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Oral Answers to Questions
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John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
1. What assessment he has made of current arrangements for disaster planning in the UK; and if he will make a statement.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
The primary responsibility for emergency planning sits with local responders. The Cabinet Office works with other Departments, devolved Administrations and emergency responders to enhance the country’s ability to prepare for, respond to and recover from emergencies.
The whole House will want to thank the emergency services, local authorities and the Met Office, who did a brilliant job working together to prepare effectively for and respond to the effects of Monday’s storm.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
In the Minister’s initial response, he praised responders and local authorities. Will he also praise parish councils—those unpaid heroes in many of our communities—which provide emergency responses, and encourage those that do not presently do so to create and implement emergency plans?
Mr Maude
My hon. Friend makes a really good point. A lot of the response needs to be done on an extremely local basis. Many parish councils take this seriously, with volunteers who rise to the occasion superbly—a huge amount of which happened on Sunday and Monday in preparation for and in response to the storm.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
2. What assessment he has made of the effect on the functioning of government of reductions in the number of senior civil service staff; and if he will make a statement.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
Since April 2010, the number of senior civil servants has reduced by 16% and the senior civil service pay bill has reduced by 20%. Last year, civil servants helped to deliver more than £10 billion in efficiency savings by changing the way in which Whitehall and central Government operate. We are determined to drive even greater value for the taxpayer while continuing to provide exceptional public services.
Kelvin Hopkins
Is not the truth that Government cuts have seen many senior civil servants take early retirement, with an enormous loss of expertise and capacity, with increasing staff churn and work overloads, leading to problems like the west coast main line franchise chaos, delays in replying to Members’ correspondence and much else besides?
Mr Maude
I wish to take this opportunity to praise civil servants for the work that they have done. With a civil service that is significantly smaller than that which we inherited in May 2010, productivity has improved markedly. The civil service is delivering at least as much as it was before, with fewer people. Engagement scores have stayed high, and I want to praise them rather than run down what they do.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I join my right hon. Friend in commending the senior civil service for operating in the way it does. Does he agree that its capability is not enhanced by the degree of churn in the top jobs in the civil service, and what will the Government do to address that?
Mr Maude
There has been concern over a long period about senior civil servants—and not just senior civil servants—not staying in post long enough. We are seeking to address that, and I know that the leadership of the civil service takes the issue very seriously. One of the effects of moving to fixed tenure for permanent secretaries will, I suspect, be to lengthen the period they stay in post rather than, as some have feared, shorten it.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
Have the Government yet worked out when we will reach the tipping point at which reducing further the number of senior civil servants will not improve the service they provide but will impinge on it?
Mr Maude
As I say, there have been significant reductions. Productivity has improved and we believe that significantly more productivity can be gained. Current departmental plans show a continued reduction in the size of the civil service through to May 2015. We are finding different ways of doing things better with fewer people and at lower cost.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
Is it not absolutely right that the effectiveness of public services is more important than the number of civil servants who are employed? What measures is my right hon. Friend taking to measure the productivity of civil servants so they can no longer be a drag on our economy, but enhance it?
Mr Maude
At is best, the civil service is not a drag on the economy; it is an important component of the economy working successfully. The leadership of the civil service identified significant deficiencies in capability, which are now being addressed. Frankly, they had been left unaddressed for far too long. Urgent action is now being taken and we need to drive it through.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
4. What assessment he has made of the work of the National Citizen Service.
Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
7. What assessment he has made of the work of the National Citizen Service.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)
The National Citizen Service is growing fast and is proving enormously popular with young people. The research shows clearly that it helps to develop life skills that employers value, and that for every £1 of public money we invest, society is receiving £3 of value back.
Nick de Bois
I thank the Minister for that answer. I was privileged to attend a challenge network campaign day in my constituency, where social action projects were put into effective and lasting programmes across the constituency. What steps will the Minister take to roll out the National Citizen Service further and expand it, and will he join me in congratulating the efforts of Enfield youngsters?
Mr Hurd
I certainly join my hon. Friend in congratulating Enfield youngsters and all youngsters across the country who have participated in the National Citizen Service on their efforts. He may be interested to know that to date the young people have contributed more than 1 million hours of their time to volunteer and do good work in communities. They get a huge amount out of that process, which is why we are ambitious to grow it and have said that we will make at least 90,000 places available next year.
Stephen Mosley
Over the summer, I was delighted to see the excellent work of the National Citizen Service team in Chester, who were redecorating Blacon young people’s project. Has my hon. Friend made an assessment of the monetary value of the work that NCS volunteers do for their local communities?
Mr Hurd
I thank my hon. Friend for the keen interest he has shown in the NCS, and many other hon. Members who took the time to visit programmes over the summer. As I said, young people have to date contributed more than 1 million hours of their time to do good work in their communities. Part of the calculation of £3 back for every £1 we spend is the value attached to the voluntary time they are giving. The other part is their increased employability, which reflects the life and work skills they are gathering through participation.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Is the National Citizen Service not heading for that same graveyard of three-word prime ministerial gimmicks like back to basics, the third way, the citizens charter, the cones hotline and the big society?
Mr Hurd
Not for the first time, I could not disagree more with the hon. Gentleman. NSC is proving its value across communities. Many Opposition Members visited the programme over the summer and Opposition Front Benchers have nice words to say about it. We are determined to embed it in the youth sector and for it to be part of the landscape of programmes that try to help young people achieve their full potential. We are extremely proud of it. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
The hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) was gesticulating as though he was training to be an opera singer. I have no idea why, but let us hear from the hon. Gentleman.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
The gesture was one of frustration and disappointment that some Opposition Members do not seem to understand how valuable the National Citizen Service is. Does my hon. Friend agree that what Gloucestershire college has been doing in my constituency to help people on to this wonderful course, which it is now replicating with a mini course for the new sixth form at the Gloucester academy, is an example of how the NCS can spread into the school curriculum too?
Mr Hurd
I could not agree more, in sharp contrast to my response to the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn). I look forward to visiting my hon. Friend in Gloucester to see in practice what he is talking about. The NCS is growing fast. We are seeing schools and colleges embrace it precisely because they see the value to their pupils of participating in a programme that helps young people develop the confidence, self-esteem and skills that will be valuable to them in life.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Can the Minister confirm that Serco has cut the funding it makes available to charities under the National Citizen Service? What impact does the Minister think that will have on the charities delivering this important initiative?
Mr Hurd
Serco leads a consortium that includes many large and small charities. It is an important provider. We manage our providers very carefully, and when there are signs of underperformance, we take action to protect the taxpayer. The hon. Gentleman would not know anything about that because he represents a party that over time has not represented the taxpayer sufficiently. In the case of Serco and that consortium, we took action to protect the taxpayer, and I am proud of that.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
Last year, 6,000 places on the NCS summer scheme went unfilled, while youth services, which provided continuity, stability and a lifeline for many young people, disappeared. With one in three organisations that provide youth services facing closure, what has the Minister got to say to those young people?
Mr Hurd
First, I congratulate the hon. Lady on her promotion. I think she is the fifth shadow Minister I have faced across this Dispatch Box, and I hope she enjoys her time.
There is a serious point about cuts to local youth services by local authorities. We have taken over responsibility for youth policy and want to engage with local authorities to try to protect and enhance those services, but the hon. Lady misses a fundamental point about the NCS: it funds grass-roots youth organisations across the country to work with young people throughout the year—spring, summer and autumn—and therefore it is part of the solution.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
5. What progress his Department has made on the cyber-security programme.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
We have committed an additional £210 million to the national cyber-security programme for 2015-16, underlining our commitment to tackling cyber threats. This year, we have launched the cyber-security information-sharing partnership and increased specialist capability in police forces, and we are currently setting up UKCERT, the national computer emergency response team.
Julian Smith
Following the Snowden leaks in the US, where a contractor working for Booz Allen was able to cause untold damage to US and international intelligence services, what steps is the Minister taking to put in place restrictions on contractors and staff vis-à-vis access to this programme?
Mr Maude
My hon. Friend has taken a close interest in this matter and made some extremely robust and helpful comments. We take contractor security extremely seriously, and following this breach, which took place in the United States, we are obviously redoubling our efforts to ensure that it is as secure as it can be.
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
When assessing the leaks from Edward Snowden and the reporting by newspapers, including The Guardian, will the Minister and the Government take clear account of the statement from President Barack Obama last week that some of the activities of the National Security Agency in the US raised legitimate questions for friends and allies?
Mr Maude
I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but I would just like to make this point about GCHQ: it comprises very, very dedicated, hard-working Crown servants who do incredibly valuable work to protect our safety and security every day of the week, and they deserve solid support from right across the Chamber and from both Front Benches. I hope that that will be made absolutely clear.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
The Government are rightly trying to tighten up on British cyber-security. Does the Minister share my concern that anybody who weakens encryption methods or puts in back doors exposes us all to greater risk?
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
According to the Government’s own figures, 87% of small businesses experienced a cyber-security breach last year and were attacked, on average, 17 times, yet more than four fifths of the Government’s cyber-security budget goes on the intelligence services, big business and government, leaving small businesses and consumers to fend for themselves. Now we learn that the Minister has set up his own wi-fi network in the Cabinet Office to bypass all that expensive security. When will he stand up for small businesses and consumers and get a grip on cyber-security?
Mr Maude
I am glad to say that the most recent rankings of countries in relation to cyber-security had the UK in top position, but we are not at all complacent; much more needs to be done. The hon. Lady is very interested in the wi-fi arrangements in my office, which were installed by the Cabinet Office IT supplier and are fully compliant. We take all this extremely seriously, but the threats are changing all the time and we need to be agile in how we respond to them.
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
6. What recent discussions he has held with his ministerial colleagues on the use of the Post Office as a front office for Government services.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)
The hon. Gentleman will know that the Post Office already delivers a number of valuable front-line services for the Government, and it has proved successful in competing for contracts. The Cabinet Office’s engagement at the moment involves conversations about how the Post Office and others might help us to give better support to citizens who are not yet online.
Mr Reid
The Minister is correct: the Post Office already delivers a lot of Government services. It has the technology to enable it to back up the Government’s digital agenda and to be the front office for the Government. For example, people without internet access could make universal credit applications through it. Post offices are at the heart of our communities, and I urge the Minister to encourage all Government Departments to make more use of the Post Office.
Mr Hurd
I hear that message loud and clear. We are engaging with the Post Office and a number of suppliers about how they can help us with our agenda of encouraging more of our citizens to get online and become digitally capable—and to access Government services online, because that is the direction of travel that we are taking—as well as with the assisted digital programme, which will ensure that none of our citizens is left behind in that process.
Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab)
One area of business that was taken from the post offices some time ago was the issuing of TV licences. Has the Minister had any discussions with his ministerial contacts about bringing that service back to the post offices? Many old people still do not have access to the internet.
Mr Hurd
As I have said, our conversation with the Post Office is about the broad agenda of digital by default, and about how we can get more of our citizens online. Some 11 million of them are estimated still to be offline, so that is a big challenge. Alongside that, programmes are necessary to ensure that people who do not want to be online can still access Government digital services. I am sure that the Post Office and others will be able to help us in that process.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
Is the Minister aware that the National Federation of SubPostmasters has reported that the income generated by the Government services that its members provide is fairly small? I am all in favour of sub-post offices providing Government services, but the Government must surely be made to pay for that properly.
Mr Hurd
Obviously, if post offices are going to provide a service, they need to have the capacity to do that. I have had conversations with postmasters in my area. In the Pinner post office, for example, I have tried out the new technology that is helping citizens to get online and access services locally and to become more digitally capable, and I did not get a sense from that postmaster that there was a problem.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
8. What recent steps he has taken to reduce barriers to small and medium-sized enterprises participating in Government procurement.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)
This Government remain extremely committed to the process of trying to increase the participation of SMEs in central Government procurement, and we believe that at least an additional £1.5 billion has flowed into the SME sector through that process since 2010. That represents progress, but we know that there is still a lot to do.
Mr Bain
The Minister has just claimed that direct spend with SMEs has increased since the last election, but will he confirm that the recorded rise in the Ministry of Justice since April 2011 is in fact down to his officials, including law firms, offering legal aid services? When is he going to correct those figures to remove that inaccuracy?
Mr Hurd
I am not going to take any lessons from the party opposite. What we inherited in terms of SMEs participating in public procurement was no ambition and no data. This Government are supplying the ambition and trying to ensure that the data are as good as they can be. We are not taking any lectures from the party that had no ambition and no data.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to support small businesses, but will he look at the systems in which small businesses are sometimes unable to bid? And may I see him after this Question Time to tell him precisely what I mean by that?
Mr Hurd
I am very glad to hear that extension to my hon. Friend’s question, and I certainly accept his invitation. We are absolutely determined to try to remove the barriers to small business participation. For example, we have recently announced the fourth supplier framework for the procurement of Government cloud technology services, and I am delighted to tell him that 84% of those suppliers are SMEs. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. There are far too many noisy private conversations taking place in the Chamber. That is unfair on the Members asking questions and on the Ministers who are trying to make their answers heard.
Topical Questions
Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
My responsibilities as Minister for the Cabinet Office are for the public sector efficiency and reform group, civil services issues, industrial relations strategy in the public sector, Government transparency, civil contingencies, civil society and cyber-security.
Tom Blenkinsop
Last Friday afternoon, the Cabinet Office snuck out details about special advisers, showing that there are more of them and that their cost has risen by more than £1 million last year. At a time when the Government are demanding cuts and claiming that they are necessary, is it right that such profligate spending by the Cabinet Office on special advisers is allowed to go uncontrolled?
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
T2. What outcomes does my right hon. Friend hope to see from the Open Government Partnership summit being held in London tomorrow?
Mr Maude
We are looking forward to welcoming to London the representatives of 62 Governments who have chosen to belong to this unique partnership both between Governments and with civil society organisations. Transparency is an idea whose time has come, and we will celebrate the progression of the open data and transparency agenda over these two days.
Michael Dugher (Barnsley East) (Lab)
Last Friday afternoon, the Cabinet Office finally released some information, but the Government failed yet again to release the Prime Minister’s annual Chequers guest list, which has not now been published since July 2011—an interesting definition of “annual”. This follows repeated failures adequately to answer parliamentary questions and freedom of information requests about visits to No. 10 by the Prime Minister’s adviser, Lynton Crosby—despite the Government answering exactly the same questions about other individuals in other Departments. When are the Government going to release this information, including about that cigarette lobbyist running around at the heart of Downing street?
Mr Maude
I am sure that when the hon. Gentleman was in residence in No. 10 Downing street in the last Government—when the degree of transparency was virtually nil—it would never have been disclosed, as it will be, that the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark) was at Chequers helping the then Prime Minister to plant a tree.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
T4. This time last year, Ministers announced a radical overhaul of facility time. With Royal Mail, teacher and fire brigade strikes inflicting disruption on the public and with the appalling behaviour of Len McCluskey in Grangemouth, FOI data I have received show that the overall public subsidy from Whitehall to the unions has gone up, not down. What further action is my right hon. Friend taking?
Mr Maude
The events at Grangemouth illustrate the problems that can arise when full-time union officials are paid for by the employer. I am glad to be able to tell my hon. Friend that the number of full-time union officials on the civil service payroll has halved and that the cost has more than halved.
Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)
T3. In response to the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), the Minister said that he took very seriously the threat of cybercrime to small and medium-sized businesses. However, cybercrime has cost SMEs £800 million in the last year, yet the Government are giving only £5 million to spend on it across the board. What are the Government doing to tackle that problem?
Mr Maude
I accept that awareness of cyber-threats by all businesses is still too low. As the rankings show, the threat is higher in Britain than it is in most countries, but awareness is not good enough and too many businesses have left themselves vulnerable. We are working hard to raise their awareness. My right hon. Friends in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills are leading that work, but there is much more that we can and should do.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Will the Government support my private Member’s Bill on 29 November, which is intended to give charitable status to religious institutions? Will they support it?
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)
I have already told my hon. Friend that we will not. I understand that there is a lot of concern on both sides of the House about the Plymouth Brethren case, on which we are all united in wanting to see a quick and speedy resolution to that issue.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
T5. The coalition agreement pledged to limit the number of SpAds—special advisers. Given that the number has risen to 97, what limit do the Government actually want?
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
When my right hon. Friend came to office in 2010, what cross-Government work had been done to tackle fraud, error and debt?
Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 30 October.
The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)
This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Sheryll Murray
Under this Government, there are more than 1 million new jobs. That has happened with the help of companies such as Lantoom Quarry in South East Cornwall, which is investing in and training young people. We were told that the Government had a programme that would clearly lead to the disappearance of a million jobs. Is it not time for the Opposition, who said that, to admit that they were wrong and to apologise?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The British economy is on the mend. We see unemployment coming down and the number of people in work going up, and our growth rate is now forecast to be almost three times as fast as the German growth rate. The Labour party and the Leader of the Opposition told us that we would lose a million jobs, but the Leader of the Opposition was absolutely wrong, and it is time that he got to his feet and told us that he was wrong.
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
Having listened to the Select Committee hearing yesterday, will the Prime Minister tell us what is the difference between his—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. May I just say to the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary that his role is to nod his head in the appropriate places, and to fetch and carry notes? No noise is required.
Edward Miliband
Having listened to the Select Committee hearing yesterday, can the Prime Minister tell us what is the difference between his policy on energy and that of the energy companies?
The Prime Minister
Not a word of apology for predicting that a million jobs would be lost! The Opposition got it wrong, and they cannot bear to admit it. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. The questions must be heard and the answers must be heard, however long it takes. Some people need to get used to the fact that that is what the public would like to see from the House of Commons.
The Prime Minister
What we need in the energy market is more competition and lower levies and charges to drive profits and prices down, but what we have learnt in the last week is this: competition should include switching. At the Dispatch Box, the right hon. Gentleman said:
“I will tell the Prime Minister what is a con: telling people…that the answer was to switch suppliers”.—[Official Report, 23 October 2013; Vol. 569, c. 295.]
However, what have we found out over the last few days? The right hon. Gentleman switched his supplier. Yes—he went for one of these insurgent companies to cut his bills. Is it not typical? The right hon. Gentleman comes here every week and attacks Tory policy; then he goes home and adopts Tory policy to help his own family.
Edward Miliband
The only thing that people need to do if they want someone to stand up against the energy companies is to switch the Prime Minister, and that is what they know.
Perhaps, as the unofficial spokesman for the energy companies, the Prime Minister can answer the question that they could not answer yesterday. Can he explain why, although wholesale prices have hardly moved since a year ago, retail prices are rising by about 10%?
The Prime Minister
Because we need both competition and rolling back the costs of charges. Switching is part of competition and the company the right hon. Gentleman switched to has this to say about his energy freeze. Let us listen to the people providing his energy:
“A policy like this is potentially…problematic for an independent provider…bluntly, it could put me under.”
That is the right hon. Gentleman’s policy: not listening to the people providing his energy, but having less choice, less competition, higher prices. It is the same old Labour.
Edward Miliband
The right hon. Gentleman had no answer to the question, and I will explain something quite simple to him: most energy companies do not want a price freeze and most consumers do. That is why the energy companies are against a price freeze. He is so on the side of the energy companies that we should call them the big seven: the Prime Minister and the big six energy companies. In Opposition, he said there was a problem in the relationship between wholesale and retail prices, and he went on to say, “The first thing you’ve got to do is give the regulator the teeth to order that those reductions are made and that is what we would do.” Why when it comes to the energy companies has he gone from Rambo to Bambi in four short years?
The Prime Minister
Who was it who gave us the big six? [Interruption.] Yes, when Labour first looked at this there were almost 20 companies, but, because of the right hon. Gentleman’s stewardship, we ended up with six players. The Opposition talk about a price freeze but down the Corridor they have been voting for a price rise. That is right: they voted for a decarbonisation target that everyone accepts would raise prices. If he wants a price freeze, why has he just voted for a price rise?
Edward Miliband
It is just so hard to keep up with this Prime Minister on green levies. This is what he was saying in January: believe it or not, he was boasting about the size of his green levies. He said—I kid you not: “ECO was many times the size of the scheme it replaced.” So when it comes to green, as short a time ago as January he was saying the bigger the better, and now he says the opposite. Here is the problem: on competition—[Interruption.] Here is the problem: he wants a review of energy policy, but that is exactly what the energy companies want—a long inquiry, kicking the problem into the long grass. How will a review that reports next summer help people pay their bills this winter?
The Prime Minister
We want a competition inquiry that starts straight away: that is our policy. On the point about voting for a price rise, the right hon. Gentleman has to answer, because this is what the former Labour energy spokesman Lord Donoughue said in the House of Lords. The right hon. Gentleman should listen to this because Lord Donoughue was their energy spokesman:
“I have never spoken against a Labour amendment in my 28 years in this House, but…I am troubled by the consequence…for ordinary people…The amendment will…raise the cost of living and is in conflict with a future price freeze.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 28 October 2013; Vol. 748, c. 1357-1359.]
That is it from Labour’s own policy spokesman in the past in the Lords. The fact is that the whole country can see that the right hon. Gentleman is a one-trick pony and he has run out of road.
Edward Miliband
If the right hon. Gentleman wants to talk about what people are saying—[Interruption.] If he wants to talk about—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Members should try to recover some semblance of calm. It would be good for their health and beneficial for their well-being. They must try to grow up, even after the age of 60.
Edward Miliband
If the right hon. Gentleman wants to talk about what people are saying, his own former Tory Environment Secretary, the man he put in charge of the Climate Change Committee, says his figures are false. That is what he says. Instead of having a review, the right hon. Gentleman has an opportunity to do something for the public next week. He has an Energy Bill going through Parliament. Instead of sitting on his hands, he could amend that Bill to institute a price freeze now. We will support a price freeze: why does he not act?
The Prime Minister
Because it is not a price freeze—it is a price con. The fact is that the right hon. Gentleman is hiding behind this economically illiterate policy because he cannot talk about the economy, because it is growing; he cannot talk about unemployment, because it is falling; and he cannot talk about the deficit, because it has come down. He has got nothing else to say. He is just a weak leader with no ideas.
Edward Miliband
I will tell you who is weak—it is this Prime Minister. He is too weak to stand up to the energy companies. Nothing less than a price freeze will do, because that is the only way we can deal with the energy companies overcharging. It is time he started acting like a Prime Minister and standing up for consumers, and stopped acting like a PR man for the energy companies.
The Prime Minister
I will tell you what is weak: being too weak to stand up and admit to economic failures; being too weak to stand up to Len McCluskey, who tried to wreck Scotland’s petrochemical industry; and being too weak to stand up to the shadow Chancellor on HS2—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Mr Gwynne, recover your composure man. You are wholly out of control.
The Prime Minister
Let us just examine what has happened on HS2 this week: the shadow Chancellor has been touring the radio studios, telling everyone it will not go ahead; and Labour local authority leaders have been begging the Leader of the Opposition to stand up for this infrastructure scheme. And what has he done? He has cowered in his office, too weak to make a decision. To put it another way: Britain deserves better than that lot.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
Q2. Last year, businesses created three times as many jobs in the private sector as were lost in the public sector. So is it not high time that those who made duff mystic predictions that we would not be able to create as many private jobs as were lost in the public sector admit that they got it wrong?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that the Opposition should admit they got it wrong. Let us just remember what the Leader of the Opposition said as late as March 2012. He said that we were not going to be able to replace the jobs in the public sector quickly enough with jobs in the private sector. The fact is that we have now got 1 million more people employed in our country—1.4 million private sector jobs—but the Opposition are too weak to admit that they got it wrong.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
Q3. Does the Prime Minister believe that the accident and emergency crisis in the NHS has anything to do with the fact that he has cut 6,000 nurses since coming to power?
The Prime Minister
What we see in the NHS is 23,000 fewer non-clinical grades—bureaucrats and managers taken out of the NHS—and 4,000 more clinical staff, including over 5,000 more doctors in our NHS. That is the change we have seen. Just imagine if we had listened to Labour and cut the NHS budget. We believe in the NHS and we have invested in it.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
Q4. Hampshire chamber of commerce reports, in the last quarterly economic survey, real business optimism, with a rise in the number of local firms employing more staff, an increase in UK orders and a 10% increase in sales. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is evidence that the Government’s economic plan is working and that the Labour party got it wrong?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is right; we had to take tough decisions, but growth is there, unemployment is falling, the number of people in work is rising and we have 400,000 more businesses in this country. If we had listened to the shadow Chancellor, who said that we were in for a “lost decade” of growth, we would have higher debts and higher interest rates—it would be the same old outcome under the same old Labour.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
Q5. In a recent uSwitch survey, 75% of people said that they switched their heating off on one or more occasions last winter. Does the Prime Minister expect that number to go up or down this winter due to his inability to stand up to the energy companies?
The Prime Minister
Fuel poverty went up under Labour. This Government have maintained the winter fuel payments; we have increased the cold weather payments; and we have increased the benefits that the poorest families get in our country. That is the action that we have taken, and we can afford to do that only because we have taken tough and sensible decisions on the economy.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
A few days ago, I launched the business case for the electrification of the Harrogate and Knaresborough rail line, which will mean more trains, faster services and better rolling stock. As the previous Government electrified just 9 miles in 13 years, will my right hon. Friend continue to prioritise rail electrification?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The previous Government did just 9 miles of electrification in 13 years, an absolutely pathetic record, whereas we are putting £1 billion into modernising railways in the north of England. Let us look again at HS2: we all know we need cross-party agreement to make that important infrastructure scheme go ahead. What a pathetic spectacle we have seen this week. One minute the Opposition are for it, then they are against it, and the Leader of the Opposition is too weak to make a decision.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
Q6. I have come across a very interesting interview given by the Prime Minister to The Times, during which he had to stop off at his constituency office as, in his words, he needed “to turn the heating on just so it’s a bit nicer when I get back this afternoon”.How many of my constituents does he think will be able to afford such niceties as we approach this winter?
The Prime Minister
What the hon. Gentleman’s constituents will understand is that Labour’s price freeze is a price con. Prices would go up beforehand, prices would go up afterwards and as the Leader of the Opposition himself has admitted, Labour would not be able to keep its promise because it does not control gas prices. That is why everyone knows that it is a con.
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)
Q7. My 20-year-old constituent Liam Burgess, from Llansteffan in Carmarthen, left school involuntarily at 16 and was told that the only choice ahead of him was in which prison he might end up. Four years later, he runs and owns one of Wales’s best chocolate brands, nomnom. Does the Prime Minister agree that the record number of new business start-ups and the positive economic signs are as much down to people such as Liam Burgess as they are to the excellent work of the Chancellor?
The Prime Minister
I certainly join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to his constituent for how he has turned his life around and is contributing to our economy. We see 400,000 more businesses up and running in our country—[Interruption.] Of course Labour Members do not want to hear about success stories. They do not care about enterprise; they do not care about small businesses. It is this enterprise and this small business that are turning our country around.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Q8. A new flat has just been launched in my constituency, which has been built partly as a result of public money under the Government’s affordable housing scheme, known as Share to Buy. It is a two-bedroom flat in Pear Tree court and it costs £720,000. Does the Prime Minister believe that to be affordable and, if so, to whom?
The Prime Minister
We need to build more houses in our country and that is why we are reforming the planning system, which Labour opposed, why we have introduced Help to Buy, which Labour opposed, and why we have put extra money into affordable housing, which Labour opposed. Labour is now the “build absolutely nothing anywhere” party and as a result housing will become less affordable.
Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)
Over the past few decades, hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty in India and China. As those people have increased their living standards, their energy demands have increased, too. Does my right hon. Friend agree that if we are to have sustainable, long-term and cheap energy, the innovative deal that the Chancellor heralded a few weeks ago through the Chinese initiative is crucial and much better than short-term political gimmicks?
The Prime Minister
That was an important step forward in encouraging inward investment into our country to help fund our nuclear programme. That means that we will have dependable supplies of low-carbon electricity long into the future. People might oppose foreign investment—it sounds now like the Labour party opposes foreign investment and with all the flip-flops the Opposition have done this week, I would not be at all surprised if they did not start to oppose nuclear energy, too—but getting that foreign investment means that we can use our firepower to build hospitals, to build schools, to build roads and railways and modernise our country.
Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)
Q9. Does the Prime Minister believe that Royal Mail was undervalued?
The Prime Minister
Considering that Royal Mail in the past was losing billions of pounds, the whole country is far better off with Royal Mail in the private sector. I just talked about flip-flops and here is another from the Labour party. Who said that we needed to privatise Royal Mail in the first place? Anyone? Where is Peter Mandelson when you need him? Labour said that we needed private capital—I agree; they said we needed private management—I agree. It has taken this Government to deliver the policy.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
With 1.5 million jobs created by business and 400,000 new businesses, last month’s figures in Worcestershire showed the biggest monthly fall in unemployment on record. Unemployment is now down more than 30% since its peak under Labour. Does the Prime Minister agree that by backing business and supporting businesses to grow, we can undo Labour’s legacy of unemployment?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Whoever was in government right now would have to make difficult reductions in the public sector, and obviously that leads to the reduction of some public sector jobs, so we need a strong private sector recovery. That is what we have seen—1.4 million more jobs in the private sector, meaning that overall there are 1 million more people employed in our country. That is 1 million reasons to stick to our plan and reject the medicine suggested by the Opposition.
Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)
Q10. Current legislation to protect agency workers was designed to stop the exploitation of migrant workers and also to protect the wages and conditions of our indigenous workers. I know that the Prime Minister has been lobbied on this issue, but can he reassure the House that he will resist any temptation to dilute even further the protection for agency workers?
The Prime Minister
What I want to see are more jobs in this country, and that means making sure we keep our flexible work force. What the hon. Gentleman did not tell us, of course, is that he chairs the Unite group of Labour MPs. Perhaps he ought to declare that when he stands up. While he is at it, perhaps he could have a word with Mr McCluskey and say that we need a proper inquiry into what happened in Unite and a proper inquiry into what happened in Grangemouth, because we all know that the leader of the Labour party is too weak to do it himself.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
Q11. The economy has grown 1.5% in the past six months, during which time in the Chippenham constituency the number of jobseekers has fallen by a fifth. Raising living standards requires greater productivity from a work force who are highly skilled, but in Chippenham hopes were dashed five years ago when the national college building programme ran out of money. Will the Prime Minister join me in backing Wiltshire college’s bid to the Skills Funding Agency to rebuild our Chippenham campus to make it fit for local students to gain the skills that employers demand?
The Prime Minister
I very much agree with what my hon. Friend says. We all remember the huge disappointment when Labour’s planned investment in so many of our colleges collapsed. I saw exactly the same thing at Abingdon and Witney college, and it is this Government who are now putting the money in to see that expansion and improvement and to put quality colleges in place. I am sure that that can happen in Wiltshire as well as in Witney.
Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)
Since two thirds of the green levies on people’s energy bills were established under this Government, why has the Prime Minister been attacking himself?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman is wrong. [Interruption.] The fact is that many of the green levies were put in place by Labour. Let me remind him that one of the first acts of this Government was with the £179 renewable heat initiative, which the leader of the Labour party wanted to put on the bill of every single person in the country—and we took it off the bill.
Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)
Q12. Will the Prime Minister join me in congratulating the work force at Toyota in my constituency, as well as manufacturers across the country, whose hard work has ensured that car production went up by 10% in the past year?
The Prime Minister
I certainly join my hon. Friend. I remember my own visit to Burnaston in Derby—[Interruption.] Again, Opposition Members do not want to hear good news about manufacturing. They do not want to hear good news about our car industry. The fact is that this country is now a net exporter of cars again and we should be congratulating the work force at Toyota. We should be congratulating the work force at Jaguar Land Rover. We should be praising what they are doing at Nissan. These companies are leading a re-industrialisation of our country. I was at the Cowley works on Monday, where the Mini, which is doing brilliantly, is leading to more jobs, more apprenticeships, more employment, more skills—all things that we welcome under this Government.
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for launching our report on electoral conduct yesterday, which found some shocking examples of racism and discrimination during election campaigns. Will the Prime Minister back our call to get political parties, the Electoral Commission and the Equality and Human Rights Commission to work more pro-actively now in areas of tension so that the next general election can be a battle of ideas, not race hate and discrimination?
The Prime Minister
I very much welcome what the hon. Lady says and the report of the all-party parliamentary inquiry into electoral conduct, which I will study closely. If there is anything we can do on a cross-party basis to ensure that we keep that sort of disgusting racism out of politics, we should certainly do it.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
Q13. Thanks to the Government’s regional growth fund, £8.8 million is being spent reopening the Todmorden curve rail link, which will cut travel times between Burnley and Manchester in half. However, better rail connections to the south of England are also vital. Does the Prime Minister agree that it is absolutely outrageous for the Labour party to be challenging HS2 at the present time, putting in jeopardy jobs and investment in the north of England?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to stand up for his constituents and for the north of England, because there is a real danger with Labour’s antics that it is letting down the north of England and the midlands. Let me remind the shadow Chancellor what he said about these transport investments:
“Nowhere is…consensus more essential than on our national infrastructure…successive governments…have ducked or delayed vital decisions on our national infrastructure, allowing short-term politics to”
get in the way. By his own words, he is found guilty of short-termism and petty politicking, rather than looking after the national interest.
Mrs Siân C. James (Swansea East) (Lab)
I am surprised that the Prime Minister, along with the Justice Secretary, is prepared is gamble on his proposals for the probation service, especially given that the early tests and trials have been called to a halt. Is he prepared to gamble with the lives and daily safety of my constituents and others in this country, and will his gambling luck hold out?
The Prime Minister
What we want is a probation service that is much more focused on getting results on stopping reoffending and making sure that we give people rehabilitation services from the moment they leave prison, which does not happen today.
It is interesting that at 26 minutes past 12 we have not heard one question from Labour Members on the economy. They have nothing to say and nothing to offer. They are embarrassed that prediction after prediction was completely wrong.
Mr Scott
Q14. Like my right hon. Friend, I welcome the fall in unemployment, which is down to 3.7 % in my constituency, but does he recognise, as I do, that one of the biggest problems is getting young people with special needs, particularly autism and Asperger’s, into work, and will he congratulate the London borough of Redbridge and the Interface parents group, where the project I initiated has now started and the first young people with special needs are in work?
The Prime Minister
I know of my hon. Friend’s close attention to this issue and his deep care about it. I certainly pay tribute to Redbridge and all those who help children with special needs. Through our reform of special needs, we have tried to focus the help on those who need it most to ensure that they get the help they need.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I have a question on the economy for the Prime Minister. Does he agree with his own advisers that the Government’s Youth Contract is failing to tackle
“the appallingly high levels of youth unemployment”?
The Prime Minister
What we have seen with the Youth Contract is thousands of young people getting work through our work experience scheme. It has been more successful than the future jobs fund but has cost six times less. Through the Youth Contract we have also seen more than 20,000 young people get work opportunities. That is why we see the youth claimant count coming down so rapidly in our country. There is still far more to do to get young people into work, but the fact that we have backed more than 1.5 million apprenticeships is a sign of how much we care about getting young people into work.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
Q15. Does the Prime Minister agree with President Obama that additional constraints on how we gather and use intelligence are needed and that we need to weigh the risks and rewards of our activities more effectively? Will he follow the President’s lead?
The Prime Minister
What I have said in the House and will repeat again is that obviously we will always listen to what other countries have to say about these issues, but I believe that in Britain we have a good way of having intelligence and security services, having them overseen by a parliamentary Committee, having their work examined by intelligence commissioners, and ensuring that they act under a proper legal basis. I take those responsibilities very seriously, but I believe we have a good system in this country and we can be proud of the people who work in it and of those who oversee it.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
We have recently learned that energy security in this country is being outsourced to the Chinese and the French, that the lights may go out, that pensioners will freeze this year, and that we have no control over the big six. Does the Prime Minister have any regrets about the cack-handed privatisation of the utilities by the former Tory Government and the decimation of the most technically advanced coal industry in the world?
The Prime Minister
What I would say to the hon. Gentleman in terms of energy security is that he backed a Government who in 13 years never built a single nuclear power station. Oh, they talked about it—boy, did they talk about it—but they never actually got it done. In terms of Chinese and French investment, I think we should welcome foreign investment into our country, building these important utilities so that we can use our firepower for the schools, the hospitals, the roads and the railways we need.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
In my constituency there are shortly to be more than 100 wind turbines and there are about 30 or 40 more in the planning system. These turbines are paid for by constituents but they are not constructed here or creating any jobs in my constituency. When the Prime Minister rightly reviews green taxes, will he ensure that the changes to green subsidies ensure that jobs in that energy sector are here in the United Kingdom?
The Prime Minister
I know how hard my hon. Friend has worked with other MPs on a cross-party basis right across the Yorkshire and Humberside region to try to attract investment into our country, and we should continue to target that investment.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
Will the Prime Minister join me in paying tribute to the positive role played by trade unions in the work of the Automotive Council, which has brought about the renaissance in the UK car industry?
The Prime Minister
The Automotive Council has been extremely successful. Where trade unions play a positive role, I will be the first to praise them, but where, frankly, we have a real problem with a rogue trade unionist at Grangemouth who nearly brought the Scottish petrochemical industry to its knees, we need to have a proper inquiry—a Labour inquiry. If Labour Members had any courage, any vision or any strength of decision making, they would recognise the need to have that inquiry and get to the bottom of what happened.
Sainsbury’s Development in Rushey Mead (Leicester)
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
This weekend in Leicester it will be Diwali, but unfortunately the celebrations are going to be ruined—unlike the wonderful celebrations we have had in the House this afternoon—because of the Sainsbury’s development at the top of Melton road. That development has had a terribly detrimental effect on local residents, with traffic piling up for several miles and local residents having to stay up all night because of the works going on. I held a public meeting last Friday, and local residents wanted me to present a petition to Parliament today. It is very much hoped that Sainsbury’s will listen to this petition, so that the Diwali celebrations on Belgrave and Melton road can be successful.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of Leicester East,
Declares that the development plans by Sainsbury’s in Rushey Mead are having a negative impact on the daily lives of the Petitioners’ families.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Department for Communities and Local Government to introduce legislation relating to major retail developments to allow local people to have a say on how the work is carried out and so that potential noise and traffic problems are considered and to provide compensation.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001260]
Changes to Health Services in London
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the “Shaping a healthier future” programme, a locally led review of NHS services across north-west London.
The NHS is one of the greatest institutions in the world. Ensuring that it is sustainable and that it serves the best interests of patients sometimes means taking tough decisions. The population of north-west London is growing and will reach approximately 2.15 million by 2018. About 300,000 people have a long-term condition. However, there is great variation in the quality of acute care. In 2011, there was a 10% higher mortality rate at weekends for emergency admissions, and the number of hospital re-admissions differs considerably across the area. The Independent Reconfiguration Panel expressed concerns that the status quo in north-west London was neither sustainable nor desirable, and might not even be stable.
In order to address these challenges, the NHS in London started the “Shaping a healthier future” programme in 2009. It proposed significant changes to services, including centralising accident and emergency services at five rather than nine hospitals; 24/7 urgent care centres at all nine hospitals; 24/7 consultant cover in all obstetric wards; a brand new trauma hospital at St Mary’s hospital, Paddington; brand new custom-built local hospitals at Ealing and Charing Cross; seven-day access to GP surgeries throughout north-west London; the creation of over 800 additional posts to improve out-of-hospital care, including a named, accountable clinician for all vulnerable and elderly patients with fully integrated provision by the health and social care systems; and increased investment in mental health and psychiatric liaison services.
These changes represent the most ambitious plans to transform care put forward by any NHS local area to date. They are forward-thinking and address many of the most pressing issues facing the NHS, including seven-day working, improved hospital safety and proactive out-of-hospital and GP services. The improvements in emergency care alone should save about 130 lives per annum and the transformation in out-of-hospital care many more, giving north-west London probably the best out-of-hospital care anywhere in the country.
The plans are supported by all eight clinical commissioning groups, the medical directors of all nine local NHS trusts, and all local councils except Ealing. It was as a result of a referral to me by Ealing council on 19 March 2013 that I asked the Independent Reconfiguration Panel to conduct a full review.
The panel submitted its comprehensive report to me on 13 September 2013 and I have considered it in detail alongside the referral from Ealing. I am today placing a copy of the panel’s report in the Library, alongside the strong letters of support for the changes that I received from all local CCGs and medical directors. The panel says that “Shaping a healthier future” provides
“the way forward for the future and that the proposals for change will enable the provision of safe, sustainable and accessible services.”
Today I have accepted the panel’s advice in full and it will be published on the panel’s website.
The panel also says that while the changes to A and E at Central Middlesex and Hammersmith hospitals should be implemented as soon as practicable, further work is required before a final decision can be made about the range of services to be provided from the Ealing and Charing Cross hospital sites.
Because the process to date has already taken four years, causing considerable and understandable local concern, I have today decided it is time to end the uncertainty. Therefore, while I accept the need for further work, as the IRP suggests, I have decided that the outcome should be that Ealing and Charing Cross hospitals should continue to offer an A and E service, even if it is a different shape or size from that currently offered.
Any changes implemented as part of “Shaping a healthier future” should be implemented by local commissioners following proper public engagement and in line with the emerging principles of the Keogh review of accident and emergency services.
I have today written to the chair and vice-chair of the health and adult social services standing scrutiny panel of the London borough of Ealing council, the chair of the IRP Lord Bernie Ribeiro, the chief executive of NHS England and local MPs, informing them of my decision.
These much-needed changes will put patients at the centre of their local NHS, with more accessible, 24/7 front-line care at home, in GP surgeries, in hospitals and in the community. More money will be spent on front-line care, which focuses on the patient. Less will be wasted on duplication and under-performing services.
Let me be clear that, in the joint words of the medical directors at hospitals affected, there is a
“very high level of clinical support for this programme across NW London”.
Local services will be designed by clinicians and local residents and will be based on the specific needs of the population.
None of these changes will take place until NHS England is convinced that the necessary increases in capacity in north-west London’s hospitals and primary and community services have taken place.
I want to put on the record my thanks to the IRP for its thorough advice. As the medical directors of all the local hospitals concerned said in their letter to me, these changes will
“save many lives each year and significantly improve patients care and experience of the NHS.”
When local doctors tell me that that is the prize, I will not duck a difficult decision.
I commend this statement to the House.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
People at home will have listened carefully to what the Secretary of State has just said, and they will have one simple question in their mind: why is this man trying to close so many A and Es when we are in the middle of an A and E crisis? At least seven A and Es across the capital are under threat, at a time when all London A and Es are working flat out and are full to capacity. As we stand here, thousands of people are waiting to be seen, stuck on trolleys or held in the back of ambulances that are queuing outside A and E. When the A and Es we have are struggling to cope, how on earth can it be safe to close or downgrade so many?
That brings me to what I see as the major flaw in what the Secretary of State has announced. These plans have been in development for four years, as he said. Four years ago, A and E was not in the crisis that it faces today. The reality on the ground in London has changed. In 2013, A and Es in London have been getting worse and worse and worse. Across London, 200,000 people have waited in A and E for longer than four hours in the past 12 months. Here is the statistic that should make people stop and think: taking all its major A and E units together, London has missed the Government’s A and E target in 48 of the last 52 weeks.
Any further changes to this fragile and overburdened system must proceed with the utmost caution. Will the Secretary of State give me a categorical assurance that he personally gave in-depth consideration to the latest evidence of the pressure on London A and Es and to the changed reality that 2013 has brought before making his decision? I understand how tough such decisions are. Sometimes, difficult changes need to be made, as I found when I reorganised stroke services in London before the last election. When he does the right thing, based on a clear clinical case that lives will be saved, we will support him, as we did on children’s heart surgery. The problem with the closure programme, as managers admitted to Members of the House at the outset, is that it is primarily about saving money, not saving lives.
Even though the Secretary of State has made some minor concessions today, he is still performing pretty brutal surgery on west London’s NHS. It is the single biggest hospital closure programme the NHS has ever seen. Has he considered the impact of the changes on people in those communities who are on low incomes? They will face much greater costs and journey times in getting to hospital.
Will the Secretary of State be straight with us on the much-loved Charing Cross and Ealing hospitals? I listened carefully to what he said. What is the “further work” that he referred to? He spoke of their A and Es being of a different size and shape. Is that not spin for saying that the units will be downgraded and become urgent care centres? Alternatively, is he giving those units a permanent reprieve today? If he cannot answer those questions directly, local people in those areas will take what he has said as weasel words.
The Secretary of State said that there will be investment in communities before the changes go ahead. He said that to the hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) in respect of Chase Farm hospital, but he is closing that unit next month. What guarantee do people have that he will follow through on this promise, when he broke the promise that he made to his hon. Friend?
The Secretary of State has made a statement on London health services. People will not have missed the fact that he has failed to mention Lewisham hospital and what happened at the Court of Appeal yesterday. Is that not a staggering omission? The victory that was won by the people of Lewisham will give hope to people who are disappointed by today’s announcement.
The humiliation of the Secretary of State in court again raises major questions about his judgment and his ability to manage such important decisions. In the summer, we explicitly warned him to accept the first court ruling. Instead, he ploughed on, throwing around taxpayers’ money in a cavalier fashion, to protect his pride and defend the indefensible. I have a simple question: how much has he spent on appealing that decision? When he decided to appeal, did the official legal advice from the Government recommend an appeal or did he overrule it? Will he confirm today to this House and to the people of Lewisham that there will be no further appeal against the court’s ruling? Will he give the people of Lewisham and the staff who work at Lewisham hospital a commitment that their A and E and maternity services will be protected? Finally, will he apologise to the people of Lewisham for the unnecessary distress and worry he has put them through?
It will not have escaped people’s notice that the Secretary of State is trying to put powers through the House quite soon to grab further powers for himself and drive through financial closures of A and Es without proper consultation, so that in effect he can do what he tried to do to Lewisham to every community in England. That will send a chill wind through those communities that fear to lose their A and Es, and that is why we will oppose those powers when they are considered by the House.
In conclusion, the Government have come a long way since the Prime Minister stood outside Chase Farm hospital days after the last general election and promised a moratorium on all hospital changes. Local people in west London will not have forgotten the Prime Minister standing outside Ealing and Central Middlesex hospitals and promising the same. People are seeing through a Prime Minister whose broken promises on the NHS are catching up with him. Has it ever been clearer than it is today that people simply cannot trust the Tories with the NHS?
Mr Hunt
I am afraid the right hon. Gentleman is sounding more and more desperate. Today the Government have taken a difficult decision that will improve services for patients. It was a moment for him to show that he understood the challenges facing the NHS, but that was not to be. He said that we should not proceed with the changes given winter pressures on A and Es, but he should read the document. The proposals are for more emergency care doctors, more critical care doctors, and more psychiatric liaison support that helps A and E departments, and they are supported by the medical directors of all nine trusts affected. He said that if evidence can be produced to show that the proposals will save lives, Labour will support them. What more evidence does he want? He should be shouting from the rooftops to support the proposals, but instead he is putting politics before patients.
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned A and E performance, and I am happy to tell him about that. On average a person now waits 50 minutes in A and E before they are seen; when he was Health Secretary it was 71 minutes. The number of patients seen in less than four hours every day is 57,000—nearly 2,000 more than when the right hon. Gentleman was Health Secretary. Our hospitals are performing extremely well under a great deal of pressure because we are taking difficult decisions of the kind that we are talking about today.
The right hon. Gentleman also talked about hospital closures. Again, he should read the proposals: a brand new trauma centre at St Mary’s hospital in Paddington; two brand new elective care centres at Ealing and Charing Cross; seven-day NHS care that will save lives; 24/7 obstetric care; 16 paediatric care centres. Those are big improvements in hospital care—[Interruption.] I will come on to Lewisham. I am acting to end uncertainty because I made the decision today that whatever the outcome of further discussions that the Independent Reconfiguration Panel recommends, there will remain an A and E at Ealing and Charing Cross. That is the best thing I can do for those residents.
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned Lewisham, but let us remember that the problem started because his Government saddled South London Healthcare NHS Trust with £150 million in private finance initiative costs. I judged that the right thing for patients was to sort out a problem that was diverting £1 million every week from the front line. Yes it is difficult, but I would rather lose a battle with the courts trying to do the right thing for patients than not try at all.
Finally, these are difficult decisions, but the party that really has NHS interests at heart is the one that is prepared to grip those decisions. We are gripping the problems in A and E, and in terms of hospital reconfigurations. That is why the NHS is safe in our hands and not safe in those of the Labour party.
Mr Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that we tackle health inequalities, and improve health outcomes and access to accident and emergency departments, by facing up to the need to make difficult decisions to change the way care is delivered to keep it up to date? Does he further agree that today we have seen a Government who are prepared to face those challenges, and an Opposition spokesman who has demonstrated a determination to duck them? Who cares about the NHS?
Mr Hunt
I thank my right hon. Friend for that comment. He is right that this is about facing up to difficult decisions. One aspect of the proposals that is so exciting for people who want a transformation in services is that they involve employing 800 additional people for out-of-hospital care. The real way we will reduce pressure on A and E units is by ensuring that people, particularly the frail and elderly, are looked after better at home. That is what we must do. We must recognise that, fundamentally, the problems will not be solved by trying to pour in money in the way that it has always been poured in. We must rethink the model. This is a positive and ambitious programme. If the shadow Secretary of State were in my shoes, he would speak differently of the proposals, because they represent the way forward for the kind of integrated care he normally champions.
Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Let me remind the Secretary of State that the High Court ruled that his actions in trying to remove services from Lewisham hospital to save a separate failing trust were illegal. He then lost the appeal. Will he now stop throwing good public money after bad, leave Lewisham hospital alone, and learn to respect the views of the people who work in our hospital and those who use its services?
Mr Hunt
I respect those views and the right hon. Lady for her campaigning. I understand why the people of Lewisham were unhappy about those changes but, as Health Secretary, I had to take a decision in the interests of all patients in south London. That was the first time the powers—the trust special administrator powers—were used. My interpretation was different from the courts, but I respect them as the final arbiter of what the law means. However, when we have to make difficult decisions about turning round failing hospitals—south London has some of the most serious problems in the country—it is important that the local NHS can take a wider health economy view of what changes are necessary. As I have said, I will respect what the Court has decided, but it is important that I continue to battle for the right thing for patients.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
The Secretary of State, his predecessor and the Prime Minister are well aware of my continued opposition to the decision to downgrade Chase Farm. However, today, will he join me in condemning the shadow Secretary of State, who has said that Chase Farm is closing? It is not closing. Against my wishes, there is a proposal to downgrade the A and E unit. The hypocrisy and politicking is worse because the previous Labour Government initiated the process and authorised the downgrade in the first place.
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend speaks wisely. It is disappointing that we are not having a more intelligent debate. When Labour was in power, it closed or downgraded 12 A and E units in 13 years. The then Government realised that there were problems. He is right that they started the problem in Chase Farm. That is why, when we are facing such difficult decisions, it is important to have a responsible debate. I accept that MPs have views on their constituencies, but we have to start looking above the parapet to the wider interests of patients. That is a difficult thing to do, but I would have hoped for more leadership from the shadow Secretary of State, who used to be Health Secretary.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
The Secretary of State is destroying services in four great London hospitals, two of which are in my constituency, in the biggest closure programme in the history of the NHS. Why is he closing A and Es in two of the most deprived communities in London—Brent and White City—and why, rather than certainty, is he installing chaos into Ealing and Charing Cross hospitals? What is happening to the 500 beds at Charing Cross? What is happening to the best stroke unit in the country? What does he mean by A and Es that are different in size and shape? When will he answer those questions? This is a cheap political fix. How can anyone have confidence in the Secretary of State—
Mr Speaker
Order. We understand the general drift of the observations—[Interruption.] Order. I understand how strongly the hon. Gentleman feels, but he should really ask one question. The Secretary of State is a man of dexterity and no doubt will meet the hon. Gentleman’s needs as he sees fit.
Mr Hunt
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I will. The hon. Gentleman does no credit to himself or his party with such hyperbole. Let me remind him that the leaders of the clinical commissioning groups, including the ones in his area, which are there to look after his constituents, have said that
“delivering the Shaping a Healthier Future recommendations in full will save many lives each year and significantly improve patients’ care and experience of the NHS.”
That is what the doctors are saying, which is what I want to follow.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
At the Central Middlesex hospital, we have well qualified doctors and nurses waiting for patients to arrive but, at the same time, we have long queues at Northwick Park hospital. That makes no sense. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that any reduced resources at Central Middlesex hospital will be transferred in full to Northwick Park so that patients can be seen far more quickly and in a far better manner?
Mr Hunt
I assure my hon. Friend that the resources taken out of some acute services will be used to give better, safer and more high-quality services to his constituents. Northwick Park is one of the best examples of that. Stroke services in the north-west London area were centralised in Charing Cross and Northwick Park. As a result of those changes, which were introduced by the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), stroke mortality rates in London have halved. That is a very good example of why it makes sense to centralise certain more specialist and complex services if we are to get the best results for patients.
Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State talked about putting politics before patients, but I remind him that the Prime Minister, when he was Leader of the Opposition, went to Chase Farm to say that the Conservatives would stop all configurations. That simply has not happened, but yet the Secretary of State continues to have a role. Patients and local residents are firmly opposed to the reconfiguration at that hospital and he will end up in court very soon over the matter. There is still time for him to reconsider that decision.
Mr Hunt
We did not agree with how the previous Government went about reconfigurations. I have announced a better way of achieving them, with better public and clinical support. My predecessor as Health Secretary paused on reconfigurations because he wanted to introduce a better structure, including the four tests, one of which was the need for local clinical support, and another of which was the need for effective public engagement. That is why we are in a better place today than we were with the previous Government’s reconfigurations.
Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)
My constituents in Brent will be very disappointed with the Secretary of State’s announcement of the A and E closure at Central Middlesex hospital. However, given that the hospital trust began moving acute services out to Northwick Park hospital many years before the process began, they will probably not be surprised. Does he agree that there is an urgent need for health managers to work closely with Transport for London to ensure good transport links for my constituents in Harlesden to get to Northwick Park? It is currently extremely difficult to do so. Will he write to health managers to express that view?
Mr Hunt
The hon. Lady makes an important point. I accept that there will be changes in transport arrangements. I am happy to work with her and to talk to TfL about how improvements can be made in respect of the changes I have announced today.
I hope that the hon. Lady talks to her constituents about the positive aspects of the proposals. Hers will be the first part of the country in which all GP surgeries are open seven days a week—at least, there will be seven-day access to GP surgeries throughout her constituency and north-west London. North-west London will be the first part of the country where we have full seven-day working and we eliminate the fact that mortality rates are 10% higher if people are admitted in an emergency at the weekend. The positive aspects of the proposals will mean that her constituents find that they get better, safer care and live for longer.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I represent wards with some of the highest morbidity and lowest life expectancy in north-west London. Clinical support for reform and restructuring was based on adequate funding during the period. Hillingdon clinical commissioning group has written to the Secretary of State to express its concern about the current funding formula, which could undermine service delivery unless there are additional resources. Will he meet representatives from the CCG and Hillingdon hospital, which he has denied additional winter money this year, to talk about the long-term future of our health economy?
Mr Hunt
Hillingdon CCG supports the changes because it recognises the profound impact they could have in addressing health inequalities. I know that that is precisely what concerns the hon. Gentleman. His constituents will be big beneficiaries of the changes we are announcing today. The funding formula is an extremely difficult issue. We have decided to depoliticise it by making it a matter for NHS England—it is decided at arm’s length from politicians because we believe it is very important that things are decided on the basis of an independent formula.
Sir John Randall (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement. We in Hillingdon are very pleased for our near neighbours in Ealing and in Charing Cross for this reprieve—rather than stay of execution—and it will take pressure off our residents. I echo the words of the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), however, about the pressures we are facing in Hillingdon. Perhaps we could have a meeting with my right hon. Friend to discuss some of these issues, including the funding formula and the winter pressures.
Mr Hunt
It is the first time I have responded to a question from my right hon. Friend, so I shall take the opportunity to congratulate him on his knighthood. I am more than happy to meet him and his neighbour as long as they understand that the funding formula is not in my gift—it is decided by an independent body. As for the winter pressures money, the allocation was not decided by Ministers: it was decided by the people who are responsible for making sure that we head off winter pressures. They decided to concentrate resources in the third of the country where the problems were most severe, and that is how that selection was made.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
The whole House knows that all the medical directors in the hospitals involved in north-west London support the reconfiguration. Does the Secretary of State really understand the importance of bringing ordinary people with him? Londoners are especially cautious about these reconfigurations because of the historic problems with access to GPs and the many excluded communities for whom A and E is their primary care, and because these institutions are often major employers in their area and people identify with them. Does he realise that unless he brings ordinary people and patients with him on these reconfigurations, Londoners will continue to fight them and, as in the case of Lewisham, they will continue to win?
Mr Hunt
Apart from the very last sentence, I actually agree with what the hon. Lady says. It is important to carry the public with us in these reconfigurations. Governments of both parties have struggled to do that in these difficult reconfigurations, which is why the new structures that we have introduced will put doctors in the front line to argue for changes. It is not just the medical directors of trusts supporting them, but the CCG leaders, who are all local GPs, making that case. That is why there is much stronger support for these changes. All the elected representatives on the local councils, apart from Ealing, supported these changes, and that is a very big change from what we have seen previously. I agree with the hon. Lady: we need to do more work and it is very important to carry people with us.
Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)
It is fair to say that today’s announcement leaves my constituents in a much better place than they were over a year ago when we set out to save our four local A and Es. Obviously, there is disappointment about the loss of the A and Es at Hammersmith and Central Middlesex, but huge relief that the bigger A and Es at Ealing and Charing Cross will be saved. My right hon. Friend says, rightly, that it will be for the local CCGs to take responsibility for the future of these A and Es. Can he give us a little more detail on how he sees the services being delivered and improved by the CCGs, and can he reconfirm that the A and Es at Ealing and Charing Cross will be saved as A and Es?
Mr Hunt
I can absolutely confirm that A and Es will remain at Charing Cross and Ealing hospitals, thanks in no small part to the remarkable campaigning that my hon. Friend has done for her constituents, both in public and in private. I commend her for that. The process that has to happen is clearly set out in what the IRP says and in my reply. There must be full consultation. There will be changes to the way in which services are provided, but they will be changes made in the interests of patients. Whatever those changes are, A and Es will remain at those two hospitals.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
It is a bit rich for the Secretary of State to accuse the Opposition of being desperate when he has been told by the court not once, but twice that he acted unlawfully in relation to Lewisham. The Secretary of State’s amendment to the Care Bill would enable him to do to other hospitals what the courts said yesterday he could not do in south London. Will he admit that under those changes no hospital would be safe, and that in fact he wants to inflict the blatant injustice that he tried to inflict on Lewisham on hospitals not only across London, but up and down the country?
Mr Hunt
I understand why the hon. Lady is rightly representing the concerns of her constituents, but she must also understand that I have to look at their interests as patients, as well as at the interests of the broader south London population. It is important to make that amendment to the Care Bill because hospitals are not islands on their own. We have a very interconnected health economy, and what happens in Lewisham has a direct impact on what happens in Woolwich and vice versa. If we are to turn around failing hospitals quickly—something that the last Government sadly did not do—we need to have the ability to look at the whole health economy, not at problems in isolation.
Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend look again at Barking, Havering and Redbridge trust? As he knows, the difficulties that Queen’s hospital has had simply meant that, in its own admission, it would not be able to cope without an A and E at King George hospital for many years to come.
Mr Hunt
I commend my hon. Friend for raising this issue with me consistently. I know his very real concern is to make sure that when those changes are made they do not have an adverse impact on his constituents. I will go back and make absolutely certain that no changes will be made until it is certain that they are clinically safe.
Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
Why does the Secretary of State find it so difficult to realise that he is not above the law? Both the Court of Appeal and the High Court have made it plain that his flagrant disregard for the law in trying to destroy Lewisham hospital cannot stand. Why does he not have the decency to abandon his proposals; apologise to the people of Lewisham and the staff and users of Lewisham hospital; and share his humiliation with the Leader of the House, the previous Secretary of State, who launched this illegal programme in the first place?
Mr Hunt
There is no humiliation in doing the right thing for patients, and I will always do that. Sometimes it is difficult and we have battles with the courts, but no one is above the law. I have said that I respect the judgment made by the court yesterday, and that is what I shall do.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
Are there not three lessons to learn from the Secretary of State’s statement and the response from the shadow Secretary of State? First, we should listen to the opinions of local doctors. Secondly, delay puts at risk patient safety. Thirdly, we should not play politics. For Enfield, is it not the case that we should recognise that local doctors have united to say that we need to get on and implement changes, because delay would put at risk patient safety this winter, not least at our new, expanded North Middlesex hospital in Enfield? The future of Chase Farm is secure, but it could also be put at risk if we do not allow the implementation of good changes. We should not play politics, but Enfield council is doing so by trying to challenge the changes.
Mr Hunt
As so often, my hon. Friend speaks wisely. It is very important that in all this we do the right thing for patients. My view on all these big changes is that once we have decided what to do, it should be done as quickly as possible, but within the bounds of what is clinically safe. It is very important that safeguards are in place and I would always follow the advice of local doctors as to the right moment to proceed with an important change in safety.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State commit to doing better against the four-hour A and E waiting target in London in the future? Will he put on the record today his acknowledgement of the value of the contribution being made by those A and E units—too few at the moment—that are doing well against that target at the moment?
Mr Hunt
There are a number of hospitals that are doing extremely well, and we are doing everything we can to support those that are in difficulty. I absolutely recognise how hard front-line NHS staff are working: we are working with them in an incredibly detailed way on a hospital-by-hospital basis, not just in London but across the country, to see what additional support we can give to people as we go through a difficult winter. We have already announced £250 million of support for the third of trusts in the greatest difficulty, and we are looking at what other, non-financial means we can use to support other trusts. The search continues, because we recognise how challenging winters are for the NHS under this Government as under previous ones.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
Given the difficult legacy of the financial arrangements in London and south-east London in particular, and the Court of Appeal judgment yesterday, will the Secretary of State give an assurance that in future decisions will have the support of GPs in the areas affected; will not put at risk other viable and successful parts of the London health family; and will not suddenly impose new management structures and create huge disruption—for example, at King’s College hospital, Guy’s hospital and St Thomas’s hospital—as London health partners appear to be suggesting?
Mr Hunt
I certainly agree with two of the three points. I do not think it is credible to say that we will not make any changes to the NHS, even if they are in the interests of patients, unless there is unanimous support from local GPs. The reality is that that would always be difficult to achieve. We would end up with paralysis, which would be against the interests of patients. However, I do think that GPs should be in the driving seat and be the advocates of these changes, and we should listen to them above all people on whether to proceed with the changes. The whole purpose of the Government’s reforms to the NHS is to create less bureaucracy not more, so I would be concerned if there was any suggestion that more was being created.
We must always ensure that changes do not have an adverse impact on successful neighbouring areas. However, we need to encourage all areas to work together, because we have an interconnected health economy, particularly in London.
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)
I cannot find the words to express how disappointed the residents in my constituency, and elsewhere in west London, will be on hearing the statement. We are not clear about what will happen to Ealing hospital. You are not clear in your statement, before the final decision is made, about the range of services that will be provided from Ealing and Charing Cross hospitals. What work will be done? Will you consider or ignore, like you totally ignored the thousands of people who marched in the rain outside Ealing hospital in west London two weeks ago—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but may I just say to him that I will not be doing any of the things that he suggested? I think his inquiry was directed at the Secretary of State, rather then me. I have no responsibility for health services in London or anywhere else.
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman has had his say and we are grateful to him.
Mr Hunt
I am disappointed that the hon. Gentleman is disappointed. I am interested to know what his definition of “totally ignored” means, because we have decided that we will not close Ealing A and E, and that is a big decision. With respect to how his constituents feel, I completely understand that many people will be nervous about any changes. I hope he will become a big advocate of these changes, because his constituents will be among the first in the country to have seven-day access to GPs and a seven-day NHS, which means there will not be a higher mortality rate for admission to hospitals at the weekends and that there will be 24/7 consultant obstetric cover for people who need it when giving birth. They are big and important changes that will benefit his constituents.
Mr Speaker
Order. I should just say to the House, almost as a courtesy, that I am prioritising London Members. However, non-London Members should take heart. If they exercise their knee muscles they may have an opportunity in due course.
Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
The hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) was absolutely spot on in her question to the Secretary of State, not least with regard to variability and accessibility of GP services. A few months ago, I asked him whether he would make it a requirement for plans to expand out-of-hospital care to be in place before hospital changes occur. Can I take it from his statement that it is his intention that, when recommendations from the Independent Reconfiguration Panel are before him, he will require plans to build capability for community health services and primary care services to be in place before they go ahead?
Mr Hunt
The right hon. Gentleman campaigns assiduously for his constituents. I recognise that there are worries about potential changes in his constituency, an issue he often raises. Yes, we must ensure, if there are transitions or changes, that proper plans are in place to ensure they can be made safely. If he reads the report, he will derive a great deal of comfort from the stress the IRP puts on the necessity of having proper alternative provision in place before any changes are made.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State’s statement has left us even less clear than we were on the implications for hospital services for Westminster residents. Frankly, that is quite an achievement. Planned non-emergency hospital services have already moved away from St Mary’s Paddington to pre-empt the closure programmes that he is now telling us will not happen. That was done on the basis that St Mary’s would become the premier emergency hospital for west London, so where does that leave the provision of additional emergency services? Will that leave my constituents having to travel to Hammersmith, Ealing and Central Middlesex hospitals for their treatment, something the local authority was not even consulted on? Many GPs did not even know where their patients were being treated.
Mr Hunt
I hope that I have provided clarity by saying that there will remain an A and E at Ealing and Charing Cross, and that I support what the report says, which is that there should be five major A and E centres, of which St Mary’s Paddington will probably become the most pre-eminent trauma centre in the country. This is a big step for the hon. Lady’s constituents who use St Mary’s, and I think that they will be pleased with what I have said today.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
I congratulate the Health Secretary on his important announcement regarding the A and Es at Charing Cross and Ealing. My constituents in Chiswick will feel reassured about the ongoing service at Charing Cross, and I thank him for that. Does he agree it is important that at the centre of any decision he makes about health care are improved patient care and saving lives across London?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When the dust settles on these decisions—there is rightly so much local passion, concern and uncertainty relating to hospitals, such as Charing Cross, which has a great tradition—what people will notice is whether their local NHS services are getting better. I am afraid that one of the legacies from the previous Government was the abolition of named GPs in 2004 and a sense that it has become more difficult to access one’s local GP. The proposals mean that her constituents will be some of the first in the country to have seven-day GP services, a big step forward that her constituents will welcome.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State give me an assurance, following the huge debate that took place over the future of the A and E department of the Whittington hospital—and, by extension, the neighbouring Royal Free hospital—that its future is secure and that he will not try to reconfigure services once again in north London? Does he recognise that during that debate, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who was then Secretary of State, intervened to assure the future of the Whittington A and E department? I would like the same assurance from the Secretary of State, if that is possible.
Mr Hunt
I think the best reassurance I can give the hon. Gentleman is that, unlike when the Labour party was in power, the Secretary of State does not sit behind his desk planning reconfigurations in every part of the country. This is a locally driven process. We have put in place safeguards to ensure that, where there is a reconfiguration proposal from a local NHS, it meets certain criteria. It has to be supported by local GPs and there has to be proper engagement with the public. If his constituents are worried, I hope they will take heart from the thoroughness of the process that has happened today. It is the right process and a good process, and it will lead to better outcomes for the people involved.
Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)
My own general hospital, in keeping with many throughout the country, has come in for unfair criticism owing to the increasing pressures exerted on its A and E department. What does the Secretary of State think has caused those pressures, and will he reassure my constituents by telling us what he is doing to help relieve A and E departments?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the pressures. I am sure that most A and E departments, including his own one in Northampton, would say that the biggest single cause has been the increase in the frail elderly population and the inadequacy of the care those people receive outside hospital. We are trying to put that right by having named, accountable GPs responsible for out-of-hospital care, reversing the historic mistake made in 2004, when that personal link between GP and patient was abolished.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
This decision is devastating for my constituents. The Secretary of State will know that in the last winter period, Northwick Park hospital and Central Middlesex hospital, which comprise the North West London Hospitals Trust, were the worst-performing hospitals when it came to meeting A and E targets not only in London, but in the country. The trust scored 81.03%. That is an appalling record. What he has done today, by announcing the almost immediate closure of Central Middlesex, can only make that much worse. The College of Emergency Medicine has said that his reconfigured hospitals should have at least 16 consultants in their emergency departments, but his decision will give them 10—and that is not for major trauma centres. Will he elaborate on what he will do to bring the number of consultants up to the level required by the college?
Mr Hunt
Has the hon. Gentleman, who is so against these proposals, not noticed the proposals for more emergency care doctors, more critical care doctors and more psychiatric liaison support for A and E departments, which will reduce pressure on A and Es and mean that people admitted through A and Es for emergency care will not have a 10% higher chance of mortality if they are admitted at weekends? His constituents will be among the first to benefit from that. I would caution him, therefore, against saying that this is devastating for his constituents. We were reminded in Prime Minister’s questions earlier of how Labour suffered from predicting massive job losses, when in fact there was an increase in jobs. This announcement is good news for the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, and he should welcome it.
Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that, difficult though it may be, all NHS trusts will have to live within their budgets, because, with both Front Benches effectively having agreed public spending limits for several years to come, the amount of money that can be spent on the NHS will be finite whoever is in government?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend speaks wisely. Let us bear in mind the challenges facing north-west London, which are similar to those across the country, including in Oxfordshire. In the next two decades, its population is predicted to increase by 7%, and life expectancy has risen by three years in the last decade alone. Furthermore, the uncertainty over public finances means that the trust cannot bank on substantial increases in the NHS budget, so it has to do the responsible thing and look for better, smarter, more efficient ways to use that money to help more people. It has been brave and bold in doing this, and I think that many other parts of the country will take heart from what has happened today and come forward with equally bold plans.
Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)
Your House, Mr Speaker, is being made dizzy this afternoon by the surfeit of spin we are suffering. We are being asked to believe that this benevolent Government are partly motivated by a desire to end uncertainty. The death sentence ends the uncertainty of life, but it is not necessarily something I would recommend. Will the Secretary of State please provide a little information about what exactly a different shape and size A and E department looks like? The people of Ealing deserve to be told precisely what it means, otherwise they will think the worst.
Mr Hunt
I hope the hon. Gentleman will be pleased that today the death sentence on A and E at Ealing has been not just reprieved, but cancelled; it will keep its A and E. The definition of A and E is not something that politicians decide. We said in the statement that what the A and Es at Ealing and Charing Cross contain must be consistent with Professor Sir Bruce Keogh’s review of A and E services across the country, which they will be, and that any changes made in service provision must have full consultation with his constituents, which will happen. On the basis of an IRP report that simply says, “More work needs to be done,” I cannot answer all his questions, but I hope I can give him greater certainty than he had this morning that there will be an A and E for his constituents in Ealing.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
Clinically led, evidence-based changes to services save lives. That is straightforward and clear. It is also clear that we have to make these changes happen if we are to live within our means and the health service budget. How are we going to make reconfigurations such as this one more straightforward, because the cost and time are unacceptable? Likewise with mergers, how are we going to streamline this process?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend speaks wisely. It concerns me, as it does her, that these processes take so long. When it comes to changes in A and E and maternity services, exhaustive public consultation is necessary, because they cause such great public concern, but we also need to deal with these issues in a much more timely way, particularly when it involves sorting out the problems of failing hospitals. I agree with her, therefore, and I am looking at what can be done to speed up all these processes, while retaining the appropriate consultation with the public.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State have any idea of the concern he is causing up and down the country? In Wigan, we value our 24-hour A and E service; we do not want it downgraded, and we do not want it closed. Will he clarify his proposal for the future of Ealing A and E? Is he proposing a type 1 service? Also, will he give me a cast-iron guarantee that any future decision about our local hospital will be made on the basis of people’s lives, not cost?
Mr Hunt
I can assure the hon. Lady that decisions about the future of A and Es will be based on what is best for patients and on what will save lives and get the best outcomes—that will apply in her constituency, as it will in mine and every other constituency—but that will sometimes mean a difficult decision if we have a change that doctors strongly support, but about which members of the public are anxious. I have said that services at Ealing will change, but that there will be proper public consultation and that at the end of the process there will still be an A and E. The recommendation from the process was that the A and E should close, but I said, “No, I think there should be an A and E at the end of the process.” I am injecting that much certainty, therefore, but I am not going to micro-manage the local NHS by saying precisely what those services should be.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
It is not only A and E units in London that are under pressure; Derriford hospital’s A and E unit is also under pressure, because of our night-time economy. Is my right hon. Friend willing to meet me and potentially representatives from the English Pharmacy Board and my own Devon pharmacists to discuss how they can help to relieve some of the pressure on A and E units, especially down in Devon?
Mr Hunt
I would be more than happy to meet my hon. Friend and his local pharmacists. There is a lot that pharmacists can do. One change we are making that could make a big difference, where proper protections are in place for patients, is allowing pharmacists to access GP records so that they can give people the correct medicines, know about people’s allergies and things like that. There are lots of other things as well, though, and I look forward to the discussion.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
The statement has broader implications beyond London, although I accept that colleagues from Islington and Ealing want to ensure they have their A and E facilities. On smaller A and E facilities outside London, however, the Secretary of State said there would be no political fixes, yet when he announced additional moneys to deal with winter pressures on 53 NHS trusts, there were none in the north-east of England. What assurance can he give my constituents that hospitals in the north-east will have sufficient resources to meet the demands placed on them in winter?
Mr Hunt
The decision on where to allocate the extra help was based on where the need was greatest, and it was taken not by Ministers, but on the basis of recommendations from people working in the NHS and dealing with these problems. They chose the 53 local health economies where they thought the pressures were greatest. The fact that nowhere in the north-east was selected indicates that A and E performance is better in the north-east of England than in other parts of the country.
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
When the Secretary of State is not leading the smear campaign against my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), he is continually being dragged into the Chamber to react to events that he should be in control of. When will he finally get a grip on the problems in our A and Es across the country?
Mr Hunt
I completely reject what the hon. Gentleman says. There are 1.2 million more people using A and E every year than there were under the last Government, yet people are waiting for a shorter time, with more people being seen within the four-hour target. But we are doing something else. We are addressing the long-term problems of A and E, including the patent failures of the last Government over the GP contract, social care integration and the working time directive. All those things have made the pressures worse, but we are sorting them out.
Points of Order
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. For the second time in as many weeks, I have had the privilege of asking the Prime Minister a question. On both occasions, however, he did not address the question that I asked in any way whatever. Instead, he answered the question that he thought he was going to be asked. The question I asked him today was about agency workers, but he did not even mention agency workers in his response. How do we go about getting answers from the Prime Minister to the questions that we are asking him?
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. He will know that it is a long-standing practice in the House that considerable latitude is afforded to the Prime Minister of the day to decide in what way to respond to a question. If the hon. Gentleman is dissatisfied with an answer—and it is apparent to me that that is so—he has the resources of the Order Paper and the guidance of the Table Office available to him to enable him to pursue the matter until he receives a substantive response to his inquiry. The opportunity therefore exists for written questions, correspondence and other means to extract the information or views that he seeks. I have given the hon. Gentleman a very particular response because I recognise how strongly he feels, but it would not be right for the Chair to interpose himself between a Minister and the hon. Gentleman in circumstances of this kind. I hope that that is helpful. I know that he is a terrier, and that he will pursue his concerns with his usual indefatigability. [Interruption.] The Whip on duty has just said that the hon. Gentleman is a big terrier. He certainly has a big heart, that is for sure.
Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I wish to raise a point of order relating to the right of Members of the House to have access to Ministers and, in particular, to Ministers at the Home Office. This relates in particular to two cases, whose correspondence I have here. I originally wrote to the Home Office about the first case on 9 July, saying that it was urgent and that I needed a speedy reply. It involved a religious organisation, the Al-Raza Foundation, in my constituency, which had an indispensable need for a religious worker to join it for an event beginning on 1 November. The matter has not been resolved in the interim, despite my repeated attempts to contact the Home Office and, in particular, the Minister for Immigration, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper). That organisation is registered by the Home Office as a sponsor, but its activities have been wrecked by the failure of the Home Office to respond since 9 July.
The second case involves a constituent of mine who has been in Copenhagen and who has had problems with his passport. He has visited the British embassy there daily, but has received no help. He is now homeless in Copenhagen. During his family’s most recent visit to see me, his brother was in tears over his predicament. I wrote to the Home Office about the case a month ago, saying that it was urgent, but it has not even bothered to respond. I warned it yesterday that if I did not get a result by today, I would raise the matter with you, Mr Speaker. As a result of that, I got a completely useless telephone call from a member of the Minister for Immigration’s staff, saying that they would let me know as soon as possible. I do not object to the Home Office treating me like dirt, but I will not have my constituents treated like dirt by a Home Secretary who is, as it happens, the least responsive and courteous Home Secretary I have known in my 43 years in the House of Commons.
Mr Speaker
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I say in no facetious spirit but in all solemnity that, having known him throughout my 16 years in the House, I am surprised when Ministers do not judge it prudent simply to respond courteously to him in the first instance, not only because it is the right thing to do but because failure to do so will almost certainly result in a veritable Exocet of protest being lobbed in their direction by the right hon. Gentleman. That appears to have happened now, and I rather imagine that it will continue to do so.
There are two points here. The first is the question of courteous responses to Members, to which I attach a premium. It would help if Ministers on the Treasury Bench would commit to providing the timely, substantive and courteous responses to hon. and right hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber. That is what they ought to do, and I trust that the Leader of the House will ensure that they are up to the mark.
The second point relates to the question of particular immigration cases. I recognise that there has long been great pressure on the immigration system, under successive Governments, but I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will understand that I cannot comment on how long it might take to resolve a particular case, however needy it might be. However, courtesy, timeliness and comprehensiveness of replies are to be expected from Ministers in relation to correspondence, just as they are rightly expected from Ministers in relation to parliamentary questions. I trust that that message will have been heard, and that it will now be heeded.
Hate Crime (People with Learning Difficulties and Learning Disabilities)
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require police forces to register hate crimes committed against people with learning difficulties and learning disabilities including autism; and for connected purposes.
Right hon. and hon. Members may remember early-day motion 172. It related to hate crime against those with autism, and was signed by 104 Members of this House, showing that this is a matter of concern in this place and in the wider community. I think it is safe to say that everyone in the House either knows someone personally or has met someone with learning difficulties or disabilities, yet how many hon. Members are aware of the abuse and bullying that many of those vulnerable people are subjected to on a regular basis?
The issue was repeatedly brought to my attention when I was chair of the Valuing People Now partnership board for the north-east and, more recently, during my discussions with the national and international campaigner Kevin Healey, whose autism anti-bullying campaign has been acknowledged by his 147,000 followers on Twitter. But even Kevin is not immune to cyber-bullying, to trolling and to vitriol being directed at him because of his autism.
To appreciate the seriousness of bullying and hate crime, we need only look at the tragic case of Fiona Pilkington, who took her own life and that of her daughter Francecca Hardwick in 2007, after 10 years of harassment by bullies in her neighbourhood. The case has been well documented, and the resulting recommendations are in line with what I am proposing in the Bill. A few years ago, in one of my neighbouring constituencies, Brent Martin, a young man with learning disabilities, was beaten to death by three people he took to be friends. That was a sad case in which a vulnerable individual was physically abused and murdered by so-called friends. There are ever-growing concerns that hate crime against vulnerable groups is on the rise. My only hope is that the rise is not, as many vulnerable people feel, indicative of an increasing antipathy towards people who are perceived to be different from the rest of society.
According to Home Office figures for 2011-12, there were 43,748 hate crimes recorded by the police. Of those recorded hate crimes, 82% were race-related; 10% were related to sexual orientation; 4% were religiously motivated; and 4%—only 1,474—were recorded as disability hate crimes. What we need to see happen is for offences motivated by hostility towards the disabled or those with learning disabilities or difficulties to be treated in the same way as those motivated by racial or religious hatred. The victims of these crimes are equally aggrieved and equally harmed as anyone in any other category.
I think we can all agree that we want disabled people to be protected from criminals and bullies, and in order to guarantee this, we need an effective system whereby hate crimes against these vulnerable individuals are properly reported, recorded and reviewed to combat this scourge.
I am not sure how many right hon. and hon. Members have had the opportunity to read Mencap’s revealing report “Don’t stand by: ending disability hate crime together”, which investigated how 14 police forces in the UK report disability hate crime and further highlighted how reported disability hate crime against those with learning disabilities and difficulties was significantly lower than actual disability hate crime. The report also found that, although many forces recorded disability hate crime, only one force recorded it by type of impairment—physical, sensory and learning disabilities and mental health conditions. That is concerning. As reported last year by the Director of Public Prosecutions, some force areas recorded a nil return for disability hate crime—I treat that with incredulity.
Another element found in the report, as well as in the joint review of disability hate crime, was the inability of some police officers to distinguish between learning disability or difficulty hate crime and general antisocial behaviour. In fact, Steve Ashley, programme director to Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, who conducted the joint review, said that there was a lack of willingness by police officers and police staff in control rooms to put the right sort of questions to vulnerable people to establish their condition as a victim. Furthermore, improved information sharing between all agencies is essential to ensure that hate crimes against those with learning difficulties and disabilities are properly reported and that prosecutions are pursued as vigorously as racial or religious hate crimes.
It is a sad fact that all too many victims with learning difficulties or disabilities do not report to the police in the first instance. In 2010, only 1,200 cases of disability hate crime were prosecuted, compared with 48,000 racist or religious crimes. A survey by the National Autistic Society, however, revealed that 81% of respondents said they had experienced verbal abuse; 47% reported that they had been victims of a physical assault; and only 6% said they had not experienced any form of bullying or abuse because of their disability. Furthermore, 28% of respondents had experienced exploitation, theft and fraud or had had their possessions or property damaged; 24% had been victims of cyber-bullying; 65% had experienced hate crime more than 10 times; 73% did not report the crime to police, while of those who did, 54% said the police did not record it as a hate crime, and 40% said the police did not act on their report; and 62% said they did not think that the police had taken disability into account in the recording or otherwise of the crime.
That is a sample, but we should multiply that by the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who are either on the autistic spectrum or have learning disabilities or difficulties—and therein lies a catalogue of untold misery. The last few statistics highlight the necessity for improved police training when it comes to identifying, first, whether a person is disabled and which type of disability they have and, secondly, whether what they are reporting is a hate crime.
Many people with learning difficulties and disabilities, including autism, find it difficult to communicate with others, and this has resulted in some quite horrific cases. You may have heard, Mr Speaker, about the teenage boy with autism who attended a special educational needs school. While he was visiting a swimming pool, staff became concerned about him, and he was physically restrained and handcuffed by police. That resulted in the family receiving damages, and the High Court described the treatment of the boy as “inhuman and degrading”. This case highlights the need for autism, learning disabilities, learning difficulties and general disability awareness training for police officers.
It is important that we accept that this is a national problem and a national scandal, when people with learning disabilities and difficulties are having dreadful experiences because of bullying, verbal and physical abuse and intimidation. There needs to be a clear definition of disability hate crime, which encompasses people with learning disabilities and difficulties, and disability hate crime should become a specific criminal offence. Police forces around the country need to accept that this is a problem that needs to be dealt with and that there is a proper recording method when such crimes occur. We must urge police forces and police and crime commissioners to take learning disability and difficulty hate crime seriously in their individual force areas.
We need to ensure that people with learning difficulties and disabilities are protected from this unwanted and unwarranted harassment, physical harm and mental torture, which can often make lives a misery and indeed lead to tragic consequences. In preparation for this Bill, I was assisted by contributions from the National Autistic Society, Leonard Cheshire Disability, Mencap, Dimensions UK and a personal account from active campaigner, Kevin Healey. I place on record my thanks to all of them.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Ian Mearns, Pat Glass, Mark Durkan, Mrs Mary Glindon, John McDonnell, Annette Brooke, Heather Wheeler, Grahame M. Morris, Ian Lavery, Mr Robert Buckland, Craig Whittaker and Paul Farrelly present the Bill.
Ian Mearns accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 24 January 2014, and to be printed. (Bill 122).
Opposition Day
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Qualified Teachers
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
16:00 - The House having divided: - Ayes: 229 / Noes: 263 - Question accordingly negatived.
Mr Speaker
I advise the House that no amendment has been selected. I shall shortly call Mr Tristram Hunt, but let me point out that as a consequence of the statement, truncated time is available for this debate and no fewer than 16 Members wish to speak, which is reflected in the short time-limit. There is, of course, no time-limit on Front-Bench speeches, but I politely suggest that it would be a considerable discourtesy to Back Benchers if Front Benchers were to take longer than 40 minutes in their opening speeches. The Secretary of State looks a bit alarmed at that, but there is no reason for him to look alarmed; I am sure he can cope, and that the shadow Secretary of State can cope, too.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House endorses the view that in state funded schools teachers should be qualified or working towards qualified teacher status while they are teaching.
In moving this motion, the Opposition call on the Government to uphold the highest standards in our schools. We are delighted that the Deputy Prime Minister—if not his Schools Minister, as we never quite know on whose side he is talking—appears finally to have accepted the Labour party’s position on ensuring qualified teacher status within our schools. As if we needed any further proof of the importance of this point, events at the Secretary of State’s Al-Madinah free school in Derby—where the teaching was inadequate, the school dysfunctional and the care of those with special educational needs a disgrace—proved that right.
This afternoon I shall set out the importance of having a professionally qualified teacher work force; the role that this work force play in allowing children in our schools to reach their full potential; and to urge the Liberal Democrats to rediscover their progressive credentials. I hope to do so succinctly, Mr Speaker, so that many of my colleagues can contribute.
Andrew Percy
Yes, and one with qualified teacher status—unlike, perhaps, some others.
May I press the shadow Secretary of State on that issue of qualified teacher status? I taught at a time when we had a Labour Government and, at that time, we saw a massive increase in the number of unqualified teachers, a massive increase in the number of instructors, and a massive increase in the number of teaching assistants taking classes when planning and preparation time was introduced. What has changed the hon. Gentleman’s mind?
Tristram Hunt
Today we are focusing on the future. Under future Labour Governments, we will have qualified teachers in our classrooms. I find it extraordinary that Government Members do not want the best-qualified, best-trained teacher work force in the world.
In 2010, when the British people lent the Prime Minister their trust and he used to talk about things like the big society, the Government believed in having a motivated, professional teacher cohort. At that time, the Prime Minister rightly said that
“the most important thing that will determine”
whether children succeed at school
“is not their background, or the curricula, or the type of school, or the amount of funding. It’s who the teacher is.”
Sadly, since then the Secretary of State has focused entirely on curricula, school structure and reducing funding, and has done little to support the skills and capacities of our teachers.
Tristram Hunt
I should be delighted to give way to my hon. Friend the. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman).
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Before my hon. Friend gives way to a Government Member, may I remind him that in the past a Labour Government went out of their way to secure talented teachers from a much broader background? They introduced all sorts of ways of getting into teaching that were innovative and good, and I saw real changes in our teaching force as a result. We did some very good things, and they did not lead to the employment of unqualified teachers..
Tristram Hunt
My hon. Friend has made the crucial point that Teach First was a Labour innovation. We believe in innovation, but we also believe in some basic standards in our schools.
The Secretary of State used to praise teaching standards in Finland, South Korea and Singapore, saying:
“In all those countries teaching is a high prestige profession.”
How would the Government ensure that it remained so?
“By making it difficult to become a teacher.”
But what has the Secretary of State done in office? He has done everything possible to make it as easy as possible to assume control of a classroom. He has undermined the profession, sought to remove teacher training from universities, and adopted a policy of wholesale deregulation. That has led to a 141% increase in the number of unqualified teachers in free schools and academies. The surprising truth is that under this Government, people need more qualifications to get a job in a burger bar than to teach in an English school. While I salute the efforts of restaurant chains to improve the skills of their work forces, I should like history teachers, as well as hamburger restaurant managers, to have some basic qualifications.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is, in my opinion at least, a fine historian. He will recall that when he was at school he was taught by a very fine teacher, Terry Morris, who was the head of the history department. Will he tell the House whether Mr Morris was a qualified teacher, or simply an inspiration?
Tristram Hunt
The great thing about qualified teachers is that they can be both qualified and an inspiration. [Interruption.] I know that the Conservative party is developing something of an obsession with me, so let me say that if Conservative Members want to invite me to a special session of the 1922 Committee to talk about my past and history, I shall be more than willing to take up their invitation.
Why does the Labour party believe in having qualified teachers in our classrooms? The Secretary of State’s 2010 White Paper put it best:
“The first and most important lesson is that no education system can be better than the quality of its teachers. The most successful countries…are those where teaching has the highest status as a profession’’.
In Finland, the world’s highest-performing education system, teacher education is led by universities, and all teachers are qualified to Master’s level. In Singapore, all teachers are fully trained and have annual training entitlements. The most effective way in which to improve our children’s education is to boost the quality, elevate the standing, and raise the standards of our teaching profession. We need to train teachers up, not talk them down.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
My hon. Friend has just alluded to the very point that I wanted to make. The Secretary of State thinks that it is okay for us to have unqualified teachers, but also lauds the Finnish system, under which the minimum retirement for a teacher is to be a qualified professional with a Master’s degree.
Tristram Hunt
That is exactly the difference between the parties. We believe in professionalisation rather than deregulation. We believe in going up the value chain rather than deskilling. The point is simple: good teachers change lives. They engender aspiration, curiosity, self-improvement and a hunger for knowledge. It is teaching that awakens the passion for learning that a prosperous society and a vibrant economy so desperately need. The Secretary of State should heed the words of Andreas Schleicher of the OECD, who has argued for teaching to be elevated
“to a profession of high-level knowledge workers, who work autonomously and contribute to the profession within a collaborative culture.”
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
I hope that the whole debate will affirm the importance of teachers, qualified teachers, and the teaching profession. The hon. Gentleman is new to his post and fairly new to Parliament, but can he confirm first that under Labour an Act was passed which allowed unqualified teachers to work in schools set up by Labour, and secondly that there are fewer unqualified teachers in our schools now than when Labour was in government?
Tristram Hunt
Last year, the Liberal Democrats had a chance in the other place to support qualified teacher status. We have now heard the Deputy Prime Minister say that they believe in it. The only answer that interests me now is whether Liberal Democrat Front Benchers will vote for their values this afternoon.
The use of the word “profession” is important here, because we take a different view from the Government. We believe that teaching is more than a craft. Personally, I am full of admiration for craftsmen and craftswomen—I represent Stoke-on-Trent, where, according to J.B. Priestley, the greatest craftsmen and craftswomen, the master potters, lived—but we think that teachers need to know about more than just classroom technique. Teachers need to know how children develop, how subject knowledge can be adapted for children of different ages and how pupils with special needs can be supported, and they need an understanding of the latest research on learning.
I applaud the Government’s focus on ensuring that teachers have good subject knowledge, but—as you well know, Mr Speaker—they also need the attributes that will secure discipline and authority in the classroom and produce a safe learning environment. Those are the qualities that qualified teacher status can help to provide, and they can ensure even higher standards and happier school days for young people. That is certainly the view of the chief inspector of schools. Last year, Sir Michael Wilshaw, the man who had been hand-picked by the Education Secretary to head Ofsted, told the Education Committee:
“I would expect all the teachers in my school to have qualified teacher status.”
We all know experts in their field whom we would not trust with the teaching of our children. The hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) is a not unoriginal scholar of the Plantagenets, but I am not sure that he could deliver a history course for six-year-olds. The hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) has a background in aviation, but I would not necessarily trust him with year 7. A great mind might produce a great teacher, but a common standard of training is far more likely to ensure that that is the case most of the time—and that is why the motion is in favour of delivering a qualified teaching profession all the time.
Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)
I think I am right in saying that my hon. Friend took part in the Teach First initiative this year. I did, and I hope that I was able to give something to the young people with whom I spent an hour. They certainly gave a great deal to me. However, what I learnt most from were the skills that the teacher displayed in the classroom, and the ability of that teacher to connect with all the children. Is that not why the debate is so important?
Tristram Hunt
My hon. Friend makes a brilliant point: that pedagogy, as well as subject knowledge, is absolutely essential. It seems bizarre that we simply do not want the best-skilled teachers possible.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
First, may I reassure the hon. Gentleman that I do not have an obsession with him? I speak as someone who also has a PGCE to my name on top of my degree, but please do not confuse being qualified and being able to teach pupils with bits of paper. I have seen plenty of excellent teachers without PGCEs and some pretty poor ones with, and I think the hon. Gentleman is getting the two rather mixed up.
Tristram Hunt
This is about reducing the risk in the teaching system. This is about making sure we go up the value chain in terms of qualifications and teacher capacity.
As it has been raised, let me deal with the issue of non-qualified teachers in the private sector. First, figures from the Independent Schools Council show that 90% of those teaching in such schools have a teaching qualification and over 70% have qualified teacher status. Secondly, if head teachers in the private sector wish to employ teachers without QTS, that is their decision. But a Labour Government will demand a minimum standard of QTS for those teaching within the state system. As Secretary of State for Education, I am not going to allow for the deregulatory free-for-all which produces the likes of Al-Madinah.
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
Has the hon. Gentleman made any assessment of the quality of the teachers we are talking about here, who will be sacked after two years? There are fewer than there were when his party left office, we have a tightened-up the Ofsted regulation regime, and there is no place to hide on data and exam results, so I put it to him that a head teacher would employ a non-QTS teacher today only if they were above-average and were delivering a brilliant service to children in the classroom.
Tristram Hunt
When those teachers get into school, we want them to train up for QTS. This is simply about going up the improvement chain. It seems to me entirely uncontroversial.
Let me also stress that our plans do not affect the artists, the actor, the footballer, builder, business man or, dare I say it, historian—missing the more incisive quality of debate which a year 5 can provide—who comes into a class to inspire young people about their subjects. For those teachers holding that enormous responsibility for the learning outcomes of young people, however, we would expect, like Sir Michael Wilshaw, a minimum baseline qualification.
So let me return to the core of this motion: how do we deliver improvements in our schools system and close the attainment gap? The answer is great teaching. Part of that is strong leadership; part of that is the innovation that comes from Labour’s Teach First policy; part of that is autonomy; but it is also about further professional development: about stretching our teachers, about learning to improve at every turn.
Achieving QTS is not the whole answer. It does not in itself, as the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) said, guarantee excellence. As the Secretary of State well knows, passing a driving test does not mean that all new drivers will avoid accidents, but this is not a reason to remove the requirement to pass a test. Removing the expectation of QTS means we endanger the status of the teaching profession at a time when we need to raise the status of teaching if we are to succeed in what the Prime Minister calls the global race. The countries with the most successful education systems are going up the value chain, not deskilling. They are raising the status of teaching, not opening the door to our classrooms to anyone who just wants to have a go.
We have brought this motion to the House because the Labour party is passionate about education. From the earliest days of Robert Owen and the co-operative movement, from our history in the mechanics institutes and the mutual improvement societies, from the Workers Educational Association to the trade union movement, academic and vocational excellence is engrained in the Labour movement’s DNA. So too with the Liberals: stretching back to the Forster Education Act, or the role of education in that positive vision of freedom enunciated by T. H. Green and L. T. Hobhouse, or John Maynard Keynes’s ambition for post-war cultural enrichment, social mobility and progress has been part of the Liberal creed. While the Tory Party supported King and class, our parties are parties of the word—of a belief in the liberating potential of education—which is why it is so depressing to see a once-progressive party sign up to this narrow vision of education: of deregulation, of dumbing-down and a lack of ambition for our schools.
Great teachers broaden horizons, motivate students, and help young people achieve their potential. It is time for the Liberal Democrats to show the parents, pupils and teachers of this country whose side they are on and to vote for their values this afternoon. In the Labour party, we have made our choice: professionalism not deregulation; a qualified teacher in every classroom. I commend this motion to the House.
The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)
I welcome the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) to his place as shadow Secretary of State. It is a pleasure to have a historian representing the Labour party on this issue and it was a joy for me to hear him talk about Hobhouse and Keynes, Owen and the mechanics institutes. It is marvellous to have a historian there. However, when he was asked by one of my hon. Friends about more recent history, to wit the Labour party’s record on teaching, his mind was a curious blank. He said he was focused on the future. What a pity that when he was asked that first history question, he passed.
Michael Gove
No. What a pity that when the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central was asked about one of his former history teachers—Mr Morris, I believe—like Peter, he denied him thrice, and when he was asked to stand up for Mr Morris, who has done so much for this young lad to help him into the position he now enjoys, he refused to stand up for him. When he was asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) about Labour’s record on education, once more he declined to answer the question. He may have a PhD from Cambridge, but one thing he has to learn about education in our state schools today is, “You do not pass if you don’t answer the questions.” He did not answer the questions; he has failed his first test in the House of Commons.
Michael Gove
No, thank you. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman has not even asked a question, but I will answer all his points in due course.
As the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central knows, we are fortunate because under the coalition Government we now have—[Interruption.] I will answer the question; he did not. We now have the best generation of teachers—
Michael Gove
In a moment; all in good time. [Interruption.] I know the hon. Gentleman is impatient; he is a young one as well.
We have the best ever generation of teachers in our schools. Gerard Kelly of The Times Educational Supplement has said:
“Contrary to most reports, teaching in Britain has never been in better health”
and it
“is a more respected profession and a more attractive graduate destination than it has been for many years.”
We are also fortunate that we have, as the OECD has reminded us, the best generation of heads in our schools, and more and more of them are now enjoying the autonomy from bureaucracy and freedom from micro-management that the coalition Government have brought. They need that freedom because of the problems we inherited in our education system. As the OECD reported just last month, our 16 to 25-year-olds—those who were educated under Labour—have some of the worst levels of literacy and numeracy in the developed world. We are the only country in the developed world whose oldest citizens are more literate and numerate than our youngest adults, and what makes matters worse is that educational underperformance under Labour was concentrated in the poorest areas.
Julie Hilling
I thank the Secretary of State for giving way. It seems to me that his maths is not quite adding up, because surely those teachers who are coming into our schools now, and who are, as he just said, the best teachers that have ever come through, will have been educated under a Labour Government. Why is he running down the profession and why does he not agree that those teachers who are qualified should be joined by the other teachers becoming qualified?
Michael Gove
How could I be running down the profession when I have just applauded this generation as the best ever? Why is the hon. Lady so ungracious that she does not acknowledge that under this coalition Government we have the best quality of teaching ever?
Let me answer the question that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central failed to answer. He has one sole criterion by which a good teacher will be judged: the possession of a single piece of paper which entitles someone to QTS. That is all he talked about in his speech. [Interruption.] He cannot have a second bite at the cherry. No resits for the hon. Gentleman. That was his case. But the truth is that under Labour the number of unqualified teachers rose and under the coalition it has fallen. When we came to power there were 17,800 unqualified teachers in our schools. The figure decreased to 15,800 and is now 14,800. Under Labour, the number of unqualified teachers rose to a high point of 18,800, so by the criterion that the hon. Gentleman applies the last Labour Government were a signal failure and this coalition Government have been a resounding success.
The Labour Front Benchers talk about Teach First—
Michael Gove
In a second, eager beaver.
Interestingly, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central called Teach First “Labour’s Teach First”. That will be a surprise to Brett Wigdortz, who set it up; it is a charity. It is wholly contrary to the co-operative spirit that the hon. Gentleman lauds that he instantly nationalises every worthwhile initiative. Let us not forget that when Teach First was launched, the National Union of Teachers, which seems to be writing Labour’s policy these days, accused “Teach Firsters” of being unqualified. One teacher at the time said:
“When I first”—
heard about—
“Teach First I just thought ‘no way’…My fear was that they were totally untrained teachers.”
But Andrew Adonis, someone who does know something about state education, pressed ahead and backed, as we back, Teach First, and “Teach Firsters”, who were damned as “unqualified teachers” at the time, are now responsible for securing an improvement in every school in which they operate. They were damned as “unqualified” and introduced by a charity, and they are driving up standards. That proves that we have the best generation of teachers ever in our schools, and it is all a direct result of the initiative of individual teachers and the generous support that we have given, because Teach First has expanded as never before under this Government.
Kevin Brennan
Will the Secretary of State confirm that it was the Labour Government who supported the introduction of Teach First and supported its expansion? Will he also confirm that the figures he quoted on an increase in the number of unqualified teachers, which were in a parliamentary answer to me from the Minister for Schools, include people undertaking Teach First who are on their way to qualified teacher status?
Michael Gove
I will happily acknowledge that there are fewer unqualified teachers now, under the coalition, and that it was we who expanded Teach First. What the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central failed to acknowledge when he was asked a direct question by two of my colleagues is that Labour’s record on teacher qualifications was weaker than ours.
Andrew Percy
Will the Secretary of State also confirm that the situation is worse than those figures on unqualified teachers would suggest, because we also saw a massive increase then in the use of cover supervisors, who were often used for very long periods to teach GCSE courses that they had never passed the exams for?
Michael Gove
As ever, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. He speaks with experience from the front line and he knows that it was under Labour that, unfortunately, there was a growth in the use of cover supervisors in a number of schools. Unfortunately, in tough schools such as the one he helped to turn round we did not have people with the qualities needed to hold the attention of a class and to transform young lives. That is changing now, and one reason for that, which the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central failed to acknowledge, is that we are introducing a raft of reforms that are helping to improve teaching in all our schools.
Mr Sheerman
May I, for a moment, just raise the level of debate, rather than have this ding-dong? We all want well-qualified, well-motivated teachers who are continuously professionally developed—that is the truth. We should agree on this across the Benches and get on with it, rather than raking over daft stats from the past.
Michael Gove
I am only too happy to agree with the hon. Gentleman, who, as ever, speaks sense. However, it was not the Government who brought this motion and it was not me who failed to answer the question politely put by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark. I am enlightening the House in a way that, I am afraid, the hon. Gentleman’s Front-Bench team failed to do. I agree with him about continuous professional development, which is why we are changing the way in which we support teachers, through the establishment of teaching schools. We have 357 teaching schools that have been established. I presume that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central supports that initiative, applauds the teachers who are involved in it and believes it is the right thing to do. It will be interesting to see whether the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) backs it when the opportunity comes.
We are also changing the way in which teachers are trained. The Times Higher Education has reported that under its new inspection regime Ofsted pointed out that school-centred initial teacher training—SCITT—is in many cases better than higher education initial teacher training. According to Times Higher Education, 31% of the school-centred initial teacher training centres inspected were outstanding whereas only 13% of higher-education institution centres were. So we are moving teacher training from those institutions that are performing less well relatively—some of them are still “outstanding”—to those that are performing better. That is a real improvement in the quality of teacher training and professional development.
We have also introduced tougher standards, by which all teachers are judged. We got rid of the fuzzy standards that used to prevail under the previous Government and we have drawn up new, professional standards. They were drawn up by Sally Coates, the head teacher of Burlington Danes academy, in alliance with Joan Deslandes of Kingsford community school, Patricia Sowter of Cuckoo Hall and Sir Dan Moynihan of Harris academies. Again, the question for the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central and his Front-Bench colleagues is: do they believe that the introduction of these new teacher standards was the right thing to do? Do they support them? Do they back them? Do they recognise that they drive improved performance in the classroom? Do they also recognise that as a result of our changes the quality of teaching is higher than ever before?
My hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) rightly pointed out that we have a tougher Ofsted regime and a more rigorous accountability regime than ever before; it is tougher for someone to prove that they are outstanding. Under Labour 13% of teaching at primary schools and 11% of secondary teaching was outstanding, whereas the latest figures show that under the coalition Government those proportions have risen. The number of outstanding primary lessons has increased by 12% and the number of secondary lessons judged “outstanding” has gone up by a third. So more quality teaching is benefiting more students in more schools as a result of the changes we have made.
I also hope that the Opposition will applaud the increase in the number of highly qualified graduates from our top universities in our schools. When we came to power only 62% of those entering the teaching profession had a 2:1 or better, whereas the figure now is 71%. So we have a prestigious profession attracting more highly qualified people and transforming more lives.
Simon Hughes
Not only do I have the privilege of being the Member of Parliament for Bermondsey and Old Southwark—the MP for Teach First—but I am still a chair of a primary school governing body and a trustee of Bacon’s college. As such, I can confirm that the view of the head teachers and the governors in my constituency is that the quality of teachers now is better than it has ever been, across the board, and that Teach First has contributed hugely to the inward pressure of new people—although, of course, with educational qualifications they would be better still.
Michael Gove
As is so often the case, my right hon. Friend strikes a balanced and sensible note. He has made the point that under the coalition Government education has improved, and that teachers once damned as “unqualified” by the trade unions and others are driving improvement in our schools. If only we could hear more of him on education and rather less from some in the Labour party.
It is not just the quality of teaching that has improved; attainment has improved for our very poorest. One of the starkest problems in the education system that we inherited was the gulf between the achievement of the wealthy and that of the poorest in our schools. That gap has narrowed thanks to the teachers in our schools, to whom I, once again, wish to pay tribute today. At key stage 4 we inherited a gap of 27.6 points in exam performance, but that has been reduced to 26.3. At primary we inherited a gap of 21.3 points between the poorest and the rest, and that has closed to 16.8. I hope that everyone in the House would applaud that movement towards helping the poorest children do better.
Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)
To truly tackle the social mobility crisis that exists in our country we need much more radical action than the schemes, no doubt well intentioned, that the Secretary of State is talking about. Will he examine the open access scheme championed by Peter Lampl of the Sutton Trust and consider introducing it for the 100 leading independent schools in our country?
Michael Gove
The hon. Gentleman—I hesitate to call him that because he is increasingly becoming my hon. Friend; he knows what he is talking about and is the son of a head teacher—is absolutely right to say that we need more help from independent schools in improving the state sector. I think that Peter Lampl is a hero, but one of the things that the hon. Gentleman and I both believe in—independent schools helping state schools—would be more difficult as a direct result of official Labour party policy, as it would ban teachers in independent schools who do not have qualified teacher status from helping out in the way we would both want. His aim is noble and his heart is in the right place but he is on the wrong side of the House. I hope he will come over to our side, where logic will inevitably lead him.
Mr Graham Stuart
May I correct my right hon. Friend, because the policy is worse than that? The net effect of this highly scrutinised system of sacking people who do not have QTS will be to take high-quality teachers who make such a difference to the lives of the poorest children out of the classroom. To maintain their living, these teachers will be sent to the independent sector, where doubtless they will educate the children of people such as the shadow Secretary of State.
Michael Gove
The Chairman of the Select Committee is right once again. This is a policy for generating unemployment for excellent teachers in the state sector and giving the wealthy—those who have the advantage of the cash that enables them to pay for an independent education—the freedom to benefit from them. It is also important to recognise that the freedom to employ whoever a head teacher believes to be important and capable of adding value to education is essential to the academies and free schools programme.
It is important that Opposition Members are not selective in their use of evidence when they talk about academies and free schools, because academic results are improving faster in sponsored academies than in other schools, and the longer schools have enjoyed academy freedoms, the better they have done. In sponsored academies, open for three years and taking advantage of the freedoms we have given them, the proportion of pupils who achieve five good GCSEs including English and maths has increased by an average of 12.1 percentage points. Over the same time, results in all state-funded schools have gone up, which is good, but only by 5.1 percentage points.
We are clearly seeing academies and free schools generating improved results for the students who need them most. More than that, free schools, overwhelmingly in the poorest areas, have been backed by Andrew Adonis and Tony Blair. Andrew Adonis said that free schools were essentially Labour’s invention and Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, backed them, saying that they were a great idea, explicitly because they were
“independent schools in the state sector”.
He backed them because they had all the freedoms of great independent schools, like University College school and others, to do the right thing for their students.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
Not for the first time, there is a lack of logic in what the Secretary of State is saying. If unqualified teachers are doing such a good job and are so able, why would they find it so hard to achieve formal qualifications?
Michael Gove
If they are doing such a good job, why would the hon. Gentleman want to see them sacked? As far as he and those on his Front Bench are concerned, the only way in which someone can be a good teacher is if a single piece of paper is conferred on them. We believe that the right person to decide who should teach in a school is the head teacher, not the bureaucrats.
Another point that it is important to remember—I shall be explicit about this point, which was hinted at by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central—is that there is a difference of opinion between the two coalition parties about the future of the policy on academies and free schools. It has been a success so far, one in which we share, and I pay tribute to the Liberal Democrats for supporting it.
Michael Gove
In a second.
The difference between Liberal Democrat and Conservative policy, however, is not as big as the difference between those on the Labour Benches. In particular, I mean the difference between the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central on one side and the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central on the other. We all know that the hon. Gentleman is a distinguished historian of the civil war, and he knows all about a body politic being racked by internal division. What a pity that it is his body politic that is being so racked.
Let us listen to the cavalier Tristram, talking to Conservative-supporting The Mail on Sunday. He said:
“What I am saying is if you want to do that”—
that is, set up a free school—
“when we are in government we will be on your side. There has been this perception that we would not be, and I want people to be absolutely clear that we are…putting rocket boosters on getting behind parents and social entrepreneurs…We are not going…back”—
no turning back—
“to the old days of the local authority running all the schools—they will not be in charge.”
Three cheers for the cavalier.
Then the puritan—the roundhead—Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central suddenly popped up a few hours later on the BBC talking about the free schools that he had been lauding just a few hours earlier. He said that
“you have…a system which allows…irregularities”
and
“allegations…because there’s no oversight there.”
He said that it was a “dangerous ideological experiment”, yet only a few hours before, it was an ideological experiment with which he had fallen in love. One of the flaws in this ideological experiment, he said—
Michael Gove
In a second—[Hon. Members: “Give way.”] No, I think that the House is enjoying this section of my speech. I will conclude it in just a moment.
The hon. Gentleman said:
“We are not going to go back to the old days of the local authority…they will not be in charge”,
but then on Thursday he said that the problem with free schools was that local education authorities had no role in monitoring those schools. Within four days there has been a complete U-turn, a reversal, as the civil war in the Labour party between those who believe in excellence and those who believe in the unions is embodied in one man. In four days there has been one U-turn and no answers. I am very happy to give way now.
Tristram Hunt
I am delighted that the Secretary of State has finally given way. Let me be clear that the difference between our policy and that of the Government is that we believe in social enterprise and innovation but also believe in having qualified teachers in the classroom and systems of financial accountability and transparency, so that we do not end up with the chaos that we saw at Al-Madinah and Bradford. Let me go back to his earlier point, however. When did the division in the coalition between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives on qualified teacher status first emerge? Can he talk us through the history?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Interventions must be brief, however important the point might be to the person who is making it.
Michael Gove
I know that the hon. Gentleman is interested in splits, because he embodies one. He is a one-man walking split-generating machine. On the one hand, he is determined to remove schools from the hands of local authorities, whereas on the other he wants to impose them on them.
I fear that one thing the hon. Gentleman does not appreciate is the fact that academies and free schools face a greater degree of scrutiny than local authority schools. He has argued that we need local authority oversight because the current regime is not enough, but is he aware that academies face an annual audit from the Education Funding Agency? They must have independently audited financial accounts. They must appoint an accounting officer who has personal responsibility to the National Audit Office and, through that office, to Parliament. Those accounts must have a regularity opinion from external auditors that sets out how regularity over income and expenditure has been obtained. Free schools must also undergo their own financial management evaluation, which is counter-checked by the Education Funding Agency. That is regulation.
What about local authorities, by contrast? The National Audit Office has said:
“Local authorities do not publish systematic data to demonstrate how they are monitoring schools’ financial management and that they are intervening where necessary.”
There we have it: academies are properly regulated whereas local authority schools are not, according to the National Audit Office, regulated with anything like the same degree of intensity.
As laid out in the academies financial handbook, if there is any problem with their finances academies must ensure that they comply with the financial notice to improve and seek consent to any non-routine financial transaction. Local authorities, of course, have similar powers to suspend delegated financial functions, but there is no central record of their doing so in local authority schools, whereas there are many records and examples of academies and free schools being subject to precisely the sort of regulatory oversight that local authority schools lack. For that reason, academies and free schools are better regulated and better protected.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central mentioned one particular free school, the Al-Madinah free school, and there were certainly grievous problems there. However, that is just one school with problems; a number of local authority schools, unfortunately, also have the same ranking from Ofsted and have been graded as 4—inadequate—in every conceivable area. He has not mentioned them because he is entirely selective in his use of evidence. He has not mentioned Hawthorn primary school, Oakhill primary school, Newtown primary school, Doncaster Road primary school, St John’s primary school, Stanhope primary school, Long Cross primary school, Wellfield, Roydon, Rosebrook or a number of others. He has not done so because his selective use of evidence has been designed to discredit a programme under which, just a few weeks ago, he said he would put rocket boosters. The problem, I am afraid, is that those rocket boosters have blown up in his face.
As a historian, the hon. Gentleman should know that excessive reliance on just one source leads to errors. Of course, there have been other historians whose selective reading of evidence has allowed them to make a splash at times in the past, such as Hugh Trevor-Roper, for one, with the Hitler diaries. But although he caused a stir, he also sacrificed his credibility permanently. That is what the hon. Gentleman has done by refusing to acknowledge the brilliant record of free schools overall. He has refused to acknowledge that 50% of new local authority schools have been rated good or outstanding in the latest Ofsted ranking, whereas 75% of free schools have been ranked good or outstanding. The evidence overwhelmingly shows that where it counts, free schools are outperforming local authority schools.
Julie Hilling
I thank the Secretary of State for giving way. I have forgotten why I wanted him to give way earlier, but on his last point, how many of those free schools are teaching less pupils—[Hon. Members: “Fewer pupils.”]—fewer pupils because they have not filled all their places? My local free school has far smaller class sizes because it cannot fill those places.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Before the Secretary of State replies to that intervention, may I gently remind him that the Speaker asked for brief opening speeches? There are many Members on both sides of the House who want to participate, so I am sure he is keeping that in mind as he comes to the conclusion of his speech.
Michael Gove
I am bearing that in mind, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I thought it was important that the House was acquainted with evidence, there being a distinct lack of it in the speech from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central.
One of the things that I wanted to stress is that if the Labour policy is enacted, that will mean that there are people currently teaching in the state sector in academies and free schools who will lose their jobs—people like Anita Zarska, who is a chemistry teacher at the new East London science school, who has a PhD in molecular biology. She would lose her job. Howard Bowden, a graduate of Trinity Cambridge, the same college as the hon. Gentleman went to, is teaching at Batley grammar and has won national awards for teaching. He would lose his job. Jane Macbride at Priory community school in Weston-super-Mare, former head of an Asda sales team, who teaches—appropriately enough—business studies would lose her job.
In the week when we have discovered, as the Sharon Shoesmith case shows, that when Labour politicians start sacking people in a knee-jerk fashion, the courts can intervene and cost the taxpayer thousands, has the hon. Gentleman consulted his lawyers? Is his policy compliant with the European convention on human rights? Will he ensure that those outstanding teachers who are in our schools now will not be sacked arbitrarily as a result of a policy drawn up simply to appease the teaching unions? The consequence of his policy would be to sack them.
The consequence of the hon. Gentleman’s policy would also be that independent schools that have joined the state sector through our free school programme would be barred from opening their doors, as the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) wants, to every student who wants to join them—schools such as Chetwynde in Barrow, Liverpool college in Liverpool, King’s school in Tynemouth, all of them independent schools and all with teachers who do not have QTS. All of them would be barred from opening their doors to every child as a result of Labour policy.
What of the contribution of outstanding head teachers from the independent sector who are also helping state schools? What about Richard Cairns of Brighton college, who set up the London Academy of Excellence? What about Stephen Spurr, the head teacher of Westminster school, who is opening a new free school with Harris to help the poorest children? Neither of those has QTS. Both of them are outstanding. Both of them would be barred from helping poorer children under the hon. Gentleman’s policy.
The policy of the Labour party in the past prevented many intellectually gifted educators from helping children in need because those people were imprisoned in ivory towers. Take a chap I know called Tristram. Tristram was an Oxbridge man; he had a top degree; he was universally lauded by everyone in his field. He was a celebrated media figure. [Interruption.] No, I am not talking about the hon. Gentleman. I am talking about Tristram Jones-Parry. I know the hon. Gentleman thinks it is all about him, but this is not about him. It is about the children who will be denied the chance to get a fantastic education because Tristram Jones-Parry, who has a Cambridge degree in mathematics, was barred from teaching in state schools under Labour and is able to teach in state schools under our policy.
As a result of our policy, we now have support from Richard Cairns, the headmaster of Brighton college, the best independent school in the country. Katy Ricks, the head teacher of Sevenoaks, has said that recruiting staff, the job of any head teacher, is quite simply about getting the best possible person for the job. FASNA, the organisation that represents those teachers who are most keen on freedom and autonomy in driving up standards, says that head teachers should be trusted to hire the right people for the job.
Everyone who knows anything about how to improve state education, everyone who backs greater autonomy, backs our Government’s policy. The one person who does not, unfortunately, is the hon. Gentleman. He benefited from great teaching at his private school. It allowed him, as we heard, to make it to Cambridge, but he would deny that teaching to poor children. He got to Cambridge with the help of men and women who did not have QTS, but who had a great degree and a passion for learning, and now he wants to deny that same opportunity to poor children. He knows directly what great teaching in an independent school is and he says that poor children should never have the opportunity to enjoy the same privileges as he did.
It is the same old Labour party—“Do as I say, not as I do”—a Labour party willing to pull up the ladder from the next generation, a Labour party that has benefited from all the advantages that money can buy and then, when the poor come knocking on the door, saying, “Liberate us from ignorance,” says, “Sorry, no. We’re with the unions. We are not on your side.” It is shameless and that is why I hope everyone on the Government Benches will vote against the Opposition motion.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. There are a large number of Members who want to take part in the debate. We are starting with a time limit of five minutes each. It will be necessary to reduce it if everybody is to get in.
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. When making decisions about education, one question matters above all others: how will this affect the quality of teaching? That is the prism through which every educational decision should be viewed. A great teacher can make the difference between a child muddling through, struggling or aiming high.
Research by Professor Eric Hanushek of Stanford university shows that during one year with a very effective maths teacher, pupils gained 40% more than they would have with a poor performer. The effects of high quality teaching are especially significant for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. Hanushek found that over a school year, these pupils gain one and a half years’ worth of learning with very effective teachers, compared with just half a year of learning with poorly performing teachers. So that is the prism through which we should look at these issues.
Before we make decisions in education, another approach is to make sure that we follow the evidence. What assessment has the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) made of the quality of teachers without qualified teacher status in the classrooms? He could shake his head when the Secretary of State was speaking, but inevitably people will be sacked from the classroom. We have heard these people come forward. The hon. Gentleman is shaking his head now, denying an obvious truth. Teachers without QTS will be sacked from the classroom if that policy is implemented. [Interruption.]
We have a rigorous Ofsted regime, tough exam results, mapping, peer review, departmental head review, head teacher review—a whole system of accountability to make sure that there is nowhere to hide for the teacher who is not performing. In that context a head teacher has gone out on a limb to recruit someone who is non-QTS. We know, as was not acknowledged by the hon. Gentleman, that the number of non-qualified teachers in the teaching profession has fallen. [Interruption]. We know that the number in free schools and academies as a percentage of those employed has fallen over the past three years. We therefore have a smaller number of teachers who have been through the threshing machine of that accountability system. If they are to have such a person working for them, head teachers will need to be sure that when the inspector comes they can point to exceptional performance. [Interruption.]
The hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) who barracked and heckled the Secretary of State throughout his speech is attempting to do the same to me. Those teachers, who are necessarily strong and effective teachers, will be fired under his party’s policy. That is the central point.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
On the question of which teacher should be employed, we should not listen to the choices and the whims of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt). We should speak to the head teachers, who hire and fire. They are in the best position to know which teachers are best for their school.
Mr Stuart
I agree with my hon. Friend. The shadow Secretary of State has come into post at exactly the same time as his party has lurched to the left, and he has inherited this policy. I put it to him, as someone who has taught in schools as a non-QTS teacher, who benefited from non-QTS teachers as a pupil and who has suggested in recent days that he might send his children to schools that have inspiring non-QTS teachers in place, that his heart really is not in this.
Tristram Hunt
There is a world of difference between an external speaker coming into a school to explain history, politics or geography and someone in charge of the learning outcomes of an entire class. I would have thought that the Chair of the Education Committee knew that.
Mr Stuart
The hon. Gentleman would not answer questions about the teacher who taught and inspired him, but he was more than just a visiting lecturer.
My children attend an independent school and have non-QTS teachers. I want to ensure that every school can access people who can inspire pupils within a system of accountability. If the shadow Secretary of State told me, “We’ve carried out an assessment and got the evidence, which shows that some head teachers are taking on unqualified teachers just to save money and sticking them in classrooms with low-ability children, which is letting them down”, I would be the first to congratulate him. I would say, “Yes, let’s look at the right policy response, but let’s not sack top teachers who happen to be non-QTS teachers if we can possibly help it.”
I would even accept the hon. Gentleman’s argument if he could show me, on any kind of evidence base, that widespread numbers of non-QTS teachers are letting down our kids. I put it to him, who has been in post for a matter of days, that there is no such evidence base. On the contrary, the evidence base shows that non-QTS teachers in state schools in some of our toughest neighbourhoods are inspirational. There are often teachers who have left the independent sector, where he went, where I went and where my children go, in order to try to make a contribution in state schools in challenging circumstances. Under the Opposition’s policy, if those people do not put themselves through the many hours required to pass QTS, they will be sacked. That is absolutely wrong. He should not deny the consequences of his policy: it will lead to the removal of outstanding teachers from state school classrooms. It will almost certainly see them turning up in independent schools, where they are needed least, rather than most. That is the central flaw in his argument, and I think that he sees it.
It is early days in the hon. Gentleman’s new post. I suggest that he has inherited a dreadful policy that is entirely against what he and I believe, which is that we should be transforming education for everyone in this country, and most of all for those from poorer homes who too often have been left behind.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I wondered why Mr Stuart looked startled when I called him to speak, and now I realise that it was because I should have called an Opposition Member. To correct my error, I will now call two Opposition Members before returning to alternating speakers.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
Having been a college principal only three years ago, I bring the perspective of the head teacher to the debate. In the college I led, the sixth-formers would have expected debaters to refer to the motion. I think that they would have found that much of the Secretary of State’s 30-minute speech related not to the motion, but to peripheral issues concerning free schools and the question of regulation. Those are valid areas of debate, but if he had taken the trouble to read the motion, which I think would have been helpful—it is what I would have advised my sixth-formers to do—he would have seen that it states:
“That this House endorses the view that in state funded schools teachers should be qualified or working towards qualified teacher status while they are teaching.”
Having listened to the contributions from Government Members so far, one might be forgiven for forgetting the important phrase
“working towards qualified teacher status”.
When I appointed teachers, as I did frequently in my 28-year career in education, they either would have teaching qualifications or would be put in a framework in which they could gain them. That was for their benefit and that of their students, and there is a lot of evidence to demonstrate that. I think that any Member who intends to go through the Lobbies tonight ought to look carefully at the motion. If they vote against it, they need to understand what they are doing.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing us back to the motion. If it became Government policy, will he explain what would happen to those teachers currently employed who did not work towards qualified teacher status? Would he want them to be sacked?
Nic Dakin
As a practical person and a head teacher, I would give the people employed in my college a framework in which they could get those qualifications, and we could have accreditation of prior learning, assessments and so on. Those people who have not done the job I did will have theoretical views on this, but I know how it is done, because I have done it day in, day out. The people out there know how they are running their schools and colleges, and the people who work in them know what they are doing as well. We trust them, but they need to be in a framework that delivers. We also need to listen to what parents are saying. In a recent YouGov poll, 78% of parents said that they want the teachers teaching their kids to be qualified.
I have just left a symposium in Portcullis House on the Finnish teaching system. I was reminded that not only do Finnish teachers need a master’s degree in their subject knowledge, but the degree has to deal with pedagogy. That is what teachers need: the knowledge and the pedagogy. That is what I needed when I had teachers standing in front of the kids in my college who I had a responsibility to deliver for. I am sure that is what people up and down the land want.
Nic Dakin
I am afraid that I cannot give way because so many Members wish to speak and the Secretary of State was so greedy in using up the time.
All my experience tells me that essentially there are only two things that really matter in running schools and colleges: the quality of leadership and the quality of teaching and learning. If we get those two things right, all the rest will follow. Of course, just because someone has a piece of paper, whether a postgraduate certificate in education, graduate teacher status or whatever, does not mean that they can necessarily teach, because there needs to be a framework of support in their school to ensure that they learn the skills of the profession.
To be fair to the Secretary of State, he very much echoed what the shadow Secretary of State said in underlining the importance of teaching as a profession. That echoes what the Prime Minister said quite rightly in 2010, which was that teaching should be a profession. Well, a profession has proper structures for training, qualifications and professional development. That is the framework that delivers high-quality individuals. Within that delivery of high-quality individuals, there will always be people who need appropriate support.
The Deputy Prime Minister was right when he made it clear that anybody teaching in our state-funded schools should either have qualified teacher status or be on the way to gaining it. I am really pleased that the Schools Minister, who is in his place, despite struggling a little to make this clear in the Westminster Hall debate, made it extremely clear when he appeared before the Select Committee that he was alongside the Deputy Prime Minister on that. That is why I am confident, because they are people of honour, that the Deputy Prime Minister, the Schools Minister and the rest of the Liberal Democrats will be alongside us when we vote for the motion today.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
Over the past week, the Minister for Schools and I have duelled a couple of times on the qualification of teachers and initial teacher training, in the Westminster Hall debate that my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) mentioned and in the Education Committee, so much of what I say today will not be unfamiliar to him.
I do not disagree with the Government and the Secretary of State on all their education policy. I agree with the Secretary of State that we now have in our schools the best quality teaching force this country has ever seen. I also agree that the one single thing that improves standards and outcomes is the quality of teaching; the difference is that I know what it looks like when I see it. I agree with the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Schools, who last week made it absolutely clear in the Education Committee, that teachers in taxpayer-funded schools should be qualified or working towards a qualification while they are teaching.
I listened carefully to the Deputy Prime Minister when he spoke about this on Sunday just gone. He said he agreed with many policies on academies and free schools but allowing unqualified teachers to teach in state-funded schools was not one of them. That prompts the question as to why he then whipped Liberal Democrat MPs to vote for it in the first place. Is it simply that he has seen the polling and recognises that this piece of Government ideology is not a popular policy with voters and is overwhelmingly rejected by parents?
Simon Hughes
The hon. Lady’s competence is well recognised. Our party, which is a democratic organisation, recently debated this issue, and I can confirm that what the leader said in his speech last week exactly reflected what the party voted for by a very large majority at our conference in March this year.
Pat Glass
I recognise and respect that. I therefore expect to see the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues in the Lobby with us tonight.
When the Deputy Prime Minister spoke at the weekend, he talked about schools being set free to set their own school holidays and the times of day when they open and close. Well, I have got news for him: maintained schools have always had that ability. They do not need to be a free school or an academy to do that, nor to employ unqualified teachers. Maintained schools have always had the ability to bring in non-QTS specialists. The person delivering the lesson at the front of the classroom does not need to be a qualified teacher, but the person who designs, differentiates and manages the curriculum, manages the lesson plans and is responsible for individual pupil assessment does need to be a qualified teacher. On that, I absolutely agree with the Secretary of State.
Pat Glass
I am not going to give way any more because there is so little time.
The history of Labour in office and unqualified teachers shows that in the vast majority of cases, great non-QTS teachers went on to become qualified through the licensed or the classic routes. Government Members say that free schools and academies are now free to employ teachers who have a master’s degree or a doctorate, and is that not a good thing? I am not altogether sure about that. I have a master of science degree, but a working knowledge of maths and statistics does not make me a teacher. Without a bachelor of education degree I would not have the skills and knowledge to understand child development, the science of teaching and learning, how children learn, and classroom management and managing behaviour, or to identify the needs of children with special educational needs and how to meet them. I would not know about differentiation, delivering a programme of study across a range of abilities, or assessment—that is, knowing what a child can and cannot do, and what they need to do next. Important as those things are, I would also not have the credibility and trust of my professional colleagues, of parents, or, more importantly, of young people themselves. Pupils know very quickly who is qualified and who is not, and who is experienced and who is not, and that affects their behaviour and how they learn in the classroom.
The problem with this Government is that they think anybody can teach. I know from experience that as soon as we move away from the classroom it looks really easy, but it is not. Teachers are people who stand up in front of classrooms every day and deliver great lessons. I do not pretend to be a teacher in terms of that definition. Being qualified does not make a great teacher; it takes more than that. [Interruption.] I am glad that Government Members agree with me. As has been said, this is not necessarily about the qualification of teachers. Every teacher does not have to be qualified to deliver a great lesson, but surely good qualification is the basis of a state-run system. [Interruption.] Having anything else leaves our children open to—[Interruption.] Does my hon. Friend want to intervene?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. It is very disruptive to have people shouting across the Chamber, particularly from the Government Benches. Those Members may wish to be called in the debate, and if this behaviour persists, they might find that we run out of time before they get called.
Simon Wright (Norwich South) (LD)
Cynics might say that this debate has been put forward by the Opposition to cause mischief, but I welcome the opportunity to promote my party’s policy on how to ensure there is freedom and fairness for all in our school system and to endorse the progress that has been made by the coalition.
Liberal Democrats believe that all schoolchildren and their parents should receive a core guarantee of what they will get from a state-funded school education, and that includes being taught by a qualified teacher or someone who is en route to being qualified. We want to free schools and teachers so that they can do what they do best while ensuring that parents have the confidence of knowing that their children are taught by a teacher suitably qualified for their vital job. Parents want and expect their children to be taught by good, qualified teachers and to be taught a core body of knowledge. It is fair to parents and to children to expect state-funded schools to meet those reasonable expectations.
I strongly support much of what the coalition has achieved in giving schools more freedoms. Teachers and schools are being freed up from micro-management and daily guidance notes from Whitehall. The national curriculum is being slimmed down to enable teachers on the front line—those who know best about their pupils’ educational needs—to teach in the way that is most effective for their class. The £2.5 billion pupil premium has been introduced, and head teachers have the freedom to use it in the way they know is best to raise the attainment of their students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The coalition has quadrupled the number of Teach First graduates and increased bursary levels available to top graduates in subjects including chemistry, biology and computer science.
Those policies, which deliver freedom for teachers and schools and help to raise the status of the teaching profession, have been delivered only because Liberal Democrats and Conservatives are working together to pursue shared interests in coalition. Nevertheless, it cannot surprise anyone that two coalition partners will not always see eye to eye on every issue affecting our schools. Liberal Democrats have always been clear that teaching is a highly valued profession that requires a solid understanding of educational values and subject knowledge. Teachers up and down the country are called to the purpose of doing all they can to transform the life chances of young people, and great teaching has a theoretical and skills-based foundation.
Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Ind)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the motion misses what we should be looking for, which is not whether teachers are qualified or not, but whether they are good? Surely he must agree that many qualified teachers, for whatever reason, are simply not up to the job, and yet many teachers who are not qualified are absolutely brilliant. Should we not be getting to the root of the matter in getting those who are great teachers teaching and those who are not out of the profession?
Simon Wright
I agree that qualified status is not the end of the matter, but parents need to have confidence that their child is being taught by a teacher with suitable qualifications. There are also important issues about professional development, which I will address later.
On-the-job training is crucial, as is an intellectual evidence-based understanding of teaching methods. QTS demonstrates that a teacher has the skills, the qualities and the professional standards that make such a difference to their students’ education. That is why head teachers value qualifications when they recruit, and why the National Association of Head Teachers and the Association of School and College Leaders support the view that schools should employ qualified teachers.
Of course, there are unqualified teachers who do a really good job in the classroom. We would want to support them in gaining qualified teacher status, and there are several routes through which that can be achieved, according to the needs of the individual. Qualified teacher status is a reliable signalling device for heads wanting to recruit the very best, and a guarantee to students and parents that their teacher has the broad attributes needed to excel in the classroom. However, ensuring that all teachers in state-maintained schools are suitably qualified should not be the extent of our ambition. I have already mentioned our achievements in coalition and the encouragement given to top graduates to go into the teaching professions. There is also further scope to explore how teachers can best be supported to develop at every stage of their career.
We want innovation, creativity and diversity in the classroom. Liberal Democrats also want minimum professional standards in our schools. It is vital that we continue to free up teachers and schools and drive up standards for all.
Andrew Percy
Does the hon. Gentleman consider a teacher who has QTS and a postgraduate certificate in education to be better qualified than a teacher who has just QTS? There seems to be a bit of confusion about what lies behind QTS.
Simon Wright
I would not say that PGCE is a necessity, despite the fact that I myself studied for it. I think there are lots of routes to qualified teacher status, all of which have different advantages and merits, but, crucially, it depends on the needs of the individual seeking that status.
On other forms of professional development, we should consider options such as enabling all teachers to build an individual professional portfolio, including the accredited continuing professional development courses they undertake, to progress and support their career in the classroom. The recently announced champions league proposal could get outstanding leaders into those schools that need them most from next year. That could be expanded in due course and applied to proven subject teachers looking for a new challenge.
As I have said, the Liberal Democrats welcome the innovation, creativity and diversity that the Government seek to introduce in the classroom, but we want minimum professional standards in our schools, too.
Simon Wright
No, I am coming to the end of my comments.
I would have welcomed the opportunity to support the amendment on the Order Paper. It would have given the House the opportunity to acknowledge the fact—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The amendment has not been selected, so the hon. Gentleman cannot refer to it.
Simon Wright
I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker. Given that I do not have the opportunity to refer to the amendment, I will not take part in the Division.
Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)
The central point I want to make is that we as a country have to make education our No. 1 priority. We need to drive up results, enhance the status of the teaching profession, recruit the brightest graduates, train them better and insist on higher standards.
The fact is that not enough young people are succeeding in science, maths or technology, or going on to apprenticeships, particularly in high-tech industries. We are not sending enough young people to university and not enough young people from state schools are going to the best universities. We have to be honest with ourselves, however challenging it may be, that standards and results in too many state schools are just not good enough.
Britain is falling far behind other countries on basic numeracy and literacy. The OECD has just reported that, on basic skills, the UK is behind not just countries such as Finland, South Korea and Germany, but others such as Estonia, Poland and Slovakia.
Some areas in Britain are lagging even further behind. Just two schools out of seven in north Dudley reached last year’s national average with regard to five good GCSEs including English and maths. Six out of 10 across the borough as a whole failed to meet the national average. I do not think that any school in the country should be seeing fewer than 70% or 80% of its pupils achieving that level.
This year, I am pleased to say that results improved at four of those schools, but what shocks me is the extraordinarily wide variation in achievement between schools with similar intakes. Children starting at two schools in Dudley had achieved exactly the same key stage 2 results, yet five years later twice as many pupils in one school achieved better GCSE results than the other.
Just a few years ago, only a third of pupils at Ellowes Hall school managed to get successful grades; now, more than eight out of 10 do so. It is without doubt the best state school in the black country. If we take into account the value it offers its students, it probably has a good claim to be one of the very best schools in the country. It still has the same kids from the same families and largely the same teachers, but the thing that has changed is that it has a brilliant new head teacher, Andy Griffiths, and there is a relentless focus on standards and discipline. He has motivated the teachers and made the pupils believe in themselves.
Results are finally improving at Castle High, my old school in the middle of Dudley, under a new head teacher, Michelle King, and Dormston school, which suffered a catastrophic collapse in standards, now has a brilliant new head teacher, Ben Stitchman, who is turning things around.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that one of the best ways of driving up standards in our state schools is to get quality leadership in place. Is that not one of the key aims in driving forward the improvements he has mentioned?
Ian Austin
My hon. Friend is right. What unites all of those schools and others where results are improving is high-quality leadership. Being a great head teacher comes from being a great teacher. They know all about managing behaviour and discipline. They know how to get the best out of pupils, and they set high aspirations and demand high standards. I am concerned that, by not insisting on the very highest standards for teaching, the Government could be weakening the national stock of educational leaders for the future. That is so important, because the quality of teaching transforms opportunities for the rest of pupils’ lives. According to the Sutton Trust:
“Bringing the lowest-performing 10% of teachers in the UK up to the average would in five years bring the UK’s rank amongst OECD countries from 21st in Reading to as high as 7th, and from 22nd in Maths to as high as 12th. Over 10 years the UK would improve its position to as high as 3rd in Reading and 5th in Maths.”
My central point is that standards in too many schools are not high enough, and I do not think it is possible to tackle that by insisting that teachers in state schools should not have to have the very best qualifications.
Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)
I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman, but what is his evidence base for suggesting that QTS teacher outcomes are better than non-QTS teacher outcomes? I have not heard any evidence.
Ian Austin
My point is that standards are not high enough. We need to get the best graduates into teaching and insist that they are trained as effectively as possible. We must insist on the very highest standards in the classroom.
We should dramatically expand the work of Teach First. We should agree as a country—every party, the Government, schools, universities, teachers and business—to set an ambition for Britain to produce the best-educated young people in the world. We need a targeted approach based on the London challenge—which transformed education in the capital—with tough targets, the best heads and the brightest teachers for areas such as the black country that are lagging stubbornly behind.
We should be much less obsessed with a pupil’s age and focus more on their ability. We should ask whether pupils should be moving up each year, regardless of their attainment. We should massively expand Lord Baker’s brilliant work and have a university technical college in every town. We should specialise more at 14 years of age in relation not just to technical and engineering subjects such as those studied in UTCs, but to straightforward, academic subjects, too.
We have to be honest with ourselves and admit that the current system is not promoting social mobility. The vast majority of senior jobs in professions such as the law, the media, those in the City, the civil service and even politics go to a tiny minority of people from the best private schools and Oxbridge. Sutton Trust research shows that just five public schools send more pupils to Oxbridge than 2,000 state schools—two thirds of the entire state sector.
Ministers should look at the brilliant work on open access by Peter Lampl, who proposes opening up access to leading independent day schools so that kids from ordinary backgrounds can get into those brilliant schools. Sharing costs with parents would mean that the cost is less than the current cost of an average state school place. Those who say that we cannot afford to do such a thing should consider that failure to tackle this social mobility crisis will cost the UK economy up to £140 billion a year by 2050, or 4% of GDP.
We need an education revolution in our country. We need tough targets to drive up standards in our schools and we need to transform the status of teaching. We need to promote a new generation of brilliant head teachers and we need more UTCs and greater specialisation. We need radical new measures to open up to many more youngsters opportunities that are currently only available to a few, not just because we should open up access and opportunity as a matter of fairness or because that is the only way to create the new industries and new jobs on which our future prosperity will depend, but because people in places such as the black country are as good as anyone and we should open up for them the opportunities that people elsewhere have taken for granted for decades.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this important debate. It is hard to overestimate the importance of education to the individual and to society. I am therefore grateful to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education for the changes that he has made to our system. The education revolution that he has driven forward is truly astounding. He should be very proud of his achievements.
Students get one chance at education and every day counts. It is up to us to ensure that every one of those days is fruitful and productive. To do that, we need to provide an engaging and inspirational learning experience. For that, we need the best and the brightest to see teaching as the career of choice. Teachers need to be dedicated, motivated and appropriately qualified. For the vast majority, that will include achieving qualified teacher status. However, as part of delivering an all-round inspirational education we should not exclude those who do not have qualified teacher status.
The purpose of education is to impart knowledge; to allow students to access the next level of learning; to give individuals the opportunity to find their place in the world; and, I hope, to inspire people to have a lifelong thirst for learning and knowledge.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Gentleman says that the purpose of education is to impart knowledge. Does he not think that the training that teachers get through QTS in how to impart knowledge, the psychology behind learning and behaviour management is important in delivering that? Does he not think that it matters that every teacher can control a class and help children to learn? That is what we are talking about today.
Stephen Metcalfe
Yes, those are important skills, but they are not the only skills that one needs to be able to impart knowledge.
We all have examples of inspirational teachers who have made a difference to our lives. Mine is my fourth-year junior school teacher, Mrs Chapman, at Staples Road county primary. She was an inspiration and I am still in touch with her. However, there are other inspirational people who have shaped our lives, given us an alternative perspective, encouraged us to aim higher or showed us a world that we never knew existed. Those people have something to offer to our education system.
Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)
How would the hon. Gentleman feel if he turned up at the airport and was told that they did not have a qualified pilot, but they had somebody who was passionate about flying and was really quite good at it?
Stephen Metcalfe
Many of the teachers who do not have qualified teacher status are the most outstanding teachers around. It is for schools, head teachers and Ofsted—those who are in the know—to assess the individuals about whom we are talking. They should not be disqualified just because they do not have the relevant piece of paper. We exclude those people at our peril.
Do not get me wrong: QTS is an important and valuable qualification that most teachers should have achieved or be striving for. We are trying to free schools from the burden of bureaucracy. As I said, the best person to assess who is the right person to be teaching in their school and delivering an education that best meets the local needs is the head teacher. We need to move away from command and control from the centre. That should include the opportunity of involving excellent teachers who do not have QTS.
Mr Graham Stuart
The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), the former Labour Secretary of State for Education and Skills, said recently:
“If you find someone who is a great musician but they can’t spend three years getting the proper teaching qualifications, I think you should use them.”
Does my hon. Friend agree?
Stephen Metcalfe
I agree 100%. We need to be open and transparent about who has what qualifications and we must ensure that there is a rigorous and robust inspection regime, but the motion would exclude Stephen Hawking from even offering to teach a class. He would not be allowed to teach a—[Interruption.] He would not be allowed to teach because he would not have—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. We are going to have a bit of command and control here. The command from me is that Members are to stop shouting across the Chamber when somebody is speaking. If they want to intervene, they should do so. The control is that if they persist in shouting, they will not be called in this debate.
Stephen Metcalfe
I apologise for responding, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The motion would prevent Stephen Hawking from offering himself as a teacher, unless he got QTS or said that he was studying for it. It would prevent Jessica Ennis from teaching PE, Damien Hirst from teaching art and the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) from teaching history. We should consider all the people who might have something to offer our students, but who would be excluded unless they put themselves forward for QTS. I accept that experience and achievement in themselves do not make for a good teacher and that we must never compromise standards, but equally, experience and achievement do not make somebody a bad teacher.
We need excellent, well-qualified, dedicated, respected and inspirational teachers, but let us not exclude all those who are exactly that just because they have not acquired QTS. If we do, we will fail not only ourselves, but the very people on whom we should be focused: the students.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
If the Liberal Democrats do not join us in the Division Lobby later to support their own policy, those who voted Lib Dem in 2010 will wonder why they did so, just as they did when the Lib Dems voted for the privatisation of Royal Mail and for the trebling of tuition fees.
I will talk about the evidence that supports the use of qualified teachers. In his report for McKinsey in 2007, Sir Michael Barber found that although the high-performing systems in Finland, Japan, Singapore and South Korea had very different curricula, teaching methods and school structures, they all made the quality of teaching their first concern. Getting the right people into the profession and giving them the right training were the top two priorities that Sir Michael proposed to improve education. It would be interesting to hear from the Secretary of State how many of those jurisdictions actively encourage schools to employ teachers who have no teaching qualifications. A cursory glance at other school systems shows where the priority lies in the most successful countries. The Governments in Finland, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan are raising the bar for professional qualifications, not trying to remove it.
The Government’s 2010 White Paper also looked abroad for inspiration. It noted that South Korea recruits teacher trainees from the top 5% of school leavers and Finland from the top 10%. Importantly, those recruits receive college or university based training and secure qualifications before they become teachers. In April 2012, the Education Committee published “Great teachers: attracting, training and retaining the best”. It held a follow-up evidence session last month. The original inquiry looked at evidence of existing good practice in the UK. The Committee found that
“the partnership between schools and universities was often the recipe for successful provision, with a balance of theoretical and practical training vital for any teacher”.
In short, whether we look at international comparisons or at existing good practice in this country, it is accepted that having highly trained teachers with professional qualifications is the best way to ensure that there are high standards and the best possible education for children. That is what the evidence shows. Parents agree and are overwhelmingly opposed to the expansion in the use of unqualified teachers in free schools and academies.
This is not a debate about the best way of tackling teaching shortages. We should not be thinking about the quickest way to get new teaching staff in front of a classroom. We should be thinking about how we can get the best teachers and trainees into our schools. The evidence from successful education models around the world, parents, teaching unions, trainee teachers and the party colleagues of the Minister for Schools at conference is clear: improved outcomes in education and incentives for the best candidates to enter teaching both come from having highly qualified teachers who are paid well and trusted more as professionals to do a job that they are appropriately trained to do. The Government’s support for the employment of unqualified teachers presents us with the opposite: less qualified people who are paid less to do a job for which they are not fully trained. I am certain that we should have qualified teachers in all state-funded schools.
Mr Rob Wilson
To be clear, is the hon. Gentleman saying that non-QTS teachers are in some way inferior and get worse outcomes than QTS teachers?
Bill Esterson
That point has been made in a number of interventions and speeches, and the international evidence that I have already quoted is extremely powerful. Those countries with the highest standards and best results have the highest qualified and best-trained teachers. They take people from among the top-performing graduates, and put a premium on the quality of people coming into teaching. That is how to get the best teachers and best outcomes—sorry to use the jargon. Children do best by having the best teachers.
The Secretary of State makes great virtue of the fact that the link between great teachers and great results for children is unanswerable, but unfortunately that approach is undermined by having unqualified teachers. I am certain that we should have qualified teachers in all state-funded schools, which is exactly what the Liberal Democrat conference voted for. If Lib Dem MPs agree with their party on the importance of qualified teachers, they have the chance to show their support. I am afraid that by sitting on his hands tonight, the Schools Minister will not show the support for qualified teacher status that his party voted for.
When he gave evidence to the Education Committee, the Schools Minister admitted that he was involved in the drafting of that motion, and told us that last year, both he and the Deputy Prime Minister voted for that. It is clear, therefore, that every Lib Dem MP in this Parliament supports the principle of qualified teachers. All they have to do to show that support is vote with Labour tonight and show the public what they believe in. Otherwise, it is just meaningless words.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I was genuinely surprised to see the words of today’s motion, because this debate is based on the fact that fewer than four in every 100 teachers do not have qualified status. If the purpose of the debate is to try to draw out differences between the coalition parties, and sow the seeds of public concern that if free schools and academies expand—I sincerely hope they will—vast numbers of state-educated children will be taught by unregulated, unqualified and unsuitable individuals, it will fail in that objective.
My view is that free schools and academies provide freedoms for head teachers and leadership teams to employ individuals from a range of diverse backgrounds—perhaps for shorter periods or on an ad hoc basis to suit the developmental needs of their pupils, or, where necessary, to extend the curriculum. It is right to trust head teachers to appoint the staff they need locally, and to take on experts from industry and those with varied skills who sometimes simply may not have ticked the final box before qualifying. The fundamental principle that teachers are more likely than politicians to know their staff and what they need in their school is undoubtedly true.
Most importantly, academies and free schools will not be free from Government oversight, and the process for becoming an academy or starting a free school is rigorous—in my constituency, several applications have been unsuccessful. If schools get through that rigorous process, Ofsted can come in at a few days’ notice, and Ebacc requirements will involve more and more scrutiny of outcomes. I fear that this debate is really about an obsession with process and uniformity, and discomfort with getting to the heart of education, which is about inspiring young people and securing better outcomes for our children.
Salisbury has a wide range of excellent schools which each have different requirements from their staff. We are about to gain a university technical college that specialises in science and engineering, and a free sixth form with a broader academic curriculum focused on STEM subjects. We also have three sixth forms that have converted to academies, two of which are nationally leading grammar schools. All five institutions will deliver a high-quality curriculum to young people in my constituency, but why should any of them be restricted to a narrower pool of talent on the basis of dogma?
I was recently contacted by a top academic from Southampton university about its teacher training programme. She noted that one of its graduates had been described as “phenomenal” by Ofsted just 10 days after gaining NQT status. While important skills can be taught and honed on teacher training programmes, those programmes cannot fully replicate raw talent and a passion for teaching, which—among some—is evident in the classroom from the start. In other words, teachers may become properly trained through on-the-job training alone, and it seems unnecessary to make high-quality candidates jump through arbitrary assessment hoops and delays, when their skills are being tested and they can demonstrate them to the head teacher’s satisfaction and secure better outcomes in exams at the end of the year.
The university technical college that will open in Salisbury in 2015 has developed a partnership with many local employers, such as defence industry employers, the Army, and the university of Southampton. It will provide brilliant teaching opportunities for industry experts on a part-time basis. Those specialist inputs, which come from individuals who will not have all the teaching qualifications, must be valued in our education system.
Richard Fuller
Is my hon. Friend concerned about some of the terminology? We are using the phrase “qualified”, when what we mean is that someone has a qualification. Those he is talking about are qualified, and we want them to educate our children, whether or not they have a particular qualification.
John Glen
My hon. Friend makes a characteristically wise and perceptive point. We must think more broadly about education and not be held back by dogma in our approach on who we allow in the classroom. We know that Ofsted exists and that there is real rigour in the oversight that we expect in terms of outcomes. I fundamentally disagree with the premise and motives behind the motion. The Government have done a lot to raise standards as well as the expectations of pupils and parents. That is about removing Whitehall interference, and demonstrating our trust in head teachers to employ who they need in individual schools, which will have different appetites and needs to suit their different local populations and employment opportunities. It is right that we continue in that way, and I will vote against the motion this afternoon.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
It is the second time this year that I have risen to welcome an intervention from the Deputy Prime Minister. First, I welcomed his intervention on child care ratios, and now I welcome his support of Labour’s position on teacher training. I admit that I have a newfound appreciation of him. Alas, it may not last. Of course, that means the poor Schools Minister is in the unenviable position of having to defend the fact that he defended a policy that he is not now able to defend, without being on the wrong side of his party leader—I think I have that the right way around.
Even more baffling than the political acrobatics being performed by the Lib Dems is the fact that, in 2013, we are having a debate in Parliament about whether we want the people who teach our children to be trained to do so. Anyone who last week watched the last episode of “Educating Yorkshire” will, after drying their eyes as I did, have been left in little doubt about the value of a great teacher, particularly when it comes to getting the best out of the children who face the greatest barriers to learning. Seeing Mr Burton try everything he could to unlock the ability of Musharaf Asghar to complete his English language oral exam—he eventually succeeded—was inspirational. Mr Burton was able to do that not because he knows a lot about poetry, although I am sure he does, but because he knows a lot about pedagogy. That is the thing about the best teachers: they know how to teach the class in front of them—every individual child or young person, with the myriad challenges they each face—rather than just the subject matter.
The Secretary of State is undoubtedly a man of great accomplishment with an impressive academic record but, with respect, I would not want him teaching my children. That is nothing personal. If a Nobel prize winner cannot manage behaviour in a class, and if they cannot tailor their teaching to the strengths and weaknesses of each person in their class, their presence is little better than giving a child a textbook and telling them to go away and read it. Schools are not universities, and teachers are not lecturers. Schools and schoolteachers must be there for every child, not just for the most academically gifted or self-motivated.
I have always thought that teachers perhaps do not get enough training on supporting the one in five children who have special educational needs, either through their initial qualification or their continuous professional development. For the Education Secretary to argue that someone who has had no training is a suitable person to unlock learning for those children is therefore incomprehensible to me.
Mrs Hodgson
I am sorry—I cannot because of time.
I refer the Secretary of State to Ofsted’s report on the Al-Madinah school, which found that children with special educational needs and disabilities were particularly failed by the school, which did not identify them or provide tailored support, leaving them to struggle.
The Government’s position is not even consistent, because they insist that some members of staff in academies and free schools need QTS—special educational needs co-ordinators. Perhaps the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), who has responsibility for children—he is not in his place—snuck that one, in his wisdom, past the Secretary of State when he was drawing up the new SEN code of practice. I, for one, am pleased he did so.
I wanted to raise a couple of other issues but time will probably run out. In a Westminster Hall debate last week, I described in greater detail the deep concerns among universities, not least the university of Sunderland, about the impact that the roll-out of School Direct is having on the future sustainability of teacher training courses. That is not just another financial hit on universities; it is a question of whether we will lose the capacity to train the number of teachers we need. Some universities are already considering closing courses or losing experienced staff. The Schools Minister was perhaps more concerned with avoiding explaining his party’s flip-flopping last week, so I hope he can address the issue in his closing remarks today.
I want to raise a final point as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on art, craft and design in education. Despite the fact that the creative sector is a burgeoning part of our economy and one of our fastest growing exports, just 358 initial teacher education places were allocated for art and design teachers in this academic year, compared with just short of 600 places in 2009. That is much fewer than for the vast majority of other subjects.
I have more to say, but time has run out, so I will leave it there.
Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)
This debate is about freedoms, and the wider context is that the Deputy Prime Minister has referred to teachers other than qualified teachers. The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), the Chair of the Education Committee, who has left the Chamber, spoke of the need for evidence. The Committee has received no evidence in support of free schools or academies—it does not exist, although experts have been to see the Committee. That greater freedoms necessarily lead to improved performance is an ideological belief, but the evidence does not currently exist.
The Secretary of State is relaxed about the freedom to have unqualified teachers in classrooms, but other freedoms that have been extended to free schools and academies could have much more serious consequences. An internal audit investigation team at the Kings science academy has shown how far that can go. The school is free to have unqualified teachers, but it is also free to appoint a principal with no real management or leadership experience, let alone qualifications. It is free to have unqualified teachers, but it is also free to access £460,000 to pay for temporary accommodation in a former independent school, of which the principal’s father was a trustee. No wonder the school is happy about employing non-qualified teachers. The principal was also free to employ his mother, his sister and his father. I do not know whether they teach, but they were employed without any interviews or applications being required.
Yes we should trust head teachers, but should we trust them to that extent? Should we trust them to take on suppliers and contractors with no contracts and no procurement process, to fabricate—that is a euphemism—and make out false invoices? Should they be free to do that? Should they be free to access £10 million of Government funding to refurbish a derelict mill owned by the vice-chairman of the Conservative party? It costs about £5 a square foot for warehousing in a mill in Bradford, but that property company, owned by the vice-chairman of the Tory party, is getting £300,000 a year for leasing that building for 20 years, after which the building will revert to the property company. Should head teachers be free to defraud the Department for Education and HMRC by false claims about pupil numbers, about rent paid to a property company owned—surprise, surprise—by the vice-chairman of the Conservative party, and about tax payments?
The issue is the culture that is in place. That principal was in a situation in which the normal rules do not apply. We are told that there are mechanisms and checks in place to deal with such problems, but when the chaotic and dysfunctional governance arrangements were highlighted, guess who was responsible for dealing with disciplinary action? We are told in a press release from the Department:
“Any necessary disciplinary action is a matter for the school.”
I do not trust it to deal with the problems and sort them out.
The main problem with this whole policy—I opposed academies under Labour and I oppose academies and free schools under this lot—is that the criteria for success are not about raising educational attainment. The criterion for the success of this policy is how many academies and free schools there are. It is claimed that it is a success because there are so many. So when an application is made, the due diligence that we would expect, and that we have a right to insist upon in terms of public accountability, flies out of the window.
The Deputy Prime Minister is right: children have a right to be taught by a qualified teacher. But there are other rights. As taxpayers, we have a right to robust and rigorous due diligence before these schools are opened. This is not about freedom; it is about the privilege of being exempt from public accountability—these are freedoms too far.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
On the understanding that he will speak for two minutes, I call Chris Williamson.
Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)
Children are our most precious asset, and every child in the country deserves the right to be taught by a qualified teacher or someone who is working towards qualified teacher status. Most people outside the House would be astonished that that is not custom and practice already. Before the general election the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State, who is no longer in his place, talked about learning from the best educational systems around the world. I know that a week is a long time in politics, but this is ridiculous. We have seen a complete volte-face by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State.
The Government’s record on education, particularly their ideologically driven free school experiment, highlights the Prime Minister’s political somersault on this issue. The Ofsted report on the Al-Madinah school in Derby, the city that I represent, was absolutely damning. It says that the achievements of pupils were inadequate; the quality of teaching was inadequate; the behaviour and safety of pupils were inadequate; and the leadership and management were inadequate. It says that the school is dysfunctional and has not been adequately monitored, and:
“Staff have been appointed to key roles for which they do not have the qualifications and experience. For example, most of the primary school teachers have not taught before…large numbers of unqualified staff desperately need better support and training. Arrangements for the training and professional development of staff are woefully insufficient and uncoordinated.”
What a damning indictment of the free school experiment.
What next? Will we have unqualified surgeons, whose qualification to operate and take somebody’s appendix out is a steady hand and good eyesight? What about firefighters? I have used a hosepipe, so I must be able to put out fires—absolutely ridiculous. Is it not time that the Secretary of State started putting children before political dogma, and ensured that our children get the education they deserve—an education delivered by properly qualified professional teachers, rather than this nonsense, which is causing so much damage to our education?
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I welcome you to the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is the first time I have spoken since your elevation.
I congratulate all hon. Members who have participated in this interesting debate. We would have liked to have explored the technical and legal sides of qualified teacher status more, but time was limited, as it often is on these occasions.
This is essentially a simple debate on a straightforward motion concerning a proposition supported by the majority of Members of this House, so it ought to pass. We have been spared complication by not debating the coalition Government’s position. However, for those interested in the context, that position is still worth checking, if only for its comedy value. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time in the history of the House of Commons that a Government have tabled a satirical amendment. I will not go there, Madam Deputy Speaker, because you would rule me out of order if I did. What we have is confirmation of what I said at the outset, namely that the Deputy Prime Minister and his colleagues believe that
“all schools should employ teachers with Qualified Teacher Status”.
If they believe that, the motion should pass.
Kevin Brennan
I will make a little progress first because of time, but I might take an intervention later.
There are not many Liberal Democrat colleagues here, but I welcome those who have turned up. Being asked, as I understand they have been, not to support the Opposition motion—one hon. Gentleman said he was not going to support it—is not good for their health. It must drive them to distraction to be asked to perform such feats of intellectual and political contortion of believing one thing and voting for another just to save the blushes of the Tory Secretary of State for Education. He is not in his place for the winding-up speeches, despite taking half an hour of our time earlier on.
The Secretary of State is happy to trash, on a daily basis, the Liberal Democrats’ fundamental principles and beliefs on education policy, yet they have to turn up to bail him out. There can be no more tortured example of that than the Minister for Schools himself, the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws). [Interruption.] I welcome the compassion from Opposition Members. The week before last he came before this House and stoutly and enthusiastically defended the policy of allowing non-qualified teachers to teach in our taxpayer-funded schools. In fact, he spoke with such passion and conviction that I understand from press reports that some of his Conservative colleagues in the coalition actually believe he meant what he said—they took him at his word. He is shaking his head, but I read it in a newspaper.
Then, the Minister’s right hon. Friend, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, let it be known that he disagreed with his other right hon. Friend, the Deputy Prime Minister. I know they bear a striking resemblance to each other, but they must surely be two different people. When the Schools Minister heard what his leader had said, he had a slight problem. Did he, in fact, still agree with himself on whether teachers should be qualified? Last week in Westminster Hall and in the Education Committee, we got an answer of sorts: he had agreed with himself all along; when he came to the House he was not telling us what he believed, but what his Tory Secretary of State boss believed. Some months earlier, we were told, the Schools Minister had proposed a motion to the Liberal Democrat conference—[Interruption.]—I welcome the Secretary of State back to the debate, and I apologise for mentioning him in his absence—but when we checked this, it turned out he had not proposed a motion at all, although he claimed he was involved in its drafting.
I know that the Schools Minister is a very, very clever man. He has a first-class degree from the university of Cambridge.
Kevin Brennan
As my hon. Friend reminds me, and as the Schools Minister insisted on reminding us in Westminster Hall last week, he has a double first from the university of Cambridge. But what I had not realised until now was that having a double first meant he was so clever he could hold two completely opposite beliefs in the same brain at the same time. [Laughter.]
Kevin Brennan
In a moment. I think the House is enjoying this bit, as the Secretary of State might say.
And he can do that without experiencing any of the consequent anxieties that mere mortals such as us would suffer in that turbulent and contradictory mental state.
Chris Skidmore
I believe that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) also holds a double first-class degree.
The motion talks about
“working towards qualified teacher status”.
Will the hon. Gentleman give a time frame? Is it one year, two years, three years, 10 years? In other words, it could mean non-qualified teachers still working in schools, just as the 18,500 did under the Labour Government.
Kevin Brennan
We would have to clear up the Government’s mess and think about what the time frame should be, but without giving anyone the sack, we would require all teachers to achieve QTS in a reasonable time, and unlike this Government, we would negotiate and consult.
The Schools Minister can believe that teachers should not have to be qualified and profess that view in the House of Commons with impressive conviction one week, and then believe that teachers should be qualified and say so with equal conviction the next week. It is a remarkable, but not unique pathology, at least not in science fiction, because there is a creature in “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”, which I am sure the House is aware of, called Odo the Shape-Shifter, who can alter his shape according to circumstances—for example, by appearing to be a human—until the end of the day, when he dissolves into a bucket in his natural gelatinous form in order to rest, ready to emerge the following day in whatever shape is deemed necessary by the circumstances. I say to the Schools Minister: that might be okay for a science fiction character, but extreme shape-shifting does not constitute statesmanship.
It need not be like this. I told the Schools Minister last week that, having performed a careful textual exegesis of the coalition agreement, I could find no reference—not one reference anywhere in the document—to the Liberal Democrats agreeing to allow unqualified teachers in our schools. I wish more Liberal Democrat MPs were here for this. It is not in the coalition agreement. I have some experience of dealing with Liberal Democrats in coalition, having helped to put together the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition in the Welsh Assembly in 2000, when I worked for Rhodri Morgan, and I can tell the House that the idea of their agreeing to something that was against their own strong beliefs and the professed beliefs and policy of their own leader and which was not in the coalition agreement would have been unthinkable. It is, therefore, simply a mystery to me—and it must be a mystery to them too—how they were dragooned into supporting this policy and into rejecting an amendment that would have put this right and put policy in line with Liberal Democrat policy. The policy was not part of the coalition agreement, but obviously the result of some backroom deal between the Schools Minister—
Kevin Brennan
Oh, the right hon. Gentleman is shaking his head, so he is not responsible. We would like to know who is. It is a bit of a mystery. Some mystery character from the Liberal Democrats and the Education Secretary did a deal to introduce a policy that was not in the coalition agreement and which was against Liberal Democrat fundamental beliefs and principles. Why, then, did they agree, and will they now support our motion, which endorses their professed policy and does not breach the coalition agreement? If they do not, no one—not least parents and teachers—will believe a word they say about education at the next general election.
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
We have had a fascinating debate today and, as I will show in a moment, we have learned quite a lot about the inconsistencies in the Labour party’s position on these matters. Let me first pay tribute to a number of the hon. Members who have spoken today, including the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), and my hon. Friends the Members for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) and for Bradford East (Mr Ward). I also want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Simon Wright), who spoke today for the first time as the schools spokesman for the Liberal Democrats. He set out our position on this matter clearly and effectively, and I agree with everything he said.
We also heard a fantastic speech from the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), who I have always previously thought of as a Brownite. He morphed today into something of a Blairite and for a moment, I thought, almost into something of a Goveite, until my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State leaned over to tell me that to contemplate a voucher system to allow people to move from the state sector to the private sector was too radical even for him.
Finally, to cap it all, we had a marvellous contribution from the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), who was so full of praise for the Deputy Prime Minister that, for a moment, I thought she was going to make an application to join the Liberal Democrats. The offer is still open to her if she would like to take that opportunity while there is still room on our party’s Benches. Sadly, the excellent contributions from the Back Benches were not matched by those from the Opposition Front Bench, although I accept that the shadow Schools Minister, the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), has one or two good jokes.
Through the contributions from our Back Benches and from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, we exposed some pretty substantial holes in Labour’s position. First, let me deal with today’s version of the West Lothian question, which was posed very effectively by my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes). They asked an interesting question at the beginning of the debate, but they got no answer. That question, to which we have still not had an answer, was: why, if Labour Members are so keen on qualified teacher status, was the number of unqualified teachers thousands higher when the Labour Government were in power than it is today? I have the figures here. In 2005, when Labour was in power, there were 18,800 unqualified teachers in state-maintained schools. That figure is now down to 14,800. If Labour Members are so passionate about this, and if they want to join my party in its strong views on it, I think that they owe it to the House to answer the question put to them earlier. Why, if they are so keen on qualified teacher status, were there so many more unqualified teachers when Labour was in power?
I have a second question for Labour Members. Of course the hon. Member for Cardiff West is able to have some fun by pointing out the responsibilities that come with government and the need for compromises in coalition. It is rather more difficult to explain how a party that is not in coalition seems incapable of having just one position on these matters. The second version of the West Lothian question that we must ask today is the Stoke-on-Trent Central question. Even without the pressures of coalition, the Labour Education spokesman, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), seems able to hold in his mind two completely contradictory views, not only on qualified teacher status, important though that is, but on the whole issue of free schools. Will he explain that?
Only a few months ago, the hon. Gentleman was saying that the entire free school programme was a
“vanity project for yummy mummies”.
A matter of only months later, there he was in The Mail on Sunday saying, “Let us have more free schools”. When it comes to contradictions in policy, to holding two different views in one’s mind at the same time and to double first-class intellects, perhaps the shadow Secretary of State will stand up at the Dispatch Box to explain why his party leader was saying to the trade union conference in September this year:
“Let’s be clear we are not going to have new free schools under a Labour Government”?
He could not have been clearer—until the shadow Secretary of State intervened just a matter of weeks later to say in his statement to The Mail on Sunday, “Let’s have more”.
While we are in this mood for honesty and transparency, let the Labour party have the guts to come to the Dispatch Box and explain its policy on free schools. Suddenly, the Labour Front-Bench team has a fascination with discussing matters among themselves. What are they discussing? Is it the weather, or is it the position of the Labour party on free schools? We would all like to know whether the policy is one from Doncaster North or from Stoke-on-Trent Central—or as described in The Mail on Sunday. None of us knows.
It is all very well for the shadow Schools Minister to mess around with his press cuttings, read through the coalition agreement late into the night and tease Ministers about the responsibilities of government, but the Labour party cannot even agree with itself. The shadow Education Secretary cannot even agree with himself! We cannot get agreement even in one head. We then heard the shadow Schools Minister having the gall to say that he was confused about these things and had to look through the coalition agreement to discover what my party’s policy was, but why does he need to do that? Whatever happened to the research department in the Labour party?
We have held our position on qualified teacher status for as long as this party has been around. We held a debate on it at our spring conference in March this year. We put out a press release after the debate. It was no state secret; it said this in the headline:
“Every child should be taught by a qualified teacher.”
As I say, that was in a Lib Dem press release in March, and it was reported in the Times Educational Supplement in the same month. It was commented on by the Department for Education itself, so what on earth was the shadow Schools Minister doing on that weekend of the Liberal Democrat conference? [Interruption.] I know he was not the schools spokesman for the Labour party at that time, but surely he was paying attention. Why is the Labour party so incompetent these days that it has to wait until October—eight months after our debate at conference and eight months after the publicity in the press—before it comes to a realisation on these matters? Labour is a totally incompetent and totally ineffective Opposition.
Mr Laws
I will in a minute.
The question for today should not be about the recent position of the Liberal Democrats, which is entirely consistent and has not been kept a secret. I invite both the shadow Schools Minister and the shadow Education Secretary, who seem to need research support, to come to the Liberal Democrat conference free in the future. They can come in the autumn for next year’s debate. Then we will not have this shambolic embarrassment for the Labour party suddenly discovering our policy eight months after we passed motions at our conference.
Simon Hughes
Does my right hon. Friend not agree that it is slightly surprising that a party that has twice been in coalition with us in Scotland and once in Wales does not yet appear to understand—whatever the level of their degrees—that two parties in coalition have some things they agree on, but do not agree on other things, which are independent policies?
Mr Laws
I have only a minute left.
The vast majority of state-funded schools in this country still require qualified teacher status. I have no doubt that there are people on the Conservative Benches who would see that the logic of their policy means that this should be applied to all state-funded schools. They accept that there have to be compromises; they understand that and they do not have difficulty with it. What we have found today is that the parties in coalition accept their responsibilities and that the Labour party is completely incoherent, hiding behind this matter to cover up the embarrassment of its own lack of policies. We will not be blown off course. We will continue to deliver a better education system. We will work together closely in Government as we have since May 2010, and we will go on delivering the reformed and improved education system for which all of us on the Opposition Benches have been working since that date.
Question put.
The House proceeded to a Division.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
I ask the Serjeant at Arms to investigate the delay in the No Lobby.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I understand that during the Division, no Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament voted against the motion—not even the Minister for Schools, who spoke from the Dispatch Box against it. Is that in breach of the “voice and vote” provisions of “Erskine May”?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
As the hon. Gentleman is aware, the way in which individual Members decide to use their right to vote is not a matter for the Chair.
I now have to announce the result of the deferred Division on the motion relating to the designation of the UK Green Investment Bank. The Ayes were 290 and the Noes were 22, so the Question was agreed to.
[The Division list is published at the end of today’s debates.]
Probation Service
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
18:59 - The House divided: - Ayes: 223 / Noes: 289 - Question accordingly negatived.
19:14 - The House divided: - Ayes: 278 / Noes: 218 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House applauds the important role of the professional Probation Service in keeping the public safe; recognises that more needs to be done to break the cycle of reoffending; notes that, without parliamentary approval, the Government plans to abolish local Probation Trusts, commission services from Whitehall, fragment the supervision of offenders on the basis of their risk level, and hand over supervision of 80 per cent of offenders to private companies; deplores the fact that under the Government’s plans supervision of dangerous, sexual and violent offenders may be undertaken by inexperienced and unqualified staff and by companies without any track record in this area, without any piloting or independent evaluation, all of which is taking unnecessary risks with public safety; and calls on the Government to suspend the national roll-out of its plans until evidence is made public that its proposals to reduce re-offending do not put public safety at risk.
It is great to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Our probation services work tirelessly below the radar with offenders in prison, with those released from prison and with those given community sentences, doing their best to rehabilitate those people back into lawful life as good citizens in society. Probation, by and large, works, as 128 Members of Parliament agreed when they signed early-day motion 622 last year, praising the probation service for its award-winning performance, including the former Minister with responsibility for probation, the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), who I see in his place.
The probation service might not work as well as we would all like it to do and we need to do more to reduce reoffending rates, which are still far too high. That is one reason why we support the Government’s moves to introduce supervision for those who receive a prison sentence of less than 12 months, and through the prison gate supervision as well. This debate is not about status quo versus change. This is about good, evidence-based, tested change versus ideologically driven, untested, reckless change. The Government know, as do we, that probation works because those supervised have lower reoffending rates than those not supervised. That is why they are extending supervision to those with sentences under 12 months.
However, we do not believe that what the Government are proposing is the right way forward—abolishing local probation trusts, commissioning services directly from Whitehall, imposing a payment-by-results model on the system, and fragmenting supervision on the basis of risk levels. Implementing half-baked plans in a rushed manner is a gamble with public safety. If something goes terribly wrong or, God forbid, tragically wrong, public confidence in our criminal justice system is undermined. Ministers should not just take my word for it. According to the front page of The Guardian yesterday, in the past few weeks—[Interruption.] I hear the Lord Chancellor groaning because the chairs of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire probation trusts had the temerity to write to him and warn him that he should delay probation privatisation or risk deaths. I remind the House that he may have 12 months’ experience in his job; they have more than 12 years’ experience in theirs. I know who we trust in relation to probation. That is why we should be cautious about making changes to probation. Neither the probation service nor the Opposition have anything against change, but new ways of working should be tested first to see what works and what does not work.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I am following the right hon. Gentleman’s argument, which I agree with, but does he not find it strange that the Government’s own internal risk register says that there is an 80% risk that the Government’s plans will lead to an unacceptable drop in operational performance? Does he also find it surprising that the Government will not allow us to see it?
Sadiq Khan
Either the risk register says there is an 80% risk, which should alarm us, or we should be alarmed at the Justice Secretary not publishing the risk register so that we can see for ourselves what the Ministry of Justice’s own officials say. The MOJ agrees with us that the proposal should be tested first. Pilots were set up in the Wales, Staffordshire and West Midlands probation trusts. The MOJ’s press release from 25 January 2012 trumpeted, “World leading probation pilots announced” and quoted the excellent then Minister, the hon. Member for Reigate, as saying:
“These ground-breaking pilots will for the first time test how real freedom to innovate, alongside strong public, private and voluntary sector partnerships, could drive significant reductions in reoffending by those serving community sentences.”
The key word, of course, is “could”. This was a test—one could say a ground-breaking pilot—but what did the current Justice Secretary do in the first week in his job, just nine months later? He pulled the plug on the pilots, opting for full national roll-out, declaring war on evidence in the process. As both judge and jury, he decided that the plans will reduce reoffending, without bothering to wait for any evidence. The headlines generated were, in his view, worth the gamble with public safety.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Sadiq Khan
I shall make some progress first.
The Justice Secretary seems to come out in a rash at the mere suggestion that he should pilot the plans. Back in January, when I challenged him on that, he put his gut before hard facts and evidence when he said:
“Sometimes we just have to believe something is right and do it”.—[Official Report, 9 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 318.]
That from the man who brought us the Work programme. He will forgive me if I do not base my opinions on what we should do with a probation service employing thousands, supervising hundreds of thousands and serving millions on his hunch, because his hunch led to billions being spent on a Work programme that performed so badly that someone who was unemployed stood a better chance of being in work after six months if they had not been on it. The Public Accounts Committee’s verdict on the Work programme was that
“providers have seriously underperformed against their contracts and their success rates are worse than Jobcentre Plus”.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Sadiq Khan
Fast forward two years and the same model has resurfaced in probation, but this time the fallout from failure is of an altogether different magnitude—[Hon. Members: “Give way!”] Madam Deputy Speaker, you know that I am extremely generous in giving way to colleagues on both sides of the House. It is just a shame that it took an Opposition day debate to drag the Justice Secretary here to discuss his plans, which we are quite keen to scrutinise. I will make some progress before giving way.
The Economist hit the nail on the head when it stated:
“If the work programme fails, the cost is higher unemployment; if rehabilitation of offenders fails, the cost is worse: more crime. Which is why those now-disregarded pilots were set up in the first place.”
As if that is not criticism enough, the article goes on to refer to the Justice Secretary’s plans as “half-baked”.
Mr Burrowes
I know that we have had a bit of political knockabout, but can we clarify what we agree on? The right hon. Gentleman says that he is in favour of change, but on the previous Government’s watch I did not notice any change in the appalling reoffending rate for short-sentence prisoners, which was some 60%. Does he not welcome the fact that short-sentence prisoners will now have statutory supervision for 12 months to drive down reoffending for the benefit of local communities and, indeed, for offenders?
Sadiq Khan
The hon. Gentleman has some audacity. The Conservative party voted against the Offender Management Act 2007, in which we tried to change how probation works. Which voting Lobby did he go into? Was he with us? No, he was not, so I will take no lectures from him on our plans to reform probation.
Jackie Doyle-Price
The right hon. Gentleman quoted rather selectively from the Public Accounts Committee report—I know because I am a member of the Committee. One of the points we were keen to make was that we were talking about people in a long-term relationship with providers. We had to take a very balanced decision on the success of the programme after two years of engagement with people who had been unemployed for a long time and needed a lot of help. He should look at the Committee’s full conclusions, in which we said that the direction of travel was positive.
Sadiq Khan
The hon. Lady is just wrong. I am happy for her to go and get the report and quote what it says, but I have a copy here and I have read it. I will refer to it again in a few moments, so she can correct me again if she thinks I am wrong, but I know that I am right, because I have the report here.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that these changes will lead to increased cherry-picking by the new companies and agencies, which will want to deal with the offenders who are easiest to manage but will park on one side those whose cases are more complex and who have multiple needs?
Sadiq Khan
My hon. Friend has answered the last intervention. What happened with the Work programme was that the big boys cherry-picked those who were easy to get into work, and those who were not had more chance of succeeding with Jobcentre Plus. He is right to remind the House that the probation service works with people who have done poorly outside prison. They might have problems with mental health, alcohol and drug-dependency, or with numeracy and literacy. Those are the people our professional probation service works with who will not be cherry-picked by the big boys that the Justice Secretary wants to give the contracts to.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
My right hon. Friend has talked about the importance of partnership working and its success lying in agencies working together effectively. Does he agree that the Government’s proposals go against the grain of everything we know and could not only create artificial divides between public and private providers but freeze out voluntary sector providers who have great and important areas of expertise—for example, in working with women offenders?
Sadiq Khan
My hon. Friend has paraphrased what the chief inspector of probation, the probation trusts and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations have said, which I will come to shortly.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Sadiq Khan
I would like to make some progress first, if that is okay with the hon. Lady.
Over the past few days, the Justice Secretary has claimed that the pilots in Peterborough and Doncaster prisons show that his plans work. If he is honest with himself, he will know that that is nonsense. Those pilots are not only completely different from his plans for probation but are nowhere near to finishing, let alone being evaluated, although the interim results show that they are far from being a huge success. He should know better.
We must not let the Justice Secretary pull the wool over our eyes by saying that only low and medium-risk offenders will be in the hands of G4S, Serco and their ilk, as though only those caught stealing chocolate bars will be in their hands. Risk level is not directly related to the original crime committed. Offenders rated low and medium-risk include those convicted of domestic violence, burglary, robbery, violence against the person, sexual offences, and much more. I asked the Ministry of Justice how many offenders would be covered by these ratings and how many would be transferred over. It could not tell me how many of the 260,000 offenders supervised by the probation service are high, medium or low risk. You could not make it up, Madam Deputy Speaker! However, the Freedom of Information Act 2000 is a wonderful thing. Using FOI, we have uncovered that the number of medium and low-risk offenders who will be handed over to the likes of G4S and Serco is 217,569.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Sadiq Khan
I will give way first to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and then to my hon. Friend.
Caroline Lucas
That is very kind of the right hon. Gentleman and I am grateful. He spoke about the higher reoffending rates for those sentenced to less than 12 months. Is not that an argument in favour of extending the good practice of the probation service in allowing it to take over that area rather than contracting it out? The probation service is currently meeting or exceeding its targets, so if we let it work in that area as well, it can do equally well there.
Sadiq Khan
One would have thought that because the Justice Secretary is saying that we should extend supervision to those who have received a sentence of less than 12 months, he accepts that probation works and that the probation trusts are doing a good job, but no: he is abolishing the probation trusts and giving the big boys in the private sector responsibility for supervising those offenders. His argument is illogical.
Ms Buck
I have met officers from the London probation trust who are most concerned about the arbitrary distinction between serious and less serious offenders. They point out that particularly given the nature of people’s problems, which my right hon. Friend outlined—perhaps mental health problems or drug and alcohol abuse—there is a fluidity between less serious and more serious offenders, with people not easily defined as being in one category or the other. They fear that very serious offenders may fall through the cracks because of that arbitrary division.
Sadiq Khan
The last two interventions have shown that there is clearly more expertise among Opposition Members than Government Front Benchers. Our FOI questions uncovered that in London 29,813 offenders will be given over to the likes of G4S and Serco. In Surrey and Sussex, 7,313 offenders will now be supervised by the experts that are G4S and Serco.
Sadiq Khan
Let me make some progress, if that is okay, and then I will give way.
My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) is right, because compounding this situation is the unnatural carving up of responsibility for offenders on the basis of risk. The public sector will keep the very highest-risk offenders—the Justice Secretary clearly does not trust G4S and Serco with them—and the private sector will have the rest. He does not get it. Again, my hon. Friend is right: risk is not static. In one in four cases, risk levels fluctuate. Each time someone’s risk level fluctuates, bureaucracy and paperwork is involved, but we cannot afford for this to be a slow or cumbersome process, because when risk levels escalate, they tend to do so rapidly. They might stop taking their medication or a relationship might break down, leading to them becoming, overnight, a danger to themselves and others, so the process needs to be swift if the appropriate measures and support are to be put in place.
Can we really see the police working as closely with private companies as they do with probation trusts? Probation trusts often have on-site access to police record computers, which are crucial in assessing, monitoring and supervising offenders. Can we really see the police giving private companies the same access?
Who decides the risk? The Government claim that the decision will be taken by the new national probation service, but the Justice Secretary does not get it. The national probation service will not have a day-to-day personal relationship with offenders, so how will it know? His plans will be clunky, cumbersome and prone to errors, with cases falling between two stools.
Gavin Shuker
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. He makes the point brilliantly that the issue of low, medium and high risk is one not just of fluctuation, but of staff retention and ability effectively to manage the case load. What will happen in the rumps of the probation services that will be left over—many of whose employees have performed excellently throughout—when they are dumped with the most difficult cases, day in, day out, for 10 or 12 hours a day?
Sadiq Khan
We know what will happen: when those offenders cherry-picked by the private sector do better—which they will tend to do, because they will be easier to rehabilitate—the Justice Secretary will say that the public sector is failing because the offenders who will be more difficult to rehabilitate will not be doing as well. We have seen that happen before.
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
Does it not strike my right hon. Friend as a bit odd that a Government so hellbent on apparently reducing bureaucracy have come up with a half-baked idea of creating additional bureaucracy by fragmenting the system into two bodies? Does that not create uncertainty in grey areas in which some individuals may get lost in the system?
Sadiq Khan
That is what the Justice Secretary’s own risk register says, but he is not willing to publish it so that we can all see for ourselves that he is refusing to follow his own Department’s advice.
The idea that the national probation service and the private companies will work anything like as closely together under the new system as offender management teams work is laughable. The chief inspector of probation has said:
“Any lack of contractual or operational clarity between the public and private sector…will, in our view, lead to systemic failure and an increased risk to the public.”
The chief executive of Hertfordshire probation trust, Tessa Webb, has said:
“We’re very concerned about separating offenders out between low and high risk. Things don’t work like that. We think there should be a coherent, single organisation.”
Do Members really think that G4S and Serco will hold up their hands if something goes wrong? They did not with electronic tagging or the transfer of prisoners. If anything goes wrong, who will get the blame? The national probation service. There is no risk for the big private companies and no taking of responsibility—just a nice little earner.
There is a risk, however, to the public. As has been said, according to the press, the MOJ’s own risk register raises serious questions about the plans. We would think that the Justice Secretary would want to reassure the public by publishing the risk register, but he is refusing to do so, which in itself raises a number of questions.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
Can we just agree that 600,000 crimes a year are committed by people who have already broken the law and that that is of huge cost to all our constituents and costs taxpayers about £10 billion? Does the shadow Secretary of State not agree that something must be done and that, surely, statutory supervision and rehabilitation in the community—for the first time ever—of people who reoffend and have been sentenced for fewer than 12 months must be a huge step forward?
Sadiq Khan
If the hon. Gentleman wants me to go back to the beginning of my speech, I would be happy to do so—this is one of the problems when Members read a hand-out from the Whips—but I have already answered that question.
Sadiq Khan
I know that a lot of work has gone into the hand-outs, but let me make some progress.
Another concern is that the big multinationals will dominate, just as they did in the Work programme, because they are the only ones that have financial clout. Smaller companies and charities will be used as bid candy to sweeten the less palatable bids of the big corporations. People should not take my word for it; the deputy chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, Ben Kernighan, has said that
“under its most significant public service reform so far, the Work Programme, many charities have found themselves squeezed out by large commercial providers. In the interests of helping ex-offenders who could benefit from charities’ expertise, the government must ensure the mistakes of the Work Programme are not repeated.”
Nothing has persuaded me that those mistakes will not be repeated.
Our concerns do not end there. Another £600,000 a year of the Ministry’s budget will go to companies that have let us down before over electronic tagging, Olympic security, prisoner transport and the Work programme. Those companies will be beyond the scope of freedom of information requests, which will do nothing to lessen the chances of fraud or irregularities.
We are also concerned about the length of the proposed contracts. The Official Journal of the European Union states that the contract lengths will be between seven and 10 years, with an option to extend them to 13 years. The estimated value of each contract is between £5 billion and £20 billion. Imagine what great work the public sector could do if it was awarded similarly long contracts and such stability, rather than having a year-to-year, hand-to-mouth existence.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend will be aware that local charities in my constituency are doing good work with offenders. However, those charities will not be able to bid for the contracts because of their size and complexity. In the past few weeks, the large companies have tried to sign up the charities as providers. Effectively, the large companies are becoming middlemen in the delivery of the service.
Sadiq Khan
What my hon. Friend describes is a repetition of what happened with the Work programme. Small companies, charities and voluntary groups are used by the big boys as bid candy to get the contracts and are then elbowed out. We saw that with the Work programme and we will see it again in probation.
Do Members know who will be able to bid? G4S and Serco. The allegations against both companies are so serious that the Serious Fraud Office is investigating them, and yet the Justice Secretary is refusing to rule them out of the bidding process. By the way, there is no obligation for the staff of those companies to be trained or experienced in this area. Those companies have no track record of providing such services.
We are not confident in the ability of the MOJ to procure the contracts, given its poor track record. Last year, we had the scandal of court translators under this Government’s watch. The hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) is busy reading her texts, but I will read what the Public Accounts Committee, of which she is a member, said of that debacle. She can correct me at any stage. It stated:
“The Ministry was not an intelligent customer…The Ministry failed to undertake proper due diligence…The result was total chaos…the Ministry has only penalized the supplier a risible £2,200.”
There is no guarantee that the big private companies will not run rings around the MOJ yet again.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I apologise to my right hon. Friend for being a little late for the debate. Is not the picture that is unfolding of this Government that they are the friends of the private sector who see the state as a golden calf that they can milk when it suits them? This proposal is not in the public interest and it is not in the taxpayer’s interest. G4S wants to be considered, but it has some problems in South Africa at the moment.
Sadiq Khan
The question that our constituents are asking is: why are the Government so keen to suck up to the big and powerful?
Sadiq Khan
Let me make some progress.
The Justice Secretary would like us to believe that the companies will not be paid unless they deliver, as if payment by results means payment only by results. In fact, nearly the whole fee will be paid to the private companies regardless of the results. Private companies are intent on squeezing the fraction of the payment that is dependent on results as close to zero as possible. The Government are so keen to suck up to the big companies that they have caved in. So much for payment by results. No doubt the Justice Secretary will claim that he is doing only what the Offender Management Act 2007—which the Conservatives voted against—gave him power to do. In fact, that Act established local probation trusts, empowering them to commission services locally from whom they see fit. It was not about abolishing local probation trusts or commissioning services directly from Whitehall.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) was at the time the Minister responsible for the legislation, and he knows exactly what it was for. [Interruption.] I can hear some chuntering but do not worry, Madam Deputy Speaker, it is not putting me off. In 2007 my right hon. Friend said that
“there will also be a need for local probation trusts to act not just as service deliverers but as commissioners of services from the voluntary sector, or from others, providing a proper service to help prevent reoffending at local level.”
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
I feel a slight ownership of this issue as I was the Minister who took the Bill through the House of Commons in 2007. Is my right hon. Friend aware of Pepper v. Hart, whereby what Ministers say at the Dispatch Box counts as legal interpretation? At that Dispatch Box, I mentioned
“trusts remaining public sector-based and delivering services at the local level, and with support from regional commissioners and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.”—[Official Report, 18 July 2007; Vol. 463, c. 353-4.]
Are the Government using the legislation in a false and inappropriate way?
Sadiq Khan
I have read carefully in Hansard what my right hon. Friend, as well as what the Under-Secretary of State at the time, my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe), and Baroness Scotland said in 2007. The Justice Secretary’s power was supposed to be limited, with the Justice Secretary stepping in only when a probation trust failed. It was not to be used to abolish all those probation trusts, and for him to be the sole commissioner, which is what he wants to do—and, by the way, using the Department’s own measure, none of the trusts are failing. There is no justification for the Justice Secretary to do what he is doing.
If the Justice Secretary, his Ministers or his Government said they were abolishing the whole existing probation landscape to save money, there would be a sort of logic to it, but they cannot even say that. The MOJ made an impact assessment of the plans—do hon. Members know what it said? It said:
“The cost will be dependent on the outcome of competition”.
The Government cannot say how much the plans will cost, let alone how much they will save. You could not make it up!
Where are the Liberal Democrats on this? To be fair, 24 Lib Dem MPs signed early-day motion 622, which heaped praise on the work of the probation service just last year. Back in 2007, the Deputy Prime Minister wrote these words, which are worthy of repetition:
“Few public services can be as readily overlooked as the probation service. For the last century probation officers have tirelessly and selflessly sought to help make our society safer and to rehabilitate those who have been drawn towards crime. The role they play is a vital one and it is important that politicians from across the party spectrum recognise this. As the second century of the probation service begins it is crucial that the unglamorous, painstaking yet hugely important work of the probation service is cherished, not undermined, by both Government and opposition parties.”
I say to those on the Liberal Democrat Benches that our motion is a modest one: read it, consider it, support it. If they fail to support our motion, they will be allowing the Secretary of State and his Government to go ahead with their risky plans.
In conclusion, changing our probation service to better rehabilitate offenders is not something that we, the profession, or experts are against. We must do all we can to reduce reoffending, by introducing new and innovative ways of working that are tried and tested before being rolled out. There should be no leaps into the unknown, and no gambling with public safety with half-baked reckless plans. I hope colleagues from all sides of the House will support our motion.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add:
“applauds the work already carried out by probation trusts and other agencies to turn offenders away from crime; and welcomes the Government’s proposals to build on that work to further reduce re-offending by extending support after release to offenders given short custodial sentences, introducing an unprecedented nationwide through-the-prison-gate resettlement service so that offenders are given continuous support by one provider from custody into the community, harnessing the skills and experience of trained professionals and the innovation and versatility of voluntary and private sector providers to support the rehabilitation of low and medium risk offenders and creating a new National Probation Service that will work to protect the public and will directly manage those offenders who pose a high risk of serious harm to the public.”
It is an enormous pleasure to be debating under your chairmanship, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is great to see you in the Chair. The amendment is in my name and the names of the Prime Minister and our right hon. Friends.
The House has sat and listened for the past half hour to a party that has absolutely no idea how to tackle what I believe to be Britain’s biggest crime problem. The Labour party did nothing about the problem in all of the 13 years it was in government. This Government will not repeat that record of failure. We are determined to break the depressing merry-go-round of crime. In this country, we have a cycle of reoffending that has a dreadful impact on the lives of decent, hard-working members of society, and that creates needless numbers of victims in our communities.
Chris Grayling
I will make some progress before giving way to hon. Members. Let me get established first.
The reality is that crime in Britain is falling, which is good. There are fewer first-time criminals, which is also good. However, increasingly, crime is committed by people who have offended previously, who are going around and around the system. Reoffending in Britain has barely changed in a decade—it rose again in the past year. It is as high as it was five years ago when the trusts were formed and the reforms were introduced.
Just yesterday, we released statistics that paint a grim picture of reoffending in this country. More than 148,000 criminals convicted or cautioned in the past year had at least 15 previous convictions or cautions. More than 500,000 offenders had at least one previous conviction or caution, including 95% of those given short sentences of less than 12 months. That group of offenders—prisoners who are released from short sentences of less than a year—have long been neglected by the system. They are at the heart of what we want to achieve.
Chris Grayling
I will give way in a moment.
The overall reoffending rates of that group are shocking. In the year to September 2011, nearly 60% of them went on to commit a further crime. Nearly 85,000 further crimes were committed by the group who walk out of prison with £46 in their pockets and get little or no support to get their lives back together and turn away from crime.
Toby Perkins
It is possible that the Secretary of State is right and that the experts whom he believes are wrong are wrong. However, surely in the interests of democratic accountability, a radical change of the sort he proposes should be debated properly in the House and the other place. Why is he so frightened of proper scrutiny of his policies?
Chris Grayling
I am not frightened, and I will talk about the legislative base later. I am not frightened to debate—I am here today debating. We are doing the right thing.
Steve Brine
The figures that the Lord Chancellor gives are shocking and, in many ways, a disgrace to our country. Is not one reason for the figures that there is no through-the-gate system from custody to community? The new resettlement prisons—I am glad that Her Majesty’s prison Winchester is part of the proposals—are part of putting that failed system right.
Chris Grayling
We are trying to do the things that experts have told us need to happen. They tell us that we need to support people through the gate and support those who have sentences on the edge of 12 months.
Chris Grayling
The right hon. Gentleman says that he is not against that, but Labour Members have come up with no suggestions whatever on how to achieve it, and did not do so in 13 years in government. This Government will make that difference. The reason is that that group of people—the ones who walk the streets with £46 in their pocket—are being abandoned by the system. Many have deep-rooted problems, such as drug, mental health and educational problems. We currently expect them to change on their own. When we do nothing, they carry on reoffending, which means more victims and more ruined lives. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) has said, it also means a cost, as estimated by the National Audit Office, of between £9.5 billion and £13 billion a year.
Richard Graham
Is my right hon. Friend as surprised as I am that the shadow Justice Secretary gave little recognition to the gravity of the problem; that, in his motion, there is nothing—not a single word—on how to reduce reoffending; and that the motion is simply a negative approach to the Government’s proposals?
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. All the Opposition are doing is opposing. I hear no suggestions, but we heard no suggestions from the Labour Government. We have heard from the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) on many occasions in the past few months. On 17 July, he said:
“But I also know that the status quo is not an option. Re-offending rates are too high.”
He has also said that we need to target specific groups, such as those who receive short sentences, many of whom are in the revolving door of reoffending. However, we heard nothing about that in his speech to his party conference this year, and there is nothing about it in the motion. The truth is that he has no plan.
Worse than having no plan, the Opposition did nothing in government. They had the chance to tackle the problem of support for short-sentence offenders when they were in office. In 2003, they legislated for custody plus, a highly complex and bureaucratic system, but at least it was trying to address the problem. However, in February 2006, the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), who was the Minister at the time, said:
“We intend to introduce Custody Plus in the autumn of 2006.”—[Official Report, 6 February 2006; Vol. 442, c. 934W.]
Only five months later, the then Government said that they would not implement the new sentence of custody plus. In November 2007, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said:
“No decision has yet been taken as to when custody plus will be introduced.”—[Official Report, 21 November 2007; Vol. 467, c. 946W.]
In February 2010, just before the general election, Lord Barker said in the other place:
“Resource constraints have meant that we have been unable thus far to implement custody plus and there is no prospect of doing so in the near future.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 February 2010; Vol. 505, c. 17WS.]
They opted out of their plan to tackle the problem that we are going to solve. They said that they could not do it, and it has been left to this Government to come up with a plan that will deliver real change.
Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)
I was a Minister in that Department, and the Lord Chancellor is wrong to say that nothing was done in our 13 years. We created the probation trusts, in the face of great resistance from his party, which voted against the Bill. In the Government’s plans, the multi-agency protection agreements between the police, the probation service and the criminal justice system will be kept in the public sector for the most serious offenders. Why will the rest go to the private sector when the risk register shows that there is concern about those people who go from a low or medium risk to high risk?
Chris Grayling
Let me address the issue of the risk register. The previous Government produced risk registers, but they never published them. A risk register is an internal working document designed to tell the team working on a project the steps that they need to take to ensure that untoward things do not happen. One of the things that we are doing in planning this project is, of course, aiming to deliver a transition that is as seamless as possible and protect the public. The difference this will make is to provide supervision for those people who are walking the streets and committing crimes, leading to more victims of crime today. That is what these reforms are all about.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
If the Minister is interested in providing a quality service, why have probation trusts been forbidden to bid to run the new community rehabilitation companies? The trusts have the expertise.
Chris Grayling
Our probation staff are not prohibited from bidding. We have teams of staff who are preparing mutual bids, some of which will, I hope, be successful. They are receiving help from the Cabinet Office to do so, and we are hoping to see members of our current team take this opportunity, win contracts, and go on to make a real difference.
Caroline Lucas
The Government claim that private providers will have the tools they need to assess offender risks, but the proposals refer to a new and untried risk of serious recidivism model. Is the Minister aware of concerns that that could lead to private companies wrongly assessing the most serious cases—those with low risk of recidivism but high on the risk of harm, such as convicted murderers and rape offenders—and will he commit, in the interests of public safety, to proper piloting and external validation of any new tool before its implementation and before the creation of community rehabilitation companies?
Chris Grayling
We intend to use the same systems across the public, private and voluntary sectors—that is enormously important—so that there will be no question of people using different systems. It will be part of the contracting structure that what the public national probation service, working with the most serious offenders, uses will also be used by contractors.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree that the Opposition have no right to lecture us on the criminal justice system, as they released tens of thousands of prisoners early, which undermined the public’s trust in the criminal justice system?
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, what we hear is a party that has changed completely. When Labour Members talk about the outsourcing agenda, they tend to forget that they were the people who drove the outsourcing agenda. They were the people who said that prisons could and should be run in the private sector. They were the people who said that electronic monitoring could and should be run in the private sector. A volte-face has taken Labour back to being an old-fashioned left-wing socialist party, and they are now pretending that none of that happened, but I can assure them that it did.
Mr Burrowes
Do not the Opposition have a one-sided view of expertise? From my involvement in the criminal justice system as a defence solicitor, I know the expertise of probation officers. That needs to be shared and transferred, and they need to be able to bid for contracts, but we have to recognise that expertise is not just in the public sector—there is expertise in the voluntary sector and the private sector. For example, is anyone saying that St Giles Trust, which supports people into work and housing, does not have expertise? Let us have a balanced view about allowing more people to be involved in the business of rehabilitation.
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is what we hope to achieve. This is not about handing probation to big companies, but bringing in the right expertise from the private, voluntary and community sectors to reinforce the work of the public sector, and to bring new ideas and approaches to rehabilitation. The great irony is that in the debate on the Offender Management Act 2007, Labour Members talked about the benefit of bringing together the skills of the public, private, voluntary and community sectors. Owing to the new, union-dominated agenda they are pursuing, they have abandoned all that and are now saying that anything that involves anybody else is simply not good, and that is not good enough.
Chris Grayling
I will make some progress and then take some interventions.
There has been talk about the categories of low and medium risk, something the right hon. Member for Tooting refers to regularly. The categories come from the current system—it is how the current probation system works. We will build on that in the new system.
We will not do business with anyone who cannot demonstrate the right expertise in preventing reoffending. The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) made the valid point that there are many good community and voluntary sector organisations doing excellent work in this field. I want more of that work to be part of what we do in the probation sector.
Richard Graham
What my right hon. Friend says about the variety of organisations that have something important to contribute on rehabilitation is surely something we all recognise in our own constituencies. Will he confirm for the record that there is nothing to prevent—indeed, lots to encourage—the Gloucestershire and Wiltshire probation trusts from getting together and bidding with a business for rehabilitation contracts?
Chris Grayling
Not only that; we are encouraging our management teams from trusts. We cannot contract on a payment-by-results basis with ourselves, but the Cabinet Office is investing money to encourage and support teams of staff who want to take over the business, run it and be free to innovate.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
The Lord Chancellor is being generous in giving way. Let me make it clear that I believe there is valuable expertise among the many charities that work with offenders on some of the problems he has raised—on mental health, alcohol and drugs—but can he define medium-risk offenders? What offences is he talking about? How does he deal with the point that was raised earlier about offenders who fluctuate between medium risk and high risk? If there is a logic to keeping the management of high-risk offenders in the current system, what is the logic for those who fluctuate between the two?
Chris Grayling
Let me answer that question specifically. First, the categorisations are existing categorisations—they are not mine—and are part of a triage process within the existing probation system that we will continue to use. Secondly, on moving people from one category to another, it will be the responsibility of a national probation trust to carry out risk assessments at the beginning, or later if circumstances change that require a new assessment to take place. The two organisations will be in part co-located, so it will not be a complicated bureaucratic process—people will be sitting in the same office. The national probation service will carry out assessments when they need to be carried out. I can explain this to the right hon. Gentleman separately and at much greater length if he would like, but that is how it will work.
On voluntary sector organisations, we are making absolutely sure that smaller organisations have a place at the table.
The shadow Justice Secretary’s comments about the Work programme were complete nonsense. When I left the Department for Work and Pensions, the voluntary sector was supporting about 150,000 people. It was by far the biggest voluntary sector programme of its kind ever seen in this country, with organisations such as the Papworth Trust delivering the programme across large areas of the country and making a real difference. I pay tribute to those charities. The story about bid candy is simply not true. In the two years I was employment Minister, fewer than 10 of the 250 to 300 voluntary sector organisations involved left the programme, and all of them did so for reasons unconnected with the programme. So I am afraid he is plain wrong.
Chris Grayling
Well, I did the job.
Section 3 of the 2007 Act provides a clear and unambiguous power for the Secretary of State to
“make contractual or other arrangements with any other person for the making of the probation provision.”
On Second Reading, the then Home Secretary said:
“The Secretary of State, not the probation boards, will be responsible for ensuring service provision by entering into contracts with the public, private or voluntary sectors. With that burden lifted, the public sector can play to its strengths while others play to theirs.”—[Official Report, 11 December 2006; Vol. 454, c. 593.]
I could not have described our plans better. Furthermore, on Report, the hon. Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) said:
“Most services will be commissioned from lead providers at area level, which will sub-contract to a range of other providers.”—[Official Report, 28 February 2007; Vol. 457, c. 960.]
Again, that is very close to the plans before the House today. The shadow Justice Secretary must also know that in another place Baroness Scotland said that the Act
“places the statutory duty with the Secretary of State, who then commissions the majority of services through a lead provider”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 27 June 2007; Vol. 693, c. 639.]
We have two options. Either the Opposition are not being up front with the House about what they really intended to do in the 2007 Act, or they were so incompetent they did not know what they were doing. The House can choose which is most likely.
Mr Hanson
The golden thread through the 2007 Act was public sector management of all offenders—low and medium-level and serious offenders—supported by the commissioning of the type of services the Justice Secretary wants on health, mental health and alcohol and drug treatment from the voluntary and private sector, but the public sector has to be responsible for managing offenders.
Chris Grayling
I repeat, from the 2007 Act:
“The Secretary of State may make contractual or other arrangements with any other person for the making of the probation provision.”
That is clear, to my mind. It might not have been what Labour intended, but it is what the power does, and it is the legal basis we are using for pushing ahead with these reforms.
We will give providers the flexibility to do what works and free them from Whitehall bureaucracy, and the deal is that they get paid in full only for real reductions in reoffending, which is a good deal for victims and the taxpayer. Despite what the shadow Justice Secretary says about the Work programme, it has now helped many hundreds of thousands of the long-term unemployed. He talks about low-hanging fruit—these are people who had been unable to find a job through Jobcentre Plus in over a year.
The Opposition are missing one other important point. The shadow Justice Secretary talked about piloting, but the pilot programme delivering clear improvements in the level of reoffending that is closest to what I want to achieve around the country is in Peterborough. It is so far achieving very good results. It is impressive and I encourage Members in that area to visit. One cannot but feel that it is the right thing to do, but what the Opposition have not admitted is that it was started by Labour. I know it does not want to admit it now, but it started us on this path, and it is a sign of how absurd it has become that it wants to walk us off this path today.
On the point about public protection, the national public sector probation service we are establishing will, of course, be responsible for risk assessing all offenders supervised in the community and will retain the management of offenders who pose a high risk of serious harm to the public, who have committed the more serious offences and who require multi-agency supervision. That is right and proper. An hon. Member—I cannot remember which one—made a point about the working day. I would rather the supervision of highest-risk offenders was in the hands of dedicated experts—and it will continue to be—but having listened to people talk about inexperienced individuals and companies coming in, I think it is worth pointing out that after these reforms, it will be the same teams looking after low and medium-risk offenders as are looking after them now. Only over time will we see the work force evolve so that the expertise in the voluntary sector becomes part of the mix, with former offenders who have turned their lives around influencing young offenders and encouraging them not to do it again.
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
What I cannot understand is how the transition between low, medium and high risk will work. We all know that people’s circumstances can fluctuate in those situations. If, as the Secretary of State said in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), the changes are not particularly dramatic, why are the Government pushing them through? If, however, they are dramatic, there will be a disjoin. How does the right hon. Gentleman propose to deal with that?
Chris Grayling
As I have said, it will be a simple process. The national probation service team will be responsible for risk assessment. They will have a duty to carry out a new assessment when a person’s circumstances change, and it will be the duty of the provider to notify the team of any material change of circumstances. They will be co-located, and when an offender becomes a high-risk offender, they will be taken back under the supervision of the national probation service. This is about people sitting in the same office and working together, just as people work together in any office environment.
Steve Brine
We have ascertained that Labour accepts the need to bring in other providers to deal with people who are serving fewer than 12 months. The Secretary of State has read out the relevant legislation; it is there in black and white. The Peterborough pilot was introduced by Labour, and we understand that Labour Members are very proud of it. So what does my right hon. Friend think lies behind the outrage being expressed this afternoon at our proposals to drive down the reoffending rates that are costing our constituents billions of pounds?
Chris Grayling
I can only think that it is because the Labour Government could not find a way to do that themselves, or perhaps because Labour has reverted politically to where we all know it belongs and is now ideologically opposed to this kind of approach. It is a party that used to believe that outsourcing part of what we did could make a difference, but it has clearly changed that view now.
It is worth mentioning the creation of resettlement prisons. If we are to deliver rehabilitation that prevents reoffending, it is really important that we have a proper through-the-gate service. My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) mentioned the prison in Winchester, which will be one of the network of 82 resettlement prisons in which people will, whenever possible, spend the last few months of a longer sentence, or the whole of a shorter one. Those prisons will provide a proper through-the-gate service that will also prevent reoffending.
We must remember why we are doing all this. The Opposition want us to wait for years before doing anything; they do not want us to take this approach. I have a different view: I think that we cannot afford not to act now. Every day of every week, innocent people are the victims of crimes committed by offenders who have just left prison without getting any supervision whatever, and with wholly inadequate preparation for life back in society. Every day of every week, innocent people are the victims of crimes committed by offenders who could be turned away from a life of crime if only there were someone there to help them to do that. That is a scandalous situation, but there are ways for us to solve it. This should never have been allowed to happen in the first place, but our reforms will change things for the better.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. Owing to the high demand for time to speak, I have had to impose a time limit on Back-Bench speeches of six minutes.
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
I, too, would like to congratulate you on your election to your new position, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I do not criticise the Justice Secretary for wanting to change, improve or reform our prison and probation services. That is something that we should all want. However, I absolutely reject his assertion that nothing happened during the 13 years of the Labour Government, and I want to explain, drawing on my own experience, some of the things that did happen during that time.
Ten years ago, almost to the day, Lord Carter of Coles presented my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) and me with a report, “Managing Offenders, Reducing Crime: a new Approach”. And it was a new approach. Three outcomes from that report were significant. The first was the creation of the National Offender Management Service, which brought together prison and probation services in a way that had not been done before and institutionalised the end-to-end management of offenders in a way that has underpinned everything that has happened since. More controversially, there was a clearer separation between commissioning and providing services, and a greater emphasis on contestability—a belief that by bringing more players into the system, we could get efficiencies and innovation.
Some of that got me into hot water with some of my colleagues, and I make that clear now because I want the Justice Secretary to know that I am not afraid of bringing in competition or of private sector or third sector players coming in to help to reduce reoffending. I share many of the objectives of his transforming rehabilitation strategy. I am deeply concerned, however, that what he is doing is not reforming the probation service, but destroying it. This is a Secretary of State who wants both to nationalise and to privatise the probation service at one and the same time. He wants to end local probation trusts, but to create a new national probation service run out of Whitehall and to award 21 new private sector contracts that will be drawn up and awarded by his Ministry of Justice.
Why is it that successful and effective trusts such as the Northumbria and Greater Manchester trusts will not be allowed to bid for low and medium-risk offender work? Why is it that Greater Manchester trust, which has been commended from the Dispatch Box by the Justice Secretary on more than one occasion and has introduced innovations such as the intensive alternative to custody, cannot be trusted to bid for and to run these services? The only conclusion I can reach is that his motivation is ideological and not practical.
Let me say something about the costs and the lack of transparency—my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) alluded to this—especially in respect of the new arrangements that the Justice Secretary proposes for the supervision of offenders who get short prison sentences. I support the Government in trying to introduce this innovation—I make no bones about that—but let me be absolutely candid about custody plus. Along with many of my right hon. and hon. Friends, I wanted custody plus and we legislated for it in the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The obstacle—the Secretary of State referred to it—was the cost. But at least I can put a price on what custody plus would have cost. Ten years ago, it would have cost £194 million a year. Interestingly, that was based on an estimate of 50,000 offenders who would have been in the system—precisely the same number as those in his impact assessment report. I can put a figure on it, but he cannot. All we are told is that it will be paid for by the savings generated by the competition for low and medium-risk offenders. Frankly, I just do not believe it. Either that supervision will be inadequate or the existing provision will be weakened and reduced in quality.
I cannot understand the pace of change on which this Secretary of State seems hell-bent. Within one year from now, he will have to award contracts, appoint staff, transfer cases, set up IT, sort out premises provision, renegotiate or even end existing contracts and organise 70 resettlement prisons. Well, I wish him well. If he succeeds in that, I will be the first to congratulate him, but he is setting himself an impossible target that could produce tremendous dislocation within these important services.
I do not understand why the right hon. Gentleman is not prepared to trial and test the sort of approach he is taking. We may disagree about the approach, but he should at least trial and test it. How can he work out the balance between risk and reward when he has not tested his own scheme? How can he know how much money to offer as an up-front payment? How does he know how much to pay for the results? Even by his own lights, he is found wanting in his thinking.
My concerns and those of other hon. Members and probation officers are shared by police and crime commissioners, and I know that the Justice Secretary has received representations from them. They criticise him for reducing the local partnerships that probation trusts have been able to develop and they are critical of the fragmentation that will come from this flawed approach to risk assessment. The probation service has evolved much over the last 100 years, but this Secretary of State runs the risk of destroying it.
Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)
I join others in congratulating you on your election to the position that you now hold, Madam Deputy Speaker, and wish you all good fortune. I also congratulate the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins). This is not the first occasion on which I have spoken immediately after him in a criminal justice debate. I have always found that what he has to say is full of good sense, and that he thinks a great deal about it beforehand.
Like the right hon. Gentleman, I have form. He has experience as—I believe—a Home Office and Northern Ireland criminal justice Minister, while I come to the debate armed, if that is the right expression, with some experience as a Crown court recorder. I sat as a recorder from 1998 until 2010, when I was appointed a Law Officer. Between 2005 and 2009, when I became shadow Attorney-General, I was the shadow justice Minister dealing with prisons and probation. I like to think that, as a consequence of both those functions, I learnt quite a bit about the way in which we run our probation and rehabilitation system.
I would be dishonest if I did not accept that a number of my constituents who work for the probation service in Leicestershire are deeply concerned about what my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor and his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice are proposing, but I happen to disagree with them because of what I learnt during my time as a recorder and as a shadow justice Minister. Having visited 65 of the 142 or 143 prisons and other custodial units in the country, and having also visited any number of probation offices and staff throughout England and Wales, I concluded that what we were doing extremely badly was looking after—and I mean looking after—repeat offenders. We were quite good at dealing with long-term offenders who had been given five, six, seven or eight years or life sentences, but we were hopeless at dealing with those who had been given sentences of under a year. Now, at last, my right hon. Friend is pushing forward—admittedly, not with everyone’s approval—a policy that will enable us to look after those people, and looking after them will mean that we look after the victims as well.
When I sat as a recorder, most of those whom I saw were drug-addicted, mentally ill people in the dock, and people who could not understand why they had become victims and, in many cases, repeat victims It was the pathetic story of a carousel of failure, and by the time I had become shadow Attorney-General and, eventually, Solicitor-General, I felt evangelical about it. I am not suggesting that the Lord Chancellor is anything like a saint—he and I have had our differences over all sorts of things—but at last he and I are on the same page, both of us wanting to do something practical about repeat offending.
At Pentonville prison in London, most of the probation work is entirely defensive. Those who go into the prison will probably be there for less than six months, and many are there for a matter of days or weeks. Most of them cannot read, most are on drugs, most do not have a GP, and most do not have a fixed address. The main thing that the Prison Service and the probation service can do in that place is keep them alive. After a few days or weeks, they are spat out on to the street—and what do they do in order to feed their drug habit? They commit burglaries, they commit robberies, and they become street drug dealers.
We cannot continue to permit that. While it is difficult for my constituents who are members of the National Association of Probation Officers and work extremely hard, and very well, in Leicestershire, to accept the structural changes that are required to achieve the improvements that are needed, and while I have great personal sympathy for them, I regret to say that we must do something and do it quickly, because otherwise the situation will simply progress. What people who have been given short and medium-term prison sentences need on release is a job, somewhere to stay, and a strong relationship. Ideally that strong relationship should be with a partner, but it could also be with someone who can supervise and assist them. They need to be caught, not at the gate but before the gate—before they leave prison.
My good friend Jonathan Aitken said the most terrifying and difficult thing for him when he was in prison was worrying about what was going to happen to him when he left, and he was well-off, highly educated and had all the advantages of his class and education. Just imagine what that must be like for a poor drug addict with mental illness. They have a great big cliff to face as they leave prison. Unless we have supervisors, whether in the charitable sector or the probation service, there to catch them and take them to a better life, we will just reinforce failure.
I commend my right hon. Friend, and I urge him and his fellow Ministers to press on with this. Some unedifying remarks will be directed at us by the Opposition, but I say, “Just be strong.” We have got people to save here and it takes courage: get on with it.
Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier). His compassion for those who need our help does him credit. I have to say I draw different conclusions, however, and that is the argument between us. I am very pleased that the Labour party has chosen the probation service as the topic for this Opposition day debate. May I also congratulate you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on your election to the post, and say how pleased I am to see you in your place?
This is the right time to be debating this topic. I believe that what the Government propose poses a real risk to the general public—who are, after all, our constituents—and also to the public purse. When the Secretary of State for Justice was making the case for his proposals, he did not say he thought they would save money. I strongly suspect that, if he gets his way, this will not save money; indeed, I think it will cost more money.
There is an overarching consideration in all this: the question of the delivery of public service. I urge caution. I believe the Government should proceed more cautiously and in a more measured way. The criticisms of the Government’s proposals are widespread; there are many people urging caution, although it is my understanding that the Government intend just to press ahead. I believe that the pace of change is too fast, and that the nature of the change—essentially to a payment-by-results contractor system for 70% of the total work load—is too great to roll this out without first piloting the core proposition. Payment by results is, in any event, an untested way of delivering probation and aftercare services and may well turn out not to be a suitable model for delivering such services. The scope for abuse is obvious and the nature of the safeguards the Government propose is not obvious.
Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)
Talking about payment by results, 70% of the people who come to Devon and Cornwall probation service with literacy and numeracy issues end up with a qualification, whereas the national average is 20%. Those are the results currently being achieved by the probation service.
Mr Brown
Yes, those are the results. We are talking about what is, by and large, a well-run public service that does its job well. Quite some argument is required to make the case in favour of taking the sort of risks with it the Government are proposing in order to justify what is being done.
Not enough thought has been given to the distinctions between high-risk, medium-risk and low-risk offenders. The idea is that all the difficult cases are dealt with in the public sector and those deemed to be low risk are dealt with by private contractors, which is quite dangerous. These categorisations are not static. Even under the present system, 24% of the case load changes categorisation during the period of supervision. Payment by results by its very nature incentivises contractors to minimise the difficult part of their work load, so there are some perverse economic incentives in the Government’s idea.
It is also the case that categorisation can change very suddenly as a result of a significant single event. In theory, this will result in transfers between public and private sectors inside what is, at the moment, a unified public service. The new arrangements will make this more difficult, especially with economic incentives driving the process. There is too much scope for dispute and delay, thus endangering the public. In any event, the private sector contractors will have to be invigilated, with their claims checked to make sure that they are true, and that will cost money. I suspect that the Government are being unduly optimistic about this aspect of their proposals. Indeed, the Secretary of State is already complaining about being overcharged for the electronic tagging arrangements.
I do not understand why the Government are trying to do this to the probation service, which is a good public service. Feeling is particularly strong in the area I represent. A fortnight ago, I presented a petition signed by more than 2,000 local citizens in defence of the Northumbria probation trust, which is rated as exceptional. Of the 35 probation areas, 31 are rated good and four are rated exceptional. In 2011, the probation service was awarded the British Quality Foundation gold medal for excellence.
The Government’s proposals will wreck all that, and the claimed benefits are unproven. The Department’s own risk assessment of the proposals, which was helpfully leaked into the public domain, confirms that. The risk assessment codes a number of the key risks as black, which is the worst rating possible; apparently, there is an 80% chance of a drop in operational performance and up to an 80% risk of failure of implementation. Crucially, there is an 80% risk of the cost savings not being met. Why on earth are we doing this if there is a likelihood of the cost savings not being met? Why would any rational person do this? The risks to the public purse and to the safety of our constituents are unacceptable.
I urge the Government to take a deep breath and to go back to the reasonable compromise proposal to pilot their ideas to test them against the evidence. In parallel, they could, if they wanted to, pilot the same ideas in a public setting and compare the two. Thirdly, it would be reasonable to have a pilot involving voluntary organisations with a special expertise, where they may be able to enhance what is done in the context of a first-rate public service.
Taking a little longer and getting this right is surely the correct way to proceed, rather than rushing at it, getting it all wrong and then coming back to the House saying, “We haven’t saved any money. It has actually cost more. Rather a lot has gone wrong and we are asking the public sector to take over again and to clear it all up.” That would be absolutely disastrous and there is no need to take the risk. There is no need to take the risk with our constituents’ safety and no need to take the risk with the public purse. I urge the Government to step back and to try to come to a more consensual way forward. I would certainly play a part in that if they were willing to do so.
Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)
The Liberal Democrats want a rehabilitation revolution. We want to toughen up community sentences and make them a genuine alternative to custody, to embed restorative justice throughout the justice system and to open up rehabilitation services to a wider range of providers to ensure that the most effective and innovative measures are available.
It is clear from the comments of hon. Members from both sides of the House that the justice system, as it stands at the moment, is not working. Nearly half of offenders reoffend, but the figure for short-term prisoners is even worse, at 60% and they are the ones who currently get no help with rehabilitation at all. The result is a huge cost to society and to the economy. We need help for all ex-offenders to enable them to build their lives on release and not fall into the same traps that got them into trouble in the first place. That is why I welcome our current proposals to change the law to ensure that all offenders released from custody, regardless of their sentence length, will receive at least 12 months of supervision on licence. It is to be done by making probation cost-effective, by extending the service to lower-risk offenders on a payments-by-results basis. That additional help that offenders receive should, literally, pay for itself.
I am a member of a Select Committee considering prisoner voting, and I can tell hon. Members that when it comes to the issues that will determine the amount of reoffending, the right to vote, although that is an important human right, is way down the list. The important factors are having somewhere to stay, meaningful work, training and education, supportive personal relationships, a mentor, continuing health care and so on. Ex-offenders will now have the opportunity to access such things through a structured programme of help. The private and voluntary sectors as well as those who now work in probation trusts can bid for the care of those low-risk offenders.
Mr Kevan Jones
I do not disagree with the hon. Lady about the excellent work done by many voluntary organisations, as I certainly have one such organisation in my constituency. I am being told, however, that such organisations cannot bid for the contracts, as they will not take that financial risk, but, ironically, some of the big private sector companies are asking them to be on the sub-tender list. The idea being suggested is that such organisations will come forward, but that will not be the case.
Lorely Burt
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman was listening very carefully when the Secretary of State made his remarks on that point. I can only concur with the Secretary of State’s comments—they worked for me.
The importance and value of probation officers in protecting the public and helping offenders reintegrate into society should not be underestimated. We are clear that we need to obtain the skills and expertise of probation professionals as we move into the new system, which is why we are establishing a national probation service.
I want to address a phrase in Labour’s motion that is, I feel, misleading. It states that it is a
“fact that under the Government’s plans supervision of dangerous, sexual and violent offenders may be undertaken by inexperienced and unqualified staff and by companies without any track record in this area”.
I believe that the important factor is whether they are “high risk”. The Justice Secretary has explained very clearly how the system would work. The established probation service will handle all high-risk ex-offenders and to imply that they would be entrusted to inexperienced and unqualified people is, in my view, scaremongering. Let us have none of that.
Natascha Engel
How does the hon. Lady account for the fact that although some individuals might be low-risk or medium-risk offenders, a fluctuating condition might mean that something happens in their lives—as she has said, some of these people often live very chaotic lives— and they suddenly, overnight, become high-risk? That is the situation that we are worried about.
Lorely Burt
I am sure that the hon. Lady is right that such people live chaotic and fluctuating lives and things can change, but the Justice Secretary explained that the people making the assessments would always be on the job and would be in the same room as the other people who would be involved.
There are some legitimate questions for the Minister. I have seen payment by results work well in job searching and I know that there are good voluntary and private organisations with skill and experience that could be put to good use in rehabilitation. There are also private companies, however, that have failed spectacularly to handle work that has hitherto been carried out by the public sector. Whenever the profit motive comes into play, the desire will be to maximise profit and minimise risk and effort. How will the Government ensure that private companies, in particular, do not simply come along and pick the low-hanging fruit? How will we ensure that a very important Liberal Democrat principle is adhered to—[Laughter.] The right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the Opposition Benches are having a laugh, as they say, but a decision on this very important principle was passed at the last Liberal Democrat conference—[Interruption.] If hon. Members care to listen, they will find out what we think is really important. The principle that we would adhere to is that all ex-offenders should receive appropriate help, even when the risk of reoffending is high. So how will that happen, and how will the costs be factored? After all, many ex-offenders will leave prison never to reoffend, all on their own. Will there be some form of incentive to encourage voluntary sector or private providers to take on the hard cases—people with addictions, low educational attainment and poor or even non-existent employment records?
Lorely Burt
I have taken two interventions. I am sorry.
How we will ensure that everyone gets the help that they need to become a real stakeholder in Britain today? I look forward to the Minister’s answer.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
As a member of the Justice Committee, I can tell the House that we are still concerned about the Government’s proposals. We have not formed a view yet but we are returning to the issue to look at the timing of these changes, the structure, and crucially the contractual arrangements. I understand that the Government intend to use the Offender Management Act 2007 as the prime mechanism to abolish probation trusts and create new community rehabilitation companies and the national probation service, but I believe sincerely that the introduction of the transforming rehabilitation programme should be debated in full by both Houses of Parliament. This is far too important a matter to be rushed through without proper parliamentary scrutiny.
In March 2014, 35 probation trusts will disappear. That will inevitably lead to job losses. Currently 18,000 staff face uncertainty about their future. The impact on the public will be shocking; I hope I am wrong. After six months, the remaining 70% of the probation service will be privatised and sold off to the cheapest bidder—another race to the bottom. The Minister disagrees, obviously. Contractors who offer services for the lowest price will be responsible for supervising the low to medium-risk offenders—that is, the precise group most likely to go on to commit further and serious offences. This will include the supervision of those convicted of domestic violence, sex offenders and gang members—groups which require specialist knowledge and expertise.
The National Association of Probation Officers, the probation union, has estimated that nearly 70,000 of the 140,000 medium and low-risk cases that are bound to be outsourced will be offenders convicted of violent or sexual offences.
Alison Seabeck
The right hon. Gentleman is making an important point. Does he share my concern that there is a risk that those private contractors will look at some of those people in their mix and say, “These are a bit difficult. Let’s just pass them back to the public sector and all the costs will go back,” in order to meet their target?
Mr Llwyd
That is precisely what will happen. Once the profit motive comes in, common sense dictates that that will happen.
Private companies will be handling extremely sensitive cases, many of which pose huge risks to the public, with little or no experience of assessing risk. We know that that, too, is a movable feast. They will also be unable to cope with the demands of managing offenders who need encouragement, support and patience—work which the probation service itself is doing very well at present. The Ministry of Justice figures show that all 35 probation trusts are hitting all their targets with good or excellent performance levels. The reoffending rates for all adult offenders on probation supervision are the lowest they have been since 2007-08. In October 2011, as we know, the probation service was awarded the British Quality Foundation gold medal for excellence.
Reoffending by those who undergo supervision by probation has been falling every year since 2000, and two thirds of individuals managed by probation trusts in the community do not go on to reoffend within a year. The service’s high-level performance is continuing. The Government want to fragment that. The highest reoffending rates of 57% are of course found among those offenders who undergo short-term prison sentences—that is, the group who have no current contact with probation trusts. The Government have in the past ruled out the option of handing over responsibility for these individuals to probation trusts.
Probation trusts have made savings of 20% between 2008-09 and 2012-13, despite the fact that the probation budget has fallen by 19% in real terms over the same period. That all goes to show that it is trained and experienced probation workers who keep crime rates down and protect the public from further harm, but the Justice Secretary seems to have little regard for any of that.
These plans represent a victory of dogma over common sense and are yet another example of the Tory mantra that public is bad and private is always good, despite G4S torturing people in South African prisons and, along with others, skimming off millions of pounds of Government money.
Richard Graham
If I heard the right hon. Gentleman correctly, he accused Government Members of being anti-public sector. For those of us who have worked in the public service for large chunks of our life, that is deeply offensive.
Mr Llwyd
I was actually referring to the Secretary of State. Whether the hon. Gentleman fancies himself in that role is a matter for another day.
The MOJ’s internal risk register was mentioned in an intervention on the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan). Both NAPO and the Probation Chiefs Association have expressed grave and well-thought-out concerns about public safety as a result of these plans. That is why the call for pilots makes every possible sense. There is a real risk that communication gaps will occur, leading to delays and endangering the public.
The problems faced by offenders are frequently complex and probation staff have experience and training that helps them know which services offenders should utilise to meet their needs. Work done by the Prison Reform Trust has shown that offenders are 12 times more likely to have spent time in care and 20 times more likely to have been expelled from school than others in the general population. Furthermore, two thirds have encountered problems with substance abuse and 72% have two or more mental health problems. But the Government’s proposals will fragment the local partnership work in which probation trusts currently play a vital role, including youth to adult transitions, troubled family initiatives, women offender institutes and community safety partnerships.
The staff are now being kept in the dark about how individuals delivering probation services will be trained in future, as well as crucial details such as: the terms of voluntary redundancy schemes; what access, if any, will be granted to local government pension schemes, both for existing staff and new recruits; and information on how their roles will change after the reforms have been introduced. In October members of NAPO, for only the second time in its 101-year history, voted for direct action, with more than 84% voting in support on a 46% turnout.
The Government’s plans risk threatening the success of the probation service and pose a danger to the public. The MOJ knows that and has refused to publish the evidence to substantiate that stark fact. The common-sense answer—the elephant in the room—is of course to extend the remit of the award-winning probation service so that it can supervise offenders sentenced to less than 12 months in prison. The Government have chosen not to do that on dogmatic grounds, and sooner or later they will pay for it.
Mr Speaker
Order. The time limit will have to be reduced to five minutes in an attempt on my part to accommodate all remaining speakers. There is no guarantee of that, but the chances are now better.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I shall do my best to encompass all my thoughts within the requisite five minutes.
It was a pleasure not only to be asked to speak in this debate, but to meet a constituent last Saturday whose grandson is sadly in the criminal justice system. He has just had to move to the other side of the country to access the rehabilitation course he requires to get a meaningful job upon release. The consequence is that he can no longer see his family, as they cannot afford to travel to the other side of the country, but he understands the importance of getting a job and having a secure financial base on which to rebuild his life. It is clear to me that this debate is not about the arid structures that Opposition Members have talked about; it is about real people and, most importantly, outcomes.
The Secretary of State is right to point to the appalling reoffending statistics for those serving sentences of less than 12 months. As he said, those with the highest reoffending rates seem to get the least rehabilitation support. Resettlement prisons are clearly a key component of the new landscape, but on the journey there are risks of mixing potentially vulnerable young offenders and older inmates. Will the Minister look closely at what the independent monitoring board has said about HMP Portland, where there has been serious evidence of self-harm and violence because of the inappropriate mixing of populations?
I urge hon. Members to look at the Prison Reform Trust’s report, “Out for Good”, which is about what prisoners want in having a successful rehabilitation in their communities. I declare an interest as a trustee, but it is a very worthwhile read. One of its key points, which I have not yet heard mentioned in the debate, is the importance of stable financial support on release. By this I do not just mean the £46 that people take through the gate, but their ability to have a bank account and to access insurance. Many banks have carried out pilot projects—Barclays has made more progress than most—and the charity Unlock is doing its best to corral the financial services industry in this regard. However, I urge Ministers to try a little harder. Without access to a bank account, which is now such an important part of daily life, or adequate insurance, rehabilitation is made that much harder.
Members in all parts of the House have praised the voluntary sector and the charities that can all play such an important role, but I have detected a slight discrepancy whereby Opposition Members see them as being welcome participants but in a subsidiary role. I am happy to see them in a leading role, and I think they want to do far more. For example, the Clink Charity is a support group for about 1,000 different smaller charities that is actively trying to work with the Government to play a role in this. I urge the Minister to look closely at its recommendations about how we can involve those smaller charities fairly in the commissioning sector. It proposes that some of the up-front financial risk that they have to bear should be transferred to the upper-tier providers of these services, perhaps allowing them to play a much greater role. I would like the Minister to respond to the point made by the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), who is no longer in her place, who said that many small charities—Hibiscus springs to mind—work with very small segments of the offender population and might struggle to generate the statistical justifications that, in the eyes of the larger providers, enable them to make a contribution.
I recognise the concerns of many probation trust members about their professional future. Will the Minister say a little more about the benefits of mutuals? Will he confirm that any trust that is doing good work at the moment, be it in Manchester or in Sussex—for both are doing excellent work—can continue to do that work if they transfer to a mutual status? That confirmation would be very welcome to those who work in such trusts. Thank you again, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in this debate.
Mike Wood (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard).
I speak as a trained probation officer and as someone who was perhaps least offended when the Secretary of State talked about ideologues, as I think that ideology often gets a bad press. However, being ideological does not remove from the Government the responsibility to provide protection for their citizens. These dramatic changes within our criminal justice system place the 120,000 men, women and children I represent in this place, as everybody else represents their constituents, under threat, and we must therefore speak out against them.
The stated aim of the Government’s plans—we have heard this articulated several times—is to address their concern about reoffending levels. Recidivism should be of concern to all of us, but up to this point neither the probation service nor anyone else has had any responsibility for the vast majority of reoffenders. Nobody in this House disagrees that petty criminals who leave prison after serving short sentences need extra help and support, and we have already heard how that should be done: extend the remit of the probation service to cover such people. Why abolish the probation service and privatise out of existence the successful group of people who have proved that they have the expertise to make a difference to the lives of those people, and why exclude them from the Government’s bidding process? It is absolutely barmy.
Anyone listening to this debate would not think that crime has been falling for the past 20 years under Governments of both stripes. West Yorkshire probation service deals with offenders in my area, where reoffending is down by 14% over the past five years. The situation is in many ways better, not worse, than it has ever been. The probation service is leaner, fitter, better and more focused than ever—certainly compared with when I worked as a probation officer—so we have the opportunity, should we wish, to extend support to people through a proven organisation.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
South Yorkshire, like west Yorkshire, has one of the best-performing probation trusts anywhere in the country and it already works with people who are convicted and serve a term of fewer than 12 months. Is it not the case that all of the probation trusts have said they will do this extra work at no extra cost? The question for Ministers, therefore, is: why on earth will they not back the probation trusts, which are already doing the job and doing it well in most cases?
Mike Wood
My right hon. Friend makes exactly the right point, but we know that the reason why that will not happen is ideological: this Government believe that private is good and public is bad. We also know that they are not really convinced that these changes will make any real difference to reoffending rates or save money.
Richard Graham
Will the hon. Gentleman explain what has happened to reoffending rates over the past 10 or 15 years? Have they got better or worse, or have they stayed the same? If they have stayed the same, does he not agree that something needs to be done differently? Secondly, does he not agree that the high rate of reoffending by those with sentences of fewer than 12 months needs to be tackled urgently?
Mike Wood
The hon. Gentleman’s question has two parts and I think we have already answered it. The reoffending rates are static, but the bulk of the problem lies in a group that is not yet the responsibility of any organisation—certainly not of the probation service. What I am suggesting is that if we want to provide support for that group of offenders, we should extend the remit of the organisation that has proved that it has the expertise, skills and ability to make a difference. Instead, the Government intend to move to an untested system of payment by results that is unique throughout the criminal justice world and that will be inhabited by companies that have proved themselves to be not only incompetent, but dishonest in the exercise of previous contracts let to them by this Government.
A problem has been identified, but the system that we are producing will make things worse, not better. The Government are in a fix of their own making. They talk of a revolution in the way that offenders are managed. The hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt), who is no longer in her seat, said that the Liberals identified with the idea of a revolution. However, we know that revolutions have a tendency to eat up and destroy those who are central to their genesis.
The Government want to place the supervision of thousands of potentially dangerous and unpredictable offenders in the hands of companies that have no track record in the field and that increase their profits consistently by employing poorly paid, untrained, temporary staff. If we add to that the privateer’s tendency to promote commercial confidentiality over partnership working, which has been central to the progress that has been made over the past 20 years, we have a volatile and frightening prospect.
Had the Secretary of State graced us with his presence until the end of the debate, I would have reminded him, as has happened once already, of the statement that he made in this House on 9 January:
“Sometimes we just have to believe something is right and do it”.—[Official Report, 9 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 318.]
That might be okay for the Secretary of State in his personal life, but he is charged with a responsibility to the public of this country and he needs to exercise it better.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Mike Wood).
Earlier this afternoon, I had a chat with my father, who was a justice of the peace for many years. When I told him that I would be speaking on behalf of the Dorset probation service this afternoon, he said without any hesitation what huge respect he had for all the members of the probation service he had met in his many years as a JP.
Dorset has 10 probation officers and a small administration group based in Weymouth. They handle a case load of 350 offenders at any one time. The pressure is intense. When I visited the team, I was deeply impressed by their professionalism and dedication. They told me that they were concerned about some of the changes that the Government are proposing. It would be wise for us to listen.
I should emphasise that some of the changes are broadly welcomed by the probation team. They are pleased about the extension of statutory supervision to those who are in custody for fewer than 12 months. We have heard about that proposal today. They also welcome the development of seamless through-the-gates resettlement provision. However, the seamless resettlement service will work only if there is active engagement between the probation officer and the offender for at least three months prior to release. Crucially, family ties have also been shown to be vital to the successful reintegration of offenders into the community.
With the closure of Dorchester prison, which until now has been the dedicated resettlement prison for Dorset, offenders and probation officers must meet at Exeter prison, which is some 90 minutes away. That inevitably reduces the number of times they can meet and the amount of useful time that they can spend together. Furthermore, it takes the offender further away from home and his or her support network. It also affects the probation officer’s ability to deal with the intense work load that they leave behind.
If those changes are due to cuts, as must be assumed, they are a false economy. Spending nearly four hours on the road is not a good use of time or money. It also has a knock-on effect on the service and the courts. If the resettlement is truly to be seamless, we must ensure that Dorset probation officers can spend time with Dorset prisoners in Dorset. I ask the Minister to look again at the provision of a dedicated resettlement prison for Dorset.
There are also questions over the part-privatisation of the probation service that need to be answered. At the top of the list of concerns is the potential impact of the split between the national probation service and the community rehabilitation company. The NPS will be publicly run and manage offenders with a high risk of harm, as we have heard. The CRC will be run by commercial bodies and will manage those who have a medium or low risk of harm through a series of interventions and programmes. The problem is that offenders do not usually remain low, medium or high risk; many factors can mean that an offender moves from low risk to high risk, not least if they revert to a drug or alcohol habit.
The new system would mean an offender being passed from the CRC to the NPS, and potentially back again. Will the Minister comment on the continuity of care under such a scenario? That issue matters because research has shown that the relationship between an offender and their probation officer is crucial to whether—once released—they succeed on their licence or order. That continuity is so important that, as I understand it, a change of probation officer for an offender is investigated by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons, and every effort is made to ensure that the prisoner keeps the same probation officer throughout. As a result of the split between the NPS and the CRC, probation officers are concerned that that relationship could be affected, with serious consequences for both the offender and wider society.
John Healey
The hon. Gentleman is making a good speech and a strong point, about which the Minister was shaking his head. Is it not the case that one in four offenders in any one year moves between medium and high-risk categories? They therefore risk yo-yoing between the agencies, which must involve extra cost, extra bureaucracy and extra risk to the public.
Richard Drax
I hear the statistics from the right hon. Gentleman, and on my right, my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), says that they are wrong. I was expressing the concerns of my constituents that there will inevitably be some potential confusion between the two organisations. I have been told by probation officers that what is vital and successful at the moment is the fact that they can keep an eye on someone and there is no need to think, “What happens if they go there? Who is going to deal with that? Will they slip through the net?”
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)
It might help if I clarify the position at this stage. In answer to the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), I was shaking my head because when someone is categorised by the national probation service as moving from medium risk to high risk, they will stay with that service. There will be no passing to and fro when that allocation process has taken place.
Richard Drax
I am most grateful to the Minister although that still leaves a slight query about those categorised as low risk. What happens if, as I mentioned in my speech, someone moves from low risk to high risk?
Richard Drax
I am most grateful to the Minister for intervening.
My other concern is that probation officers are concerned about their careers because when they join they have, as I understand it, a mixed portfolio—some offenders are low risk, some medium risk and some high risk. If the probation officer is a member of the CRC, they will inevitably end up with high-risk offenders all the time. I am told that the pressures on those who look after those offenders—who are potentially dangerous—is immense. At the moment, because probation officers have a mixed portfolio, they welcome the fact that they do not have that continual assault on their time. I would be grateful if when he concludes, the Minister commented on career prospects for those probation officers who will still be in the probation service run by the public sector.
Finally, my probation officers would argue that we should run the probation service for all offenders, rather than arbitrarily dividing them into high, low or medium risk and artificially separating them. We heard earlier that three councils have asked the Government whether the proposals could be delayed for further consideration, and I would be grateful if the Minister told the House whether that is being considered because of all the issues that have been raised, not least in the Chamber this afternoon.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
We all know that when probation services do good work most people do not find out about it. On the odd occasions when things go wrong, however, the entire world is made aware. When I visited Derbyshire probation service I was blown away by the commitment, imagination and bravery of our probation officers, and that is why they command such respect across both this House and the country. These changes appear to be lacking in evidence base. They fly in the face of all expert opinion and are so dangerously misguided that they are very worrying indeed.
The fact that my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) had to initiate this debate to allow the House to discuss these changes is a matter of shame for the Government. That the other place had to table an amendment to the Offender Rehabilitation Bill to prevent the Government from making changes to the structure of the probation service until it was debated by this House, and that the Justice Secretary failed to bring that Bill back to us, speaks volumes about his political cowardice and the lack of support that the reforms command.
The Secretary of State tells us that we should trust him because he believes his proposals are right. His approach seems to be this: we have a problem—reoffending rates—and we need a policy; this is a policy, therefore it is right. He has not explained in any way why his intention to extend services to offenders sentenced to less than 12 months must coincide with the creation of a load of new companies and a privatisation. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting asked, why can we not have the extension of those services—it is already happening in some cases—within the realms of the current successful probation service?
If the Secretary of State has confidence that wholesale privatisation is right—it is privatisation not just of probation provision, but of commissioning the services—why did he not let the pilots run their course? Why cancel the pilots and then embark on the policy? If that was because he has an unblemished track record and a Midas touch, Opposition Members might be a little less nervous. However, as my right hon. Friend made clear, the Secretary of State was responsible for the shambolic Work programme, under which people were better off if they were not on it. He was also the man at the heart of defending the operation of the work capability assessments when dead people were found to be fit to work. One would have hoped that, with a track record like that, he would show a little caution before ripping up a service on which so many people depend.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) made a wonderful speech and asked why the time scale was so urgent. However, he missed the point. The Secretary of State is clear that the Conservatives are on their way out and that he has to introduce his proposals before he is out of power, when he will not have the chance. He is rushing through this ideological and dangerous move before he is thrown out of office, as he so thoroughly deserves to be.
The probation service has a limited budget that has to stretch a long way, but it is performing. Every single service is ranked as good or outstanding. Its success is built on partnership working with local authorities, the police, prisons and other services. Many people are worried about that partnership working. The probation service operates as a seamless whole. As we split the service in two, the services will not have the partnership aspect that is so important to its success. The Women’s Work programme in Derbyshire brings together all women who have been in prison, regardless of their sentence. That is exactly the kind of specialist work that will be under threat when the service is split in two.
The implementation of the integrated offender management programme involves collaboration with the police in working with offenders who are at a high risk of reoffending. That often means burglars, thieves and serial perpetrators of acquisitive crime, but not the people who are considered to be at a high risk of causing harm—the sort of people about whom the entire community breathes a sigh of relief when they are banged up. They are capable of creating a spike or a rut in local crime figures depending whether or not they are inside. Those people—walking crime machines—are the sort who are likely to fall through the net because of the changes being introduced.
The changes are dangerous and could create a huge problem. The Secretary of State has said that his proposals are not about giving probation to big companies, but I bet we will see the big companies getting all the services. The idea that the voluntary sector will pick them up is a mirage. The Secretary of State is involved in a dangerous experiment and has a track record of failure. He should stop listening to the voices in his head that are telling him he is right. Instead, he should listen to the wide body of opinion telling him that he is getting this wrong, and protect our probation services now.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
I have heard empty rhetoric from Opposition Members before, but this afternoon it is particularly poor. The hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Mike Wood) tried to position the debate as a public versus private one. The entirety of my career before becoming an MP was in the public sector. The ethos of public service flows through my veins. We are talking about having effective vehicles to deliver our policy objectives. Whether delivery is public or private is not important; the important thing is that we achieve the outcomes we intend. That is why the instinctive opposition to the proposals from Labour Members is disappointing. As all hon. Members recognise, the rate of reoffending remains stubbornly high, notwithstanding the efforts of Governments of all colours. Unless we show some imagination in tackling that, we will not win the fight against crime and we will continue to fail people who are trapped in the cycle of reoffending. I welcome the initiative and imagination shown by the Government. As we have heard, the National Audit Office has estimated that the cost of crime committed by offenders released from short prison sentences is up to £10 billion. For the sake of those offenders, their potential victims and the economy, we must not allow that to continue.
Let us focus on the outcome we are trying to achieve, not on the inputs or on maintaining a provider-led system that is failing to deliver. I was most motivated to speak in this debate by hearing the comments of the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), who desperately tried to pray in aid the Public Accounts Committee to back up his position. The role of the PAC is to assess proposals on the basis of value for money. It is getting increasingly tiresome to hear it being prayed in aid to attack Government policy, because that is not its role. We examine the effectiveness of the machine at delivering the policies.
The right hon. Gentleman was right to highlight the report by the PAC on contract management by the Ministry of Justice, and we never hold back on criticising poor contract management across the public sector. It is well known that Whitehall needs to learn a lot in that regard. One of the things that we did in our earlier report on the Work programme was praise the approach to that particular aspect of contract management, which was based on payment by results so that the private sector providers taking those contracts bore the risk. That is a principle that needs to be read across government, and it is an important principle for the proposals that we are talking about.
I bow to no one in my admiration for the Committee Chairman, the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), and the way that she is extremely inventive at spinning our reports to give maximum comfort to the Labour party. It says a lot about the lack of talent on the Opposition Front Bench that she is their most effective weapon.
As I have said, the risks will be borne by the providers. If they succeed in transforming the lives of people who are caught up in the cycle of reoffending, what is not to like? If they succeed, people are freed from the cycle of reoffending. If they do not, they do not get paid. What is wrong with that?
Mike Wood
I was delighted to hear about the nature of the blood flowing through the hon. Lady’s veins, but could she address the question of the percentages in the contracts? The latest figures suggest that private companies will get 90% of their money whether they succeed or not.
Jackie Doyle-Price
If that were the case, I would consider it exactly the kind of poor contract management that I have been talking about. The important point is that we pay for results. Equally, we should reward those companies that are helping the most difficult.
Richard Graham
My hon. Friend is making some extremely good points, and I hope that the Opposition are listening carefully. The hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Mike Wood) keeps referring to private contracts, but the Lord Chancellor has confirmed twice today that probation trusts can bid for those contracts in conjunction with someone who can take the financial risk. Does she agree that the hon. Gentleman should stop slagging off the private sector?
Jackie Doyle-Price
My hon. Friend pre-empts my next point. We have been talking about private versus public, but it is not like that. We are not just talking about the Sercos and the G4Ss. We want public servants to come together and create mutuals. We are most effective when we all work in partnership. The “us and them” culture perpetuated by the Opposition does nothing to improve outcomes for anyone, whether in jobs, tackling reoffending or anything else. This stale thinking has had its day. We are in the 21st century, not the 20th.
Police and crime commissioners will have a massive role in bringing together successful partnerships to bid for contracts. I pay tribute to an imaginative approach in my constituency, spearheaded by the police and crime commissioner, working with the youth offending team. The team had to find a new home. One of our police stations had closed. The PCC brought together a partnership between the council and the youth offending team, which enabled the re-opening of the police station, with a front-facing desk, that also provided a secure working environment for the team and its clients. That is a great example of partnership working and of how police and crime commissioners can make a difference. I commend what the Government are doing on this agenda.
Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)
I am grateful to you for calling me for the second time today, Mr Speaker, which I know is unusual.
I recently had the privilege of visiting the Dudley office of the Staffordshire and west midlands probation trust. I was impressed with its work. It is currently the third best in England and Wales at reducing reoffending. Of 53,216 ex-offenders in the entire region, just 6.9% went on to reoffend, down 16% compared with 2007. Across all areas covered by West Midlands police, none has reoffending rates above 10%.
That is excellent work, but it is not unusual. In July, the Government’s own report assessed all probation trusts as either good or exceptional. Despite that, the Justice Secretary has criticised reoffending rates for prisoners serving less than 12 months, but the probation service will not be allowed to deal with those people. Despite all the evidence that the probation service is functioning well, the Government plan to hand 70% of its work to private companies.
I support using private and voluntary sector expertise and investment where it works, and I believe that the principles of competition and contestability drive up the quality of public services and can reduce costs, but the Government are planning to invest in a completely untested payments-by-results model and do not have a clue if it will work. First, they have no evidence that it will work in practice. Nowhere else in the world uses a payment-by-results model, and the Justice Secretary cancelled pilot schemes in his first week on the job.
Secondly, the Government have no clue how many low and medium-risk offenders will go to private companies. This is key to the Government’s plans, but parliamentary questions have revealed they have no idea how many of the 260,000 offenders handled by the probation service are low, medium or high risk. We need to remember that low risk does not mean no risk. Figures show that the majority of serious offences committed on probation are committed by low and medium-risk offenders. Those are the basics and they should be absolutely clear. Instead, the Government are intent on splitting the probation service, and introducing bureaucracy and delays that could lead to mistakes.
Thirdly, the Government do not even know if the scheme will save money. They are investing in a completely unproven scheme, instead of tried and tested local probation services. That is not good enough when the cost of failure is more criminals committing crime on our streets. That is exactly why chairs of probation trusts told the Government yesterday that the plans will lead to
“more preventable serious attacks and deaths”.
The truth is that the probation service should be more integrated into the justice system, not less. The first way to do that is to ensure more cases are dealt with by the courts and, where community resolutions are used, probation officers should be involved. Community resolutions are being used more and more extensively: the cases never go to court and the perpetrators do not come into contact with the probation service. I heard about a case where an offender kidnapped his underage girlfriend at knifepoint and raped her repeatedly. He assaulted the girl so severely that she miscarried. Unbelievably, just four weeks before the attack he had been issued with a community resolution for underage sex with the same girl. In another case, the rape of another underage girl was dealt with by community resolution, and in other cases robbery, domestic violence and sexual assault were dealt with in the same way. These people should be going to court and the probation service should be working with them, because there is no other way of stopping criminals from offending again.
Secondly, probation offices and courts need to work together at the local level. In Dudley, the Government are threatening to close our criminal court, which is in the same building as Dudley magistrates. Part of the reason why Dudley has one of the best probation teams in the country is that it too is based in the courts and works closely with them and uses their local knowledge.
Thirdly, probation officers should work more closely with prisons. Investment in prisons without investment in rehabilitation is a false economy. There is normally a small probation team based in each prison charged with co-ordinating the sentence planning and the programmes that a prisoner should be on, in conjunction with external probation officers, but I am told it is not permitted to run offender programmes, which are ultimately the best way of reducing reoffending and rehabilitating offenders prior to release. I am told the team finds it almost impossible to work with prisoners in private prisons in Birmingham and Wolverhampton, because the companies that run them are paid to lock people up and have no incentive to do anything that might ensure they do not commit crimes when they are released.
The Government know that their plans are a gamble—that is why they are trying to force them through quickly and quietly—but we cannot afford to gamble with probation. The cost could be more criminals on our streets and more victims of crime. The probation service is working—we have the evidence to prove it—and we should be investing in it, not selling it off. That is the way to reduce reoffending still further.
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
I will be brief, because I cannot disagree with anything already said from the Opposition Benches. We have heard the expert opinion of people who really know what they are talking about.
No one thinks there is a silver bullet that will stop reoffending. If we think there is one answer, and that it is either in the private sector or the public sector, we will be looking for it for an awfully long time. As we all recognise, everyone in the House wants to reduce reoffending rates as far as possible, protect society and turn criminals into law-abiding citizens, not just for their own sake, but to save money for the public purse. The big question is: how do we do that? Most people, certainly in the Opposition, believe that the public sector, in the form of the probation trusts, has demonstrated an ability to innovate and make improvements. Certainly, that is the case in Derbyshire, and we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins). There has been some astonishing innovation and really fantastic improvements and results.
Natascha Engel
Yes, and in South Yorkshire. Obviously, I cover a lot of South Yorkshire as well.
How can we best cut reoffending? We can talk about private, public, a mixture of both, about the involvement of charities and so on, but our big concern, and the concern of the chairs of the probation trusts, including in Derbyshire, is that these reforms are being so hurried—they are to be implemented in one year—that the safety of the public could be at risk. Opposition Members have talked about the amount of work, the staff and buildings and everything that needs to be transferred, and 12 months simply is not long enough, so will Ministers please consider pausing and piloting these changes properly? Why is that not possible?
What would we lose that is working well at the moment? With any dramatic change, there will be things lost that work well. We need to protect those services that are working excellently, not throw them out with the bathwater.
Richard Drax
I wish to raise another point that I have got wind of. I understand that two organisations would be in the same location for two years, after which the private or public organisations—whichever they are—could go their separate ways? I do not know if the hon. Lady knows anything about that, but I would be grateful to hear from the Minister about it.
Natascha Engel
I am going to finish on this point, Mr Speaker. I have a big concern about the organisations equipped to bid for these contracts. We are talking about G4S and Serco, which are the very organisations being investigated over serious allegations of fraud in their current MOJ contracts. Also, why are the probation trusts—not the probation officers—which are providing such a good service, unable to bid for these contracts? That could be a big improvement.
I shall finish now and donate my remaining three minutes to the Minister so that he can answer the question from the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax). I do not understand how the distinction between low, medium and high-risk offenders will work; I do not understand the co-location system; and I certainly do not understand how it will not be a disbenefit to someone who has just come out of prison to go from one probation officer to another as he moves from being a low or medium-risk offender to a high-risk offender. If the Minister could explain, I would be very grateful—and there we are: two and a half minutes donated to him.
Mr Speaker
Order. Shorter speeches will be necessary if everyone is to get in. It is up to colleagues to decide whether to help one another.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
Our probation service comprises 35 trusts, staffed by incredibly dedicated, hard-working probation officers, all of whom are extremely concerned about the Government’s proposals. The National Offender Management Service published a report in July this year that demonstrated that the quality of the service was either “good” or “exceptional” in every single probation trust. I am proud to say that the facilities in Rotherham won an award for excellence.
Reoffending rates are not the only criterion for measuring the successes of the probation service. Victim feedback has been positive in 98% of cases. Targets for completions on domestic violence interventions, and for court report timeliness, have been exceeded, and completion targets were also met or exceeded on the vast majority of probation programmes. Moreover, the service has managed to achieve all this while making the considerable budgetary savings expected of it. Given that record, I find it astonishing that the Secretary of State is planning to scrap the trusts in a few months and to replace them with an entirely different system, most of which will be run by the private sector. In an echo of the disastrous Work programme, the Secretary of State intends to impose an untried, untested payment-by-results model on the probation service. These reforms are flawed, rushed and ill-conceived.
I want to focus on three issues. First, the proposals will allow cherry-picking by the private sector and will lead to a downgrading of the quality of support that medium and low-risk offenders get. As the National Audit Office has put it, the proposals
“could encourage providers to concentrate their efforts on the offenders least likely to reoffend and prevent them from working with the most prolific offenders”.
Part of the success of the probation service in reducing reoffending has been its use of more targeted interventions. A good example is how interventions for women are handled. These work well because they are small, local and holistic; they look at each woman as an individual with her own problems and needs, rather than as just another offender. Under the proposals, this type of niche service is likely to be lost altogether as the links between large, prime contractors and smaller local providers either break down over time or do not emerge at all. Crucially, those tailored services are simply more expensive. The proposed changes mean that it will become the probation provider, rather than the court, that decides the activities the offender should undertake. Through commercial necessity, providers are likely to prioritise the cheapest solution, rather than the best.
Secondly, let me turn to the issue of exactly what sort of company might tender to run the new community rehabilitation companies. In July this year, the Secretary of State announced that internal findings in his Department had revealed a
“significant anomaly in the billing practices”
of Serco and G4S. That anomaly amounted to tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money being mis-spent. Those practices have rightly been referred to the Serious Fraud Office, and the Department has also arranged a further, more detailed, audit of the companies’ activities. The results of the SFO investigation are not expected for several months, but I understand that those firms have not been ruled out of the bidding process, and that the pre-qualification questionnaire deadline has been delayed to give them a chance to tender.
Finally, I understand that senior staff in the probation trusts have been formally “reminded” that they have a duty to carry out the will of the Secretary of State. Nevertheless, we learned this week that the chairs of the probation trusts of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire had written to the Secretary of State warning of the dire consequences of rushing this reform through. We need to listen to the people who know and understand the service best. Those experts say that
“performance is bound to be damaged and that public protection failures will inevitably increase”.
They go on to say that the current timetable was
“unrealistic and unreasonable...with serious implications for service delivery and therefore increases the risk to public”.
In summary, the probation service of 35 trusts ain’t broke, and the privatisation should not be going ahead.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
Forget my speech; I just want to make a couple of points so that other Members can get in. I am the secretary of the justice unions parliamentary group, and the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) is its chair. Over the past eight years, that group has enabled us to work with probation officers, prison officers and police officers, as well as members of the Public and Commercial Services Union, to gain some understanding of what is happening in the service. To be frank, I did not vote for the previous Government’s legislation. I know that the intention was not for it to be used to roll out privatisation in this way, but I was worried that it would be.
I went to a lecture at the weekend by Angela Davis, the 1960s radical who is now a university professor. She has done research into what is called in America the “prison industrial complex”, in which every prisoner under supervision is a profitable asset—someone who people can make a profit from. I fear that that is where we are now going with this roll-out of privatisation. As others have said, we are talking about a 70% privatisation of this probation service, which is so successful at present and was about to welcome the roll-out of management of offenders with less than 12-month sentences and was rising to the challenge.
We have looked at how privatisation of the justice system has worked. Perhaps we should reflect on Oakwood prison, where a report last week told us it was easier to get drugs than a bar of soap. Privatised companies have made profits in prisons by reducing wages by 23%. That is the prospect held out to probation officers—professionals who are committed and dedicated to their task. If these people are saying—they are front-line staff who know their job—that the public will be put at risk, for God’s sake let us start listening to them.
Finally, let me send out this warning to Ministers. We have heard so much advice about the risk posed by this privatisation to my constituents and members of my community, so if Ministers go ahead irresponsibly without heeding those warnings, they will be held responsible for every member of the public who is harmed, hurt or murdered as a result of these ill-thought-out reforms. This is a warning from me: if any of my constituents are harmed, I will hold Ministers responsible and I will seek to ensure that none of them ever holds public office again.
Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
I shall keep my remarks short, as most of what I wanted to say has been covered in the debate. I have no problem with a private-public partnership or with businesses coming into partnership, although there has been criticism on both sides of the House when Government Departments do not follow business models. We can learn some things from the private sector, but when 35 probation trusts—deemed good or, in some cases, excellent in a National Audit Office report of July 2012—have won awards for the level of service they provide, what good can come from this change?
I shall focus my comments on short-term sentences. Before this debate, I did some research and wrote an article about such sentences. I learned that 60% of people with short-term sentences who are not given a probation order are likely to reoffend within a year, while 20% will reoffend within three to four years. What does that say? It says that probation is pivotal to stopping reoffending.
As my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) said, there is no magic bullet to stop people reoffending. People are different. By privatising 70% of the probation service, we are turning people into statistics and into profits. Private companies will cherry-pick the best and leave the worst cases on the vine. I think we need to talk more about why the probation service has been so successful and why people have not been reoffending. It comes down to one thing. When I talk to probation officers, they tell me that everybody is different, everybody faces different circumstances and everybody has different needs. Probation officers get to know these people and develop a relationship with them. They understand the barriers and how to stop these people from getting back into a cycle of crime. The probation service has been very good at this, and we should support what it does.
I mentioned some statistics about short-term sentences, which highlight the need for the probation service to get involved. We should be expanding the probation service rather than privatising it. We have heard that we must go with our gut instinct. That is what the Justice Secretary said. Well, let him go with his gut instinct, but the fact remains that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) said earlier, this is a matter of life or death. It is up to the Government, but if they get this wrong, there is nothing they can do to apologise to the victims of crime.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
During my brief time serving on the Justice Committee, I have seen this Justice Secretary rolling out disaster after disaster under his stewardship. The outsourcing of translation cases resulted in whole cases being abandoned at huge cost to the courts service and putting at risk the liberty of individual citizens. The Ministry of Justice was repeatedly warned that ALS—Applied Language Solutions—was incapable of delivering a contract of that size, but those warnings were ignored. Although Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service forbade front-line staff to talk to the Justice Committee, the Committee’s investigation resulted in a declaration that the privatisation was not sustainable, even after the intervention of ALS’s parent company, Capita. The electronic-tagging debacle has now required the intervention of the Serious Fraud Office, yet G4S and Serco, which won those contracts, have not been banned from entering bids to run probation services.
The problems do not stop there, however. The damning report of the private, G4S-run HMP Oakwood by Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons demonstrates the great dangers of putting private profit above prisoner rehabilitation. Oakwood is an institution in which inmates have died because defibrillators were locked away, and where levels of violence and victimisation are high. The Minister has called Oakwood
“an excellent model for the future of the Prison Service.”—[Official Report, 5 February 2013; Vol. 558, c. 114.]
Well, we saw a snapshot of that future this week in the form of the sickening images from G4S-run Mangaung prison in South Africa—yet G4S will be able to bid to manage the rehabilitation, in our communities, of the very sex offender prisoners whom it did nothing to rehabilitate in Oakwood prison.
There is an organisation that has been banned from bidding for these franchises, despite being superbly placed to do so. It has a dedicated, experienced staff, and it has over a century of proven results in this area. The latest independent reports have praised its competence, and it continues to work with charities and social investment organisations at every level. That organisation is the probation service, via the probation trusts. There is no greater indication that this is an ideological attack on the public sphere than the fact that none of the trusts can bid—not even my own local trust, Durham Tees Valley, which was rated as showing excellent performance. The 8,000 low and medium-risk offenders whom it supervises will now be transferred to private providers—unless, of course, those offenders become high-risk again, in which case the probation trust will have to pick up the pieces. The justification for forbidding probation trusts to bid for franchises is that it would risk public money because of the “payment by results” system. The Minister’s mechanism for improving standards bans the best practitioner right out of the gate.
The Ministry of Justice simply does not have the skills to deal with private sector contracts of this magnitude. In evidence to the Justice Committee, its own permanent secretary, Dame Ursula Brennan, said that the lesson learnt from the previous contracting disasters was this:
“When you have something really big and complicated, biting it off in bite-sized chunks is now thought to be a better way of going.”
Why, then, is the Minister ignoring that very lesson, and proceeding with a radical, hurried, nationwide overhaul?
Notwithstanding the calls for plurality, the current proposals would allow 21 probation trusts to be run by just five companies. Those organisations will have to have the financial reserves that will enable them to wait for results-based payments, and the depth to underwrite any potential losses. In other words, there will be the same old cartel consisting of Capita, Serco, A4e, MITIE and G4S.
It is not the family silver that is being sold off in this instance; it is the foundations of the house. It is madness that the administration of justice—the basic purpose of the nation state—should be sold to the highest, or in this case the lowest, bidder. I urge the Secretary of State to look at the trail of calamities that this dogmatic pursuit of ideology over evidence has caused, and to reconsider before it is too late. With its latest proposal, the Ministry of Justice is not only endangering the public finances, but endangering the public.
Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State back to the Chamber. It is a pity that he could not be here to listen to the heartfelt and sincere expressions of concern from Labour Members. We could have filled the time three times over, such is our anxiety about these proposals.
We have heard excellent contributions from Members on both sides of the House. This has been a welcome, if overdue, opportunity for us to debate the Government’s upheaval and sell-off of probation services. It is a pity that the Government themselves do not welcome the House’s scrutiny of their proposals. My hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) described that as shameful.
My hon. Friends the Members for Dudley North (Ian Austin), for Islwyn (Chris Evans), for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) presented clear arguments, and expressed deep concern about the Government’s proposals. The lack of evidence and the abundance of haste mean that this initiative has “blunder” written all over it. These plans will see the majority of probation provision handed out to large companies with no experience of probation. They will see offender supervision divided artificially by risk category, in spite of the fact that risk regularly shifts, and the introduction of an entirely untested payment-by-results model. We are told it will be effective, but they cannot tell us how effective, and we are promised it will make us savings, but they cannot tell us, even roughly, how much will be saved. They cannot tell us the cost, and they cannot tell us any of the efficiency savings they hope to make.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) summed it up extremely well. He pointed out the complete absence of costings and called the plans flawed. Few Members are held in as high esteem as the right hon. Gentleman on these issues.
So far, the public have been offered a personal testimony from the Justice Secretary that he thinks the policy will work, but that assurance comes without evidence as the Government have not seen fit to test its effectiveness. Probation is a front-line service that deals with public safety, and it is not good enough for the Secretary of State just to “believe” his proposals are right. We are not arguing for the status quo and, where we can, we have been very clear about our support for the Government on these issues, but untested, uncosted and dangerous upheaval is not the same thing as effective reform, and this motion calls for the model to be piloted and evaluated so that only the good practice gets rolled out.
Pilots that were in place and ready to begin in two trust areas were instead cancelled by the Secretary of State. That scrapped any opportunity to test or improve the model, learn from mistakes on a small scale, and get it right. Instead, inevitable teething problems, inexperienced providers, failures in communication and glitches in the untested IT systems will have to be contended with all at once on a national scale. My right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) urged caution. He said risks had not been thought through, and he is absolutely right.
The Government keep referring to the Doncaster and Peterborough pilots. They are prison pilots and are therefore not comparable; nor are they intended to pilot changes for probation—plus, although both pilots showed some reasons for cautious optimism, they missed their targets, which is why it is helpful that they are pilots. The people working on those pilots say they have learned from their mistakes along the way, and of course they have; that is what pilots are for.
In the same week that universal credit is having to be rolled out far more slowly than planned due to serious management and IT difficulties, the Secretary of State for Justice is refusing to learn from the experience of his colleagues. Not only that, but he is failing to learn from the mistakes of his own Department. After the “inglorious saga”, as it was christened by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), of the Ministry of Justice’s language services contract, the National Audit Office recommended that the Ministry should
“implement future contracts so as to minimise transitional problems, for example through piloting and rolling-out new systems gradually”.
That is good advice.
By failing to test, evaluate or improve the model, Ministers are failing to manage effectively the risks that come with their plans. They will not even admit to them and publish the risk register. Our most serious concern is risk management and the fragmentation of the supervision of dangerous offenders. As we have heard from Members—on both sides of the House, to be fair—risk is not static. One in four offenders change their risk category during their order, and they do not always go from low to medium to high; they shift around far more dynamically than that. As the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) observed in his excellent speech, the nub of the matter is that the Government are introducing a dangerous layer of bureaucracy where an offender, while at their most volatile, will be passed between organisations. There is a serious risk—if this is not inevitable—of information being lost and vital warning signs being missed through this unnecessary divide, yet the Government have failed to pilot it, and check what sort of delays might be caused and how quickly information can be reliably passed on.
The Government have failed to provide any evidence for the benefits of this upheaval, have failed to admit to the inherent risks and publish the risk register, and have failed to provide a realistic or responsible timetable in which to operate. The chairs of three probation trusts have written to the Secretary State this week to ask him to delay his rushed timetable, which is risky, unreasonable and, they say, “unrealistic”. Apparently, those managing the changes do not “just believe” that everything is going to turn out all right. By forcing through a timetable that his own Department has deemed “aggressive”, the Secretary of State, who is having a friendly chat with his colleagues rather than listening, appears to be showing more concern for being a champion of change—any change, it seems—than for safe service delivery.
Serious concerns have been expressed, and not only in the Chamber today, about the Ministry of Justice’s capacity ably to procure and contract quality services. The language services procurement process was described as “shambolic” by the Select Committee on Justice, and the Public Accounts Committee reported that the Department was not an “intelligent customer”. The Justice Committee also found that the Ministry’s naivety in contracting was matched by its “indulgence towards underperformance” after the contracts came into operation. In the past two years, we have had Jajo the rabbit signed up to be a court interpreter; charges for tagging dead inmates; and a new contracted prison in which it is easier to get drugs than soap. When is the Secretary of State going to recognise the need to hit the brakes, build skills and capacity in his Department, and improve on past failures?
My hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Mike Wood) summed it up brilliantly. He said, and was backed up by interventions by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), that the Government should trust the skills, experience and expertise of high-performing trusts, which are hungry to take responsibility for short-term prisoners. What a shame that the Secretary of State puts more faith in his inner belief than in evidence and experience.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken and apologise to some for the fact that I will not be able to deal in detail with what they have said. In particular, I should apologise to the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), because she kindly donated two minutes of her time but some of her Labour colleagues have stolen it back. I am sorry about that, but I will do my best to answer what has been said.
There is no contradiction between two things that have been said in this debate. The first is that good work is being done up and down the country by probation officers. The second is that there is a need for change. I accept that a good deal of good work is being done by probation officers, but they, too, would say that we are simply not doing well enough on reoffending rates, which are far too high; half of those released from custody are reoffending within 12 months, despite our spending 70% more on probation over the past 10 years.
There are two key advantages in what the Government propose to do. The first is that we bring innovation and good new ideas into the management of offenders. Many hon. Members on both sides of the House have mentioned good voluntary sector organisations that do exactly that sort of work. We want to see them do more, and it is important to bring them more into rehabilitation work—our reforms will do that. That point was made by, among others, my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard).
The second huge advantage to what we are proposing is that we bring into the ambit of rehabilitation those offenders who at the moment have very little or no rehabilitation—those who receive sentences of 12 months or less. I detected very little disagreement across the House about that. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) summed up the case for doing that passionately and well; we have overlooked those people and we should not do so because it is not in our interests to do so, as those are the offenders with the highest rates of reoffending and it is very important that we deal with them. It is also important that we deal effectively with support through the gate, so that people do not reach the cliff edge that he so well described.
The question, surely, for Labour Members, not least those on the Front Bench, is this: if they do not like our way of doing those things, which they agree are worth while, what is their way? I heard not a word of an alternative solution to the problems they accurately describe, except of course that the probation trusts should do it all themselves.
Interestingly, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) suggested that we should simply ask the probation trusts to do the work. I was rather surprised to hear that from an ex-Treasury Minister, because it would have an additional cost. I suspect that had I gone to him as a Treasury Minister—he was a very good one in his day—and said that I wanted the probation trusts to do more and wanted the money to pay for it, it is likely that he would have told me to ask the probation system to do better with the money it already received. That is exactly what we are proposing. We must make taxpayers’ money work better; that is hugely important.
Some concerns have been expressed and we take them seriously. I want to pick up on as many as I can. The first concerns the principle of payment by results, which, it seems to me, is perfectly sensible. We want the taxpayer to pay for those things that work and not for those that do not. That is at the root of payment by results. I am confused, however, about the Opposition’s view: is it that we should not have payment by results or that we should have more? Both views seem to have been expressed.
Jenny Chapman
On the issue of payment by results, how much of the contract will be paid regardless of the results? Any more than 90% is not payment by results—it is just leaving a tip.
Jeremy Wright
As I have said to the hon. Lady before, this is a process that we are going through with those who will be involved in the system—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Those on the Opposition Front Bench should listen to the answer to the question that was asked in an intervention after the Minister gave way. We will do things in an orderly manner.
Jeremy Wright
I am confused, Mr Deputy Speaker, about what I am being asked to do. Am I being asked to pay a bigger percentage by results or am I being asked not to do it at all? I do not think that the Opposition know.
I have also been asked whether the system will involve contractors passing back difficult cases. That will not happen for two reasons. First, the decision on whether an offender has become a high-risk offender will be taken by the national probation service—that means public sector probation officers—not the private sector. Secondly, if such a thing were to happen, the individual offender would stay within the cohort for the provider, so there would be no financial incentive to pass them back.
Another concern was whether the cheapest bidder would win and whether quality would not matter. That would absolutely not be the case. We will assess the bids not just on price but on the quality offering. That will include, incidentally, bidders’ ability to work in the partnerships that the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) rightly described as important, whether through integrated offender management or other less formal arrangements.
I have been asked why probation trusts cannot bid. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State explained that we do not see how a public sector body can bid for a payment-by-results contract. That does not mean, however, that people who work in probation trusts now cannot bid for work as part of a mutual, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys suggested. We want to see that happen.
There are two major concerns, are there not? First, the Opposition say we are doing this too fast, but I make no apologies whatever for acting quickly in this matter. As long as we wait, new victims will be created by those who reoffend. We can do something about that and we should. Secondly, the Opposition say that the decision is ideological. Let me tell the House what is ideological: saying, “It doesn’t matter how good your ideas are or how effective they’ll be. If you come from the private sector, we’re not interested.” That is the Opposition’s view; that is ideology if ever I saw it. We believe that what works is what should be done. That is what we propose and that is what our reforms have suggested. There is no alternative from the Opposition. I urge the House to reject this empty motion and support the amendment.
Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.
petition
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
This weekend in Leicester it will be Diwali, but unfortunately the celebrations are going to be ruined—unlike the wonderful celebrations we have had in the House this afternoon—because of the Sainsbury’s development at the top of Melton road. That development has had a terribly detrimental effect on local residents, with traffic piling up for several miles and local residents having to stay up all night because of the works going on. I held a public meeting last Friday, and local residents wanted me to present a petition to Parliament today. It is very much hoped that Sainsbury’s will listen to this petition, so that the Diwali celebrations on Belgrave and Melton road can be successful.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of Leicester East,
Declares that the development plans by Sainsbury’s in Rushey Mead are having a negative impact on the daily lives of the Petitioners’ families.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Department for Communities and Local Government to introduce legislation relating to major retail developments to allow local people to have a say on how the work is carried out and so that potential noise and traffic problems are considered and to provide compensation.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001260]
Rachael and Auden Slack
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
I am grateful for the chance to raise this important, if tragic, issue. I remember it well because the murder of Rachael and Auden Slack took place shortly after the general election, and I mentioned it in my maiden speech nearly three and a half years ago. I am not sure that it is a great commendation for our system that it has taken three and a half years to get to the inquest, and to have the chance to try to learn some of the lessons from the tragic death of three people.
Rachael and Auden Slack were murdered on 2 June 2010 by Rachael’s ex-partner and the father of Auden. The gentleman concerned had been suffering from mental health issues for quite a long time, and there had been various reports about his behaviour to the police, local health services and mental health trust social services. Sadly, however, not enough action was taken, and on 2 June he stabbed his ex-partner and child and took his own life with the same knife. It was a truly awful incident, and probably one of the worst murder situations we can imagine, especially as Rachael was pregnant at the time. We lost three innocent lives because of what seemed to many people to be the failure of various parts of the system to provide the protection, prevention or indeed the health care needed, that could possibly have prevented it from happening.
The reason for the debate tonight is that the inquest finally reported last week. The verdicts for Rachael and Auden were that they were unlawfully killed, and that, in part, their deaths were more than minimally contributed to by a failure to impress upon Rachael that she was at high risk of serious injury or homicide from her ex-partner. A further verdict on Auden’s death was that the police had failed to discuss with Rachael what steps could have been taken to address the risks to him.
The case is one of far too many around the country in which domestic violence incidents are not taken as seriously as we might like, ending with tragic results. This tragedy resulted in the death of two people and an unborn baby. The purpose of the debate is to press the Government on what more we can do to change or improve the system to prevent anything like this from ever happening again.
It is worth recounting some of the facts. As I have said, the police, the mental health trust, the general practitioner and others had been involved in the case. The facts in the week before the tragic incident are as follows. On 26 May, Rachael took her ex-partner to a police station after he refused to get out of her car. He was assessed by the mental health team but released because they believed he was no threat. Questions have been asked about whether those who did that assessment were fully aware of his mental health history, which was known to the same trust.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the tone and the manner in which he is conducting the debate. As he knows, Andrew Cairns’s family live in my constituency. They are grieving for Rachael, for Auden, for Rachael’s unborn child and, of course, for Andrew. Mr Cairns’s family have told me of the lengthy battle fought by them and by Rachael to get him the help he needed as his mental health deteriorated over many years. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is essential that we learn the lessons from this tragic case? Four lives could have been saved had we done so earlier.
Nigel Mills
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s kind words. I agree entirely that there seems to have been a long failure to provide Andrew with the care he needed. We cannot be wise after the event. None of us can say that people must have known the incident would happen. However, perhaps they ought to have seen a pattern of escalation of his condition—perhaps it gave off more warning signs than were seen.
On 28 May, in that tragic week, two days after Andrew was arrested and assessed, he phoned Rachael more than 20 times. He went round to see her and forced her to take him and the child out. While they were out at a park, he threatened to kill her and made various threats saying that she did not realise how dangerous he could be. That was reported to the police. Sadly, he was released on police bail with conditions not to approach Rachael, but no further action was taken.
A neighbour reported further threats Andrew had made to take away Auden. There was some concern that the police did not take action following that report. At that point, the police concluded that Rachael was at high risk. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that they told Rachael how high their assessment of the risk was. That is what led to the coroner’s findings.
On the day of the tragic incident, Mr Cairns visited his GP, who reported that Mr Cairns was anxious and agitated. Mr Cairns remarked to the GP that, “The next few days will be the most important of your career.” By the time Mr Cairns left the GP, he had apparently calmed down and was rational, but, clearly, even on the day, he had made a cry for help that sadly was not heeded. I am sure that, if any of the police, the mental health team, the GP or anybody else had thought that the tragedy would happen later that day, they would have taken action to prevent it. The question we need to ask is: what more could have been done to assess the risk properly and see whether there was a realistic risk of such a tragic event? No hon. Member wants anything like this tragedy to happen again.
Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does he agree that it is important that our Derbyshire police, whom we love and trust, have a specialist domestic violence unit that can look into incidents and give professional advice to people who do not necessarily deal with domestic violence day-to-day?
Nigel Mills
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention and I entirely agree. One of the issues is ensuring that the police have the specialist knowledge and training to be able to handle domestic violence cases. The right answer has to be more specialist police officers, but because there are so many reports of domestic abuse, which police all over the county have to handle urgently, I am not sure that it is possible always to send out a specialist domestic violence officer to each of those incidents. It is perhaps a question of ensuring better training in general for police officers and then making sure that cases that look to be serious receive specialist follow-up as soon as possible to ensure that signs of escalating behaviour or real risk have not been missed by a perhaps less trained person. In general, I agree with my hon. Friend’s suggestion.
The coroner last week suggested that he would make some recommendations to the Home Office, and I am not sure whether the Minister has received those yet. One of those suggestions was for some kind of electronic document that would summarise the important details in the investigation that would be available to all the police officers involved in the case. Outside agencies might also have some input, such as the mental health teams, social services, the local health teams or anyone else deemed relevant. It is key to ensure the full and complete sharing of information between the various teams involved. If everyone who had ever dealt with this case had known the full history of the complaints by Rachael and Mr Cairns’s mental health issues, it might have shown the pattern of escalating behaviour. He might have been viewed as a much higher risk than was initially thought by most of the people involved.
Another suggestion is that perhaps we could strengthen police bail conditions or introduce greater sanctions if they are breached. There is a question about what can be done by court bail and what can be done by the police, but it cannot inspire public confidence if someone is released on police bail with a condition that he cannot approach someone, but very little action appears to be taken if he approaches her soon after being given that bail condition.
A public campaign, supported by 38 Degrees—not an organisation Conservative Members are always fans of—suggests a full public inquiry into how the whole system deals with domestic violence issues. The Independent Police Complaints Commission is carrying out a review, but as various police forces around the country have received strong criticism from the IPCC on how they have handled domestic violence cases in recent years, perhaps we need to go a step further than an IPCC review. A full public inquiry could look at all the agencies involved rather than just focusing on the police, which is not where all the issues lie. Perhaps the Minister could tell me whether the Government are inclined to have a public inquiry on an issue as important as this. The statistics suggest that two or three women a week are killed in domestic violence incidents, and that is an awful situation for a country such as ours still to be in.
It is not for us to reinvestigate this case. Reports are still required from the police and various other agencies, but my purpose today is to raise with the Home Office both the tragedy of this case and the points at which greater action could have been taken to protect Rachael—perhaps to give her greater security, or regrettably to advise her to flee her home to ensure that she was not at immediate risk—or to address Mr Cairns’s health needs, perhaps including sectioning him or giving him more intensive treatment than he was able to get. Is it fair that Rachael was never recorded as Mr Cairns’s carer so she never really got any information or support for the help that she was trying to give her ex-partner for his mental health condition?
Having discussed this with Derbyshire police over the past three years, I am aware that they have reviewed their processes and have tried to make improvements. There are outstanding reports that may require further consideration, but they now have initiatives to work more closely with social services from the same base and to try to improve links with the mental health team. Perhaps the Minister can talk about initiatives he may have seen elsewhere that could be rolled out as best practice around the country. The closer the working relationships, the more immediate the contact and the sharing of information, all of which might make a positive outcome more likely. We all talk about greater partnership working and sharing, but people work in silos and if there are not robust processes and good personal working relationships, trying to bridge three trusts or public bodies with different demands on their time is not always very effective. The question is: how can we improve and create best practice?
It is tempting to think that Parliament could wave a magic wand, pass a new Bill or give new powers to stop this type of incident happening. I am not convinced that we have missed anything. The police have never said to me, “If only we had had this power we could have stopped it.” However, if the Minister has any suggestions about extra powers that the police need or could have used in this case that they were not aware of—I am not saying that that is the case—that would be helpful to the family. There is a feeling among the family, friends and the community that something went horribly wrong—that this was preventable and that somehow the system failed. If there is anything that can come out of an incident as tragic as this, it is that it never happens again.
I again stress my condolences to the family and friends of Rachael and Auden for their tragic loss. I wish that the inquest had reported several months or years earlier. It is a pity that we have had to wait three and a half years before being able to have a public assessment to start to learn the lessons in the public domain. I urge the Minister to do whatever he can to make the inquest system much faster. I struggle to see why we have to put people through three and a half years of waiting before they can get the closure they need. I hope the Minister can provide some assurance that the Government take this issue very seriously—I know they do—and that we can expect further progress to ensure that this kind of thing can never happen again.
The Minister for Crime Prevention (Norman Baker)
It is the convention on these occasions to congratulate the hon. Member who secured the debate. I am not sure that “congratulate” is quite the right word in this case, but my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) has been absolutely right to raise this matter. I welcome his contribution and the contributions of other hon. Members.
I want to begin by offering my condolences to the family of Rachael Slack and her son Auden, and commend them for the courage and dignity they have shown at this difficult time. Domestic violence is an abhorrent crime, and one that the Government is committed to tackling with determination. This is a high priority for both me and the Home Secretary.
The circumstances of Rachael and Auden’s deaths are tragic, and were eloquently outlined by my hon. Friend. The sad loss of such individuals is doubly distressing, because it is now clear from the coroner’s findings that their deaths could have been prevented. Such a case deserves our attention and we must ensure that lessons are learned, but we must do more than that: we must ensure that those lessons are acted on. I have noted with concern the findings of the coroner in this case, Richard Hunter, which were released on 22 October. I understand that he will be writing to the Home Secretary in due course. I would like to thank him for his thoroughness and diligence in such a difficult case.
I was concerned to read that police failings “more than minimally” contributed to Rachael and Auden’s deaths. I have the utmost respect for the police and the vital work they do with professionalism and integrity day in, day out. However, it is alarming that in this case officers appear to have assessed Rachael as being in danger and yet failed to pass that message on to her—the one person who really needed to know. The Independent Police Complaints Commission is currently assessing all the evidence in this case following the inquest. It will then make a decision on the next steps. This case follows other reports from the IPCC that have flagged up police failings, such as the cases of Maria Stubbings, Clare Wood and Susan McGoldrick. I would like to reassure Parliament that I take such cases extremely seriously; such failings cannot be allowed to happen again.
Since Rachael and Auden’s deaths in 2010, the Government have supported a series of reforms to the handling of domestic violence by the police. All police forces have measures in place to ensure officers have the knowledge and skills to deal effectively with cases of domestic violence. Specific training on domestic violence and abuse is included in the national police training curriculum. This training was updated this year to take account of the Government’s introduction of a new definition of domestic abuse. The new definition helps to prevent the escalation of abuse, which can end in tragedy, by dispelling the belief that domestic abuse begins and ends with violence. It places coercive control at the centre of determining whether abuse is taking place.
Perhaps most significantly, since April 2011 the Government has placed homicide reviews on a statutory footing. Now every local report into a domestic homicide is reviewed and quality assured by a panel of independent and Home Office experts. A community safety partnership in Derbyshire is among those to have completed a domestic homicide review that has been quality assured by the independent panel. Each review has resulted in a tailored action plan that must be delivered by the area in question to make sure we learn from these individual tragedies. I am also happy to confirm that the Home Office will be issuing a document collating the lessons learned from these reviews into a national action plan.
My hon. Friend asked about specialist teams. Of course, that is a matter for each individual police force to decide, but it is important—indeed essential—that police who attend domestic violence cases have the right training. The Home Office is working closely with the College of Policing to ensure that this occurs. The Home Secretary has also announced a force-wide review by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary into how the police deal with domestic violence.
My hon. Friend also mentioned mental health, as did the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy). The Home Secretary chairs an inter-ministerial group on violence against women and girls, on which I also sit, and I will raise this matter with the Department of Health to ensure we address any gaps in the system, including information sharing and risk assessment. Members are absolutely right to expect this to be joined up across Departments, and joined up locally as well.
Nigel Mills
Does the Minister also agree that when assessing domestic violence cases, it is important to bear in mind the risk to the children as well? It is not always just a case of the woman or man; we need to look at the risk faced by the children, but in this case I am not sure that that was done as thoroughly as it ought to have been.
Norman Baker
We will see what the coroner writes to the Home Secretary, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right that in any situation of suspected domestic abuse, it is right that children’s services are engaged, if there are children present. Sometimes, if there is domestic abuse of a partner, there can also be domestic abuse against children. It does not always follow, but sometimes it does, and we ought to ensure that it is covered in any assessment.
This Government has ring-fenced nearly £40 million for specialist local domestic and sexual violence support services. Facilities funded with this money include 144 independent domestic violence advisers, who help victims of domestic violence get their voices heard, and 54 multi-agency risk assessment co-ordinators, who protect the interests of those such as Rachael who are most at risk. Up to 60% of abuse victims report no further violence following intervention by independent advisers.
This national funding operates in tandem with local initiatives, and I am sure my hon. Friend will join me in congratulating Derbyshire county council on the support it is now offering, which includes the Derbyshire domestic abuse helpline, to those at risk of domestic abuse. I encourage all local authorities to remember the importance of such initiatives when making difficult decisions about spending and delivering more for less.
But we can, should and will do more nationally to reach out to those caught in cycles of abuse. That is why the Home Office has piloted two new initiatives designed to empower victims and stop domestic abuse in its tracks. This comes to the point my hon. Friend made about what more can be done. The first of these pilots is named after another young victim, Clare Wood, who was tragically murdered by her former partner in Salford in 2009. Known as Clare’s law, the domestic violence disclosure scheme is a system where anyone can seek disclosure of a partner’s violent past. Those with the legal right to know are provided with information that could well save lives, empowering them to make an informed choice about their futures.
Our second pilot scheme creates a new process to protect victims in the immediate aftermath of domestic abuse. Domestic violence protection orders have the power to prevent a perpetrator of domestic abuse from having contact with the victim for up to 28 days. This offers both the victim and the perpetrator the chance to reflect on the incident. In the case of the victim, it provides an opportunity to determine the best course of action to end a cycle of abuse, as well as providing immediate relief and protection. We are currently carrying out an evaluation of both the pilots, and we expect to be able to announce plans for their future soon.
There is no room for complacency, however. It is because of cases such as Rachael’s that the Home Secretary has commissioned HMIC to review police handling of domestic violence and abuse. The inspection is under way and I look forward to receiving the findings, probably in April. We will review the recommendations with care, and ensure that they are acted on as we strive for further improvements in this area.
The crime figures for England and Wales show that the levels of domestic abuse experienced in the past year are lower than they were in 2004-05, and that the conviction rates for violence against women and girls are higher than before, but hon. Members have rightly expressed concern at the reduction in domestic violence referrals to the Crown Prosecution Service by the police at the end of last year. The Home Office has held a round-table with the Director of Public Prosecutions and national policing leads to understand the cause of this downward trend, and the Attorney-General has issued a six-point plan to address this. We will continue to work on delivering against that plan in the coming weeks.
Lisa Nandy
I appreciate that, as a Home Office Minister, the hon. Gentleman is focused on the important lessons of this tragic case for the police and the Home Office, but I really do not want us to lose sight of the fact that Mr Cairns had been extremely unwell over a number of years, and that concerns had been raised repeatedly by Rachael and by Mr Cairns’s wider family. I would be grateful if the Minister could pass on the concerns about the care that Mr Cairns received, and about the failure to act on the warning signs, to his colleagues in the Home Office, so that those issues can also be addressed.
Norman Baker
That is a valid point. As I mentioned a moment ago, we need a joined-up approach not only in Government but at local level. I have undertaken to ensure that the Department of Health is made aware of the particular aspects of the scheme, so that it can work with us to plug any gaps that are identified.
The point was also made about delays relating to the coroner. I agree that that process took a long time, and ideally there would not be such a long wait. We want to see justice being completed quickly, and the delays were obviously painful for those who wanted closure. I would be happy to raise that matter with the relevant Justice Minister to see what can be done, and I will pass those comments on.
We have also founded the College of Policing, and announced its role in providing professional standards for policing and helping police officers and staff to meet those standards throughout their careers. It will be the college’s mission to ensure that officers and staff understand and comply with the highest ethical standards. We hope that this will drive up standards in the police generally.
Domestic violence is a crime, and the worst possible violation of trust in human relationships. Deaths such as those of Rachael and Auden rightly cause shock and outrage, but we must also ensure that action is taken to prevent a similar thing from happening again and to secure justice for those who have lost their lives. I will be carefully reviewing the actions that we have taken over the past three years against the coroner’s findings in this case, to ensure that we do all we can to prevent appalling tragedies such as these from happening again because of the same failings.
Through our violence against women and girls action plan, the coalition Government has made significant strides towards a better reality for victims of domestic abuse, but we know that there is still much to do. Tomorrow, I shall raise my concerns on domestic abuse at a team meeting of all chief constables, and in the coming weeks I will be meeting representatives of women’s groups. I look forward to discussing our plans with them and listening to what they have to say about this matter. It is vital that we respond to cases such as Rachael’s to ensure that those who are vulnerable to the worst crimes are protected. I look forward to updating Parliament on our continued progress in tackling domestic violence in coming months.
Question put and agreed to.
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Cancer Patient Experience
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Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)
Mr Owen, it is a pleasure to have you chairing the debate on a subject that is important to many families up and down the country. Some 2 million people in the UK are living with or beyond cancer, and that figure is set to rise to 4 million by 2030. Although it is a cause for celebration that more people than ever survive after a diagnosis of cancer, a significant challenge must arise in ensuring that their clinical and human needs are met and that patients have the best possible experience.
Before turning to the nature of the challenge and the points I wish to raise, I pay tribute to all those who work in and support the many charities and voluntary organisations that address the challenge posed by cancer. There are many such organisations, but, with utter respect to all those involved in the field, I shall mention just a few: Macmillan Cancer Support, Cancer Research UK, Breakthrough Breast Cancer, Marie Curie Cancer Care, Breast Cancer Care, Beating Bowel Cancer, the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation and the Teenage Cancer Trust. There are many others. They all do fantastic work and much to improve patient experience and give hope to many of our constituents.
The Government have set great store by patient experience and all the issues that naturally interest cancer patients. I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s ambition to give every cancer patient the opportunity to be a research patient if he or she so wishes; that must interest many people in that position.
The UK now leads the world in recruiting cancer patients to take part in research. One in five cancer patients in the UK takes part in some form of research, which compares with 3% of people in a similar position in the United States. I pay tribute to the research of Cancer Research UK in that regard. Last year, 36,000 patients took part in its trials in this country.
I welcome the fact that NHS England has said that it plans to continue the important national cancer patient experience survey. The results of the 2012-13 survey showed that there is room for improvement in some areas of care. I make that point not as a criticism of the NHS, but to highlight areas where there is room for improvement. Macmillan Cancer Support highlighted some such areas in particular, and has urged Ministers to take notice of and act on them. I urge Ministers to listen to the representations being made to them by Macmillan Cancer Support and others.
The national cancer patient experience survey highlighted several important issues, and I will mention three. The first is care planning and information. The most recent cancer patient experience survey reveals that before starting treatment, 45% of patients were not fully informed about the side effects that could affect them in future, that 78% were not offered a written assessment and care plan, and that 41% were not given enough support from health and social services after leaving hospital. As a result, not all patients felt that their families were given all the information needed to help care for them at home. That is clearly an area where there is room for improvement.
David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on obtaining this important debate. He mentioned Macmillan, which says in the research paper on the survey:
“The lack of basic care, dignity and respect experienced by cancer patients in hospital is shocking.”
It also says that 15% of patients experienced humiliation. That should not happen to someone suffering from cancer.
Mr Clappison
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, and some of the matters I will turn to in due course underline its strength. May I apologise to hon. Members? I mentioned NHS England, because that is what the survey covers, but I will turn to the situation in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland in due course. I am delighted that so many Members from Northern Ireland are here this morning.
The next issue is financial support. Cancer patients and their families obviously need financial support, just as everybody else does. Although significant progress has been made since the first cancer patient survey in 2010, almost half of patients who would have liked information about how to get financial help or benefits still do not receive it.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this hugely important debate. He mentioned the importance of financial advice and support, but does he agree that service design is also important? I came across a case of one constituent, David Wilson, who, while undergoing chemotherapy, received 270 different pieces of paper from our city council in just one month—August this year. It is vital that we design services so that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, local councils and the Department for Work and Pensions work together to make life for patients easier and simpler and to ensure that they understand the financial entitlements.
Mr Clappison
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point that I am sure the Minister will want to address. The last thing that somebody coping with the treatments and everything else wants is to be bombarded with different pieces of information and requests from central or local government bodies, which could do something much more coherent and easy to understand if they streamlined their services.
I would like to address relational care, which the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) raised in his intervention. It covers matters such as communication, trust in nurses and being treated with respect, all of which are important for cancer patients. There is still room for improvement, according to the findings of the most recent survey. For example, 42% of respondents said that not all doctors and nurses asked what name patients preferred to be called by, which can be important to older people. It is a question of finding the right amount of kindness. Our clinicians—nurses and doctors—are marvellous, but that did emerge from the patient survey. Kindness can make a great difference to people in that situation.
Macmillan Cancer Support’s report showed that patient experience across the NHS is still not regarded as having equal importance as clinical effectiveness and patient safety. The Government’s decision to make patient experience one of the five domains against which the health service will be held to account should be warmly welcomed. It is clear, however, that a lot of effort needs to be put into the institutional framework to reinforce that priority.
The NHS mandate and outcomes framework needs a stronger focus on improving relational care. Hospital boards need to take a lead on prioritising patient care; a recent survey showed that its importance to different hospital boards varies considerably, which is clearly wrong, because all hospital boards should take it seriously. Commissioners of cancer services have a vital role to play, as does the chief inspector of hospitals. All such bodies need to reinforce the need for relational care and kindness in dealing with cancer patients.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate, and I apologise for having to leave before the end. Does he think that it is also important that priority be given to communication skills between medical staff and patients? That is the core of what he has outlined.
Mr Clappison
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I agree that communication skills are important; the important factor is that kindness should be received by the patient.
I put a point to the Minister on behalf of Macmillan Cancer Support: I hope that the Government will deal with the matters we have discussed and put patient experience at the heart of the inspection process being put in place for our health service. One way of doing that is to use the results of the cancer patient experience survey to inform ratings at a cancer team and service level and to monitor and assess providers of care—for example, as part of the foundation trust assessment process.
In the light of all that, I have four specific questions for the Minister, on behalf of Macmillan Cancer Support and other charities. First, will the Government consider making relational care a priority area in the refreshed 2014-15 mandate to NHS England? Secondly, will the Government support the use of cancer patient experience data in the inspection regime of the Care Quality Commission, which is led by the chief inspector of hospitals?
Thirdly, will the Government work with commissioners and providers to ensure that the results of the national cancer experience survey continue to drive improvements in cancer care? Fourthly, and specifically on breast cancer, can the national cancer patient experience survey include a question asking whether the respondent has secondary breast cancer? The Breast Cancer Campaign specifically asks to have that included.
More generally, I welcome the Government’s ambitious plans to improve cancer care in the United Kingdom, including those they set out in January 2011 in “Improving Outcomes: A Strategy for Cancer”, which promised action on a number of important fronts, such as diagnosing symptomatic cancer earlier; helping people live healthier lives to reduce the incidence of preventable cancers; screening more people; introducing new screening programmes, as recommended by the National Screening Committee; and ensuring that all patients have access to the best possible treatment, care and support.
Those measures should save at least an additional 50,000 lives every year by 2014-15. Many of us will be aware of the efforts being put into those different fields, to encourage people to come forward for screening, to make screening available, to make members of the public more aware of symptoms and to encourage people to lead healthier lives. That has been much more evident than it had been hitherto. In the light of all that, it would be good to hear from the Minister what progress has been made on the ambitions that the Government set out in January 2011.
Furthermore, what progress has been made in tackling inappropriate regional variations in cancer outcomes? Many advances have been made in cancer treatment in the UK, of course, but historically there has been a disparity on cancer survival rates between the UK and other comparable western nations. That has been the case for many years, under Governments of all parties, but it was underlined most recently by a 2009 Eurocare study, which revealed a disparity between UK cancer survival rates and those achieved in countries with the best outcomes.
England rated 16th in the survey for both men and women. Wales was ranked just in front, and Scotland and Northern Ireland were just behind. Apart from Ireland, every other major western European nation performed better than the UK, and some of them much better. Sweden was the best performing country.
The 2009 analysis was a little old, because it was based on patients diagnosed between 1995 and 1999, although that had to be the case to detect survival rates. More recent surveys have also seen the same pattern, such as one comparing the USA with the United Kingdom. With older patients, there is an even more marked gap between the UK and other comparable nations and economies. I have seen figures from the British Journal of Cancer that show that for women over 70 with breast cancer, the three-year survival rate in the UK is 79%, but in Sweden, it is 91%.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Although comparisons are always dangerous, a further acknowledgement of how far we remain behind our European partners is that even if we met the Government’s laudable target of saving an extra 5,000 cancer lives over the next couple of years, that would still only bring us up to the European average on survival rates.
Mr Clappison
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I am sure he would agree that there is a lot of ground to make up. The important point is that we should not only take encouragement from the improvement of survival rates as a result of advances in medical science; we should judge ourselves by how well we use those advances compared with other countries. We should set ourselves the more ambitious target of not just improving survival rates, but improving them so much that we close the gap on other countries.
Members of the British public who fall ill with cancer and their families expect cancer treatment to be on a level with that of comparable countries, our neighbours and other western developed economies. Sadly, it is not at that level, although I hope the Minister will tell us that we have made some progress.
Yesterday, some encouraging statistics were released that showed a trend of increasing survival for patients diagnosed between 2007 and 2011. The Minister will agree that that is good news, but I look forward to hearing from her that the Government’s ambition is to close the performance gap between ourselves and other countries and that the gap is being closed.
In closing, I should like to pay the utmost respect to doctors, nurses and all clinicians working in the field. We owe them a great debt of gratitude and my comments are no reflection on them. We are all hugely indebted to their work and I am sure that many of our constituents would echo that sentiment. I am just drawing attention to how the system has operated in this country over a number of years, and the experience of the patients within it. I hope that the Minister can tell me that the Government have ambitious plans for improving the cancer patient experience and that there is evidence that those plans are on the road to fulfilment.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I am grateful, Mr Owen, for being called to make a contribution to this debate. It is on cancer patient experience, but we will all have personal experience of the issues. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) on tabling the subject for debate. In his introduction he rightly said that the debate refers to the NHS in the UK, and there are four Northern Ireland MPs here because each of us can contribute to the debate by relating our experiences. I hope that the Minister will consider a strategy that involves not just the mainland, but all four regions.
As I was saying to my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) earlier today, when I first considered my contribution to the debate, I realised that I have never before known so many people in my age group, so many of my friends and so many of those just older than me who have had cancer, and I have never experienced so many people passing away as a result of it.
I have had a number of meetings with the Minister back in Northern Ireland, Edwin Poots, and I intend to have a public meeting in my constituency to review cancer care with the general public and the trust and look at how best we can do it. My frustration is compounded by discussions with the trust. I do not want to be critical, because that is not how I do things—I try to see how we can move forward and be more positive—but I am concerned about the magnitude of cancer cases in my area and across the United Kingdom. I suspect that other Members will confirm what I already know. A 10% increase in cancer cases in Northern Ireland is extremely worrying.
My father and sister suffered from cancer. Of the four staff employed in my Newtownards office, my parliamentary aide had two grandparents die from cancer and her father suffers from cancer, my secretary had her mother die from cancer and she recently buried one brother-in-law to cancer and has another undergoing chemotherapy. Only my office manager seems to have escaped cancer in their immediate family. Some 75% of my office staff have experienced cancer in their close family and individually.
If we look into the community, we can see that my examples provide an accurate reflection of the way that cancer affects entire communities. Someone in the United Kingdom is diagnosed with cancer every two minutes. More than one in three people in the UK will develop some form of cancer during their lifetime, which is a horrifying statistic. The risk of developing cancer before 50 is 1 in 35 for men and 1 in 20 for women, so the situation is more extreme for ladies.
As elected representatives, our constituents often come to our offices to ask how to find their way through the benefits system. They experience health pressures to start with, but financial pressures soon follow. Just yesterday, my hon. Friend the Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) and I went to the Macmillan Cancer Support reception here in the Houses of Parliament and we had the important opportunity to speak to carers. I will highlight some of the issues raised as we go through this debate.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
Before my hon. Friend moves on to discuss carers, which is an important matter, does he agree that a big issue is people’s reluctance and sometimes failure, in particular among us males, to visit the GP when there may be a problem? We should encourage everybody, but males in particular. I do not understand the logic. If my television does not work, I get a TV repair man in. If the washing machine does not work, I get the washing machine repair man in. If people have a health problem, they go to their GP. Unfortunately, however, males seem reluctant to do that.
Jim Shannon
I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution. The males of the species do tend to wait just that wee bit longer. I will not relate my personal case to Westminster Hall, but we do sometimes leave things a little longer than we should, which is perhaps a failing on our part. The Health Minister and his Department in Northern Ireland have run several campaigns to highlight prostate cancer in particular. It may be that MPs know more people, but I have two close friends who were diagnosed with cancer. Thankfully, in both cases, they acknowledged early that something was wrong and went to their doctors and were then referred for health checks. I am happy to say that the treatment that they are now receiving will save their lives, but if the diagnoses had been made a couple of months later, I suspect that it may have been different. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Entire families and communities are affected by this cancer pandemic. The House must deliver an effective strategy to help those experiencing the scourge of cancer.
I read with great interest the Macmillan report and the hon. Member for Hertsmere outlined the many cancer organisations and societies that do tremendous work. Macmillan’s document, “Improving care for people with cancer: Putting cancer patient experience at the heart of the NHS”, wants patient care at the core of the NHS and I heard yesterday from carers and people involved with Macmillan how important that is. The report references England and Wales only, but the overall message is mirrored throughout the UK, and the other Northern Irish Members and I are here today to provide the experience of Northern Ireland.
I recently met Edwin Poots, the Minister of Health, Social Services and Public Safety in Northern Ireland, regarding the provision of cancer carers in my area, as it is clear that changes that could really make a difference cannot be implemented due to a lack of funding, which is part of the problem, and the lack of a strategy for the increases in demand over the next 10, 20 or 30 years. Looking at the Ulster hospital in particular—I am not going to be critical of the staff, who are tremendous and can never be paid enough for what they do—I can see greater demand and that needs to be taken on board. I ask the Minister to consider holding discussions with those in the regions, in particular with the Northern Ireland Assembly and Edwin Poots, because we need a strategy that takes into account the whole of the United Kingdom and not just the mainland. We can work together. Experiences, interests, qualifications and knowledge may differ across the UK, but it is time that we exchanged some of that in order to help each other.
Getting back to the Macmillan report, it states what I am sure that everyone here believes:
“Every person diagnosed with cancer should have a positive care experience and be treated with dignity and respect throughout their cancer journey.”
My hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann said in his intervention that people needed to be treated as human beings and not just as numbers.
David Simpson
Will my hon. Friend join me in praising young carers, who look after family members until Marie Curie or Macmillan move in? Their lives are detrimentally affected by the trauma. Young carers cannot be praised enough.
Jim Shannon
I thank my hon. Friend for that comment. In my constituency, we have a young carers organisation that also works with adults. I have met some young carers and am aware of young sons and daughters who look after mothers, fathers and other siblings. We could not do without them. We are ever mindful of their experiences. I know young carers, my hon. Friend knows them and I suspect that everyone in the House knows individual young carers.
Some people may ask how the cancer experience can ever be positive, but although going through cancer will always be horrific, the care that is given can and does impact upon how a patient feels. The Macmillan report states:
“Good patient experience is closely connected to improving other outcomes such as recovery from an illness. However, the sad reality is that many people still have a poor experience of care.”
We can hopefully try to address that problem today. Cancer is no respecter of persons, but that does not mean that cancer treatment precludes the sufferer receiving the utmost respect and dignity through treatments that may be undignified in their essence. We have all lost a little dignity while in the doctor’s surgery and the manner of the doctor or nurse often determines how embarrassed we become. If we are treated gently and with care rather than being pushed through the process as quickly as possible to get the next patient seen, we may feel better as a result. That does not always happen and I can certainly appreciate the pressure that doctors and nurses are under to do the procedures, tick the red-tape boxes and bring down waiting lists. However, the fact that we are not dealing with lists but with people must never be far from our minds.
Again, I stress that I am not placing the blame on the providers of care, but something must be done to address the fact that, on average, only 56% of cancer patients in England said that doctors and nurses asked them by what name they wanted to be called, which was an issue highlighted by the hon. Member for Hertsmere. A little bit of consideration and allowing the patient to maintain their dignity does not take a whole lot of effort. It may seem trivial, but this is a serious point: a girl called Betty works in my office and were I to call her “Beatrice”, she would get upset and would tell me. Similarly, should I refer to the other lady in my office as Mrs Cotter when she is actually Mrs Armstrong-Cotter, she would immediately put me in my place. I use those examples because it is important that a caring bond is formed with cancer patients. A wee bit of time, consideration, humility and dignity can really make a difference. The same can be said on a greater scale when people are doing intimate things to patients while always reminding them that patients do not know them. That is a small thing that the Macmillan report highlighted that could make a patient feel that much more comfortable and indeed that much more safe.
The carers at the Macmillan reception also described some things that they thought should be happening in hospitals. They outlined the need for someone to be available to hospitals across all regions. The six people we met yesterday were all from different parts of the United Kingdom and all had different stories to tell. It seems that some trusts are responding well, but others are not. We need a universal response that encompasses all areas. The Macmillan representatives also suggested that someone should also be available to provide advice on benefits and on care and just to give support.
Another point that came out of yesterday’s discussion was about respite care. Some of the ladies we met were single carers—in other words, a wife looking after a husband, with no sons, daughters or other family members close at hand. We also need to consider the issue of respite care and how we can help such carers get a wee bit of time for themselves.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
The hon. Gentleman said that Macmillan Cancer Support has suggested that help with understanding social security and welfare advice is important. Is he aware that, in the Altnagelvin area hospital in my constituency, Macmillan and the Western Health and Social Care Trust run the independent Macmillan/North West advice service to do exactly that? It basically navigates people through the benefits system and all the other support mechanisms. It does not expect people to be experts on such arrangements in the public administration system, but takes away an awful lot of the worry and provides pathways to care and support that they would not otherwise know was available.
Jim Shannon
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I have such a service in my area. I am pleased that Macmillan and others provide such a level of care and support at times of great concern and worry in the Ulster hospital in Dundonald. I must say a great thank you to the volunteers—a great many of them are volunteers —who provide that service.
It is nice to see the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), in her place, because she and I had a discussion the other day about the report on care that is coming to the House for consideration. I hope that some of the points made by the ladies to whom we spoke will be part of our next debate on the draft Care and Support Bill, and I am sure that no one will be found wanting in responding to that.
In my opinion, the ethos of a hospital is reflected in how patients are treated. The Macmillan survey, which highlighted the priority of patient experience, has painted a picture of how each different hospital board views the importance of the patient care experience. It found that boards raised patient experience as an agenda item in policy meetings, but that only 5% of such items led to further action: boards noted the patient experience, but did not deem it important enough to follow up.
When I wore my other hat as a councillor, for some years I chaired the council’s audit and risk management committee and read the absolutely endless reports on matters prioritised as categories 1, 2 or 3: something in category 1 needed immediate attention, something in category 2 needed attention in a reasonable time, and something in category 3 needed attention just at some stage. It is safe to say that many of the category 3 priority cases remained the same and did not change from year to year, because time never permitted for making those changes, as something more urgent was always pressing. In other words, there were always category 1 and 2 priorities and, unfortunately, category 3 priorities sometimes sat on the shelf. My belief is that patient experience should not be a category 3 priority, but should be considered as a category 1 priority; it should not have to wait until everything else is fixed before it receives attention.
To conclude as I began, cancer is a wretched illness, whose deadly or grimy fingers reach out to impact on wide family circles, as well as entire communities. The experience of going through cancer has an impact on not only the individual, but the people around them. I believe that it is time to make cancer a priority, with a UK strategy for the Government here and those in the regions of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. That is why I wholeheartedly support the hon. Member for Hertsmere and, in doing so, I again ask that any decision taken by the Secretary of State will look at having a UK strategy as well as additional funding. I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward this debate.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) on securing this important debate. I apologise to him that I will have to leave slightly early to meet, coincidentally, the new cancer tsar, Mr Sean Duffy. That appointment has been in the diary for some time. I echo my hon. Friend’s warm words of praise for all those charities and individuals who work towards combating this disease. They do excellent work, which I know all of us across the House very much support and praise.
As chairman of the all-party group on cancer, I congratulate the Government on their excellent work on cancer in recent years. Focusing on outcomes as a driver of change within the NHS has been crucial in not only driving up outcomes, but ensuring that changes in the NHS take place for the benefit of patients.
I will not speak for long, because I am conscious that there will be other speakers after me, but to give a little bit of the history, the all-party group produced a report in 2009 on cancer inequalities across the UK. We tried to analyse why patients who reach the one-year point in this country stood as much chance of getting to the five-year point as in any other health system in Europe, while we fell down on getting patients to the one-year point. That result tends to suggest that the NHS is as good as, if not better, at treating patients once cancer has been diagnosed, but is very poor at diagnosing cancer in the first place.
We tried to come up with a solution for how to drive forward earlier diagnosis. I suggest that that is the magic key for cancer. There are very few magic keys in life that will unlock the door to a panoply of unexpected treasures, but one exists for cancer—earlier diagnosis. With the wider cancer community, the all-party group—it sees itself as representing that community in Parliament—proposed putting up in lights the one-year and five-year survival indicators.
Instead of bombarding local primary care trusts, as they then were, with lots of targets and bureaucracy, we decided to put up those indicators in lights, with the emphasis on the one-year point, as a driver of change. PCTs—now clinical commissioning groups—that were towards the bottom of the table would, if their managers were worth their salt and their large salaries, introduce local initiatives, peculiar to their population: for example, whether theirs was an ageing population, whether an adaptation was needed for an industrial illness, such as mesothelioma, or whether there were black and minority ethnic communities. Those local initiatives would drive up earlier diagnosis to combat those poor one-year survival figures, because we all know that late diagnosis makes for poor one-year survival figures and, in turn, poor five-year figures.
The Government listened not only to us, but to the cancer community that also came up with the idea, and to Members from both sides of the House who came in behind it. We campaigned together, and we are delighted that the Government have now put in place one-year and five-year survival figures both nationally and locally through the CCG outcomes indicator set—brilliant news.
There has to be a bit of tweaking, for the simple reason that we were previously dealing with PCT populations that were larger than those of CCGs, so the issue of statistical significance comes into play. I was not wholeheartedly behind—in fact, if anything, I was quite sceptical—about the structural changes to the NHS, but that is now history and we have to deal with the future. Given that the populations are smaller, we are now arguing for the introduction of proxy measures locally to supplement, although not to replace, the one-year figures. Measures focusing on accident and emergency and on staging would be two ways to supplement the one-year figure. That is an ongoing conversation, and the Government and NHS England are in constructive dialogue with us about it.
I mentioned the focus on outcomes because, to achieve improved cancer outcomes, it is essential to put up in lights the patient experience and to prioritise it nationally and locally. If I have one concern about the present direction of Government policy, it is that patient experience is built in at national level, through the outcomes framework, but as yet, it is not built in at the local or outcomes indicator set level. I am not alone in worrying that there will be a disconnect. Setting the bigger picture strategy is well intentioned and essential, but if we are really to improve patient experience, we need to ensure that that national policy is followed through locally. At the moment, that is not taking place, and if we do not put that right pretty quickly, we risk not meeting the Government’s laudable target of an extra 5,000 lives saved by 2015, which is something that we all very much want.
The Minister, to whom I wish the very best in her new post—I did not get the opportunity to say that in Health questions—will know from her civil servants that the cancer community and the APPG on cancer participated in the public consultation on the 2013-14 clinical commissioning group outcomes indicator set. Held by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, it listed patient experience of cancer services as a potential indicator for future development. The NICE CCG OIS advisory committee agreed that such experience would be useful, yet it is not included in the 2014-15 CCG outcomes indicator set. I ask the Minister in all earnestness to look at that again. We are talking about NHS England to a very large extent, but I would be very surprised if there were not conversations with it about such issues. Will the Minister use her influence and best offices to try to influence the debate?
There is no shortage of reasons why cancer patient experience is important and why it should be included locally. I will bombard the Minister with one or two facts. We know, for example, that there is vast variation of cancer care across the country. There are unacceptable geographical variations, and we need to iron them out. There have been some particularly bad examples recently in London, and we need to look at them.
Within cancer itself and the condition of cancer, there are huge variations. For example, people with rarer cancers report a worse experience. People in the most deprived areas report less favourably on their care. Those are reasons why the monitoring of cancer patient experience locally is important.
Furthermore, the cancer patient experience survey is effective at driving improvements locally, and that must not be overlooked. By contrast to the current CCG OIS indicators under domain 4, the cancer patient experience survey captures detailed service specific data about trusts’ performance across a range of aspects of cancer patient experience. For example, all London trusts put action plans in place, following the 2010 cancer patient experience survey, so we know that that is effective. We do not need to reinvent the wheel on that one; we have something within our possession that is effective in driving forward improvements. The idea of monitoring cancer patient experience locally is feasible.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere mentioned, more than 2 million people are living with and beyond cancer. That will rise to 4 million by 2030. Cancer is a unique and complex medical condition, and as we well know, certain aspects of patient experience have a particular emphasis for people living with cancer.
The CPES has a high sample size and response rate. Data from the 2010, 2011 and 2012 surveys are already easily accessible for CCGs to analyse. They are useful and user friendly. Furthermore, the CPES is regarded as an example of best practice in measuring holistic patient experience of care—looking at the complete pathway—which is something that we do not talk enough about in the NHS. It is particularly important, as the Minister fully understands, when it comes to cancer patients.
In conclusion, lots of good work is being undertaken by the Government on cancer. The Minister will know that I am not afraid to come forward and say otherwise if I think that that is the case. None the less, I urge her to look again at what appears to be a disconnect between a national priority and implementation locally. The cancer patient experience survey is terribly useful, helpful and effective. We need to get it into the CCG OIS. I hope the Minister will respond to that point when she sums up, but I apologise that I will not be here to listen to her.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
It is a pleasure, Mr Owen, to meet under your chairmanship this morning. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) on introducing this important debate. I want to raise a few points on the cancer experience that arise from my constituency.
As other Members have said, it is important that, in providing and modelling our services, we should directly draw on the experience, both in qualitative and quantitative terms, of patients and focus on outcomes. We also need to harness fully the insights that patients can give us into how services can be improved, better managed, better modelled and, more importantly, better accessed and understood.
In my constituency, there has been a major campaign for a localised radiotherapy unit. It was meant to happen as part of the overall improved cancer strategy in Northern Ireland, but for various reasons it got held up. The campaign was led by the Pink Ladies, a group who have gone through the cancer journey. They have all experienced breast cancer, but they are in no way exclusive about their cancer as opposed to other types of cancer experience.
On Monday morning, I attended a Pink Ladies event, which focused on the new partnerships in which the group was involved. It has spread its involvement to include not just Macmillan Cancer Support and Action Cancer but local community partnerships. It discussed providing new services at a neighbourhood level, including counselling services, listening-ear services and complementary therapy services. All are supported by professionals in the Western Health and Social Care Trust.
The issue is about making the services more accessible, comfortable and compatible with local users, who will rely very much on those who have been through, and are going through, the cancer experience, because such people are best placed to give support to others who are new to the journey.
On the point made by the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) about male sufferers, an offshoot of the Pink Ladies has been formed comprising males who have been through, or are on, the cancer journey. They, purely in derivative terms, call themselves the Pink Panthers, but they are addressing exactly the issues that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. Part of the role of the groups is to help to provide advice to other patients, and their families and carers, about some of the issues that might arise and to anticipate some of the questions that might be going through patients’ heads—questions that they are just not able to articulate or are not yet ready to vocalise.
Mr Robin Walker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I apologise for having to leave the debate before the summing up.
I want to pick up on the hon. Gentleman’s point about how cancer patients can contribute to the campaigns. I have had a radiotherapy campaign in my own constituency in which Paul Crawford, a former head and neck cancer patient, has played an important role. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that cancer patients can play an important role by getting on the boards of local health trusts and health bodies and providing knowledge and experience, as indeed my constituent has?
Mark Durkan
I fully accept the hon. Gentleman’s point. The point that I was about to make myself exactly “rhymes” with his observation. It is that these people are in a position to offer advice to others diagnosed with cancer; to offer advocacy to politicians, service providers and managers as to how things can be improved; and to offer real insight in administrative terms, by helping to future-manage such services and review them against the sort of yardsticks that other hon. Members have said they must be measured against.
I said that the radiotherapy unit now to be based at Altnagelvin, which will be funded on a cross-border basis in Ireland, is really a roll-out of part of the wider cancer strategy in Northern Ireland. A number of years ago, I served as Minister of Finance in Northern Ireland in the first Executive following the Good Friday agreement, and then as Deputy First Minister. One of the most important things I did was when we negotiated what was called a reinvestment and reform package, with new borrowing powers coming from Westminster but also a funding package that was to complement the infrastructure fund that we as the Executive had developed.
The first item that I was able to insist on with Tony Blair and then with the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown)—the two former Prime Ministers—was that funding should go to the regional cancer centre. It was meant to be a key part of the cancer strategy in Northern Ireland that was being led and advocated by Professor Paddy Johnston. We were able to fund that scheme, which was not coming forward and which did not seem to be breaking through in the Department of Health’s plans or budget submissions to me or to anybody else. We had been on the point of losing Paddy Johnston, who was going to go back to the United States, where he was going to be funded to do all sorts of things and use his skills.
However, as I say, we were able to create that cancer centre without going to a private finance initiative or anything else. Great work is being done there, not only for the patients it serves in Northern Ireland but because of the calibre of people it can attract and the clinical trials it can run, which are all part of improving the picture of cancer services throughout the United Kingdom.
As other hon. Members have said, staff at that centre and others are helping to work miracles every day with people who are suffering from cancer, but they are very conscious and very clear that their task is still to keep narrowing the gap between what the services ought to be and what they actually are, which is why we constantly need to drive on performance and outcomes in these areas.
Regarding the cancer experience, I am also very conscious of a constituent of mine who wrote a book a number of years ago, based on her experience, which basically says, “I have cancer but it doesn’t have me.” She is a lady called Kate Dooher and her book sets out very clearly her experience of a cancer journey and the implications for her family, colleagues and friends. Again, policy makers can get real insight from that about what the issues mean in real and practical terms.
I am a member of a number of the all-party groups on cancer, including all-party groups on different cancers, here in Parliament. Those groups can provide a platform for those with real insights, those who are providing care, those who are leading a lot of the professional fight against cancer and those who are driving the research platform. We should not underestimate the importance of either research or the linkage between good care networks and research. That is why Cancer Research UK is one of the most prominent advocates for more radiotherapy provision, because it believes that such provision not only makes services more accessible but that it is important in qualitative terms and in the research benefits that can come from improving services and treatment models in the future.
Going back to what the hon. Member for Hertsmere said, that is why, when we are talking about the patient experience, we very much have to listen to the patients themselves and base things not on what we think is the “nice fit, reasonable fit, just about cost-effective patient experience” but think in real and wholehearted terms about the patient experience.
Patients know how they have been able to improve their own experience for themselves, and they know how services whose staff might think they work do not really work for them, and how those services can be improved and modified. We need to gain their insight and emancipate their understanding as part of lighting the way forward for ourselves.
Albert Owen (in the Chair)
In calling Eric Ollerenshaw to speak, I remind Members that I will be calling the Front-Bench spokespersons at 10.40 am at the latest.
Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)
I would like to think that I take the message, Mr Owen. It is a pleasure to serve under you.
It is also a pleasure to congratulate the new Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), on her appointment. She has a reputation as a listening Minister and I am sure that, when she makes her closing remarks, she will prove to have listened to all of us here today.
I start off in a very partisan situation. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, we are getting to the “cancer world”, as I call it; it is like a separate world that involves different people, often through personal experience. My experience of it is personal, but also through being secretary of the all-party group on pancreatic cancer. If I may, Mr Owen, I will give a little plug here—the all-party group is producing a report, which the Secretary of State for Health has agreed to take at a meeting on 25 November. All hon. Members will be invited to that meeting.
The report is about improving outcomes. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) on securing this debate at this timely moment. What we in the all-party group are trying to see is a further improvement in outcomes, at a time when outcomes for cancer patients are improving. When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, if somebody mentioned the word “cancer” it was almost as if a life sentence had been passed. We are in a different situation now.
Pancreatic cancer is seen as perhaps the most difficult cancer, and there are issues connected with that. I will cite some statistics to demonstrate the situation that pancreatic cancer patients often find themselves in. My hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) is far more experienced in this area than I am, and he put his finger on the issue by stressing the importance of early diagnosis.
I will give the figures from the national cancer patient experience survey: 40% of pancreatic cancer patients visited their GP three or more times before diagnosis; and 25% visited their GP five or more times before diagnosis. Those figures compare with 75% of all other cancer patients who are referred to hospital after one or two GP visits.
From the investigation that the all-party group made, I can cite the specific example of someone who came to us to give their own personal experience. They said:
“With regard to early diagnosis, the most important aspect for us was the fact that Gemma went to her GP on a total of 10 separate occasions between the middle of April 2009 and the end of August, when she was finally referred to a specialist”.
That is the experience of most people with pancreatic cancer. In my own case, I think that my partner went to the GP six or seven times before somebody then said, “Better go to a hospital.”
Then, when a patient gets to the hospital situation, quite often there is no access to a specialist in pancreatic cancer. If a clinical nurse specialist is not available, the patient is even more lost. I underline the importance that the all-party group attaches to the clinical nurse specialist in almost holding the hand of somebody with cancer as they go through the system.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
I want to tell my hon. Friend about a meeting that I had with a radiotherapist in my constituency just a week or two ago. They told me that, all too often, patients who appear for treatment tell him that they visited their GP on numerous occasions and, sadly, often they were sent home. I know that it is incredibly difficult for GPs. We are expecting a lot of them, but there is still a lot more to be done in ensuring that GPs across the country are consistent in their approach to people who present with certain symptoms.
Eric Ollerenshaw
My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I totally agree with him. That is the kind of information that we, as an all-party group, have been receiving from right across the country.
As I said, there is a lack of specialism, even in a hospital situation sometimes. The issue with pancreatic cancer is that there is a repetition of non-specific symptoms. Again, I cite my own personal experience from the case of my partner—he just had a stomach ache that went on and on, without a particular issue. Other hon. Members have referred to what males tend to do, and they are absolutely right; we often put these things to one side and say, “It is a stomach upset”, despite the repetition of symptoms. What we are trying to get GPs to look at is this: if they are seeing somebody who has never been to them before, somebody who never really goes to a GP but keeps turning up, an alarm bell should be sounding.
I will cite some other figures, although I am aware of the time factor. Some 33% of pancreatic cancer patients feel that they have been given conflicting information, compared with 29% of all other cancer patients. Some 13% of pancreatic cancer patients did not get answers to important questions all or most of the time, compared with 9% of all other cancer patients. Some 36% of pancreatic cancer patients felt less likely to feel that their views were being taken into account by doctors and nurses when discussing treatment, compared with 30% of all other cancer patients.
As I said, I am being totally partisan. The all-party group’s experience and my experience personally is that, for some reason, this country is way down the line on pancreatic cancer—despite it being the fifth biggest cancer, in terms of the number of people who die from it—when it comes to international comparisons for improved outcomes. There are treatments, but far too often they are far too late, because of people’s constant appearances at GPs.
Other Members have talked about dignity and humiliation. I will be utterly personal about the issue, because, in one sense, that is what has driven me to get so involved. I remember my partner’s situation. It was a case of finally going to hospital, being told that people there would do some tests and then that they would carry out an operation because they thought it was cancer. “What does that mean?” We did not know.
I can remember being sat in the hospital and my partner coming back, straight from surgery, with things wrapped round. We said, “What is it?” The doctor turned round and said, “Oh, it’s terminal.” That is the kind of situation that happens. Where is the understanding? Where are the few minutes where they say, “Let’s just go through this. Let’s look at the options”?
I understand that people working in hospitals are under pressure, but there were repeated examples of such experiences at the all-party group. As other hon. Members, particularly those from Northern Ireland, have said, a person should not have to be brain of Britain or have gone on a training course to have a little more time and to treat people with a little more dignity.
I finish with two particular demands, or requests, for the Minister. The all-party group wants consideration to be given to an awareness campaign, particularly about pancreatic cancer. I add my praise for the involvement of Macmillan and Pancreatic Cancer UK, which is the charity that backs up the all-party group and continues to support us, in terms of the campaign on awareness.
Macmillan has been piloting decision tools to help GPs assess the risk of cancer, including pancreatic cancer, and make decisions about further referrals. We would like to see those properly evaluated with consideration given to a full roll-out of the pilots that Macmillan has been spearheading so fantastically.
We have also been trying to raise awareness that pancreatic cancer is not an old man’s disease, in crude terms. The risk increases with age, but 35% of all diagnoses of pancreatic cancer occur in people under the age of 65—that is about 3,000 of the 8,500 diagnosed each year. The split among men and women is reasonably even, with slightly more cases in women than in men. I am not sure that that is clear, so that would be part of what we would request in a campaign. It would lead to greater awareness and, hopefully, earlier referrals and better outcomes.
My final request relates to the national cancer patient experience data. Pancreatic Cancer UK paid for a separation of data for pancreatic cancer patients—in fact, the Department of Health paid for that to be done once. We would like pancreatic cancer patients to be routinely separated out from all upper-gastrointestinal cancer patients as part of the system of getting such statistics. I do not see why a charity or the Department should try to do that as an extra thing. It should be part and parcel of the routine, given the nature and impact of this dreadful, increasingly misunderstood cancer.
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen, and I really want to congratulate the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) on securing this important debate.
I will start with why this issue is so important. At the risk of stating the obvious, first and foremost, it is crucial for patients and their families, and as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, many of us—not only people of his age—are affected. Today, the father of one of my dearest and oldest friends is going through yet another operation for cancer. I saw him on Saturday night. I shall spend today thinking about him and all his family, and I hope that it goes well.
We know that a good experience makes all patients feel as though they have been supported and respected as individuals, whereas a bad experience can make them feel, at best, as though their needs do not matter and, at worst, that their basic human dignity has been denied. Cancer patients whom I speak to, such as those at the local Macmillan Cancer Support group, which I recently joined in my constituency, constantly emphasise their experience of care and how they are treated by NHS staff as absolutely critical at such a frightening time in their lives. However, the importance of the patient experience goes far beyond the personal value to individuals.
There is now strong evidence that good patient experience is consistently and positively associated with better health outcomes and safer and more clinically effective care. A systematic review of 55 studies, which was published in the British Medical Journal last year, found that good experience is linked to better outcomes for individual patients—both the outcomes that patients themselves report and objectively measured outcomes. It was also found that patients who have a good experience are also more likely to stick to their recommended treatments and medicines and to use preventive services, such as screening, immunisation and healthy living programmes.
The third reason why patient experience is important is that there is increasing evidence—from the US, if not from the UK—that it is linked to getting better value for money. A good patient experience, in the US at least, is associated with a reduced length of stay in hospitals and fewer problems with patient safety—so-called adverse patient events. Hospitals that achieve good scores on patient experience also have higher staff retention rates, which also contribute to lower costs through lower staff turnover. Understanding the link between staff experience and patient experience is absolutely essential in this debate. That is actually common sense: when staff feel valued and respected, they are more likely to treat patients in the same way.
What makes for a good experience for cancer patients? Macmillan Cancer Support says that three issues are consistently highlighted. The first is meaningful involvement in their care, not only for individual cancer patients, but for their families, too. The second is excellent communication, so the patient’s diagnosis, treatment options, risks and follow-up care are clearly and simply explained. The third is properly co-ordinated care. When people are going through a desperately difficult time, the last thing that they want to face is a battle between all the different services. They want their hospital, primary and community services, social care and wider help—such as financial information and welfare and benefits advice—brought together in a seamless package that is built around their needs and not the individual institutions. That kind of whole person care is vital to all patients, not only those with cancer, but if we can get it right for cancer patients, I think that we can get it right for all patients, too.
The previous Government made huge strides in improving cancer care through the work of the national cancer plan and the cancer networks. There is still further to go, particularly with earlier diagnosis, but major progress was made in starting to bring NHS care for cancer patients up to the standards in other countries. The national cancer patient experience survey, which was started under the previous Government, was absolutely integral to that. The latest results, from August this year, found that about 80% of cancer patients rate their care as good or excellent. However, there are warning signs that problems are building in the system, which could harm that progress.
Waits for vital cancer tests are getting longer. The number of people waiting more than six weeks for diagnostic tests, including ultrasounds, colonoscopies and gastroscopies, has increased by 65% between July 2010 and July 2013. The cancer networks that were so important in improving the quality and co-ordination of care have been abolished, with their work subsumed into generic clinical networks, and many staff say that that risks losing their vital specialist and local expertise. We have seen a reduction of 5,000 nursing posts since 2010, including in vital specialist services, which is putting huge pressure on remaining staff.
Many hon. Members have talked about the persistent long-term variations in the experience of cancer patients. The national cancer survey has consistently shown worse outcomes for patients with rarer cancers, for younger patients—an issue highlighted by the Teenage Cancer Trust—and for patients from ethnic minority communities, which is an issue particularly close to my heart as an MP for the very diverse city of Leicester. There are also continuing problems with ensuring that patients get the financial information and benefits advice they need and with the crucial issue of end-of-life care.
I am sure hon. Members saw the excellent report published earlier this week by Macmillan Cancer Support, which found that 73% of people with cancer would prefer to die at home but that less than a third are able to do so. Therefore, some 36,000 cancer patients died in hospital when they would have preferred to die at home. That is not only terrible for cancer patients and their families at an awful and difficult time; it does not deliver best value for taxpayers’ money either. Research by the national end-of-life care programme suggests that there are potential net savings of some £950 for every person who dies in the community, rather than in a hospital, because of the reduced use of hospital beds.
The Minister, whom I welcome to her post, may not be aware of this because she was not in her post at the time, but in the cross-party talks on Andrew Dilnot’s recommendations for funding social care, the shadow Health Secretary and I proposed removing the means test for end-of-life social care to help make choice a reality at that difficult time. I hope that the Minister will be able to update us on the Government’s actions.
I will now focus on what we need to do to put cancer patient experience much more fundamentally at the heart of the NHS. I understand that the national cancer patient experience survey is currently under review. Will the Minister commit to that survey continuing to happen during each year of the coalition? Those data are vital, but we must use them effectively. A key point highlighted by the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), who chairs the all-party group on cancer, is that we must ensure that each clinical commissioning group is properly held to account for improving patient experience, including for cancer patients.
Currently, there are generic indicators on patient experience of hospital care and the friends and family test for acute inpatient care and A and E, but is NHS England developing more specific patient experience indicators for individual hospital services, including cancer, and, across the whole patient pathway, for primary and community services, too?
As hon. Members will know, last week, the Care Quality Commission published results of its new hospital inspection scheme, which is based on 150 indicators. I welcome and pay tribute to the excellent work of the chief inspector of hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards, who is the former national clinical director for cancer, but only two of the 150 indicators in the CQC’s new methodology currently address patient experience. Again, those indicators are generic. What plans does the CQC have to ensure that patient experience of individual services, including cancer services, is assessed? Will the chief inspector of hospitals work with the chief inspectors of social care and GPs to ensure that we join up our thinking in that area?
I will conclude on an important point relating to what the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay said. We must ensure that we address patient experience locally and on the ground, not just nationally. Although holding CCGs to account and the CQC’s monitoring of hospitals are important, they essentially happen after the event—after care has been delivered. We must ensure that patient experience is at the heart of what all parts of the NHS and all staff do day in, day out. I have two suggestions for how we can make that happen.
First, we have to transform the use of what I call real-time patient feedback—not annual surveys or annual monitoring, but day in, day out use of patient feedback. There are brilliant services such as Patient Opinion, which allows patients to tell their story, positive or negative, online, by phone or in writing. Hospitals, GPs and social care providers that register with Patient Opinion can see what people are saying about them on that same day. I know because I used the service when I had to make an unfortunate visit to an urgent care centre this time last year. Patient Opinion is a powerful tool for individual patients to tell their story, for members of the public to see what others are saying about their service and for staff to hear first-hand, immediately what they can do to improve the quality of care. What plans do the Government have to encourage greater use of such services across the NHS and social care?
Secondly, the education and training of NHS staff is important. Last week, I visited the university of Worcester, which is doing pioneering work. Patients and users help to interview student nurses who apply for the course to ensure that they have the right values and attitude. Patients and users help to develop the curriculum used to train student nurses and other health professionals to ensure that it covers the issues that really matter to patients. Patients and users are also an integral part of the course, and they help with the training process.
In Leicester, we also have a groundbreaking project between De Montfort university and Macmillan Cancer Support in which students training to be nurses, NHS managers or pharmacists volunteer for Macmillan. Those students get vital skills and experience of communicating with cancer patients. How will the Government ensure that such work to improve the skills, knowledge, experience and training of staff starts when they begin working for health services? What vital work is being done to hold CCGs to account and to monitor the quality of care in hospitals?
Albert Owen (in the Chair)
I also congratulate the Minister and welcome her to her new role.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)
Thank you, Mr Owen. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) on securing this debate. I am conscious that I am still relatively new to my post—I am in my fourth week—so if I am unable to respond in total detail to some of the points raised, I will undertake to get back to the relevant hon. Members.
This has been a very good debate. Many extremely constructive points have been made, and there have been some thoughtful contributions. Members, some of whom have not been able to stay for the end, have brought great insight and experience to the topic.
Cancer patient experience is close to our hearts, and I echo the tributes paid to NHS staff and, particularly, to the charities that campaign in this area. We have all taken part in moonwalks and Macmillan Cancer Support fundraisers or gone round at the back of the race for life year after year talking to cancer survivors and people running or walking with the names of loved ones on their chests, and we know what amazing work those charities do, particularly on highlighting patient experience.
In England, each year more than 250,000 people receive a cancer diagnosis. As we have heard this morning, being diagnosed with cancer can be a traumatic experience. Like the shadow Minister, a dear friend of mine has just had that experience, so I am going on that journey with my friend to understand how she will be cared for and treated as she goes through what I hope will be a full recovery.
We know that receiving personal care that is responsive to people’s needs is vital. The Government have committed to making England a global leader in producing great cancer outcomes. We are making strides, but we know there is further to go. We are improving access to treatments, including investing £750 million during this Parliament, and we are strongly committed to saving an additional 5,000 lives by 2015.
The cancer outcomes strategy remains at the core of what we are doing and what we hold the NHS to account for in terms of delivering. However, if the NHS is to deliver high-quality care, patients’ voices and experiences are vital, and I could not agree more with what everyone has said about the end-to-end experience of care being important and a big part of recovery.
My hon. Friend rightly asked that the NHS give parity of esteem to the patient experience, alongside patient safety and clinical effectiveness. I agree, and through the mandate we have asked NHS England to deliver continued improvement in patients’ experience of care. Domain 4, which is one of the key areas of the NHS outcomes framework, is
“Ensuring that people have a positive experience of care”.
I reassure my hon. Friend that that is of equal importance to the other key areas.
Mr Clappison
I was remiss in not welcoming the Minister to her post. I welcome her most warmly, and I am sure she will do an excellent job. Will she take on board the fundamental plea made by Macmillan Cancer Support and echoed in the debate that the patient experience be put at the heart of the inspection process and of the assessment of different NHS organisations? Will she ensure that that is made a real priority?
Jane Ellison
Absolutely, and I will talk a little about some of the ways in which that will be done, but I would make the point that the Secretary of State has made this an absolute priority. He could not have been clearer recently about the priority that the Government and he personally put on the patient experience. We have never given such high-profile attention to talking about the patient experience and patient care. I hope that gives some reassurance, but I will talk later about some specifics.
In the same vein, let me pick up some of the shadow Minister’s interesting points. I was interested in some of the initiatives she mentioned. Again, they all feed into the idea of putting patient care and the patient experience absolutely at the heart of things. I certainly undertake to look at some of the specific local examples she highlighted.
To drive a good patient experience, we must listen to patients’ voices. In December 2010, the Government published the first national cancer patient experience survey report. The survey was the first cancer patient survey to take place for six years, the first to involve patients with all types of cancer and the first national survey explicitly to use the word “cancer”. The survey revealed that, while there had been substantial improvements in the patient experience since 2000, there are still unacceptable variations in the quality of care people receive, as hon. Members have highlighted.
To drive improvement locally, reports were produced for individual trusts. This is where the transparency agenda the Government set such store by is really important. The data are openly available and published, and all of us—not just people in the NHS, but hon. Members, local councillors and local government—can hold commissioners and providers to account, based on that openly published data at local trust level. Commissioners and providers can be directly challenged and incentivised to improve. Providers can benchmark their performance against each other’s. Quality Health, which provided the survey, also visits poor-performing trusts to discuss their results in detail. A number of those discussions have led to really quick improvements in local outcomes, but there is always more to do.
The cancer outcomes strategy, which we published in January 2011, built on those results. We have acted to improve the patient experience at national level by implementing the cancer information prescriptions programme and expanding the Connected national advanced communications skills programme, which is a bit of a mouthful, but which is essentially about supporting thousands of clinicians to work more effectively with patients, picking up the many issues highlighted by my hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and others regarding how seemingly small issues and small aspects of communication actually matter an awful lot at an intensely difficult time for patients and their families.
Since 1 April this year, NHS England has been responsible for delivering improvements in the cancer patient experience. That is one reason why I cannot just stand here and make particular commitments. Such debates are, however, useful because they help NHS England to know parliamentarians’ priorities in terms of where it should focus some of its attention.
Building on the work of the 2010 and 2012 patient experience surveys, NHS England published its report on the 2013 survey at the end of August. It showed improvements in many areas and some very positive experiences of aspects of care, including on privacy, being treated with respect and being listened to. Overall, 88% of cancer patients reported their care had been excellent or good, and there were some real highlights. As my hon. Friend highlighted, some of the percentages in key areas were in the 80s and 90s, although we are obviously interested in the areas where we could do better.
It is clear that many trusts acted on the findings between 2010 and 2013, and they are to be congratulated on that. Many have reorganised their pathways and services, retrained staff and created further mechanisms for patients. Cancer charities have been involved in further analysing the data to understand particular aspects of care and particular groups of patients and to create new information for patients, where needed. Much of that has been touched on this morning.
We have also looked at some of the variations in care. The hon. Member for Strangford and others mentioned care plans. Over the past three years, more work has been done on them, but given that only 22% of patients were offered care plans, everyone would acknowledge considerable improvement is still needed.
NHS England has convened a cancer patient experience advisory group to get direct input on priorities for service improvement. The group includes clinicians, experts concerned with cancer care and, crucially, patients. The group’s first meeting has now taken place. It examined the results of the 2013 survey, and actions have been agreed. As a result, NHS Improving Quality will develop a rapid-response programme to visit trusts with poor scores to discuss results and suggest improvements. I hope that gives Members some assurance about the fact that the survey does not just sit there; it is very much being acted on.
NHS England also wants to highlight high-performing trusts and identify best practice. It will put that information into toolkits that other trusts can use to develop better service in response to poor scores. NHS England is also encouraging the use of the Macmillan values-based standard and other patient-led tools, which engage patients and staff in co-creating and measuring some of the things that matter so much with regard to dignity and respect. All organisations involved in delivering care are urged to look at the survey and take it extremely seriously.
Time is a little short, so I will try to answer some of the specific questions raised. First, we recognise that making relational care a priority is important. That includes communication, trusting nurses and all the other things that have been talked about today. Rather than include references in the mandate, we have included important pledges in the NHS constitution, setting out what patients have a right to expect. All NHS services have a duty under the constitution when carrying out their functions, and we have a range of indicators to capture how well the NHS is performing in delivering dignified and personal care.
On the CQC inspection regime, I can reassure my hon. Friend that the CQC has made a commitment to listen and to take the experiences of people using services very much to heart. The new inspection teams include trained members of the public called “experts by experience”. In addition to public listening events, that will be an important way of putting patient experience at the heart of inspections.
A specific question was asked about including secondary breast cancer in the survey. NHS England is trying to ensure the survey catches the needs of all patients and looks across all cancers, but my hon. Friend’s point will have been taken.
I was asked about the future of the survey, including by the shadow Minister. NHS England has confirmed it will be run in 2014. The organisation will then undertake a review of all the surveys it runs. The debate will have highlighted to it the value that so many people place on the survey and the important role it has played in driving improvement. I cannot say whether NHS England will continue it, but I will certainly vividly describe to NHS England how strongly Members feel and what role they think the survey has had in driving change.
My hon. Friend’s last question was about using the survey to improve cancer care, and I have alluded to the ways in which we are trying to do that. In particular, I give him the assurance that the patient experience, putting the patient first and championing their care is absolutely at the heart of what all of us at the Department of Health are doing, taking our lead from the Secretary of State.
I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting the issue, and I echo his words from the start of the debate. I, too, thank the NHS staff and charities that do such amazing work in this area, and I hope hon. Members will continue to debate this important topic.
Albert Owen (in the Chair)
I am grateful to the Minister, the sponsor of the debate and all the Members who took part.
Jam and Similar Products (England) Regulations 2003
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
I am concerned that this debate may herald the end of the British breakfast as we know it. Following a consultation, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has ordered a reduction in the permitted sugar level for jams, jellies and marmalades from 60% to 50%, and the removal of the UK national limit for reduced-sugar jam and of the national provisions for curds and mincemeat. The focus of my opposition is the reduction of the permitted sugar levels for jams, jellies and marmalades, and the removal of the national provisions for curds and mincemeat, which sounds their death knell.
Reducing permitted sugar levels from 60% to 50% would in time destroy the characteristic quality of British jams, jellies and marmalades, and could mislead consumers. We all know what we expect when we go to the supermarket: something of beautiful quality with beautiful colour, with a shelf life of about a year. Traditional jams use cooked fruit, without additives—that is important: the quality of those preserves is determined by the proportions of sugar, fruit, pectin and acid. If the total sugar percentage is reduced, the characteristic gel in the consistency of jams, jellies and marmalades will be lost, and the result will be a homogenised, spreadable sludge, bearing no resemblance to the product we know and enjoy in England as British jam.
Scientists who worked at Long Ashton agricultural research station at the university of Bristol in the 1920s examined the shelf life of jam and other, similar products. The recommendation that they made was for a minimum sugar content of 60%, regardless of the type of fruit used in the recipe. That ensured a good shelf life of at least a year. The 60% level has its origin not in Brussels, as many people think, but in Bristol.
Of course, many people are slightly squeamish about the sort of thing that my grandmother would do—opening jam that had not been used for a couple of months and scooping the top off, where it had fermented slightly. Many people fear greatly, for food safety reasons, that they should not eat jam when there is a bit of fluff on the top, but it is important to understand that jam has a shelf life of a year.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for bringing this important and interesting subject to the House. Can she put the recommendation into context? Many recommendations, good and bad, make their way into the annals of Brussels. Not all of them come out of the sausage machine as legislation. What stage has the idea reached, and does the hon. Lady’s presence here today, outlining its daftness, mean that there is scope to stop it in its tracks?
Tessa Munt
I rather hope so. That is a question that the Minister will be able to answer. I understand that he signed the order last week, but that the statutory instrument has not been put before Parliament. I hope we can stop it dead in its tracks.
As well as today’s debate, there has been an amazing amount of publicity, including my debates with the Minister this morning on Radio Somerset and Radio Devon—and I have a little list of people who want to talk to me about jam later today. I suspect that all that shows that the public are greatly interested. Sometimes, Departments want to slide regulations through, and those things do not always hit the public. We do not all read the Parliament website and DEFRA press releases. I forgive the Minister that, but it is good that we are having the debate.
The new regulations are part of the Government’s red tape challenge to reduce the regulatory burden on industry—particularly on small and medium-sized businesses. They revise the Jam and Similar Products (England) Regulations 2003, which I regard as completely adequate. Those regulations state that the percentage of soluble solids content for jams, jellies and marmalades must be 60% unless the product is one with reduced sugar, when it has a permitted percentage of between 25% and 50%.
There will be encouragement to make more reduced sugar products, as they might be perceived as more healthy. Some jam manufacturers have urged caution with the percentage. The Department’s impact assessment document for the new regulations cited a potential for increasing the risk of spoilage. Currently, reduced-sugar products, with a percentage of 25% to 50%, may contain chemical additives to ensure that they have a good shelf life, which sugar will give naturally. Potassium sorbate or E202 will be added if we reduce the level of sugar in jam.
At a time when public attention is being directed to the content of food, it seems inadvisable to encourage the unnecessary production of food items with additives and artificial flavours. With a 60% sugar content, the colours of sweet preserves are bright and the fruit is fantastic. A lower percentage produces products with a darker, muddier colour, which may affect consumer confidence in a well known British product. In addition, if the consistency lacks the characteristic gel, and is more like that of a fruit spread or fruit butter, consumer confidence in the properties of jam and other products may be lost. I urge the Minister to consider calling things fruit spread or fruit butter, as happens on the continent.
The 50% permitted sugar level will be lower than the 55% minimum adopted by France and Germany; something similar is done in America as well. The jams produced by those countries have always been different from ours. I spent some of my summer in France, and what they call jam is completely different from what we expect to pluck from the shelves in shops, farm stores and supermarkets.
Historically, continental jams and similar products have been made using completely different methods. The countries I mentioned do not make products whose consistency has the characteristic British gel; to make their jams, fruit and sugar are cooked together or soaked and then cooked together. They are referred to as soft set products, and have a loose, almost pouring consistency.
British jams are traditionally made in two stages. The fruit is cooked, either with or without water, to extract any acid and pectin. Sugar is added to the cooked mixture, dissolved and then boiled to a setting point. Marmalades are made by first cooking the citrus fruit in water and then dissolving sugar into the cooked mixture and boiling it to a set. Jellies are made by cooking fruit in water and straining the cooked mixture through a jelly bag. The residual juice is boiled with sugar to a setting point. We in Britain love our jams, jellies and marmalades to be traditionally made, to produce a natural set.
The consumer was clearly protected by the Jam and Similar Products (England) Regulations 2003. A product labelled as jam had 60% sugar and consequently had the traditional characteristics I have described. Reduced-sugar jams had to be labelled as such, which alerted the consumer to the fact that they were a different product.
There is no appetite for a reduction among some of the high quality manufacturers in England, Scotland and Wales—notably Wilkin and Sons of Tiptree, Mackays, and Wendy Brandon Handmade Preserves; I note that the hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who has Tiptree in her constituency, is present for the debate. The regulations have been driven by a small number of small producers to increase their sales of apple-based spreads, which they want to label as jam. They are nothing like traditional British jam—I have tasted them. Given the high acid and pectin properties in cooking apples, it is possible to set the product with less sugar, but that does not apply to all fruits, as the pectin and acid content varies between them.
As a member of the women’s institute of Mark in Somerset, I am curious to know how the National Federation of Women’s Institutes responded to the regulations. Historically, the WI is the best known organisation to give instruction—to its members and the wider public—on the characteristics of sweet preserves. Its publication “On With The Show” lists the criteria for judging those preserves.
I understand that out of the 132 organisations consulted by DEFRA, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes was one of a handful claiming to have received a consultation letter. Sadly, I understand that it declined to respond, but the WI will be left with its rules to consider. How will the new products be judged in competitions and how will preservation judges’ training courses be affected? I can only assume that the WI will leave its rules unchanged, as preserves with the traditional characteristics are the only naturally produced ones with a long shelf life.
Deregulation of the provisions for curds and mincemeat, as listed in the 2003 regulations, would stimulate the creation of other products labelled as curds and mincemeat. In 2003, DEFRA asked the industry whether it wished to retain the national rules for curds and mincemeat, and the overwhelming response was yes. At the time, the industry felt that there was a need to set minimum rules to ensure the quality of the products and to prevent poor quality or inferior substitutes. The 2003 regulations included a minimum sugar content of 65% for curds and mincemeat. Those rules were notified to the European Commission, as required, and there were no objections to the UK’s setting rules in that area. Curds and mincemeat have continued to be UK-specific products.
In spite of that, DEFRA’s impact assessment for the new regulations suggested that the deregulation of curds and mincemeat would cut red tape and free the industry to innovate and/or reformulate, provided that the customer was not being misled. Curds and mincemeat are uniquely British, with their origins firmly established for centuries; they are not part of the culinary culture of other European Union member states.
Curds and mincemeat are made using a small list of specific ingredients. Mincemeat has a history traceable back to the late 17th century, in the period following Cromwell’s two-year ban on Christmas festivities. After his death, and once Christmas had been reinstated as a festival, the mincemeat that we know today was introduced—a product with a quantity of vine fruits, sugar, citrus peel, suet or equivalent fat, and optional alcohol.
Fruit curds, lemon curd in particular, became well known in England in the late 1800s. Recipes with eggs, butter, sugar and fruit were called transparent puddings; the method of storing them in jars became popular in the 19th century. Fruit curds are an emulsion of edible fat, sugar, whole egg or egg yolks—or both—and fruit. The 2003 regulations specify percentages of ingredients for the quantity of fat and eggs for every 1,000 grams of the finished product. The quantity of fruit is sufficient to characterise the finished product.
For mincemeat, the 2003 regulations specify the quantity of vine fruit, suet and citrus peel used for every 1,000 grams. Curds and mincemeat have a soluble dry matter of 65%, unless they are reduced-sugar products. Any product with less than 65% is labelled as a “low sugar substitute”. Deregulation would stimulate the introduction of products materially different from the existing definitions of curds and mincemeat. There is no case for deregulating curds and mincemeat.
I have some particular questions for the Minister. The 2003 regulations were based on scientific research. Is the Minister aware of any published research that supports the new regulations? For producers, there is an attraction in using the words “jam”, “marmalade”, “jelly”, “mincemeat” and “curd”—how can DEFRA be confident that consumers will not be misled when lower-sugar fruit spreads are labelled as jam, despite being very different from traditional jams?
I understand that the Minister has signed the proposals, but the statutory instrument has yet to be laid before Parliament. How can we keep the jam regulations unchanged? Now that the matter has received additional public interest and scrutiny, what should members of the public do to change the Department’s mind? What criteria will the Secretary of State or the Minister be using to review the regulations?
If we really want to have continental jam, we can go to the continent, or we can buy it. So far, I have resisted the temptation to use all the amazing jokes that have come out—
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. She has already highlighted the fact that the world’s greatest jams and marmalades are made in my constituency, in Tiptree. There is no doubt that we have the best jams in the world, and we export a lot of them. Does she not agree that the Government should be working with producers with a great international reputation for exporting their jams throughout the world, so that we can increase our profile and market share internationally and outcompete Europe?
Tessa Munt
I could not agree more. I do not agree with the idea that the new proposals will encourage exports; we will end up exporting, and importing, more gloop, as opposed to having something that we all know well—British jam, jelly, marmalade, curds and mincemeat are completely classic British products. If we want to export them, we need to help people to do so, but we need to keep the quality and the standard of what we see on the British breakfast table.
As I was about to say, the Minister seems to have found himself in a sticky situation, or in a bit of a jam. Jam today, please, but I would like to see jam tomorrow as well.
Albert Owen (in the Chair)
I call the Minister to entertain us by spreading the DEFRA word.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)
Thank you, Mr Owen. I also thank the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) for securing the debate, which has indeed gathered a bit of interest. The hon. Lady and I had a dry run of this discussion in the media this morning. I can understand her concerns about some elements of the proposed changes, but I feel that there is a degree of role reversal—as a Conservative who is sceptical about having the EU telling us what to do, I am all up for loosening regulations and letting markets decide, so to hear a Lib Dem taking such a strident position on the issue was surprising.
I come from a family involved in fruit farming. The jam industry is itself important, but having it as an outlet, a market, for the fruit industry is also important. One of the things that I learned, to my cost, while trying to grow strawberries is that a lot of things can go wrong in the fruit industry, whether bad weather, bruising of fruit or pallets of fruit tipping over, so having the jam industry market for some of the damaged fruit is very important. I ought to let the House know that my family’s business, Trevaskis Farm, makes jam for sale in small quantities through the farm shop. I have a little knowledge of the area through that.
To provide the context, the proposed changes to the regulations are part of DEFRA’s contribution to the Government’s red tape challenge initiative. The regulations were one of a number that were identified under the food and hospitality theme that could benefit from improvement and where potential savings could be delivered to businesses. The jam regulations were identified as an area in which we could consider changes that might provide businesses with greater flexibility and less restrictive rules.
One impetus behind the change was a request by some in the industry for the UK to consider taking up an optional derogation in the EU jam directive that permits—but, crucially, does not require—a sugar level lower than 60% to be set, which is something that a number of other member states have already done. The derogation allows member states to set a lower minimum sugar level for jam and similar products.
Organisations such as the Food Processors Association, an organisation that incorporates the United Kingdom Sweet Spreads Association and represents many in the jam industry, were keen for the Government to amend the regulations to ensure that the UK was on a more level footing with other major EU jam manufacturing countries, such as France and Germany.
Tessa Munt
The clue is in the title, the Sweet Spreads Association, and that is not jam. The Minister should come cooking with me—I do not know what else I can do, but suggest a master class in jam cookery in DEFRA. Let us have a go. Frankly, if people want to call something a fruit or sweet spread, they may, but they should not be calling that stuff jam.
George Eustice
All right. Since that original request, which was for a minimum permitted sugar level of 55%, others have requested that we consider lowering the minimum permitted level even further, to 50%, which would remove the so-called no man’s land that currently exists between sweet spread products, which are supposed to be below 50%, and jam products, which are supposed to be 60% or above.
After considering all the responses, we decided to reduce the minimum permitted sugar level for jam from 60% to 50%, but to retain the national provisions for fruit curds and mincemeat—an issue that the hon. Lady raised later in her speech. That will all be subject to the necessary clearances. The reduction in the minimum permitted sugar level to 50%, however, delivers the greatest flexibility to the industry as a whole, in a way that will not be detrimental to those who are in compliance with the existing regulations and can continue to make their jam as they do now.
The hon. Lady has expressed concerns about the possible impact on British jam, but I believe in the market—the market will dictate what does and does not sell. I mentioned earlier that my own family’s farm business produces small quantities of jam for sale through the farm shop. I took the liberty of talking last night to my mother, who is in charge of making the jams. She said that there has been a trend among consumers over the past 10 to 15 years to seek out products with lower sugar levels. They want products with more fruit and less sugar. We should not resist that, if there is a market demand for such products. They do not have to be the gunge or dreadful products that the hon. Lady mentioned —I assure her that the products sold in our farm shop are very good.
Tessa Munt
I have been contacted by diabetics and others who require products with a reduced sugar level and that is fine, but they are always accurately labelled on supermarket shelves and in farm shops as reduced-sugar jam. People know what they are buying. But if everything with a minimum sugar level of 50% and above can be called jam, there will be utter confusion about what is really jam and what is a fruit spread or whatever.
George Eustice
I understand that. The sugar content of a fruit spread is supposed to be below 50%, so we are removing that no man’s land between 50% and 60% and allowing products with a sugar content of below 60% but above 50% to be labelled as jam.
My hon. Friend pointed out that the 60:40 sugar-to-fruit ratio was recommended following research at the Long Ashton research station in Bristol in the 1920s. That was a long time ago and since then there have been technical advances and recipe experimentation. In the last few years, our market has included fruit spreads and jam with a sugar level of less than 60% with no increased spoilage reported. The reduction of the minimum requirement to 50% removes the current gap for products that fall into the 50% to 59% category. The flexibility delivered by the change will help to ensure that British jam manufacturers remain competitive because they will have the option to market their jam products with a higher fruit content on a level playing field with other member states.
It is worth reiterating that we are talking about a minimum permitted sugar level. That does not mean that existing manufacturers must work to the new minimum.
Mr Ellwood
I congratulate the Minister on his position. I do not know whether the Prime Minister had the foresight to appoint him knowing that this question about jam was coming his way. He seems perfectly placed to take the matter forward. If the producers of “Celebrity Masterchef” or the “Great British Bake Off” are watching, there may be some invitations coming through to pursue it further.
The Minister said that manufacturers, wherever they are based, in Dorset as well as other places around Britain, may continue to do what they are doing now. Will he confirm that no one in the industry will be affected by the prospect of a change in the regulations and that they may continue to do what they are doing now?
George Eustice
That is the case because these are minimum not maximum requirements. If there were a maximum requirement requiring all jams to have 50% sugar we would be having a totally different discussion. We are discussing minimum requirements and giving the industry flexibility. Those who want to develop products with a lower sugar level that they can market in Europe will be able to do so, and traditional jam manufacturers who want to retain a 60% level, are resistant to any change and do not accept that there have been changes in techniques or recipes may continue as at present and market their products as traditional jam with a premium in the market.
Tessa Munt
If the minimum level is set at 50%, all the organisations that are making jam with less than 60% sugar will be entitled under the regulations to call their products “jam”, not “reduced-sugar jam” or whatever else they are attempting to make. We need that clarity for the British public’s attachment to jam and what it means. I have bought stuff from supermarket shelves that is like mud—it has lost its colour, it is not the right texture and it is a completely different product. All those products will be entitled to be called jam.
George Eustice
I do not think it is in any company’s interest to market products that, to use my hon. Friend’s words, taste like mud. We must let the market decide. Makers of brands who passionately believe that a quality product must have 60% sugar will carry on with that. Nothing in the change will affect that. If my hon. Friend is right and brands with a lower sugar content will have an inferior product and if customers conclude that, as she suggested, they taste like mud, they will not buy it again. The market for that product will be small. In a free market economy, we should have a light-touch approach to regulation, and that has come out of the Government’s red-tape challenge. The market must decide. If my hon. Friend is right, the market for such products will be small.
Our changes will provide jam businesses with increased flexibility. We are keen to help small businesses that are trying to break into the market, and some exciting new products are coming on to the market based on the unique British Bramley apple. Jams made from it set more easily because of its high pectin content and do not need quite as much sugar. My hon. Friend said that the market for such products is small, but an internet search showed quite a number of products using Bramley apples as part of a mixed jam, such as Bramley and blackcurrant and Bramley and blackberry. There are exciting prospects for them, and there is nothing more British than the Bramley apply. We are almost unique in Europe in having specialist culinary apples rather than just generic apples. This is a good potential market for our excellent Bramley apples.
The regulations will be improved in respect of reduced-sugar jams. Since 2006, when new regulations on nutrition and health claims were introduced, there has been an overlap with the 2003 regulations that specify that a reduced-sugar jam must have a sugar content of between 25% and 50%. In contrast, the nutrition and health claims rules require all products labelled “reduced sugar” to have at least a 30% energy reduction compared with a standard product. To sort out this discrepancy, we are doing away with the specific rules for reduced-sugar jams so that they will need to comply only with the same rules as all other foods. That will provide improved clarity for the industry and consumers, and respondents to our consultation agreed it would be much simpler to work with one set of rules in this area.
We consulted on the proposed changes earlier in 2013 and received some useful contributions. One option that provoked strong opinions was in response to whether the UK’s national provisions for fruit curds and mincemeat—the sort in mince pies—were still useful or whether they could be removed. I can reassure my hon. Friend, who highlighted many concerns, that although she may not agree with our proposals to reduce the minimum sugar content of jam, we have acted on the evidence put to the Department and we will not change the regulations on fruit curds or mincemeat.
The main justifications cited were that curd and mincemeat standards help to maintain the production of these uniquely British products whose origins are firmly established and go back centuries. They are not part of other member states’ culinary culture and UK producers manufacture them to traditional recipes. The current rules reflect those practices.
The standards provide an important yardstick and their removal could result in a reduction in quality and could stimulate the introduction of products that are materially different from our current traditional curds and mincemeat products. So, as a direct result of the cogent arguments put forward in the consultation process, including a response from my hon. Friend’s constituent, Mrs Lloyd, we will retain unchanged the national provisions for fruit curds and mincemeat. That decision is positive and demonstrates the benefit of consultation to help to ensure that the final policy decision is fit for purpose.
Mr Ellwood
At the heart of the matter is a description of what is on the shelf so that people can recognise the sugar content and whether it is really British jam or from elsewhere with a different content. Will the Minister consider a jam kitemark or indication so that people can recognise true jam as defined at present and the different spreads that we may see more of from the continent?
George Eustice
As I said, I am a great believer in the market. Individual jam manufacturers who pride themselves on their brand and who passionately believe that jam must have 60% sugar to be good will be able to market their product as a niche, specialist product. If there is no market for products with less than 60% sugar, it will not develop. It is for the industry voluntarily to come together if they want to and jointly market traditional jams. I welcome this important debate, which has provided exactly the detailed scrutiny that the House should undertake.
Electric Vehicles (Vulnerable Road Users)
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
It is a great honour to introduce this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Hood, and I am grateful to colleagues for coming along today.
In June this year, at the request of a number of my constituents, I attended a reception, here in Parliament, for the “Safe and Sound” campaign run by Guide Dogs. It was there that I was alerted to the dangers faced by blind and partially sighted people from silent electric cars. The development of electric and hybrid vehicles is very much welcome across the country; they reduce the cost to motorists who buy them, and they are important for our greener environment. I have to say, parochially, that their success is particularly important to the economy of my region, the north-east, where Nissan in Sunderland has invested more than £400 million in the development of the Leaf electric vehicle. In addition, the Government have pledged more than £800 million in subsidies for the ultra-low emission market.
However, the downside to such vehicles is that they are so quiet that they pose a danger to members of the public, and particularly the elderly, the blind and the partially sighted, all of whom rely on hearing sound to judge when it is safe to cross the road. Guide Dogs “Silent but Deadly” report, which is an excellent report that I am sure everyone here today has read, states:
“If you can’t see or hear a vehicle approaching, how do you ‘stop, look and listen’ to stay safe?”
Statistics and research show that electric cars pose a greater threat to vulnerable road users than average vehicles. Research conducted by the University of California showed that some quiet vehicles travelling at low speeds cannot be heard until they are just one second away from impact with a pedestrian.
Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this enormously important debate. As well as this issue being important for those who suffer from hearing or sight impairment, would she also add to her list of those who are vulnerable from these otherwise very welcome vehicles, children and cyclists, who often rely on the noise of an approaching vehicle to alert them to the fact that something is behind them?
Mrs Glindon
I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. It is understated, or perhaps more widely taken for granted, that those people are also vulnerable—in fact, who among us are not? We must remember that being able to hear a vehicle also allows road users to judge the direction and speed of nearby traffic, which are crucial factors in deciding when it is safe to cross the road. For all pedestrians, 80% of our perception to danger is from our hearing.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing this matter to the Chamber for our consideration. I suspect that every one of us in the House have had the opportunity to do a walk with the Guide Dogs association, where we put on a blindfold and do a 2-mile walk through a very busy town. If ever an illustration was needed of how dangerous it is for a blind person, and how vulnerable they are, that is one way in which the message is brought home very quickly. Does she feel that when it comes to electric cars, there is an onus on the Government—perhaps the Minister will address this point today—to have some sort of method of warning people, whatever that may be? I am not an expert, but blind people and vulnerable people need to be protected on roads and on footpaths.
Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)
Order. For future reference, that sounded more like a speech than an intervention. I hope that any other intervention will be a lot shorter than that.
Mrs Glindon
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is right, and the tenet of our debate today is to ask the Government to do more. I have to confess that I have not yet done a walk around with a blindfold on, but I know people who have, and I do not think that any of us here who are blessed to have our sight can imagine what it is like or what the dangers are until we have experienced what people with poor sight or no sight have to experience.
Research by the TAS Partnership that was published only last month shows that electric and hybrid vehicles were involved in 25% more collisions, causing injury to pedestrians, between 2010 and 2012, than conventional vehicles. Moreover, between 2005 and 2008, crashes involving quiet vehicles trebled. In 2011, research for the Department for Transport found that electric and hybrid vehicles were far more difficult to detect than internal combustion engine vehicles at the lowest steady speed and, when pulling away from rest, at the lowest speed. EU research has shown that 93% of blind and partially sighted people have experienced difficulties with electric vehicles.
All those figures are very concerning. The fact that people have been injured in accidents with these vehicles is frightening enough, but as Guide Dogs has pointed out, loss of confidence is also a massive problem for blind and partially sighted people, and a bad experience, as already described, could ultimately lead to someone not wanting to leave their home, and therefore losing their independence. Many blind and partially sighted people are easily discouraged from independent mobility if any element of their journey is adversely impacted by outside factors. Guide Dogs estimates that about 180,000 blind and partially sighted people never leave home alone.
Research by the eVADER—electric vehicle alert for detection and emergency response—project found that 91% of blind and partially sighed people want to see quiet vehicles recognised as a problem, and with 81% of the general public, according to a survey by Orange, wanting electric vehicles to emit a noise at a level equivalent to conventional vehicles, it is surely time for the Government to act.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way and I welcome this debate. Is she aware of any evidence that the situation has resulted in people with electric cars getting higher insurance premiums? If there have been more accidents, insurance premiums will be higher. That would be an incentive for makers of these cars to increase the noise levels, so that in future, people will not get higher insurance premiums if they buy these cars and are more likely to have an accident.
Mrs Glindon
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Unfortunately, I have not looked at insurance, and it has not come up in anything that I have looked at, but that seems to be a logical step to take and a convincing argument, if not for insurers—well, even an insurer would have to pay out, so I hope that the Minister will say something about that.
In 2010, Japan and the United States legislated for alert systems to be put into cars. Any such system is cheap and simple to fit, and in the UK it would add only about £20 to the cost of a car. I am sure that everyone here would agree that that is a very small price to pay for road safety.
In February this year, Members of the European Parliament voted for an amendment to the EU regulation on the sound level of motor vehicles to make acoustic vehicle alerting systems mandatory for all quiet vehicles. That amendment is now being negotiated by the European Commission, European Council and European Parliament. The UN Economic Commission for Europe is developing a global technical regulation to specify standards for AVAS around the world. It will be finalised next year and will form the basis of the EU regulation, but unfortunately it seems that our Government are pushing for only the voluntary introduction of AVAS and have reservations about making those systems mandatory.
I ask the Minister to say why the Government think that making the systems mandatory will place a financial burden on car manufacturers when, as I said, the inclusion of such a system will add only £20 to the cost of a car. Motor manufacturing companies are not averse to developing alert systems. Nissan, which I make no apology for mentioning again because it is a local car company and therefore I have been in contact with it, has been researching and working with cognitive and acoustic psychologists to produce a practical system that is safe and environmentally friendly. Many technical issues need to be considered with regard to the right sound in order to be heard without encroaching on the environment, but it is good to see that companies such as Nissan, which has been so successful, are being proactive in this field.
It was greatly concerning to learn that the Government do not accept the national and international evidence of which I have spoken. It does show a link between silent vehicles and a road safety threat to vulnerable road users. Does the Minister think that the opinions of organisations such as Guide Dogs, the Automobile Association and the Royal Automobile Club are not trustworthy on this matter?
The next EU negotiation on the matter will be on 5 November, and an agreement must be reached by the time of the next Transport Council in December in order to be finalised within this EU Parliament. There are already nearly 3,000 electric cars and more than 133,000 hybrid vehicles on our roads. What commitment will the Minister give to make AVAS in electric vehicles mandatory, so that the many more motorists who will be buying these cars and other road users, especially the most vulnerable, can all be confident that they will be able to travel safely in the future? I hope that he does not agree with his predecessor—now the Minister for Crime Prevention—who, in a reply in July to a letter that I had sent him, said:
“To date the number of electric and hybrid electric vehicles on the road is small compared to conventional vehicles and more data will need to be gathered over the next few years before we can be certain of the best approach.”
As I said, the Government have already committed more than £800 million. Car manufacturers are committing large sums. People are buying these cars. We shall see many more of them on the roads. However, the numbers of people who are vulnerable—elderly people, children, cyclists and the blind and visually impaired—are not decreasing. Those people remain vulnerable, and I hope that the Minister will listen today to what all these people feel.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on achieving the debate. She has made excellent points. It seems to me that now is the time to be taking action, before we have the very rapid rise in the number of these vehicles, which I gleefully anticipate. We have only to look at how fearful our elderly residents are of people on bicycles riding around, especially when they are on pavements. I go to meetings that are packed out with elderly people saying, “Why don’t cyclists use their bells?” There is real fear out there, and I concur that this is a matter of urgency now.
Mrs Glindon
The hon. Lady just got in before I concluded. This debate has attracted an awful of attention outside Westminster. I thank Guide Dogs in particular for the work that it has done, because it has spurred on people such as me and, I am sure, other MPs to bring up this issue. Again, it is a timely issue, and I hope that the Minister will be able to send us away today feeling that he has listened and that very soon we will see mandatory systems, so that people who are blind or visually impaired and any other vulnerable road user will no longer have to fear that they have only one second to decide whether they should cross the road.
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
Unfortunately, Mr Hood, I cannot stay for the whole debate, but I trust that you will allow me to contribute on this very important issue. I hope that is in order. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) on calling this important debate. The issue is rapidly rising up the agenda as we approach the time when the EU will make its decision.
I say that I am fortunate, although I do not know whether I am fortunate or not, to have taken part in the blindfold test in my constituency. I had the privilege of walking blindfolded with a guide dog. I found the experience half terrifying. To put one’s trust in a guide dog and walk along the high street with no vision is terrifying—it was for me as an individual. At the same time, our ability to train these animals to assist people who are partially or wholly unsighted was inspiring, and it should be celebrated. However, we have a responsibility to ensure not only that such people have access to these animals, but that they are safe in their use of them on our high streets.
While I was walking along with my blindfold on, it became apparent to me that people have to make use of all their other senses to try to access the environment around them. Those include hearing and touch. I put my hands up to not being aware that when someone presses the button at a pedestrian crossing, there is a little button underneath that twists round and tells them via touch that it is safe to cross if they cannot hear the beepers or see the green man. It was a real education for me and something that drew me to the cause.
The Government are making some progress. First, we have a Minister with a track record on road safety. He has done an enormous amount of work on road safety during his parliamentary career. The Home Office is listening on the issue of attacks on assistance dogs, and we are making some progress on that. What we are discussing today is probably the last piece of the jigsaw—to try to help people in such circumstances to cope with electric vehicles that are silent.
I want to encourage my hon. Friend the Minister to think the matter through thoroughly and properly and ensure that we get to the right point, because we need to get the tone of the vehicle correct. If we get that tone wrong, it could cause nuisance in residential areas, but it needs to be audible to those who need to hear it. I hope that the Minister and his colleagues in Europe will give some thought to the decibel level. It is important to get that correct, so that members of the public can hear the vehicle coming without there being the antisocial effect of residents being woken at midnight.
Given how modern technology moves, I wonder whether it is possible not to have the vehicle emitting a noise on a motorway, for example, where there will not be pedestrians, and whether, once the vehicle reaches a particular speed level, that sound—
Mrs Glindon
I do not profess to be a very technical person, but I believe that the sound systems in these vehicles operate differently from normal car engines, whose sound can go throughout the whole of the atmosphere. The sound goes forwards or backwards, so it does not create the same noise pollution. That is what I am led to understand.
Mr Spencer
I am grateful for that intervention. That is exactly the sort of technology that we need to embrace. The sound needs to be projected forward to those people who are in danger.
Mr Leech
I was going to make a point similar to that made by the hon. Lady. Existing non-electric vehicles make quite a lot of noise. I do not think there is any suggestion that the noise created by some sort of warning system on an electric vehicle would be any more obtrusive than noise from existing petrol and diesel engines.
Mr Spencer
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. It is important to establish those facts while the discussions are ongoing.
My final point to the Minister is that we need to give some thought to retrospective action for silent vehicles already on the road. Should the law change? How do we encourage people in possession of a silent electric vehicle to fit kit that will assist others to hear it coming?
I congratulate the hon. Lady again on securing this important debate about an issue on which I hope we can make progress in the coming months.
Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Hood. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) on securing this important debate.
Silent cars, be they electric or hybrid vehicles, are becoming more and more popular and their number is increasing year on year. In 2006, more than 39,000 such cars were sold, and the latest study shows a growth rate of about 5% by 2012. The reasons for increasing demand include the EU policy objectives of reaching the 2020 target for reducing carbon emissions and rising consumer awareness of climate change and the need to reduce the use of fossil fuels. Car manufacturers are well aware of buying trends and aim to meet the expectations of consumers who want the benefits of lower fuel consumption and emissions.
We have all become accustomed to the traffic noise that the internal combustion engine causes—be it petrol or diesel, two or four stroke—but in the modern age, it has been made quieter by means of a reduction in moving parts or engine compartment noise dampening. Some cars still make a lot of noise and some owners still like to hear the roar of an engine—if you were the lucky owner of a Ferrari, wouldn’t you?
Electric and hybrid cars make little or no sound when running at low speeds and their use contributes to quieter urban areas. However, not everyone benefits from that innovation, and others’ needs must be considered. That group comprises people with visual and hearing impairments, children and older people and other road users, such as cyclists. They are all exposed to danger, because they are no longer warned by audible noise from a vehicle engine and may be unable to react accordingly. We are, after all, taught from an early age to cross the road safely by looking and listening.
Silent cars have created an unforeseen tension among car manufacturers, environmentalists and organisations representing pedestrians. Guide Dogs in the UK has raised concerns about the implications of hybrid and electric vehicles. As we heard from hon. Members, silent cars can limit the independence of blind and visually impaired people in everyday life. Guide dogs are equally vulnerable to the dangers of silent cars.
Children are exposed to the dangers of traffic daily. Most children involved in accidents are under 10 years of age. The risks raised by the distractions of playing in the street do not need to be stressed, and they are increased by the use of silent cars. The youngest children have great difficulty in assessing the speed of an approaching vehicle, and silent cars increase the difficulty, because speed cannot be associated with engine noise. It is not only children and pedestrians with visual impairments who are affected—cyclists, who might not look behind before making a manoeuvre, people listening to an iPod or using mobile phones and older people are all at risk if they do not hear a vehicle approaching.
Awareness is growing in the USA and Japan of the dangers of silent cars. General Motors has been working with the US National Federation of the Blind to develop a safe level of sound to alert pedestrians.
Mr Andrew Smith
My hon. Friend makes a persuasive speech. Does he agree that an important argument from an industry perspective is that, although motor manufacturers want to be consulted fully and are ingenious in bringing forward solutions to problems, there are advantages in the certainty of knowing where they stand, rather than the uncertainty of not knowing when a regulation is coming or whether it will be voluntary or mandatory?
Mr McKenzie
My right hon. Friend makes a good point. When changes have been made to vehicle regulations in the past, there has been an area of overlap or a time scale to allow manufacturers to bring in the change. The safety aspects of this matter would override giving a discretionary term to bring in changes.
General Motors looked at a vibrating sensor that transmits sounds as vibrations, but its effectiveness is dependent on the vehicle emitting a sound. Although sound is deemed a critical component for the increased safety of silent cars for vulnerable pedestrians and other road users, experts in the USA believe that such cars also need to indicate directions and show acceleration or deceleration.
In Europe, Guide Dogs has worked with Lotus Engineering Ltd on developing a synthesised sound system that can be added to vehicles. The UK Government commissioned the Transport Research Laboratory to conduct two items of work: first, assess whether there is an increase in the incidence of accidents between silent or quiet vehicles and pedestrians; and secondly, assess sound requirements through simulated trials.
Not everyone supports adding sound. Opponents claim that artificial sounds will do more to cause noise pollution in the environment than aid pedestrians or other road users. There needs to be a clear definition of a recognisable sound and set requirements, to ensure that the sound conveys distance, speed, acceleration or deceleration and the size of the vehicle to the pedestrian or other road user. Safety must be paramount.
The European Parliament voted in February 2013 to require manufacturers to install an acoustic vehicle alerting system in hybrid-electric and electric vehicles. The legislation has been through the Parliament and is awaiting First Reading at the EU Transport Council. Guide Dogs, which works hard to give blind and partially sighted people the confidence to get about, has intimated its concerns.
Guide dogs are trained to sit at kerbs and await their owner’s assessment of when it is safe to cross the road. If the owner cannot detect a vehicle, they do not know whether it is safe to cross. One near-miss with a quiet vehicle could severely hamper a person’s confidence, and the lack of certainty resulting from the presence of quiet vehicles could be enough to deter people from leaving their home alone, for fear of being involved in a collision. Studies have shown that some electric vehicles cannot be heard until one second before impact with a pedestrian.
Guide Dogs “Safe and Sound” campaign for audibly detectible vehicles calls for the installation of artificial engine noises on all quiet vehicles to ensure their audibility for pedestrians. It also asks EU decision makers to support the introduction of mandatory artificial engine noises at the earliest opportunity and reject the addition of a mandatory pause switch to the regulation. We all expect the Government to use their position on the Council of the European Union to ensure that quiet vehicles in the UK are made safe for our pedestrians.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) on securing this debate on an incredibly important issue, although, as she pointed out, it is not as simple as one would hope.
The growth of electric vehicles is good for not only our economy, but our environment, so we as MPs should welcome it. However, it is clear from the research, cited several times in the debate, that such vehicles bring with them hidden and silent dangers to pedestrians and cyclists.
I have visited my local Guide Dogs branch, as well as the Kent Association for the Blind, and I will speak later about the challenges they face from electric vehicles. It is important, though, that we remember other pedestrians in this debate. I do a lot locally and nationally on the issues that affect elderly people. We have to recognise that they face particular challenges when they try to cross the road or stay connected within their local community. We welcome the growth of these silent vehicles—the electric cars—but some of them are frightening our elderly population, especially those in the early stages of dementia, who perhaps do not understand some of the technological changes. We always need to be aware of the issues that face them.
Let us not forget children. When they are taught the green cross code, they are told to stop, look and listen. We grow up remembering those three words. We would all confess that in our busy days, we often look, although in London we might not even stop. But we almost always listen. If we are not giving people the opportunity to hear cars coming, we are automatically removing a key aspect of the green cross code. We need to pay close attention to that.
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
I wonder whether, like me, my hon. Friend has walked between this building and Portcullis House and had a Government vehicle suddenly appear at her knee because she did not hear it come through the archway. It is bad enough for people like us; it must be difficult for anyone who is elderly or has a sight problem. We must think about those people, because that situation is challenging.
Tracey Crouch
I agree entirely. I have always thought that the sudden appearance of those vehicles is a consequence of my voting record and that there is an intention from Ministers or Whips.
My hon. Friend raised the point of there being areas in all our communities with blind spots and blind corners. Whereas someone can hear a normal car, a lorry or even a cyclist who has the good sense to ring their bell as they go round a corner, these silent electric cars cannot be heard. We need to remember that disabled people and people with limited mobility cannot necessarily turn their heads to see what is behind them.
We also need to remember that people with learning disabilities, particularly those with autism, get used to certain sounds in the environment—they know what they are looking for and are comfortable with certain things. All of a sudden, an electric vehicle might completely unsettle everything they know and have learned. Because they do not necessarily have the immediate sense of danger that they would get from another vehicle, they become incredibly vulnerable.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the point about autism. Many autistic people will have acute hearing issues and the frequencies they are attuned to can be very different from those who have what is euphemistically called “normal hearing”. Her point is powerful. We have to think about the unforeseen consequences of vehicles that to us might seem to represent an acceptable reduction in noise. Those vehicles can discombobulate people with autism in their daily lives.
Tracey Crouch
My hon. Friend is a great champion of those with autism, and I congratulate him on all the work he has done on the issue. He is absolutely right that those of us without a learning or physical disability do not necessarily understand the challenges that those with disabilities or impairments face. While we all accept and recognise the need for the growth in more environmentally friendly cars, we have to remember the other challenges that come with them.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
As one who represents a rural constituency where we are campaigning for more pedestrian crossings in various villages, I should say that the increase in traffic makes this a serious matter. I hope that the Minister will take on board the fact that the issue is acute in rural villages.
Tracey Crouch
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. My constituency is part-urban, part-rural, so I see the challenges from both sides: the densely populated areas with blind spots and corners and the villages with high hedges and everything else. Electric vehicles are bringing challenges in every part of our community.
I had the great privilege of attending the Kent Association for the Blind forum in my constituency last Friday. I did so as chair of the Medway council disability partnership board. I was asked to attend to answer various challenges, and the issue of electric vehicles was rightly raised with me. Other issues were also raised, such as how difficult it can be to get from A to B, even with a guide dog, or just with a stick. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) pointed out, being blind makes the other senses more acute and it shows how much we rely on them.
I heard an incredibly horrific and distressing story about a blind lady who uses a guide dog and came across a lady with a pram on a path. The lady with the pram refused to go into the road, because it would endanger her children, but the dog was trained not to take the blind lady into the road. There was a stand-off. As it happened, another pedestrian came along and challenged the lady with the pram, who refused to get out of the way. The pedestrian took the blind lady and her dog into the road and around the lady with the pram.
When the hon. Member for North Tyneside was talking earlier, I thought that if that good samaritan had not come along and helped and if that lady had gone into the road and an electric vehicle had been coming—the dog is there to help see and hear and be of assistance to the blind lady—there could have been a tragic consequence. We need to get greater awareness out to wider society, not only of the issues around electric vehicles, but of the issues around the partially sighted or blind. There are many issues in our local environments that challenge the vulnerable.
Mr Buckland
To reinforce my hon. Friend’s point, I put on a blindfold and used a guide dog along a main road with the help of my local Guide Dogs branch. It became immediately apparent to me that while the dog is there to work and guide the person, it depends on the commands the user gives. The problems that she has mentioned became immediately apparent to me when I found out for myself what it must be like to be visually impaired and rely on a guide dog.
Tracey Crouch
My hon. Friend makes another excellent point. Many members of the public are ignorant as to what the guide dog is there for. The same lady from the previous story told me about how she had got on a bus and asked the driver whether it was the one to Chatham. The bus driver said, “Can’t your dog tell you that?”, as if the dog could somehow read the number of the bus and communicate that in human language to the blind person. These are important issues about electric vehicles, but the debate also gives us the opportunity to discuss the many challenges that partially sighted and blind people face.
I commend the Medway guide dog puppy trainers, who I had the privilege of meeting recently. They are desperately trying to train the next generation of guide dogs in all the challenges of their local community, and they are finding it incredibly difficult to train the pups into understanding the challenges of silent vehicles. It was a challenge for me to hold 18 leads of puppies and for them all to sit still and smile at the camera. It was a pleasure to meet them, and I am pleased that the trainers raised the issue with me.
The studies show that losing sight equals losing confidence. A near miss is enough to make anybody very wary, regardless of whether they are blind, partially sighted, elderly, a child or even able-bodied. The Health Secretary recently spoke of the dangers of chronic loneliness, and we do not want to isolate people further from their communities. People with a physical or learning disability already face social isolation, but if we put extra dangers and challenges in their way by increasing the number of electric vehicles without providing any means to protect them, another vulnerable group could end up experiencing chronic loneliness.
There are international comparisons out there. The US and Japan have taken strong action, and the hon. Member for North Tyneside spoke about the European parliamentary vote. I am not often inclined to support things that come out of Europe, but it has taken a lead on this issue on behalf of everybody across the EU, and it is important that we listen to what it is saying. We should do that for not just the visually impaired, but older people and children.
It feels as if the UK is lagging behind, so I urge the Minister to think carefully about the concerns raised this afternoon. If he cannot reassure us today, I hope he will go away and think, as a former road safety champion, about the issues raised for many people and about how we can protect the most vulnerable, including the groups I have highlighted.
Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
I am pleased to appear under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) on securing this important and timely debate.
Let me start by declaring an interest. Guide Dogs runs a centre at Forfar, in my constituency, and it is very popular and well supported locally. Trainee guide dogs are a common sight around the boroughs of Angus, and many of the centre’s supporters have asked me to make their views known today. However, I must confess that I also drive a hybrid car—one of the vehicles concerns have been raised about.
As others have said, hybrid and especially electric vehicles were pretty much a niche market until recently, but they are clearly beginning to take off, with many major car makers bringing out models. On my way into Parliament, I noted that Nissan has many posters around Westminster tube station, including a prominent one for the Leaf electric car—the hon. Lady will be pleased to see that. Anyone who has switched on a TV recently cannot have avoided the massive advertising campaigns BMW and Audi have mounted for new electric and hybrid vehicles. Charging stations are now appearing in our cities and particularly at motorway service stations, which is a sure sign that the industry expects a sizeable take-up of such vehicles in the relatively near future.
Guide Dogs is therefore right to raise concerns, and it is a good time to look at this issue, as it is still developing. What has happened is a classic example of the law of unintended consequences. For environmental reasons, we all want to see the greater take-up of these vehicles, but we now find that they may pose a serious danger for the blind or partially sighted. Guide Dogs cites a statistic showing that quiet hybrid and electric vehicles are 25% more likely than conventional vehicles to be involved in a collision with a pedestrian because pedestrians might not hear them coming. Although the debate is about the blind and partially sighted, other groups—particularly the elderly, youngsters and cyclists—are also affected.
The hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) mentioned pedestrian crossings, but the danger may, paradoxically, be greater on roads in less busy areas where pedestrian crossings have no audible signals. In the centre of London, people would cross the road only at a pedestrian crossing—at least if they had any sense—and most crossings have audible signals. In relatively quiet areas—in small villages or towns such as those in my constituency—there may not even be a pedestrian crossing. Not only may someone who has to cross the road not hear an electric vehicle coming, but there will be nothing to tell the driver someone may be on the road.
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is making a well-informed and comprehensive speech. I came to the debate because I was encouraged to do so by two constituents, who very much share his concerns and those that were expressed earlier. Given the, happily, increasing number of hearing dogs, does he agree that the problem we are discussing goes beyond the important group he mentioned—blind people with guide dogs? People with hearing dogs are also puzzled by what is happening.
Mr Weir
The right hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. Members have pointed to other groups that are affected. Clearly, Guide Dogs has been leading on this issue for its constituency of blind and partially sighted people, and it has made much of the running, but he is right that the problem is much wider.
I took part in a previous Guide Dogs campaign, on the issue of shared streets. At that point, the organisation was concerned by moves in many areas to remove defined kerbs and to allow the intermingling of vehicles and pedestrians, the idea being that each would be more aware of the other and take more care. As part of that campaign, Guide Dogs took me to a shared street, put a very effective blindfold on me and asked me to cross the street. The only thing that would give any indication of the presence of a vehicle was noise. It was a terrifying experience, although I knew it was temporary, and I could take off my blindfold at the end. There were also people there to make sure no one ran me over, although if they had been from the opposition, they might not have done so. The point, however, is that a blind or partially sighted person in a shared street might not even know they had gone on to the road, let alone hear a vehicle coming. That is a very dangerous situation.
It would be terrifying for someone who could not see vehicles to know that they might also be unable to hear some vehicles; effectively, they would have no way of knowing whether those vehicles were on the road, and they would take a major risk crossing any road, but that is what blind and partially sighted people may face every day. There is also a greater onus on drivers of hybrid and electric vehicles to take care and to ensure they see any people on the road. There is an issue for such drivers, as well as for people crossing the road.
Guide Dogs suggests that the way to deal with the problem would be to fit vehicles with an acoustic vehicle alerting system, which ensures that all vehicles are audibly detectable. That has been done in the USA and Japan, it has been investigated by a UN commission. That is an eminently sensible precaution, and if it is implemented now, it will ensure that the vast majority of these vehicles are fitted with devices as they come on the market, just as the industry takes off.
The one thing that has been put against doing that is the cost to motor manufacturers and the concern that it might impact on their productivity and their ability to produce vehicles. The hon. Lady cited a cost of about £20, which does not seem particularly high, given the cost of the vehicles. I should remind the Minister and others that we have not been slow in the past in insisting on safety precautions for those in vehicles. Seat belts are the perfect example, and air bags are another example. Both add to a vehicle’s cost, but they have been introduced because of the need to ensure the safety of people in vehicles. Is it not right, when we develop new vehicles, that we also look at the safety of people crossing the road when these vehicles are about, given that the large section of the population with disabilities may not be able to hear them coming? It seems a small price to pay to ensure that those fellow citizens are safe when they cross the road. Will the Minister seriously consider how to ensure that not only those who travel in a car, but other people on the roads, can be safer?
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) for a highly informed and moving speech about the importance of the issue and how profoundly it affects so many people’s lives.
If anyone had said a generation ago that there could be reasonably environmentally friendly cars that were also quiet, most of us would have leaped for joy and thought we had reached nirvana. However, today’s debate and the excellent work of Guide Dogs make it clear that those vehicles present a significant problem to many people. There is no excuse not to take action now.
We should pay tribute to Guide Dogs for its work on many related campaigns. I recall one that it did about talking buses, soon after I was elected as an MP. I was interested, especially since—to make an international comparison—I worked in north Japan in the early 1990s and talking buses were standard there, not just in urban areas but in rural ones too. All the announcements were audible, and I can remember how helpful it was, as I had gone to Japan unable to read any Japanese script.
We have had some discussion of technical aspects of electric vehicles. I confess that I dropped physics at 14, and will not enter into anything resembling technical debate, but I remember that only 20 or 25 years ago there were all sorts of arguments about the impossibility of certain disability rights arrangements, such as putting ramps in at village halls. People who used wheelchairs, or who were severely disabled, went on being hoiked up steps in a profoundly undignified way. That was wrong, and we would never want to go back to those days. When we speak of rights and independence for people who are blind or visually impaired, or who fall into any of the many categories mentioned by colleagues in the debate, we should recognise that it is not possible to be a little bit equal. We need to give serious consideration to enabling such people to have the same sort of independent lives that the rest of us enjoy.
A point was made earlier about how a near miss with a car could affect the confidence of people who are blind or visually impaired. If I had been in such a situation, I think I would find it difficult to go out alone again; we cannot know when such things might happen. International comparisons have been cited, and many hon. Members have spoken eloquently, and I urge the Government to act on this matter. It will have a meaningful effect on the lives of many people.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
Thank you for calling me at short notice, Mr Hood. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) on securing the debate and on her excellent opening speech. We have heard moving speeches from other hon. Members, for which I am grateful.
I think it was last week—it is difficult to remember when things have happened in this place—that I attended an event run by the Royal National Institute of Blind People for young people, so that they could meet their MPs and be their own advocates on issues that they had encountered locally. A young constituent with visual and hearing impairments spent some time—and I was glad she did—telling me what lack of confidence meant to her. She had reached the stage of not being confident to go out or travel independently, and she explained how that curtailed her life and how, with the help of the RNIB, she was getting over it. Several hon. Members have talked about how incidents involving quiet vehicles can affect confidence: we need to think about that.
My young constituent told me she was learning to use a cane and hoping to get a guide dog. My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) mentioned talking buses, and my constituent talked a lot about different modes of transport and how she could be assisted. However, lack of confidence was her biggest problem. It is vital to consider the needs of such vulnerable road users, because a limit is placed on a young life if such a person does not have the confidence to go out. Action on quiet vehicles could help with that issue.
There is a single trunk road, the A57, in the area where my constituent lives. There is a lot of development going on and a new stadium is being built. There is also at present a complex set of road works and traffic systems. Cyclists and pedestrians share the pavement, so it must be quite common for people to be pushed out into the road, as has been mentioned this afternoon. I have had many complaints about it. A traffic flow system has been installed, but it changes when the stadium is in use. Someone like my constituent, struggling to learn to use a cane or go out with a guide dog, must cope with such complications—pedestrians and cyclists on the pavement, a traffic flow system that is sometimes one way and sometimes another, and two narrow lanes. That is tricky even for someone whose faculties are not in any way impaired. There is nothing we can do about that until the new road is built, which will take more than a year, but that is the environment that my constituent is learning to deal with.
We have heard about people with a guide dog being forced out into the road, and sometimes there will be complex traffic and pedestrian conditions in a locality, as there are in my constituency at the moment. I should hate to think of my young constituent having a frightening experience with an electric vehicle as she was learning to become more independent and confident and get out more. I am sure that if that happened it would push her back into not using her cane or going out with her guide dog. She would not go out—which is the situation she has been in for some time. Sometimes such factors come together in an area, and they make things worse.
I want to do anything that would help my young constituent to become more independent and learn to be away from home. She wants to get out and have a social life, and to have opportunities for education and training. The move that we have been debating is essential for people such as her and other vulnerable road users and I urge the Minister to take what action he can.
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood, in this excellent and powerful debate. All credit is due to my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) for securing it and for raising the issues in such a powerful way. Credit is also due to Guide Dogs and the other organisations that have put the issue of quiet vehicles and vulnerable road users on the agenda for so many of us. It would be an important debate whenever it took place, but it is particularly timely that it is happening now, because further EU negotiations on the regulation on the sound level of motor vehicles will happen next week before an agreement on audio-alerting systems is reached at the next EU Transport Council on 5 December.
The debate is therefore not before time and is critical in the context of our future transport policy. It is important to put it on the record, as many hon. Members have, that this debate is not anti-electric or hybrid cars. Indeed, I am a fan of both. Two weeks ago, the Minister and I both stressed the importance of such vehicles in future transport policy. Making low-carbon transport options accessible and affordable is a priority for us all. I saw the importance of that when I helped to launch the new E-Car Club location in Poplar just last week. As well as improving access, the Government must focus on establishing proper safety standards.
This does not happen often in a Westminster Hall debate attended by many hon. Members from all parties, but we have today had absolute unanimity. We heard interventions from my right hon. Friends the Members for Oxford East (Mr Smith) and for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke), my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech) and the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), for South Swindon (Mr Buckland), for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) and for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski). We have heard powerful speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie), for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) and for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) and the hon. Members for Sherwood (Mr Spencer), for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) and for Angus (Mr Weir). One way or another, they all said the same thing: we need action and agreement on audio systems for electric and hybrid cars and other quiet vehicles before they become mainstream and not afterwards, when there has been an increase in collisions. My worry, however, is that that is what the Government’s policy is risking. I echo the points of my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside about the importance of proper legislation for road safety and will ask several questions of the Minister today.
It has been established that electric and hybrid vehicles can pose both a real and a perceived threat to the safety of vulnerable road users. The importance of vehicle noise in helping road users gauge proximity, direction and speed of nearby traffic has been mentioned many times today. It is right that most attention has been focused on blind and partially sighted people, but the range of affected people is wide and includes children, people with autism and older people. We are not even necessarily only talking about pedestrians; my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East rightly mentioned cyclists. If noise is eliminated from road vehicles, the risk to vulnerable road users increases.
Tracey Crouch
Another group has been pointed out to me on Twitter during the debate this afternoon. Someone tweeted me to say that they drive a Toyota Prius and are amazed that they have not yet knocked over and killed somebody who has stumbled out into the street when drunk. Walking around our town centres on a Friday or Saturday evening, one can understand where they are coming from.
Richard Burden
The hon. Lady makes a good point. It is important that this debate does not encourage people to wander around the roads while drunk, but we need to consider such people.
In certain manoeuvres, quiet vehicles can be twice as likely to be involved in collisions with pedestrians than vehicles with conventional internal combustion engines. Evidence from the US shows that quiet vehicles travelling at low speeds—we are principally discussing accidents at low speeds—cannot be heard until they are just one second away from impact with a pedestrian. Recent research from the TAS Partnership revealed that such vehicles were involved in 25% more collisions causing injury to pedestrians in 2010 to 2012 compared with the overall vehicle population.
Many hon. Members also mentioned that it is not simply a question of accident statistics; we are also discussing perceived danger and its impact on confidence. Recent EU research showed that 93% of blind and partially sighted people are already experiencing difficulties with electric vehicles. Personal testimonies collected from Guide Dogs reveal how vulnerable people can now feel less confident about leaving their homes. One guide dog owner said:
“Crossing roads safely is a huge part of my independent mobility. Quiet vehicles take away this independence.”
That point was made powerfully by the hon. Members for Sherwood and for Angus and by my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South. Another guide dog owner said:
“the idea of stepping off the pavement into the path of something as lethal as a silent car is truly frightening.”
Big improvements in road safety for people with sensory loss have been made over recent years, including making crossings safer through the use of audible warnings, but the failure to ensure that low-carbon vehicles are audible would be a real backwards step. In the light of the evidence presented today from across the Chamber, will the Minister confirm whether he accepts that quiet and electric vehicles pose both a real and a perceived threat to vulnerable road users?
In February 2013, the European Parliament voted on an amendment to the EU regulation on the sound level of motor vehicles, which I am pleased to say that Labour MEPs supported. The amendment would make the fitting of an acoustic vehicle alerting system—AVAS—mandatory in all electric and hybrid vehicles. Legislation mandating AVAS in all quiet vehicles has already been passed in the US and in Japan. A globally applicable UN technical specification will also be agreed in 2014. I am, however, unsure about the Government’s position. Parliamentary question after parliamentary question has been submitted, but the answers seem to be the same: the Government are considering moving their negotiating position from a voluntary to a mandatory approach or that they are considering how to implement the requirements in the UK. In reply to my recent parliamentary question, I was concerned to hear the Minister say that the Government’s position had actually moved backwards and that they were opposed to a mandatory approach. I hope that he will confirm today that that is not the case.
If the change is anything to do with alleged burdens on businesses and on the motor industry, hon. Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East, have made it clear that the technology to fit such devices is available and is relatively cheap. What motor manufacturers need is certainty. They need to know what is going to happen and when. For the Government constantly to say that they are considering this or thinking about that or considering making such devices voluntary is frankly no help to motor manufacturers. What is the intent behind the Government’s decision to wait until more electric and hybrid vehicles are on the road? Are the Government against mandatory AVAS systems in principle—most hon. Members here today, myself included, would not welcome that, but it would at least be a clear position to take issue with—or are they waiting for something to happen before they take a position on the EU regulation and its mandatory nature? If it is the latter, what is the Minister waiting for?
Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
I apologise to the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) for not being here for the beginning of the debate, as I was detained elsewhere. I rise partly because I believe that I am the only Member who is an electric car driver. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government will have to decide whether existing electric cars should be retrofitted with some form of device, so that all road users, particularly the blind, children and others identified in the debate, can be safe in the way that he is advocating?
Richard Burden
I am not sure that the hon. and learned Gentleman is the only electric car driver, but I do not want to get into an argument about that. He makes an important point about retrofitting, which raises various issues. In my judgment, it is important to regulate quiet vehicles across the piece, not simply new ones. I say to the Minister that the longer we delay regulating or giving clarity to motor manufacturers about fitting devices, the greater the problem of retrofitting further down the line. Will the Minister state clearly what the Government are waiting for?
Evidence from other countries has already shown that quiet vehicles pose real dangers to vulnerable road users, and that has led to action in Japan and the United States. Such evidence is patchy, but I hope that the Government are not waiting for more accidents, with more people being killed or injured, to provide conclusive evidence before they will act. Surely, there is now enough evidence to support other European Union member states and some British MEPs who are saying that now is the time to do something. We have opportunities to act in the negotiations next week and the discussions on the regulation on 5 December. The UK Government should not hold back or delay that process or wait for proof, the form of which is not clear; they should be at the forefront of promoting road safety and standing up for vulnerable road users, and they should respond to today’s very clear call from Members on both sides of the Chamber.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) on securing this debate on electric vehicles and vulnerable road users. I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate—the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) listed them, so I will not do so—which has given me an early opportunity to review the issue.
I am responding to the debate, but my noble Friend Baroness Kramer covers this area of competence in the Department, and I have taken her advice. I hope hon. Members will feel as free to lobby her as they have lobbied me today. The Government take the issue seriously, because the concerns are very real and affect many road users daily. Ministers in my Department are united in our ambition to do what we can both to maintain and to improve safety standards.
The Government understand the real concerns of the visually impaired and other vulnerable road users about the potential hazards of very quiet vehicles, including electric vehicles. Quiet vehicles are not new. I am not sure whether it was Mr Rolls or Mr Royce who bragged that only the clock could be heard when one of their cars was running. Many of my generation will remember milk floats making deliveries to houses. Indeed, I came to Parliament today on a silent vehicle, a bicycle—panting was the only noise that could be heard—and there are hundreds more bicycles than electric or hybrid cars on the streets of London. Anyone who ventures to cross the road because they can hear nothing coming will quickly find that they might be hit by one of the bicycles ridden around London at breakneck speed.
I commend the Guide Dogs campaign, which has been effective in bringing concerns to the attention of a much wider audience. My predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), attended and spoke at its reception in June, and my officials have advised me that his speech was well received.
The hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) said that many Members had expressed their opinions, but opinions are not a sufficient basis for Government action; we need firm evidence. Although the number of plug-in electric vehicles on our roads is still relatively small, it is growing. By the end of September, we had received more than 6,000 claims for plug-in car and van grants. More than 1,200 such claims were made in the last quarter, which makes it the best quarter to date, being 25% higher than the previous best quarter.
The Government are committed to establishing the UK as a leading market for ultra-low emission vehicles. We expect the uptake to continue to grow significantly as more and more vehicles—particularly those produced in the UK, I hope—come on to market. The Department for Transport is committed to promoting safety systems and new technologies wherever there is evidence that they help to reduce injuries and there is clear justification.
The European Commission has produced a proposal to permit the fitting of added noise systems to electric and hybrid vehicles, and separate steps are being taken at international level to agree standards for added noise systems and to ensure that they are effective without being intrusive. Once complete, those agreements should be incorporated into EU legislation. Factors to be discussed include the speed at which systems should be active, the type of noise and the sound levels, all of which have yet to be decided internationally.
On mandatory sound alerts for ultra-low emission vehicles, our position is based on an assessment of the risk that those vehicles pose to pedestrians. The Government sponsored research into that question, because research carried out in the United States had raised understandable concerns about the safety implications of quiet road vehicles.
Our research has suggested that there is no increased pedestrian risk associated with electric or hybrid vehicles in the United Kingdom. The published report has shown that although quieter vehicles are harder to hear approaching, as would be expected, the accident rates for electric and hybrid vehicles are broadly similar to those for conventional vehicles. The contradictory research in the US had suggested that there may be a higher rate of accidents for electric and hybrid vehicles, but we should be cautious about applying those results to the UK, where infrastructure and driver behaviour are different.
Barbara Keeley
We do not have many such vehicles, although their number is increasing, as Members have said. Should not the caution be about not waiting till there have been lots of accidents? I just think that the Minister is approaching this the wrong way round.
Mr Goodwill
In introducing the debate, the hon. Member for North Tyneside said that the number of accidents involving such vehicles had tripled, but that is almost entirely attributable to the increased number of vehicles. The statistics show that although there is a slightly higher number of accidents per 10,000 cars for electric and hybrid vehicles, the increase is certainly not of the magnitude she mentioned.
Richard Burden
Is the Minister aware of the research from the TAS Partnership indicating that quiet vehicles were involved in 25% more collisions in which pedestrians were injured between 2010 and 2012 compared with the overall vehicle population? That surely cannot just be down to the increase in electric vehicles.
Mr Goodwill
I accept that there is a slightly higher level for such vehicles, but that may be down to other factors, such as the amount they are used. We certainly need more research and data before that point can be recognised as valid.
We are aware of recent research carried out by Guide Dogs, which indicates a slight increase in the rate of pedestrian accidents involving electric and hybrid vehicles over the past three years, as has been said. Most of the recent difference between the figures for conventional vehicles and those with electric drives is due to a welcome, but unexplained, drop in the rate of pedestrian accidents involving conventional vehicles.
The lack of robust data is problematic. Before we decide to require the fitment of acoustic vehicle alerting systems, we should first undertake work to identify the real issues and decide whether they should be addressed through vehicle technology or by influencing the behaviour of road users. One of our main challenges is to decide when regulation is appropriate. We do not want to stifle innovation, but nor do we want to miss the opportunity to deliver real safety benefits. We are committed to a “better regulation” approach, which means that we will avoid the use of legislation in cases where market forces and industry standards can provide an outcome that is as good, or better, and we need to be clear about the costs and benefits before we consider a legislative approach.
Mr Andrew Smith
If the Minister does not think that the information is there now to take that decision, when does he think that it will be there?
Mr Goodwill
Certainly, we will be keen to look at research as soon as it becomes available. Funnily enough, as a former MEP, I know that the issue was discussed in Europe more than seven years ago, but there was not sufficient research on which to move forward. Much of the work that we carried out in the European Parliament was about how to make vehicles quieter. We looked at how to make tyres quieter and how to improve our urban environment by having quieter vehicles. After all noise has an impact on us all.
Tracey Crouch
Is the Minister aware that research from the European Union found that 93% of blind and partially sighted people have already experienced difficulties with electric vehicles? In the Department’s research, are the figures broken down by groups of people? For example, do we know whether the instances that he has highlighted involved other vehicles or pedestrians and whether those pedestrians were partially sighted or blind?
Mr Goodwill
I shall certainly mine into that information to see whether I can give my hon. Friend a bit more detail. As there is a relatively small number of hybrid and electric vehicles, and a small proportion of people affected because of sight problems, it is difficult to get statistically valid information.
We should recognise that drivers are responsible for driving with consideration and for avoiding accidents, and we need to be cautious about taking any position that might be seen as shifting responsibility for accident avoidance further towards the pedestrian. We should also avoid confusion with, for example, alerts that sound at pedestrian light controlled crossings. Bearing in mind that people travel extensively around the world, any confusion over that is something of which we should be aware. That is why we support an international agreement on that, and hopefully we can move forward in that way. Drivers should be paying attention, and they should not rely on the noise of their vehicles to warn pedestrians of their approach, or that they are about to move off.
We are keen to continue to work with Guide Dogs and its partners on this issue. We have forged a valuable relationship with them, and ministerial colleagues and I remain committed to finding a solution that continues to help its members enjoy their use of the road. Equally, we must be wary of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We should not forget that vehicle noise is a major blight on our towns and cities. A significant proportion of UK citizens are regularly exposed to road traffic noise above the level that the World Health Organisation considers a serious risk to public health. Quieter vehicles have the potential to transform our towns and cities, making them far more pleasant places in which to live and work.
Mrs Glindon
I rise in relation to the perception that we all have of danger. Some 80% of it comes from our hearing, so sound plays a significant role in orientation for all pedestrians. Does the Minister not think that that is important? It affects everybody. If we are talking about 80% of our perception, it is a massive factor in avoiding danger, so we need sound to help us.
Mr Goodwill
Certainly any pedestrian who relies solely on hearing a vehicle coming would have problems given the number of cycles on our roads.
Let me briefly touch on one or two points that have been made in the debate. The hon. Member for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie) said that there was a genuine debate to be had over the type, volume and direction of the sound. That underlines the fact that we still do not have an absolutely clear way forward. What is the best sound and at what speed should that sound come into action? Indeed, should we have sounds coming out of the back of the vehicle when it is reversing, as many lorries already have, or out of the front?
A number of Members talked about their experience of wearing blacked-out spectacles. I also had that experience but without the guide dog. I found that there were many hazards with which people with impaired vision had to contend, including cars parking on paths and all the pavement clutter, such as tables and chairs at cafes, which most of us take for granted.
The hon. Member for Angus (Mr Weir) talked about rural areas. It is certainly the case that in towns, there are often pedestrian light controlled crossings or traffic lights with crossings at them, which make it much easier for blind and partially sighted people. He also referred to the concept of shared space, which a number of towns in the Netherlands have developed. A few tentative approaches have been made in this country as well. He said that, for a person with limited vision, it was a terrifying experience going on to a shared space area. However, in general, the evidence is that towns with such areas are safer than the ones with conventional traffic and pedestrian segregation. He also made the point that we introduced seatbelts to make the car safer, but there was very clear and real evidence that safety belts did improve safety.
I will briefly outline our commitment to ultra-low emission vehicles and why they offer a once-in-a-generation opportunity to support our growth ambitions and environmental commitments. Last month, we published an ultra-low emission vehicle strategy, “Driving the future today”, which set out our ambition to establish the UK as a leading market for such vehicles, with UK industry at the forefront of their design, development and manufacture. That included a commitment to launch a call for evidence later this year to help shape our package of support and to inform us on how best to utilise an additional £500 million of funding, which we are making available between 2015 and 2020 to support the growing market for low-emission vehicles.
We will launch the call for evidence shortly and welcome any views of vulnerable road users’ representative groups, and we will ensure that they are on the distribution list. The strategy and funding announcement together with the Budget 2013 commitments to maintaining a favourable tax regime for ultra-low emission vehicles to 2020 was specifically designed to give certainty to the market. We have already seen our policies bear fruit—for example, by attracting production of the Nissan Euro Leaf and battery in Sunderland, the Toyota Auris at Burnaston in Derbyshire, and BMW’s i8 powertrain at Hams Hall in Warwickshire.
We also recognise the importance and excellence of the UK’s automotive research and development sector, with £1.5 billion of annual investment by the industry. In support of that, the Government have provided more than £80 million of targeted funding for low-carbon vehicle technologies through the Office for Low Emission Vehicles. By channelling that money through the Technology Strategy Board, and working closely with industry, we have helped generate more than £350 million of total investment in nearly 200 collaborative projects that will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from road vehicles. Following publication of our new strategy, I am proud to say that the UK now has one of the most long-term and comprehensive packages of support for ultra-low emission vehicles in the world.
Richard Burden
The Minister is giving the Chamber some impressive statistics about investment. Will he say how much is being invested in the safety of quiet vehicles? If he is not able to tell us today, will he write to us about that?
Mr Goodwill
All manufacturers have to produce vehicles, including ultra-low emission ones, to safe standards. I shall ask my officials to find out what specific research and development funding has gone into that.
We recognise that there is a balance to be struck between the growth opportunity and the concerns of the vulnerable road users. We welcome any evidence that will help us refine our policy so that the switch to ultra-low emission vehicles will provide the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people while maintaining the paramount importance of safety considerations for all road and pavement users, including those with limited sight. I will certainly pass on the comments that were made today to my noble Friend, Baroness Kramer.
Low Pay
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood.
Growth may be making an overdue return to the UK economy, but the continuing slump in real wages is forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility to extend into 2014, and the UK currently has the highest inflation rate in the European Union, both of which contribute to the cost of living crisis. The Office for National Statistics confirmed this morning in its November economic brief that real disposable household incomes have not risen in a sustained way under the Government’s policies.
Despite employees working more hours than before the economic crisis began, the recovery is not making its way into the pockets of ordinary workers. Workers in the lower half of the income scale, particularly low-paid workers, are falling even further behind the top 1% of earners in our society. There has never been a more important time for this House to discuss the issue of low pay and how together, as a Parliament and a society, we can tackle what is now a crisis.
As the report of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission recently made clear, poverty pay blights the outcomes in life of millions of men, women and children across our country. Every week, those of us with the honour of representing our great cities such as Glasgow meet those who suffer the effects of being trapped in low pay for long periods. According to the Poverty Alliance, 870,000, or 17%, of the population in Scotland live in poverty. A fifth of all children in Scotland are below the breadline.
This afternoon I will show that low pay is a problem not only in urban parts of the UK; there are pockets of truly shocking poverty in rural parts of Britain, too. If we are to come up with the right answers on low pay, we must first acknowledge how serious and widespread a social evil this now is across our country.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate, and I endorse his comment that low pay affects rural areas such as mine as much as urban Glasgow. However, does he accept that the decision to raise tax thresholds provides the best possible support to low-paid workers?
Mr Bain
I am grateful for that intervention; I will be considering that point later in my speech. However, I must point out to the hon. Gentleman that those on the lowest earnings will not gain a penny from further increases in the personal allowance. I can direct him to the research that the Resolution Foundation has produced on the subject. It has looked at the matter in detail.
There are also issues—I shall also come to this point later—about the effects that universal credit will have, particularly in relation to any future increases in the personal allowance. Sadly, given how the Government are designing the credit, what they give with one hand, they may be taking away with another, and that is an important consideration.
The hon. Gentleman has a good record on the subject. I am sure that is borne out of his own experience in his constituency, where 47% of part-time workers are earning less than a living wage. He is absolutely right to campaign on the subject—more power to him for doing so from the Conservative Benches.
As I grew up in Glasgow, the real life experiences of people paid less than £1 an hour for security work were a scar on my conscience and a powerful spur to action on poverty pay. The success of the minimum wage in raising pay rates for the most disadvantaged working poor households is shown by the fact that the Conservatives who opposed it, and the Liberal Democrats and members of the Scottish National party who did not vote for the legislation, now would not dare abolish it.
Indeed, several Ministers in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, including the Secretary of State and the Minister for Skills and Enterprise, who I am pleased to see in his place, claim that they want to build on the success of the national minimum wage. It is important that today we see precisely how the Government anticipate changing the remit of the Low Pay Commission to that end.
According to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics in response to a parliamentary question I recently submitted, the average gross median wage in Britain in 2012 was £405 a week, which is almost 7% down in real terms from 2010. For the low paid, the situation is even more desperate, given that higher energy, housing and food costs affect them with even greater severity.
More worryingly, the argument that having a job is enough on its own to lift a family out of poverty has lost much of its potency, because two thirds of the 3 million children living in poverty in this country today live in households in which at least one adult is in work. October’s rise in the main rate of the national minimum wage to £6.31 an hour was the fourth successive uprating below the rise in prices. The minimum wage has lost a fifth of its value in real terms over the past decade, and we must begin to reverse that.
Under-employment and the low-skilled, low-paid work that has been created in an increasingly hourglass-shaped labour market in the past few years have made the cost of living crisis worse for millions of the working poor. The Resolution Foundation has established that 4.8 million people, or one in five across the UK, earn less than the living wage rate set by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. That figure is up by 1.4 million in the past four years alone.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
Will my hon. Friend ask the Minister whether, to help all those on the national minimum wage across the UK—including 7% of the Welsh population, some 95,000 people, which is higher than the UK average of 5%—he will seriously consider why the cost of living has eroded the rises in the national minimum wage so quickly in the past two or three years and what he can do about that?
Mr Bain
My hon. Friend is right, and she speaks with great passion on behalf of her constituents. Some 57% of her constituents in part-time work earn less than the living wage, so she will be seeing on a weekly basis the real effects of poverty on the living standards of people in Llanelli.
Other analysis that I recently received from the ONS shows that in parts of the north-east of England between a half and two thirds of part-time workers are earning less than the living wage. In parts of Northern Ireland and the south and south-west of England, poverty pay among part-time employees is equally endemic. Even in the constituency of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, more than two in every five part-time workers take home less than the living wage. With women more likely to be in part-time work than men, extreme low pay, particularly in the social care sector, represents not only economic injustice but gender inequality.
Guy Opperman
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way to me for a second time. I know he is a passionate advocate of the living wage in Glasgow, where there has been some success. Does he agree that, for the living wage to gain greater traction and to have the take-up that we all want without the statutory empowerment that nobody wants, the key issue is trying to find ways to incentivise businesses, particularly in low-wage economies—the hospitality sector being an obvious example? Does he accept that, and does he have any ideas about how that should be done?
Mr Bain
That is a very good idea. We should be considering what is available in fiscal terms and what we can do through procurement. As I will describe, local authorities and other parts of the public and voluntary sectors have a good record of addressing low pay, but that needs to be extended to the private sector. Procurement is one means by which we can do that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Anas Sarwar) is here today. He will know that the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Bill, presented by the Scottish Government, is particularly disappointing and simply does not meet the test of ending low pay in Scotland.
As many as 220,000 direct care workers may be paid less than their legal entitlement to the national minimum wage. That is a national scandal, and the Government must act to end it. Worse, poverty pay is creating an even larger burden on the state because it is one of the biggest drivers of the increasing costs of housing benefit and tax credits. The recent report of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission found that 84% of the public agree that employers should do more to pay wages that better reflect the cost of living.
It is becoming increasingly clear that, if there is to be a wage-led recovery that reaches all the people of the United Kingdom, further action on the national minimum wage is needed now. According to the 2012 labour force survey, low pay is more prevalent in the private sector, with sole traders, partnerships and companies reporting rates of low pay at 47%, 35%, and 26% respectively. That compares with a low pay rate of only 15% in local government.
Although the tax credit system cushioned living standards between 2003 and 2008, and remains an important means of improving work incentives now, the case for building on the success of the national minimum wage has never been stronger. We should support councils and other parts of the public sector that pay or use procurement rules with the voluntary and private sectors to extend a living wage to more and more people. The Government should at last support the recognised living wage accreditation scheme, which would be a splendid way to mark national living wage week next week, but we also need to understand that a rise in the national minimum wage will help substantially more workers than even a voluntary expansion of the living wage by employers.
We also need better enforcement of the minimum wage to stop the exploitation of unpaid interns for months on end and should back the superb campaign led by Intern Aware. Equity highlights the ongoing issue with performers and arts organisations in relation to the exemption in section 44 of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998.
It is particularly shameful that the maximum penalty for fly-tipping is 10 times the penalty for not paying a worker the legal minimum rate for an hour’s work and that the average fine per breach of the minimum wage rules was just over £1,000 in the last financial year. There were just two successful prosecutions of employers last year for failing to pay the minimum wage rate, according to information provided to me by the Treasury. The Government can do a great deal more on enforcement, and I hope the Minister will outline the next steps.
As I said to the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), increasing the personal tax allowance does not in itself end the crisis of low pay. Many low-paid workers do not earn enough to pay income tax and so would not benefit from further rises in the personal allowance. For lone or couple households with children, the interaction between a rising minimum wage and the help provided by the tax credit system will do the most to raise living standards.
We also need to be mindful that the introduction of universal credit will mean that what low-income taxpayers may gain from a higher personal allowance will be lost through the new tax credit system, which is assessed on after-tax income. New research by Gingerbread published this morning shows that the Government’s current plans for universal credit will make it far harder for low-income lone parents to make work pay beyond 20 hours a week, as the incentives rapidly taper away.
Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. He rightly says that having a job is not an automatic route out of poverty. For example, 50% of people who use a food bank in my constituency are in work. Does that not demonstrate that we need to create not only employment but a quality level of income so that people can lift themselves out of poverty and give opportunities to their children?
Mr Bain
My hon. Friend is entirely correct. He represents a constituency in which nearly half—44%—of male part-time workers are earning less than the living wage and in which nearly a third of all part-time workers are in the same predicament. We both see, therefore, the costs that that has on society, with people unable to make their salary or wages last the week or the month, so that they are forced in increasing numbers into using food banks, just to feed their families. That is wrong and shameful, and we can collectively do something about it.
The Resolution Foundation has shown recently that once workers, women in particular, are trapped in jobs paying the minimum wage, they find it hard to progress out of them. The Government need to do a lot more on skills in the workplace, to help progression and allow people to advance within a job and have the potential to earn a larger salary as a result. The truth is that the low rate of the national minimum wage is acting as a ceiling, rather than as a springboard, to higher living standards. The Government must do more on workplace skills to ensure that people can progress in their jobs.
I have some specific points, which I hope the Minister can deal with. In what ways might the Government change the remit of the Low Pay Commission? Are they looking to what Gavin Kelly of the Resolution Foundation has termed “forward guidance” on future rises in the national minimum wage as the economy, we hope, continues to grow?
What particular issues has the Minister asked the Low Pay Commission to examine in looking at how, sector by sector, national minimum pay rates might be increased? In sectors such as finance and banking, it has been established that higher pay rates might be affordable now, at no or relatively little cost to those employers, whereas for hotels and restaurants a more phased approach to raising wage rates might work best, to maximise employment.
The prize for employers is real: higher productivity, higher job satisfaction and reduced staff turnover. For workers, the Government and society, tackling chronic low wages could restore the principles that work will pay and that low-income Britain should share more fairly in the wealth that it generates for this country. Such a policy should commend itself not only to Opposition Members, but to every shade of political opinion in the House. It is time for this Government to do the right thing for once, and to support giving low-wage Britain a much-needed pay rise.
The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) for securing the debate and giving us the opportunity for discussion. I have listened carefully to his arguments, which were passionately put. As he said, there is a strong cross-party consensus behind the minimum wage and the institution of the Low Pay Commission, which advises the Government on the appropriate rate. Interestingly, more Government Members than Opposition Members are in the Chamber, which demonstrates the cross-party support for the minimum wage and a commitment not only to it, but to its effective enforcement. We are absolutely clear that anyone entitled to be paid the minimum wage should receive it.
Before I answer some of the points made and set out what the Government are planning to do, I want to give some statistics in response to the hon. Gentleman. Times are undoubtedly tough following the great recession of 2008 to 2009, but since then the bottom quintile or fifth of the population have become around 6% better off, in part because of measures taken by the Government. Overall, household disposable incomes have risen in the past year and in the past quarter.
Specific actions taken by the coalition Government include freezing council tax; freezing and then cutting fuel duty; introducing the apprenticeship minimum wage, which did not exist before, in 2010; cutting beer duty; and of course raising the tax threshold, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman). The tax bill of people working full time on the minimum wage has been cut in half.
Government Members would argue that the best route out of poverty is work, with benefit and education reform and, as the hon. Member for Glasgow North East mentioned, an enhancement of skills. That is vital in the long term, but we have been able to take some shorter-term fiscal measures to support people’s disposable incomes—after tax—even in difficult times.
The hon. Gentleman also discussed universal credit and tax credits. Tax credits have the disadvantage of the withdrawal rate and the increase in marginal effective taxes. However, universal credit will ensure that work always pays, so it and a consistent withdrawal rate will be part of the solution to poverty. We want to ensure that incentives are right to support people who get on and work hard.
Mr Bain
How do the Government respond to the research produced today by Gingerbread? Given the new way in which universal credit will work—assessed on after-tax income—what lone parents get through the tax system they will in effect lose through universal credit. Frankly, will that not make it difficult for the Government to make good the pledge of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, that work will pay for every hour that people work?
Matthew Hancock
Absolutely; it is vital that work always pays for every hour, and that is why having a consistent withdrawal rate in universal credit matters. It is valuable that this debate is not particularly partisan, but I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the fact that, with tax credits as they were, withdrawal rates were sometimes more than 100%, so in some cases—not in large numbers—people were taking home less when they worked harder. Universal credit will put an end to that, which should be welcomed in all parts of the House.
Guy Opperman
Does the Minister accept that the true way to engineer people out of low pay is to provide them with the skills to do a better job and to make progress? Last week, I opened an engineering academy in Hexham, and shortly we hope to welcome to the north-east the skills funding pilot of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Does he accept that skills are the real secret for the future of the low-paid?
Matthew Hancock
Yes, of course. As the Skills and Enterprise Minister, everyone would be amazed—I would not be doing my job—if I did not support that argument, which I do.
Nia Griffith
As has been rightly pointed out, whether with tax credits or universal credit, there is an issue about tapering. More importantly, there is also an issue about the public purse. Whatever the history—which, in my opinion, shows that when the national minimum wage was introduced, it was opposed by certain parties, so it had to be brought in at a compromise level—the issue remains that, unless we look seriously at raising the minimum wage at a faster rate, we will continually have to top up from the public purse.
Matthew Hancock
I was about to answer that point. To consider what best to do to ensure that everyone gains from the economic recovery as it comes, we have to understand all the factors affecting low wages and low pay in our economy. I imagine that there is a common desire to see wages rising without damaging employment.
The Low Pay Commission was set up to get that balance right. We have now asked it to look at what economic conditions might be needed to allow the national minimum wage to rise more in future than current conditions allow without having an adverse impact on jobs. Improving incentives to work by having a higher minimum wage has a positive impact on employment, but we must get the balance right. Employment is growing strongly in this country, which is good because unemployment is worse than being in a job on the minimum wage. We must get that balance right.
We are doing what we can to protect the incomes of working households that have been squeezed, hence we have cut income tax by raising the tax threshold and taking almost 3 million people out of tax. The rises in the personal allowance are worth up to £700 in cash and more than £500 in real terms from April 2014, which is a significant improvement.
We are also taking important action on enforcement of the national minimum wage. Anyone who is entitled to it should receive it. Since 1 October, employers who fail to pay it will be publicly named, and revamped criteria were announced in August to make it easier to clamp down on rogue businesses. In 2012-13, more than 700 employers received penalties totalling more than £775,000 for failing to comply with minimum wage law. From the start of this month, I am writing personally to every new apprentice to ensure that they are aware of their rights under the legislation. Under the original scheme, we named only one employer because the benchmark was set high. It was introduced only in 2011 and did not exist in that form under the previous Government. We have strengthened it from 1 October.
All that is part of an effort to toughen up enforcement of the national minimum wage, not least because it is fair that scrupulous employers who pay the national minimum wage are not undercut by unscrupulous employers who do not pay it. We are taking a multi-faceted approach, including improved new targeted communications, to raise awareness in addition to letters from me, which I am sure every apprentice enjoys receiving. This work is starting to produce results. In 2012-13, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs identified £3.9 million arrears of wages for 26,500 workers.
Action has been taken, but we must get the balance right. We have asked the Low Pay Commission to take further action, but we must do that in a way that supports the rising number of jobs in this country. Overall, it is valuable not only to debate the issues, but to continue to try to get the balance right between ensuring that work always pays and that the minimum wage is at a level that supports people in work as consistently as possible with ensuring that it does not harm the employment prospects of those who are seeking work.
Doing that at the same time as trying to remove some of the fiscal costs—the taxes on jobs—asking the Low Pay Commission to take a forward-looking view of what economic conditions would be necessary to allow a faster increase in future and the stronger naming scheme demonstrate that we are working hard to ensure that the national minimum wage is effective, fairly enforced and supports people who do the right thing, work hard and are trying to provide for their families in tough times. That shows that the coalition Government are on their side.
Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)
I confirm that the next debate must be concluded by 5.15.
Release of Bodies from Hospital
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
As ever, Mr Hood, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I particularly thank Mr Speaker for granting this important debate on a subject that, had it not been brought to my attention by a constituent, I would not have believed possible outside the scripts of comedy or perhaps, more appropriately on the day before Hallowe’en, a horror film. However, the occurrence is possibly far more widespread than is known about, and my constituent fears that it is the modem equivalent of body-snatching by unscrupulous undertakers who, keen to ensure that they are subsequently contracted by bereaved families to organise funerals, take unlawful control of a body.
This situation, which the funeral industry states is rare, and the hospital concerned states arose under unusual circumstances, is none the less one raised by my constituent amidst fears that it was in fact a deliberate attempt to exploit bereaved families in the immediate aftermath of a death, and that it was made possible by a legal grey area and poorly drafted Department of Health guidelines. As a result of my constituent’s case, and after acquainting myself with the guidelines on how bodies are dealt with, I decided to seek this debate to raise two issues. The matter is clearly of limited interest to colleagues, but I welcome the opportunity to make my points direct to the Minister, and I look forward to his response.
First, the existing legislation needs clarification. There is a definite need for guidelines for hospitals and hospice staff to be revised, so that they comply with the existing law, and prevent staff from being exposed to unwarranted prosecution based on the technicalities of existing legal grey areas. Secondly, and probably more importantly, I want to highlight a culture of complicity between undertakers and hospital staff, and potentially deliberate unscrupulous practices deployed by undertakers, who get away with them not in spite of Department of Health guidelines but, worryingly, because of them.
A further point worth raising is Bristol royal infirmary’s failure in its duty of care towards the deceased and her family. On Saturday 23 March this year, Gladys Pugh, the mother-in-law of my constituent, Mr Peter Williams, sadly died in Bristol royal infirmary. Her body was taken to the hospital’s mortuary to await the coroner’s permission for it to be released. The following Tuesday, Mr Williams and his wife began the painful task of contacting undertakers to ask for quotes and to discuss possible funeral arrangements. Three funeral directors were contacted. Mr and Mrs Williams planned to travel to Bristol to register the death and to visit the funeral directors they had contacted, but with the long Easter weekend so close, they could not make the journey until 2 April. The family contacted all the undertakers they had spoken to and informed them they would come back to them if they were interested in taking matters further after the Easter break.
On 2 or 3 of April, one of the undertakers, Thomas Davis, part of Bristol Funeral Directors group and a member of all the relevant trade organisations, including the National Association of Funeral Directors, contacted Mr Williams and asked what was happening about the arrangements. Mr Williams informed them clearly that they had decided to engage the services of another undertaker, thanked them for their interest, and left it at that.
It then transpired that without the permission of the Williams family and without any form of verbal or written contract, Thomas Davis had driven to the hospital’s mortuary on 27 March, the day it was contacted by Mr Williams, and removed Mrs Pugh’s body to one of its own facilities. The situation came to light 10 days after Mrs Pugh’s body had been taken from the mortuary when the company subsequently appointed by my constituent contacted the mortuary to arrange collection of Mrs Pugh’s body, only to be told that it had been taken away some 10 days previously.
There was an understandable feeling of horror, shock and disbelief that Mrs Pugh’s body had been kidnapped by an undertaker whose sole instruction was to offer a quote, which incidentally was never forthcoming, and to inquire about available dates for cremation. I use the word “kidnapped” after considerable thought. First, I cannot use the word “stolen” as a dead body is not technically the property of anyone except the deceased. That is one of the grey areas that legal experts agree needs clarification. Secondly, as kidnapping is the removal of a person without their consent, and as a dead person is still considered a person in law but is unable to give such consent—and, as “stolen” would not be legally correct—“kidnapped” is the only suitable word that I can use to describe what happened.
I argue that Thomas Davis acted unlawfully, because all that had been requested by the Williams family was for a quote to be provided for the services, and for provisional inquiries to be made with a local crematorium. There was no contract, no formal quote, and at no time were the family informed that the body had been collected. Furthermore, at no time was any of the paperwork required under Department of Health hospital guidelines for the release of Mrs Pugh’s body handed over by the family to Thomas Davis.
It is that point—the lack of consent given by the Williams family—that makes the removal of the body unlawful. That is where the first issue arises. Ignoring the motivation for a moment, how can an undertaker take possession of a body from a hospital lawfully? The answer—for it to be lawful, the person in control of the body must be enabled by law, by dint of their status in the life of the deceased or through being appointed the agent of such a person. In the case of Mr Williams’ mother-in-law, the undertakers had not been given the legal right to take control of the body by the family and were therefore not in legal possession of it.
What checks were made by the mortuary staff to ascertain the lawful right of the undertakers to take responsibility for the body? None, it would appear. It seems that the law is at the same time both very clear and utterly confusing on that point, and furthermore, contradicts the Government’s own guidelines. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will bear with me while I try to explain that.
Although NHS trusts have very strict guidelines on releasing bodies, largely based on the Department of Health’s publication, “Care and Respect in Death: Good Practice Guidance for NHS Mortuary Staff”, and usually stipulate that the person collecting the body must be in possession of the relevant paperwork, often including “the green form”—an interim death certificate releasing the body for disposal—those guidelines are, I am told, probably of no legal effect. In the case of Bristol royal infirmary, its own release note, which Mr Williams was told would be essential for the release of the body, is also possibly not worth the paper it is printed on.
That is because case law dating back to 1841 states that once a person has died, unless the medical staff or the coroner order an autopsy, the deceased person’s body becomes the responsibility of—but not the property of—in the following order: the executor of the will; the next of kin; or, in the absence of the above two, a person or persons intending to pay for and arrange the funeral. Failing that, the local authority must take control. There are, therefore, a limited group of people to whom lawful control of a body can be given, which can also include their appointed representatives. That is the bit of the law that is absolutely crystal clear.
However, what follows is much more confusing. Even where guidelines stipulate which forms must be presented before a body can be released—such as Bristol royal infirmary’s own release form—in fact, once someone who can lawfully take responsibility for a body demands to be allowed to do so, the hospital is apparently powerless to prevent the release of the body, irrespective of trust or Department guidelines, and irrespective of what paperwork the person or persons may or, in this case, may not have.
That is a very important, albeit technical, point, which I wish the Minister to take note of, because if a hospital employee, following the appropriate guidelines, refuses to release the body to someone who can lawfully take control of it, honestly believing that he or she is doing the right thing, that employee can technically open themselves up to prosecution for preventing a burial or cremation—even if that was never the intention and even if they were simply seeking to establish whether the person taking responsibility was legally entitled to do so.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I spoke to the hon. Lady beforehand about this issue. She has outlined technical issues about how the body should have been released and where the process has fallen down. Is she also concerned at the impact that such a situation has on the families at a time of grief and sorrow? No matter what, that cannot be overlooked.
Caroline Nokes
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He is, of course, exactly correct on that point. It is a time of great grief and distress to families, and they are often not in a position either to know what the legal technicalities are or to ensure that they are properly implemented. I will come on to his specific points very shortly.
According to some legal experts, this grey area has arisen from a number of test cases—including one in 1974—that have apparently established that a person claiming lawful control does not need to provide any paperwork at all to justify their claim over a body. Furthermore, and of great concern, not only are there no stipulations in law regarding what paperwork must be presented, or what conditions met, irrespective of guidelines, it is apparently illegal to demand that anyone seeking lawful control of a body do anything to justify their claim. In other words, unless my understanding is incorrect, not only are trust guidelines of no legal effect, but they can actually put the staff seeking to implement them at a technical risk of prosecution—something that I know will be of concern to my hon. Friend the Minister.
The first issue, therefore, that I would like my hon. Friend the Minister to consider is clearing up the discrepancy between the guidelines that NHS, hospice and care home staff are given and the technical exposure to prosecution that they face if they seek to abide by them. Furthermore, perhaps the law can also, at the same time, be clarified to state what rights the next of kin have over a body, which is something that it does not clearly do at the moment, because, as I said earlier, the body is not technically considered to be the property of anyone.
I turn to the second point that has been highlighted by my constituents. The right of lawful control does not pass to undertakers unless they have been properly contracted and bestowed with the right to take the body. Furthermore, departmental guidelines clearly state that that right must be demonstrated by the production of the relevant paperwork. What we have to ask, therefore, is how did this situation arise and how widespread is the practice?
In accordance with Department of Health guidelines, Bristol royal infirmary operates a system where a body will not be released without staff being presented with one of its own release notes—something that my constituent was very clearly told. However, in this case, no such release note was presented, because the undertaker was never given it. How, then, did the body come to be given to the undertaker? In answer to that, I again draw the attention of my hon. Friend the Minister to his Department’s guidelines, which, like the law, can at best be described as vague.
For example, while the guidelines state that a body must be released to “the correct recipient”, they do not say who that is. The guidelines also say that “standard operating procedures” should be known by all staff through training, and be robustly audited. They clearly state:
“Before a deceased person’s body is released, mortuary staff should check that all necessary documentation is complete”.
Even if that was a legal requirement, which it seems it may not be, in this case there were clearly no checks of the paperwork because none can have been presented. The guidelines go on to state:
“The body of a person who has died may be collected from the mortuary by the family, but is usually released to a representative, most often a funeral director. Mortuaries should therefore ensure that they have good lines of communication and working relationships with local funeral directors.”
Here, the advice is that hospitals need good working relationships with local undertakers. It seems that that advice has been taken far too literally in this case at least, and I fear elsewhere, with the establishment of a very cosy relationship between undertaker and hospital—a relationship where it is deemed that things can be taken on trust, and contrary to guidelines, no checks are required as to the legal right of the undertaker to take control of the body. That is not a good working relationship with clear lines of communication; it is an abuse of trust.
Certainly, what is clear in this case is that Bristol royal infirmary and the undertakers did not act in accordance with the Department’s guidelines and were, in fact, acting like some modern-day Burke and Hare operation. What is abundantly clear is that Bristol royal infirmary’s response to Mr Williams is inadequate. Although some changes to policy have been implemented, those are changes that my constituent calls “minimal”, and there is no guarantee that it will not happen again. As my constituent noted in a letter to the hospital’s chief executive, Mr Woolley:
“The Post Office would appear to take more care in the release of a parcel than the BRI did in the release of a body”.
To say that my constituent is unhappy with the response that he has received from the hospital would be an understatement. He is desperate to see the changes required to prevent other families experiencing the kidnapping of bodies belonging to their loved ones, but feels that the points he has raised with the hospital have simply been ignored, with the hospital blaming a member of staff for not following procedures.
Mr Williams asks two perfectly reasonable questions in his complaint to the hospital. Those questions are, as yet, unanswered. First, why did Thomas Davis arrive at the hospital without the paperwork that the hospital itself says is essential for a body to be released? Secondly, why was the body released without that paperwork? Mr Williams is worried that the answer to both those questions is this: because the undertaker assumed that he would not need the paperwork—an assumption based on past experience of acting in a similar manner. That begs the obvious question: how many other bodies have been taken in that way? It appears that the hospital will not accept responsibility for its failure in its duty of care towards the Williams family, seeming to want to blame individual hospital employees and the funeral industry.
That is another area of concern to Mr Williams, because all that has been received from the funeral industry is a response that is, to say the least, disappointing, stating only that “these mistakes sometimes happen” and offering nothing beyond that. My constituent has rightly complained to the health service ombudsman, and we await with interest the decision on that complaint, but there is no redress against the undertakers who took the body of my constituent’s mother-in-law, held it unlawfully and refused to take responsibility for doing so, knowing that they are virtually free of any legal consequences for their unlawful behaviour.
I hope that, in his response, the Minister will touch on both aspects of this sorry tale: the lack of legal clarity, rights and protection that both relatives and NHS staff have; and measures designed to prevent undertakers from seeing distressed and grieving families as representing a lucrative opportunity provided that they can first kidnap the body by relying on the cosy relationship that they might enjoy with the local hospital, which the Department’s own guidelines encourage.
From grave robbery to daylight robbery, the funeral industry has questions to answer, as, having spoken to campaigners in preparation for this debate, I can tell the Minister that, despite the comments of the industry, this practice is said to be far more widespread than is believed or acknowledged. Sadly, I am told that people rarely complain, because they simply want to grieve and move on, and the funeral industry is rarely held to account.
I suspect that neither the Department nor the funeral industry keeps figures on how often this practice happens. It would be interesting to know whether the Department has some figures. However, my constituent fears that his experience is merely the tip of the iceberg—a view shared by campaigners in this area. I hope that now that this issue has been highlighted, the Department will seriously consider bringing clarity to what the legislation says and will offer protection to NHS, hospice and care home employees and to grieving families, protecting them from undertakers who should be there to offer a service at the time of greatest need and ensuring that bereavement and grief are not exploited.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) on securing the debate and raising an issue of extreme sensitivity. I can imagine the enormous distress for the family involved. As the intervention suggested, at a moment of grieving, no family would want to have to cope with this situation. Let me be very clear that the practice that my hon. Friend describes, whether it is a one-off or more widespread, is completely unacceptable. That message has to be disseminated to the entire system, because respect for families who have suffered a bereavement and respect for the deceased person are of paramount importance. I am therefore very grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this subject and enabling me to respond. I am grateful also to her constituent, Mr Williams, for raising the issue with her so that it could be exposed in Parliament.
Each year, more than 500,000 people die in England and Wales, with local mortuary and bereavement services working hard to ensure that during the period of grief, the bereaved are supported and due regard is given to their individual needs. I think that in the vast majority of cases, that happens and people are treated with the respect that they deserve.
The current guidance, entitled “When a Patient Dies: Advice on Developing Bereavement Services in the NHS”, which was published by the Department in 2005, highlights the importance of involving relatives in decisions about care after death, but does not set out specific guidelines on the release of bodies. In addition, the document entitled “Care and Respect in Death: Good Practice Guidance for NHS Mortuary Staff”, which was issued in 2006 and to which my hon. Friend referred, states:
“Where families have individual, cultural or religious preferences concerning the storage, handling, transportation or presentation of the deceased person, these need to be carefully documented and accommodated wherever possible.”
Let me now deal with the legal context. A dead body is a possible source of infection, so society requires that the law balances the need to give regard to the respectful disposal of the dead with the need to ensure the protection of public health. Hospitals have put in place procedures to try to manage a number of competing demands and legal requirements in a way that causes the least difficulty for the vast majority of people and that allows coronial, health-and-safety and other requirements to be met.
The law does not recognise—my hon. Friend made this point—a dead body as someone’s property, but it has been held in case law that the executors, administrators or other persons charged by law with the duty to dispose of the body have a right to its custody and possession until it is disposed of. In straightforward cases, in which the coroner is not involved, the duty to dispose of the body can rest with a range of individuals or organisations, with an established order of precedence. The executor of a will, not the next of kin, has the primary claim to possession.
Generally, when a person dies, an early priority for the family is to arrange the final disposal of the person’s body. Lawful disposal may occur once a registrar has received a satisfactory medical certificate of cause of death and subsequently issued a certificate of disposal, commonly known as the green form, or the coroner issues a certificate of disposal where a death has been referred for a coroner’s investigation. My hon. Friend has clearly done an enormous amount of research on this subject. I am very impressed by the amount of knowledge that she has acquired.
The person with the authority to administer the estate of the deceased person has the right to possess the body in order to arrange disposal of the body— the funeral. The green form is one of the pieces of documentation required to allow a funeral to proceed and is often passed from the family to the funeral director. However, it is not a legal requirement for an individual to produce a green form in order to collect the body from the hospital. In practice, many hospitals appear to treat the green form as the key documentation for body release. I understand that hospitals do that to confirm that the death is not a coroner’s case. Potentially, up until the green form is issued, a registrar could refer a death to the coroner because new information relating to the death has come to light and the registrar finds themselves under a duty to report the death to the coroner. The other reason for some hospitals insisting on seeing the green form is, understandably, for reassurance that the body is being released to the right person. That is key to the case that my hon. Friend has raised today.
In the context of about 500,000 deaths a year, my Department has had very little representation to suggest that local hospital procedures for the release of bodies are causing difficulties. I am interested in this. My understanding is that the Department has not had many representations, yet my hon. Friend’s assertion, which I take seriously, is that the practice could be more widespread. We need to understand whether that is the case. At the moment, there appears to be a lack of evidence, but if she or anyone else is aware of more evidence, we need to hear about it. This is a very important matter.
Caroline Nokes
On that specific point, which relates to the concern the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) raised earlier, one issue my constituent raised was that the practice occurs at a time of bereavement and grieving, and consequently people are far less likely to complain, because they wish to move on and get on with their lives and the grieving process. That point is important, because we simply do not know the extent of the problem. My constituent is concerned because his mother-in-law’s body was released with no paperwork whatsoever, so the practice could be far more widespread than we will ever know, because it is unreported.
Norman Lamb
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I appreciate that if such practices have occurred, families will in many cases feel reluctant to raise a complaint. None the less, we need evidence, so if people are aware of such activities, I encourage them to come forward.
In some areas, funeral directors had experienced delays in collecting bodies from hospitals due to the documentation required by the hospital, which relates to the problem my hon. Friend raises. A national representative body of funeral directors reported its members’ concerns to officials in my Department. Following the concerns being raised with us, my Department re-circulated advice on the release of bodies to the NHS in a 26 October 2012 edition of The Week bulletin, to highlight to NHS trusts that having sight of the green form was not a legal requirement for the release of bodies, that holding bodies can cause unnecessary delays, and informing them of proposals to consult on a draft body release form as part of the consultation on death certification reforms. I want to reinforce the point that a delay in the release of the body can also be distressing for loved ones, who are going through bereavement. Ensuring that the process works efficiently is incredibly important.
Some hospitals have been using their own body release forms, which is the impression I received from Bristol. The situation my hon. Friend describes would not have happened if the hospital had followed its own procedures. Such forms are used to facilitate release of the body, and that is potentially a way forward to resolve the problem. Officials have worked with key partners, such as mortuary technicians, bereavement services and funeral directors, to develop a draft body release form designed to provide the NHS with reassurance about the appropriateness of releasing a body, which they currently achieve via the green form. My Department will seek views on the merit of such a form, and the contribution of key groups, such as funeral directors associations, will be vital. The consultation will make further relevant proposals, and when it is published in due course, I will welcome my hon. Friend’s participation.
My hon. Friend made detailed points about the legislation and raised concerns about the potential conflict between legislation and guidance and concerns about employees seeking to comply with the law while under pressure to release a body. It is important that we respond to all the points she made, and I will ensure that we do so. I end by again thanking her for raising this important, sensitive issue. Whether this practice is a one-off or more widespread —whatever its prevalence—it is important that it is dealt with properly and that this sort of thing never happens again.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Statements
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Technology Strategy Board (Triennial Review)
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)
On 10 July 2012 I announced in Parliament through a written ministerial statement—Official Report, 12WS—commencement of the triennial review of the Technology Strategy Board (TSB). I am now pleased to announce the completion of the review.
The Technology Strategy Board is the UK’s innovation agency; its goal is to accelerate economic growth by stimulating and supporting business-led innovation. Sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Technology Strategy Board brings together business, research and the public sector, supporting and accelerating the development of innovative products and services to meet market needs, tackle major societal challenges and help build the future economy.
The review concludes that the functions performed by the Technology Strategy Board are still required and that it should be retained as an Executive non-departmental public body. The review also examined the governance arrangements for TSB in line with guidance on good corporate governance set out by the Cabinet Office. The review concluded that TSB complies with all statutory accountabilities and has strong and effective governance structures. It nonetheless identified a number of opportunities for improvement which are now in the process of being implemented.
The full report of the review of the TSB can be found on the gov.uk website and copies have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
BORONA Programme
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Andrew Murrison)
As part of the defence transformation announcement on 18 July 2011, the Secretary of State for Defence confirmed that two signal regiments would relocate from Germany to Beacon barracks in Stafford in 2015. Following that announcement the Minister for the Armed Forces gave approval for the recommencement of a procurement competition for the capital works requirements supporting these moves.
Today I am announcing that the procurement competition has concluded, that all the bids have been evaluated and scrutinised, and that the MOD has decided to award a contract for the redevelopment of Beacon barracks, Stafford to Lend Lease Construction (EMEA) Ltd. The redevelopment will enable the two signal regiments, 16 Signal Regiment currently based in Elmpt and 1 Armoured Division Signal Regiment1 based in Herford, to relocate to the UK in the summer of 2015. During the redevelopment the site will continue to be home to 22 Signal Regiment and the Tactical Supply Wing (RAF) and we will maintain all essential services, undertake all necessary works services and work with the local authorities in Stafford to prepare for the arrival of personnel, families and equipment in 2015.
The programme team will continue to consult interested parties including the trade unions and, in Germany, we will continue to engage with the relevant authorities and employee representatives at national, regional and local levels.
The move of the two signal regiments is the final phase of our pre-SDSR (strategic defence and security review) basing programme, which set out to close Rhine Garrison and Münster station in Germany. We are on course to close Münster station by the end of 2013 and the moves to Stafford will enable the full closure of Rhine Garrison by March 2016. The remaining unit moves out of Germany will be implemented as part of the Army basing plan, which was announced by the Secretary of State on 5 March this year.
1Armoured Division Signal Regiment will be re-titled to 1 Signal Regiment in 2015 as part of Army 2020 restructuring.
City Deal
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Greg Clark)
Following the successful completion of the first wave of city deals in July 2012 with the “core cities”, the Government committed to work with a further 20 cities and their wider areas to negotiate a second wave of city deals in October 2012.
Over recent months I have been in negotiation with the New Anglia local enterprise partnership, Suffolk county council, Ipswich borough council and the Babergh, Suffolk Coastal and Mid Suffolk district councils. The Greater Ipswich city deal aims to address youth unemployment and to increase the skills level of the local work force. By bringing together the efforts and resources of local businesses, local councils, colleges and the Government it will:
Provide opportunities for every young person in the area to be in education, an apprenticeship or work
Ensure that dedicated support is available to match young people with jobs through a youth jobs centre
Expand the number of jobs and apprenticeships in local businesses
Increase local investment in skills training
Over its lifetime, the New Anglia local enterprise partnership estimates that the deal will ensure:
Over 3,500 young people are supported into work
£10 million of new local investment in skills training will be made by employers and local agencies
5,000 new apprenticeships will be created
European Environment Council
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Owen Paterson)
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and I represented the UK at the European Environment Council meeting in Luxembourg on 14 October. Paul Wheelhouse, Scottish Government Minister for Environment and Climate Change, also attended.
After adopting the list of legislative and non-legislative “A” items, Environment Ministers had an exchange of views on the proposal to amend the shipments of waste regulation. The Commission emphasised the potentially severe environmental impact of the dumping or mismanagement of waste. The strengthening of inspections could bring economic benefits for member states. All member states welcomed the potential of the proposals to improve compliance with the waste shipments regulation. The UK and Bulgaria argued that further consideration was required as the proposal risked failing to achieve its objectives. Several member states agreed with the UK’s concern that requiring the publication of detailed inspection plans could be counterproductive. The UK argued that such detailed proposals were contrary to the principle of subsidiarity. The UK would prefer an obligation on member states and their authorities to plan effectively for inspections, without being overly prescriptive. A number of member states, including Germany, supported the UK.
Council conclusions were adopted on the preparations for the 19th session of the conference of the parties to the United Nations framework convention on climate change (the “Warsaw COP”). The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and ministerial colleagues focused their discussions on paragraphs relating to pre-2020 mitigation ambition and the process towards the new 2015 global agreement, including the UN Secretary General’s announcement to host a leaders’ summit in 2014.
There was a great deal of discussion on the importance of a timetable for the proposal of commitments for the new 2015 global agreement. The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, supported by many colleagues, emphasised that the aim was to ensure countries left the Warsaw COP knowing they had to do their “homework” on commitments in 2014. This was consistent with the EU’s previous public statements proposing a stepwise approach to the 2015 agreement. Mr Davey also pressed firmly for ministerial engagement on pre-2020 mitigation ambition at the Warsaw COP. Conclusions meeting UK objectives in these areas were adopted. Ministers then broke for a working lunch, during which green infrastructure was discussed.
In the afternoon session the presidency introduced the agenda item on carbon dioxide emissions from new passenger cars, inviting interventions from any member states who could not agree with or had misgivings about the text negotiated in June under the Irish presidency. The German Minister for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Peter Altmaier, explained he was committed to reaching a first reading agreement on the basis of the previous trilogue discussions that accepted the target of 95g/km for 2020, but that allowed some further limited flexibility.
Several member states supported the request for further consideration, and others offered support for finding a compromise. The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change supported the request for further consideration in the light of these concerns, and the suggestion that the presidency and Commission develop further proposals that would generate greater consensus. He none the less noted that the compromise package on the table was a good compromise and we should only be looking to minor amendments. The presidency concluded that it would talk to the Commission, keeping in mind that a resolution was needed as soon as possible, and that it would keep member states informed of developments.
In other business, the presidency updated the Council on recent international meetings and events. There were five events of note, namely: the 11th conference of parties to the convention to combat desertification; the 20th session of the Commission on Sustainable Development; the first meeting of the high-level political forum on sustainable development; the special event towards achieving the millennium development goals; and the diplomatic conference for the Minamata convention on mercury. There were no interventions from member states. The Hungarian Minister updated the group on the Budapest water summit that had taken place on 8-11 October. The Commission congratulated Hungary for this timely event, as did Sweden.
Updates were also provided on the 38th International Civil Aviation Organisation assembly outcome on climate; the system for monitoring, reporting and verifying greenhouse gas emissions from international maritime transport; and facilitating a global hydrofluorocarbon phase-down agreement under the Montreal protocol. Under other business, Denmark also reintroduced the political declaration concerning the use of industrial gas credits under the effort sharing decision which it had released in 2011. This was welcomed by a number of member states including the UK.
Railway Rolling Stock: Luxembourg Rail Protocol
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)
My noble Friend, the Minister of State for Transport, Baroness Kramer, has made the following written ministerial statement:
The Government have decided to opt in to the proposed Council decision on the approval on behalf of the European Union of the Luxembourg protocol to the convention on international interests in mobile equipment on matters specific to rolling stock, adopted in Luxembourg on 23 February 2007.
The Luxembourg rail protocol is intended to facilitate the financing of high-value railway rolling stock by seeking to ensure protection, for example of a leasing company’s rights against defaulters by a method of central registration, priority and common contractual terms. One of the purposes of this is to reduce the costs of leasing contracts for rolling stock. The rail protocol does this by providing an international mechanism whereby financial interests in railway rolling stock may be registered in a central database. Where an interest is registered a rule of priority would operate in favour of that interest, so protecting the investment where the operator of the rolling stock defaults on his obligations. The financial interest is protected and recoverable except when those financial interests rest in public service rolling stock in respect of which an appropriate declaration has been made. Protecting an investment in this way increases the confidence of leasing companies, and could thereby lead to a reduction in costs for industry.
The proposal has been published with a legal base falling within title V of part three of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union (TFEU)—Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) matters. The citation of a title V (JHA) legal base would usually mean that there would be universal acceptance that the UK’s JHA opt-in protocol applies and that the UK would therefore be free to choose whether to participate. However, the EU institutions do not accept that the JHA opt-in protocol applies when the relevant JHA provisions fall in an area of exclusive external competence—as is the case here. The Government believe that the UK opt in under the protocol to title V of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union applies and they have therefore asserted their right to choose whether to opt in; they have decided it is in the UK’s best interests to do so.
The Government consider that the protocol is clearly advantageous to the UK and European rail industry, would provide greater security for the leasing companies of rolling stock, and would be beneficial both to borrowers by stimulating increased flows of capital at lower cost, and to equipment suppliers.
Grand Committee
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Children and Families Bill
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Lingfield
Lord Lingfield (Con)
My Lords, the four amendments in my name, which are necessarily probing amendments, have as their purpose to include higher education in the Bill in cases where there is a reference to local authority duties related to education provision for young people up to the age of 25.
Unlike in the past, more and more young people with disabilities are now entering university courses. Sometimes they receive first-class support; other times, alas, it is very much wanting. There should be a seamless pattern of support whether or not a student aims at further education, which is catered for in the Bill, or for higher education. My amendment to Clause 27(3)(h) includes higher education institutions among the bodies with which a local authority must consult as part of its duty to keep education and care provision under review; the amendment to Clause 28(2)(e) adds higher education institutions to the local partners with which a local authority must co-operate; my amendment to Clause 29(2)(d) adds higher education institutions to the list of bodies that must co-operate with the local authority and vice versa; and, on the preparation of draft EHC plans, the amendment to Clause 38(3)(d) adds higher education to the institutions whose naming in the draft plan can be requested by a parent or young person.
At Second Reading I greatly welcomed the extension of the coverage of legislation from birth to 25 years of age, unlike the current system, which applies only to the end of school-based education. At that point under the current system, to quote a parent who gave evidence to my own commission on special needs, a child will often fall off an educational cliff. In light of the welcome extension of legislation to the age of 25, it is particularly important to make sure that higher education is included explicitly in this primary legislation in order that it will be regarded in the same way as further education and other post-16 provision under the new system of assessments and EHC plans. Without such amendments I fear that we will not improve the current and, in my view and the view of many parents and students, imperfect system, where there is a separate and often disconnected process for assessing and meeting the needs of young people with special educational needs who are successful in reaching higher education.
It is not often understood that currently a young person with a statement at school will not automatically have the same provision at university, and that the previous support that has come via a statement of needs has to be reassessed by Student Finance England before university entrance. I am told by those with direct exposure to this process that Student Finance England’s reassessment process does not provide for as thorough an assessment as that which would come through the current statutory assessment or, it is to be hoped, through the new EHC plan. As a result there is a clear risk of delay in support for these young people, especially where, as in many cases, there is no reason whatever why the provision that has supported them for years beforehand should cease.
I also note a separate but related concern that the expertise available to Student Finance England may be very different from, and possibly more limited than, that available to local authorities, healthcare providers and others for EHC plans. Indeed, it is rather surprising that Student Finance England and universities do not as a matter of course currently accept the advice of local authorities, expressed in the form of a statement, bearing in mind that local authorities have considerably more expertise available to them in the form of access to educational psychologists, speech and language therapists and occupational therapists.
All this is illustrated very clearly by a case that was drawn to my attention, of Michael. Michael has dyspraxia, including severe oral and motor dyspraxia, and had a statement of special needs from the age of three. Nevertheless, despite Michael’s statement being reviewed annually, Student Finance England declined to accept this as evidence of his disability. A fresh set of reports were required and had to be paid for by Michael’s parents in order to compel Student Finance England to recognise that there was a pre-existing disability. Michael has now, with continuing and appropriate support, obtained a first-class honours degree in philosophy at his university.
In the new system, designed to cater for the needs of children and young people up to the age of 25, maintaining a different assessment process for those who are capable of entering university, as opposed to further education or other provision, will perpetuate an unfortunate anomaly which, in my view, could put off young people with disabilities from attempting a degree course. Surely the repetition of the process by two state-funded bodies is a waste of money. Any moves to address this disconnect, such as those sought in these amendments, surely must be welcomed. I very much hope that the Minister will give this her full consideration. I beg to move.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, the noble Lord’s amendments prompt me to ask a question. We know that care leavers have been increasingly going to university, although it seems to have stalled rather at the moment. The question is: of the care leavers going to university, what proportion have special educational needs? Are we doing as well with care leavers with special educational needs going to university as we are with the general body of care leavers going to university? Perhaps the Minister will write to me on that particular question.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I declare an interest as my sister is a BSL interpreter at a university in the UK and I worked in the higher education sector for 20 years. I will pick up on the last point of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. Part of the problem in the HE sector is that there is not always consistency. “Care leaver” can be defined by an individual institution. There are usually generous grants, and they are usually on top of any SEN support, but the definition of care can be quite limited. Certainly it would not always cover guardianship or kinship carers, where children have come out of care. Those are some of the issues that remain.
The reason that I wanted to speak to these amendments is that I absolutely applaud the sentiment behind them. If we are truly to have an SEN offer that covers young people to the age of 25, it is ridiculous that an entire sector of education is not covered by it. My fear is that this amendment tries to tack universities on to a much more local offer, thereby causing problems. I will ask the Minister a couple of questions on this later.
The university provision can be very generous. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, outlined, for some students, where there is perhaps the possibility to have diverse views, such as with dyspraxia, dyslexia or one of a number of other SENs, it can be very difficult to get past the first hurdle. I would welcome a transition arrangement, as we have for young people with learning disabilities and social care support moving from child support into adult services, for those with special educational needs entering universities. At the moment they stand completely separate, and frankly that is where the holes start to appear. If a child has a statement under the old system, or an EHC under the new system, they should have that information passed on automatically, along with the level of support that they have had in the past, providing the young person is happy for that to happen.
I notice that the Minister in the Commons said that he would provide further detail as to the proposed contents of the code of practice relating to the transition to university, and made a commitment to consult widely with practitioners in university in drafting the code. I think that that would be extremely helpful. I would also welcome further details from the Minister—perhaps in writing as it is not directly within her field—as to what action the Government will take to ensure disabled students have disability support in place as soon as possible in their course of study. In particular, there needs to be a commitment for the code of practice to recommend that local authorities support and encourage DSA applications as soon as possible the year before entry, and that such support in applying for the DSA is stipulated in the plans of young people intending to study at university. The problem is that that conflicts with the current timescale for young people to be encouraged to apply through student finance, which most people do not do until they are well into their final exams in the summer term before they plan to go up to university. That is too late for students with statements and support because there is not enough time for receiving universities to do the research necessary to provide the right support.
I have said before that I am concerned about local authorities having a duty to secure a place in higher education for students, as would be the implication of this group of amendments. I would encourage mechanisms, perhaps through an alternative amendment, to make sure that there is dialogue so that not just the statement is carried through. If the student has concerns, the local authority may know and understand the case better, and sometimes it is useful if the young person is not the only one arguing their case.
I have probably covered it all. I regret not being able to support these amendments but there may be scope for something that ensures that these young people studying in higher education, whether in college or at university, have as smooth a transition as possible and the continuing level of support without having to reargue the case from scratch.
The Countess of Mar (CB)
My Lords, about a fortnight ago I forwarded to the Minister an e-mail I had from a young man who is autistic, questioning the fact that this Bill prevents local authorities from funding university education for SEN young people. I asked the Minister for clarification. Would it be possible to get that today? Are local authorities still able to fund young people to go to university or has the Bill blocked that funding?
Lord Low of Dalston (CB)
My Lords, I speak to Amendment 155 in my name. Clause 38(3) sets out the types of institution that may be named in an education, health and care plan. Ministers have stressed the importance of a joined-up approach and that a system that goes from nought to 25 will improve the lives of children and young people with special educational needs. I was therefore a bit surprised to see that higher education institutions were omitted from the list. That means that if a young person with a special educational need decides that they wish to pursue a university education, they must do so without the support of an education, health and care plan.
Disabled young people and those with special educational needs need all the support they can get to go to university. Disabled graduates are much more likely to get a job than those without a degree. In 2012, 71% of disabled graduates were in employment compared with only 42% of disabled non-graduates. Yet disabled young people are less likely to go on to higher education than their non-disabled peers: in 2009-10, it was 33% of disabled as against 41% of non-disabled young people aged 19.
Lord Touhig (Lab)
My Lords, I have added my name to that of the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, on Amendment 155 and it is to that cause that I wish to speak. If there is one thing where I find myself at one with the Government, it is in our shared ambition to encourage young disabled people to have the highest aspirations for their lives and to be self-assured and confident about their future. More and more disabled youngsters are liberating themselves, to the extent of refusing to accept their disability as a barrier. They are self-assured, confident and determined to have a full life.
For many, the pathway to that full life is through a university education but higher education facilities are currently excluded from the new framework created by the Bill. Given that I share with the Government this ambition that disabled youngsters should have the highest aspirations, I am mystified why they should be excluded. Indeed, I am sure that I am not alone in this Committee in thinking that. Many universities already meet the educational needs of disabled young people. Surely we want to feed and encourage this.
All too often, unfortunately, disabled students, even when given first-class support at universities, find it hard to access other services that they need. A report by the Trailblazers group found that 30% of young disabled people felt that the number of places where they could study was limited because of their concerns about an all-round care package. One student named Zoe, who was at Oxford, told Trailblazers:
“My local council had never sent a disabled person away to university before. They were quite insistent that I should stay and study at my local university (ranked at 119th as opposed to Oxford, ranked first), and do a course that I had absolutely no interest in. My decision to move away was treated with complete bewilderment; there was no understanding of how my care package would be accommodated, and the idea that agency care was more expensive in the new local authority caused real problems when negotiating”.
Lauren, who graduated from Manchester in 2012 and is now doing a master’s degree at Leeds, recalled:
“My local authority would not give me the required hours straight off. We had to appeal. Luckily we started the process a year before so had enough time to do this”.
Katy, who studies at Bedford, said:
“After an argument my home county agreed to pay for my personal care but I nearly didn’t qualify for funding as their criteria for supporting people was for those whose needs were ‘substantial or severe’”.
Finally, Rupert, who is at Canterbury Christchurch, added:
“First of all, I was living in Lewisham and Lewisham Council didn’t want to tell us that they were responsible for providing and funding the care themselves. They knew they had to but didn’t inform me. We found out through other sources, so they eventually paid up”.
Disability discrimination legislation has been in force since 1995, yet disabled people still have to struggle for equal access in many areas of our national life. Young people with a disability face challenges and hurdles enough that the rest of us do not face. Amendment 155 is a step in the right direction. It is one more step in creating a level playing field for all our citizens, able-bodied and disabled, thus ensuring that all can use their talents to the full and have a full life.
Lord Addington (LD)
Sometimes higher education provides better support than further education. I must declare that I have commercial interests in a firm that enables it to be done through the DSA. The transition between the two bits of education is probably unnecessarily complex. Making sure there is a smoother connection and an exchange of education from higher to further and the other way around would enhance the system and would probably allow people to study better in both places. I am interested to hear what my noble friend has to say on this matter. This is a recognised problem of transition and has been around a long time. It will be interesting to hear the Government’s thinking on this matter.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, we have had a briefing from Universities UK on this subject, which I suspect was compiled largely by talking to registrars, who wish that the problem would go away and who feel that it is not really their responsibility. I think disability officers in universities would take a rather different attitude, which is that they are not receiving the support they need regarding health and social care from their local authorities or clinical commissioning groups, which tend to regard the itinerant student population as somebody else’s responsibility and to think that an 18-month waiting list for mental health treatment for a student is appropriate.
I think there is a wish within universities for a better connected, more responsive system, such as we are putting in place for students in FE. I understand from what various noble Lords, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, have said that there are some aspects of the system that has been put in place for younger ages that would not fit universities. We ought to look carefully at what would suit university students. We ought to do so by talking to the people in universities who have to deal with these problems. They are conscious that the system they face at the moment is not by any means as good as it might be, and not as good as the sorts of things we are putting in place through this Bill.
I hope my noble friend will allow me to come and keep her company between now and Report with some of the people who deal with this as a daily issue in higher education to see whether there are some changes, whether in guidance or the Bill—I suspect probably in guidance—that would alleviate the problems they suffer in doing well by the disabled students they have to look after.
Lord Storey (LD)
We all want the same thing, and on Report I shall be interested to hear what the Minister has to say. I have current examples of young people who have gone to university, a young girl with cerebral palsy being one. My personal experience is that they have been very well supported by the universities, and all credit to them for giving that tremendous support. If we have established an education, health and care plan post-higher education, it just seems sensible to me, in my innocent way, if the requirements in that plan are carried through for the student when they go into higher education. I can appreciate that there might be slight delays because of the timescale of applying and getting to know and getting to grips with the university, but it seems common sense that if a young person has special needs, whatever they are, and they are contained in the plan, then the plan should be carried forward with them and continued into higher education. That seems simple and it would help the student a great deal.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for this stimulating and important debate, and I thank my noble friend Lord Lingfield for initiating it. We all very much agree on what we are trying to do here, and I am very grateful to him for emphasising that these are probing amendments, testing why we are doing things as we suggest here.
We share his ambition and that of other noble Lords that there should indeed be a seamless transition of support between school and higher education. We share noble Lords’ ambition that young people with SEN and disabilities should reach their full potential, including securing a place at university where that is an agreed goal and is appropriate. However, we do not believe that bringing higher education institutions into the framework of this Bill will help us to further that ambition. My noble friend Lady Brinton very much touched on that when she emphasised that this is about the local offer. Exactly how this would be applied as far as higher education is concerned is slightly different.
Higher education institutions are independent and autonomous organisations, responsible for all decisions on student admissions. When young people take up a place in higher education, they start a new phase of education—one in which they will be expected to develop a different approach to learning. Universities, not local authorities, are therefore best placed to support young people through this transition. However, I shall come back to the transition point in a minute.
Higher education courses will vary greatly in terms of content, delivery and assessment across institutions and subjects. Local authorities have no part in providing or commissioning higher education, and are unlikely to have the skills or experience to write a plan to suit the specific nature of the course being studied or the approach of the university.
As Universities UK says in its briefing on these amendments:
“The level of specialist knowledge required in assessing support needs for students on particular degree courses can be extensive, and is best carried out within the institutions delivering those courses. Universities UK would not want to see this system supplanted or duplicated by a local authority-based system”.
Of course, higher education institutions come under the Equality Act, like everything else. They are responsible for complying with the law in promoting disability equality and for making reasonable adjustments for disabled people. Universities take these duties very seriously. A recent report published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission on the publication of equality objectives by English public authorities shows that higher education institutions are the best performing bodies in the public sector in publishing policy objectives on disability. Institutions are expected to have in place arrangements that can proactively meet the needs of disabled students and can be adapted to individual circumstances.
Baroness Brinton
I was very pleased to hear the Minister’s response about the revised code of practice. I just wondered whether discussions had been taking place between the department and the LGA with Student Finance England, whose website is woefully inadequate on SEN; it is all about applying for finance. There is nothing on the front page that comes up and hits you. The problem is that students who have SEN statements do not know where to go to get into the system early.
Baroness Northover
My noble friend highlights a very important problem that we keep coming back to. It is one thing having arrangements in place; it is another thing making absolutely sure that those who need to benefit from them know about them. I shall carry that back and make sure that my noble friend’s recommendations, suggestions and points are fed in.
The Earl of Listowel
I welcome what the Minister said about the Government’s care-leaver strategy. I have been following it with interest and warmly welcome it. I thank her for the response to the question that I put to her. From what she said in response to the debate, I am reminded that on many occasions when I have spoken with families who have children with disabilities, they have raised an important practical point: the change in adult advocate just before the child reaches majority often undermines the transition into adult services, whether they are education or other services. This may well have already been raised in Committee but I should be interested to hear whether the Minister recognises that as a problem. Can she say whether there is any progress in ensuring more continuity in the professional relationship between social workers and families to minimise this stumbling block in the transition from child to adult services?
Baroness Northover
I thank the noble Earl for his comments—and for his thanks to me. Again, we are all very concerned, in this and other areas, that the transition of a child becoming a young person and into adulthood is supported as effectively as possible, especially for the more vulnerable of our young people. Again, I will make sure that the point the noble Earl made is fed in. It would help if he looked at the draft code of practice to see whether he feels reassured by that.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, I am sorry but I missed a little of what the noble Baroness said in response to me. Was the reference she made to the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, about something in the Care Bill?
Baroness Northover
Yes. As I listened to the noble Lord, it struck me that some of the concerns he had would be addressed by the way that the care of a particular individual moving from one area to another should be looked after. He highlighted cases of students who wished to move from home to study at particular universities—just like all other young people who had those ambitions—but their personal situation stood in their way. We clearly need to ensure that that is not the case. The Care Bill should help in that regard because of the responsibilities there in terms of social care, outside the responsibilities I also mentioned in terms of education support.
Lord Touhig
I am grateful to the noble Baroness. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and I work quite closely on these matters.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, what my noble friend said about that is very encouraging but it is not always a pre-existing condition. In particular at university, mental conditions can become apparent that were not before because the environment is that much more challenging. I am sure there are many occasions when it works, but certainly on occasion universities find that getting provision for a student who clearly demonstrates the need for mental-health assistance can be extremely difficult where the local authority and clinical commissioning group feel they have other priorities for their permanent residents. This would not be a transfer. It is getting help within the context of a university for a student, rather than having to send them home—which misses the point of supporting them at university.
Baroness Northover
I am sorry I did not address the points from my noble friend Lord Lucas, who wished to “keep me company” in discussing this Bill. I am very happy to keep his company—and that of any other noble Lords or Baronesses, should they wish. He is absolutely right: supporting students with mental health challenges is a vital area. I hope that he will be reassured that in the National Health Service now there is parity of esteem between mental health and physical health. We know that good mental health underpins better physical health. The challenges that students face when they leave home and are at university under all sorts of pressures are something we are acutely aware of, as are the higher education institutions. If there are instances where students are not being looked after within those institutions and health services locally, that is obviously a cause for concern.
Lord Lingfield
I thank the Minister for her reassurance. As she and my noble friend Lady Brinton will be glad to know, these were simply probing amendments aimed at debating this terribly important subject. As my noble kinsman Lord Addington said, the move from school into higher education is terribly important. Other noble Lords underlined that. Higher education is terribly important for these young people, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, illustrated with the statistics that he brought to us.
One point that my noble friend Lady Brinton made concerned the fact that while, of course, a young person can start early in their application to Student Finance England, most young people know only late in August, when they get their A-level results, which university they will go to. That leaves about a month and a bit to get all this straightened out. As the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, and the report that he commented on have shown, sometimes first-class accommodation that is entirely suitable for young people of this kind is provided. I am afraid that other universities do not have it. Neither I nor any of the young persons or their parents who have spoken to me are concerned as to which silo the funding for this should come from. All one is concerned about is that the provision should be as seamless as possible and that, unlike at the moment, the new plan should at the very least be taken into account when consideration is given to funding a young person who is going into university. Perhaps, along with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, I should keep the noble Baroness company in order to discuss this further.
Lord Low of Dalston
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 102 in my name. These amendments would specify that local authorities must publish information about the provision both within and outside their area “which is”, rather than “it expects to be”, available,
“at the time of publication for children and young people who have special educational needs”.
I have received a number of briefs that make the case for these amendments with considerable rhetorical flourish. However, the matter can be put much more simply.
The amendments simply require a local authority to call a spade a spade and to set out in the local offer what actually is the case, rather than what it “expects to be” the case, which is much more slippery and imprecise. Expects when? On what does the fulfilment of the expectation depend? Parents, practitioners and the special educational needs and disability sector are concerned that the language of expectation rather than actuality could easily be used to let local authorities off the hook and slide out of delivering what they had appeared to promise.
I should like to make a couple of other points. We should be clear about who the local offer covers and who it does not. Independent research by the University of Bath, to which we have already referred in these proceedings, has shown that 25% of disabled children and young people do not have a special educational need and as such will not be entitled to an education, health and care plan or to access the local offer because it is only for those with a special educational need. It is not clear how these 400,000-odd children and young people who have a disability but not a special educational need will secure the support they need if they are not entitled to access an education, health and care plan or the local offer.
Finally, I underline the importance of the local offer including provision which exists to meet the needs of children and young people with special educational needs outside the authority’s own area. This can be especially important in the case of those with particularly severe disabilities, who need to know about the full range of services, often consisting of highly specialised provision not available in the local area.
There is a concern that local authorities will provide information on provision available in only their own area. This is not the same as providing all the relevant information about what is available to meet special educational needs, including provision out of the local authority’s area. If out-of-area providers are routinely left off the list, it will undermine young people’s ability to access the provision which best meets their needs, as well as potentially threatening the viability of highly specialised but vital services.
Young people and families cannot be expected to find all this information about what may be of help to them for themselves without assistance. Local offers should be robust, accessible and effective in promoting choice. I therefore hope that the Minister will give serious consideration to accepting these amendments. I beg to move.
Baroness Wilkins (Lab)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 104, which returns to the issue of funding. The amendment would require local authorities to include information about funding for SEN provision within their local offers.
I set out at the last meeting of the Grand Committee the concerns of the National Deaf Children’s Society, RNIB, Sense and many other charities that local authority spending cuts will fatally undermine this Bill. In her reply the Minister undertook to propose to her “far more significant” noble friend that their department might discuss this matter with the organisations concerned. I look forward to hearing whether any progress has been made.
In her reply to me in Grand Committee, at column GC 545, the Minister assured me that the Government were not cutting services for deaf children and set out the funding situation. However, we know from the National Deaf Children’s Society Stolen Futures report that many local authorities are already cutting support services for children with SEN. The society found that 29% of local authorities will be cutting specialist support services for deaf children this year.
The Government have argued that the Bill will improve transparency and accountability and that it is this which will enable parents to ensure that their local authority provides the services that their children need. However, on looking at the Bill and at the draft regulations and guidance underpinning it, nothing that I can see would require local authorities to be more transparent about the funding. If the local offer is intended to bring together all the relevant information about SEN provision in one place, in a way that is easy to understand, accessible and improves accountability, surely it must include information about funding. Without that parents will be powerless.
The local offer must give parents clear information about how much funding has been allocated by the authority to support children and young people with SEN; it must allow and empower parents to compare local authority spending; and it must allow parents to identify if cuts have been made from year to year. There is a clear need for transparency. The National Deaf Children’s Society had great difficulties in extracting reliable information about funding of specialist support services for deaf children from the local authorities.
In 2012, 49 local authorities—nearly a third—did not respond to freedom of information requests on budgets for deaf children’s services within the legal deadline. One local authority did not respond until six months later, and only after the Information Commissioner’s Office intervened. Its response confirmed a cut to the education service for deaf children. However, as this was not disclosed until so long afterwards, parents were denied any opportunity to legally challenge this decision before it had been implemented.
This is the battle that the parents and charities must face. If the Government were to accept this amendment and require local authorities to publish information about funding in the local offer in an easy and accessible way, it would certainly give parents and charities real leverage to get the services that they need.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins. At the end of the last debate that we had on this Bill, I asked the Minister to explain how the extra funding that would be made available actually would reach those who needed it. She said that she would write to me. I do not know if I have missed that letter or whether there has not yet been time to produce it; however, I look forward to it.
I think that it is quite complicated, but I want to ask for something in relation to the way that local authorities are struggling to meet their commitments at present. I think that I said then that it is far easier if parents understand what is and is not available and are not misled into thinking that they can have more than is possible, rather than having massive aspirations. Of course I wish that the local authorities had funding to meet every child’s needs, but if that is not possible I think that it needs to be clear.
I move on to my Amendment 107, which is grouped curiously with this amendment. It would be far simpler for the Government to accept and implement. It relates to personal budgets. On page 25, line 2, I would like to insert,
“arrangements to assist young people and parents in managing a personal budget should they choose one”.
Personal budgets have been a great liberator for many adults and families, but for others they have caused extraordinary difficulty. Those of us who work in both the adult and children’s fields have seen in the adult field how many people have found extraordinary problems in managing employment and the financial complexities of budgets. Families are making it clear that they require support to manage personal budgets, and parents with experience of direct payments have spoken of difficulties that they have had in finding, recruiting and CRB-checking good staff, managing money and transactions with the local authority, identifying quality services to purchase, and co-ordinating a package of care. Currently, only 25% of local authorities provide key workers to help manage payments. I find that extraordinary. This leaves families to manage the often burdensome responsibilities of direct payments alone. I hope that discussion around this amendment will help us to better understand the Government’s thinking about the support that they envisage local authorities will provide for those families who opt for personal budgets. Does the Minister accept that all families should have some access to support?
I have a quick case study. As you know, on the whole I do not go in for detailed anecdotes, but I think that this story really does illustrate the issue. Oscar lives in north London with his parents and two siblings. He is about to turn 18. He has autism and learning difficulties. His parents have been receiving direct payments to pay for respite care for the last eight years. His mother explains how difficult it can be to find the right support to buy with direct payments, and to “jump through hoops” to account for them:
“16 months ago our local council agreed to pay for one weekend’s respite care each month, but it has taken a considerable amount of time to agree how to provide this. It has only been in the last two months that we’ve actually been able to use the direct payments to get the support we need.
As Oscar was approaching adulthood, it seemed appropriate for us to try to find him a residential placement for his respite breaks. We hoped that this would help equip him with additional independence skills and that he would enjoy spending time in a new environment. However, when we visited local options it was clear that they were not able to meet Oscar’s complex needs. We decided that the weekend respite would have to take place in our home.
Oscar needs two-to-one support and in a house with two other children this is a challenge to accommodate.
Having two extra adults in our home for a whole weekend has a significant impact on all of us and is confusing for Oscar who wants to spend time with us. But it’s not only space that is the issue. Knowing where to find suitable staff who are equipped to support Oscar has always been difficult, and to cover a whole weekend at least four staff are needed.
I had asked the Council for a list of local carers which they said they would provide, but this never arrived. It is a huge and stressful burden for parents, who already have more than enough to cope with, to have to recruit, interview and train up staff themselves. We are always vulnerable to staff leaving after a few months for better paid work, leaving Oscar very unsettled and us totally unsupported.
For many years I didn’t know who to talk to at the Council about any aspect of this as Oscar didn’t have a named social worker and no one would return my calls. As Oscar is now approaching his 18th birthday, he has now been allocated a social worker and this has made a big difference. However, for many years we felt we were floundering on our own, receiving the occasional official letter threatening action because of some perceived fault on our part.
The Council have now agreed to employ Dimensions, a not-for-profit organisation who specialise in providing services for people with learning difficulties and autism. Together we are now trying to recruit and train a team of four so that we will always have support, even if staff are ill or on holiday”.
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, I support the comments that have been made by previous speakers. I shall add a brief comment on Amendment 104. At the end of his speech, the noble Lord, Lord Low, helpfully said that we need robust, accessible and effective information in the offer. I would add “consistent and detailed”. If parents are comparing different authorities, as they may have the option to move, they must be able to see apples and apples rather than completely different things. Despite our need for individualism within local authorities, it would be very helpful if the offer were expressed in a fairly familiar and consistent way.
There also needs to be some detail in it. I shall come on to that in a later group that also looks at the publication of the offer. Without that detail, it can be very difficult for parents to understand what is on offer. I know a qualified teacher of the deaf who has just retired. When I first met her 15 years ago, she was based in one school with a number of children who were being integrated into the mainstream there. She spent the last five years before she retired in her car tearing around the county from appointment to appointment. As far as the local authority was concerned, deaf children were being taught sign language, but a 20-minute session every other day is not good enough for a child just starting sign language. Parents might think that they are going to get a level of offer that they are not going to get if the information in the offer is not explicit.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 110, which is in my name. It ties in with other amendments tabled which seek to ensure that the local offer has both teeth and some meaning for parents looking for support. The amendment places a duty on the responsible agencies to deliver the services that they say will be in the local offer. The Government have already placed a duty on health bodies to deliver what they outline in EHC plans. However, a corresponding commitment in relation to the local offer remains sadly absent from the Bill. It is the local offer that most children with additional needs—and there are 1.4 million of them—will be relying upon.
In the other place, the Minister said that to have such a duty would limit the services which groups such as voluntary and community organisations were prepared to offer. He also said that the local offer already increased accountability by involving children and young people and their families more and allowing them to compare what is offered. I agree that listening to children and young people and their parents, and ensuring that they have adequate information, is the right approach but the omission from the Bill of a duty on responsible agencies to deliver services is simply not right in terms of accountability, or in ensuring that families will actually receive the services specified as being needed in the local offer. It is important that there is real accountability. The Bill is currently lacking in this area for the delivery of the local offer. If we do nothing about it, there is a serious danger that the local offer will serve as merely a statement of ambition rather than as something upon which parents and families can rely. Amendment 110 would put some meat on this bone.
Lord Northbourne (CB)
My Lords, I would like to raise two small points. The first relates to page 24, lines 37 and 38, which refer to,
“education, health and care provision” ,
and “other educational provision”. There is no definition of “education” and it could be interpreted as meaning academic education or education for life. Although the one may include the other, it is very important to know what we are talking about. I am inclined to think that there might be a case for introducing an amendment on Report to clarify exactly what this clause means.
Secondly, in Amendment 107, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, in which she would put in,
“arrangements to assist young people and parents in managing a personal budget should they choose one”,
there ought also to be a wider reference there to the skills that young people ought to be learning. Again, it depends rather on which definition of education we are using. If we are using a fairly narrow definition of it then I would include, at line 7 of page 25, a subsection referring to relationship skills, personal and social skills and another on understanding the role of families and the responsibilities of parenthood. I can only put those suggestions to the Committee but I would be grateful if the Minister could consider them in due course.
Lord Storey
My Lords, first, I make a general point. The notion or the policy of a local offer is hugely important as, for the first time, parents and families will know what is available and it will be clear, concise and jargon-free. I have sympathy with most of the amendments that have been tabled but if we read the code of conduct it makes it clear what should happen. What is the local offer? It says clearly in the code of conduct that it must include both local provision and provision outside that particular area, given what is available in other areas. It refers to how it has to be clear, comprehensive and accessible and to engaging parents, children and young people. Hallelujah! It says that it should be easy to understand, and so on. So when the Bill is linked to the code of conduct, many of our concerns are dealt with there. Some word changes in the code would perhaps help it in some way. However, I am very much reassured, since in the code “should” is often replaced by “must”.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Low, for introducing his amendments, to which we have added our names. I speak in support of the amendments and of other noble Lords who have spoken in the debate.
We are all in our own way trying to address one of the fundamental concerns about the impact of Part 3 of the Bill. As a number of noble Lords have said, of course we welcome the principle of a published local offer—it has been widely welcomed by many in the sector—but our concern is what the local offer will mean in practice and what certainty of provision will underpin it. Like many other noble Lords, we feel that there is an urgent need to clarify this to avoid it becoming a wish list of the unobtainable.
In essence, there should be a legal duty on local authorities to provide what is set out in the local offer. As the noble Lord, Lord Low, made clear in moving the amendment, the solution could be relatively simple. Subsection (1) currently states that the local authority must publish information about the provision which it “expects to be available”; our amendment would simply switch that from “expects to be” to “is”. As I say, it is a simple solution. However, it is important because making that change will give those people who are trying to operate in this sector, under these rules, the reassurance that they need.
The document is intended to give parents, children and young people clear information about the local services and support available to them. Of course we welcome giving parents more information, but clarity and accountability are key to this information being effective. The local offer should be a document on which parents can rely and for which the local authority can be held accountable. However, how can we ensure accountability when the statement is one of expectation and ambition?
We also want to ensure minimum standards for the local offer, irrespective of where people live. We will return to that issue in a later debate today.
When this was discussed in the Commons the Minister said that the word “expects” reflects ambition rather than weakness. He said that the local offer will make it clear how parents and young people can complain or appeal if they are unhappy with any of the provisions set out in it so that the matter can be taken up with the service provider concerned. This seems a strange way to go about it. Why rely on an effective appeals system when we should be getting the provision right in the first place? This is particularly so when you consider how difficult it is for people to bring forward an appeal. You need to look only at the recent SEND tribunal statistics to realise some of the difficulties that are being experienced in this regard.
In addition, there is a worrying reliance on the detail of the arrangements to be prescribed in regulation and in the code of practice, which again makes it difficult to challenge. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that the draft code of practice repeats the get-out clause for local authorities of publishing what they expect to be available. So there is a flaw in the argument about where the information should be held and accessed.
As my noble friend Lady Wilkins said, there is an understandable concern across the sector that at a time of considerable pressure on local authority budgets, with children’s services already being cut back, parents will have no control over the services in the local offer being withdrawn in the future.
I have listened carefully to the issues around personal budgets raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and I have a great deal of sympathy with the points that she raises. Our Amendment 180, which we will debate later in the Bill, will tackle these issues in a different way. We are trying to ensure that, rather than rushing into a new regime of personal budgets, with the potential difficulties that the noble Baroness identified, we take time to learn from the pathfinder experience before implementing that section of the Bill. We have to get this right.
We think these amendments are essential to making the local offer a meaningful, substantial service that would genuinely be welcomed by service users. I hope that the Minister will be prepared to reconsider his position on this basis.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, before I respond to the amendments in this group, I should like to say a few words about the intention of the local offer. The Lamb inquiry into special educational needs and parental confidence highlighted how,
“good, honest and open communication … underpinned by written, publicly available information”,
was key to the development of positive working relationships. It emphasised the need for parents to be able to access the information they need, when they need it and in ways that are convenient to them. The Bill responds to that need. The local offer, introduced by Clause 30, has two fundamental purposes: first, to provide clear, comprehensive and accessible information on provision available to support children and young people with SEN and their parents; and, secondly, to help make provision more responsive to local needs. Paragraph 5.1 of the draft SEN code of practice makes this crystal clear.
To be effective, the local offer must be a collaborative venture. We are requiring local authorities and schools, colleges and others providing services to work together in developing it through the duty in Clause 28. Crucially, we are requiring local authorities to involve local parents of children with SEN, and children and young people with SEN, in developing and reviewing the local offer. The local offer should enable local people to see what services are available, how they can be accessed, who provides them and where to go if things do not work out. It will also improve local accountability by making services more transparent and more responsive. I have to say that my discussions with pathfinders have been encouraging in this regard.
The noble Lord, Lord Low, raised the question of disabled children in the local offer. We had a full and helpful debate on disabled children without special educational needs and I gave an undertaking to consider the issue with help from noble Lords. I would be delighted to discuss this further with the noble Lord before Report.
Many noble Lords have spoken to the amendment and Amendment 102, both of which are in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Low, the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Jones, and my noble friend Lady Sharp. I would like to address both amendments together. I can assure noble Lords that the local offer will not be a speculative document or wish list—or, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, an opportunity to be “slippery”. It will not be about what the local authority would like to be available. It will be what the local authority expects will actually be available.
The local authority does not have control of all the services set out in the local offer and can therefore set out only what it expects to be available from these services. This will be based on consultation and collaboration with providers, including schools, post-16 institutions and health providers. If the local offer includes only the support that is currently available, families will not be informed about what provision the local authority expects to become available in the near future, possibly from new innovative practices. We want parents and young people to have confidence in the information in the local offer. We intend the local offer to be robust and effective, and I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Storey for his positive remarks in this regard.
My noble friend Lady Brinton made a passionate case for a strong national framework for the local offer in order to provide constancy. The local offer regulations set out in chapter 5 of the draft code of practice provide that framework in some detail, and we will return to this point.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, talked about minimum standards and setting out duties for the provision of services in the local offer. We will return to these issues later and I will not speak about them now.
The noble Lord, Lord Low, made the point about provision outside a local authority’s area. I agree with him that the local offer should include details on such provision. Clause 30(1)(b) delivers this by requiring a local offer to include provision outside the local authority’s area for children for whom it is responsible.
I am not clear why the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, thinks that the detail being in the code and regulations makes it harder for parents to challenge it. The code is recognised as the Bible for the system—as my noble friend Lord Storey said—and having the information and guidance clearly explained in there will be more accessible to parents than the legal language of the Bill.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, for tabling Amendment 104. The Government currently publish information on local authority expenditure on special educational needs services under Section 251 of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 but, as the local offer will include services from a wide range of public, voluntary and private agencies across education, health and social care, it would mean a substantial additional bureaucratic burden for local authorities to collect this funding information. I hope noble Lords will agree that the focus of the local offer should be on the services provided and whether they are responsive to local need. We want that to be the focus of local authorities’ efforts, rather than gathering funding information from a range of other agencies.
Amendment 107—tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Howarth and Lady Massey, and my noble friend Lady Sharp—highlights the importance of ensuring that parents and young people who want support in managing a personal budget know where to find it. I can provide reassurance on the important issue of personal budgets—a key feature of our reforms. Clause 49(7) on personal budgets and Clause 36(9) on assessment would require local authorities to provide information, advice and support in relation to the management of direct payments and the education, health and care assessment plans. Clause 30(1) makes clear that local authorities must include in their local offer sources of information, advice and support for children and young people with SEN and their parents. The code of practice clarifies that this should include information on,
“the option of having a personal budget, who is eligible, how to ask for one and what information, advice and support is available for securing and managing a personal budget”.
The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, asked about support for families in managing personal budgets. Personal budgets can include provision for support in managing them. This can, where needed, include personal assistance and key worker support. Some families in our pathfinder areas report their satisfaction with this aspect of personal budgets. I have a quote here: through a personal budget someone’s 11 year-old son,
“has been able to swim and have a PA to attend social activities … with his classmates, doing things that ordinary”,
11 year-olds “take for granted”. I had a conversation with a pathfinder on this issue, the help they were getting from a PA and how that had changed substantially the mother’s life.
The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, made the point about including education for life. Of course, we expect the local offer to include information about educational provision in the broadest sense. The code specifies that this must include information about support in preparing for adulthood and other transitions, as well as the support provided by schools and the universal and specialist services.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, for tabling Amendment 110. The local offer covers a wide range of public, private and voluntary organisations. These will vary from area to area. Subjecting these agencies to a legal duty may inhibit their involvement when we want the local offer to be as comprehensive as possible and include the full range of services that can support children and young people with SEN and their parents. The local offer will improve accountability of local services in three key ways: first, children and young people with SEN and their parents will be directly involved in developing and reviewing it; secondly, it will make clear how and where they complain or appeal where they are unhappy with their support; and thirdly, regulations will require local authorities to publish comments from children and young people with SEN and their parents on the local offer, including comments on the quality of the provision available and its response to them. These requirements will give a strong impetus to local authorities and those providing support to respond to local needs. In view of this, I do not believe further duties are necessary.
I hope I have reassured noble Lords that these amendments are not necessary and that noble Lords feel able to withdraw them.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have spoken and to the Minister for his comprehensive reply. This is the first of a number of groups of amendments that deal with the local offer. It is clear that the concept of the local offer has given rise to a good deal of concern on the part of parents and professionals. Noble Lords have already had a lot of points to make about it, and clearly there will be a lot more. I do not propose to say much more about it now, because there is a good deal of this debate still to go, and I imagine that we may well want to come back to something more focused on Report.
I just note one observation that the Minister made. I was glad to hear him say that he would be happy to meet us on the question of whether local offers could extend to disabled children as well as those with special educational needs. That is a welcome sign of movement on the part of the Government and holds out the hope that we may be able to get closer together on that issue. I very much welcome that and appreciate the Minister’s having said it. He will not find us at all unready to take up that offer.
In order that we get on to the debates which are to ensue on later groups, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Lucas
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I shall also speak to the other amendments in this group. I apologise to the Committee for the appalling drafting of Amendment 101A; it must be hard for anyone here to understand what I am about. All the amendments concern home education, and Amendment 101A seeks reassurance from the Minister that it is intended that the local offer should cover children in home education and not just children in conventional schooling.
Amendments 164A and 164B cover a part of the Bill where it seems that the wording reverses the current relationship between local authority and parent when it comes to education. Our education legislation is written so that the responsibility for educating children rests with the parent, and the local authority then has duties in support of that. The way in which the Bill is worded at the moment seems to place the duty on the local authority, with the parent in support. If that is the case, I hope to put the situation back to where it always has been and, to my mind, where it should be.
Amendments 152ZA and 157ZA are on a more optimistic note. In recent years, there has been a considerable improvement in relationships between local authorities and the home education community. We have escaped from the cloud cast by the Badman report and are entering a period where there is a spirit of co-operation and mutual understanding. It seems to me that we ought to look for a situation where a statement of special educational needs can encompass education otherwise, as it is known; that is, that the provision might be made otherwise than at school and as part of a home education package.
For that to happen, both the local authority and the home education parents would have to agree that this was a suitable package. There would have to be rapprochement between the two sides but, as I have said, this is becoming much more common. It therefore seems sensible that we should have an arrangement where it is possible for local authority and home-educating parents to co-operate in the interests of the child, rather than the current arrangement, with the rather strange Catch-22 situation where if a home-educating parent asks a local authority for help for a child with special educational needs, that is taken as proof that they are not able to provide properly for that child and that child must go straight to school. If the parent therefore does not ask for help, the local authority has no right, role or responsibility for making any provision whatsoever. That seems a dichotomy that does not act in the best interests of the children concerned.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I will speak to this group of amendments on home education tabled by my noble friend Lord Lucas. I would like to reassure him that, despite any possible minor imperfections in the drafting, we do know exactly what he is about and we are fully aware of the role that my noble friend plays in the All-Party Group on Home Education. I thank him for raising this important issue.
Noble Lords will be aware that parents have the right to educate their children at home and there is nothing in this Bill that infringes that right in any way. Nor does the Bill increase the responsibility of local authorities for home-educated children or increase their powers to interfere in the way that parents home educate.
Parents of children with special educational needs who home educate do so for different reasons and therefore will look for different levels and types of support from the state, if any. Some home educate because it would always be their choice to do so. Others, however, have begun home education out of desperation, as they have not been able to get the support that they feel that their child needs, or have been let down by the very services which should be supporting them. While I continue to support parents’ right to choose home education, I sincerely hope that our reforms will mean that parents no longer feel that they have to turn to home education as a last resort.
In broad terms, the Bill seeks to keep the same legal position for children with SEN who are home educated as now, but it does so within the important wider context of the Bill including a much greater focus on the views, wishes and feelings of parents as set out in Clause 19 and throughout Part 3 and the code of practice. Where a child or young person has an EHC assessment and the outcome of that assessment is that a plan is needed, the local authority is under a duty to prepare such a plan. If the local authority considers that home education is the right provision for the child or young person, that will be specified in the plan. It will then be under a duty to secure the special educational provision specified in the plan, with the home educator providing the core education provision. Likewise health commissioners will be under a duty to provide the health provision specified.
Amendments 152ZA and 157ZA seek to strengthen parents’ right to request that a plan specifies home education. They would mean that local authorities would have to treat such a request in the same way as a request for a particular school or institution. I think that there is a delicate balance to be struck here. Parents can already make representations for home education and will continue to be able to do so under Clause 38(2(b)(i). Moreover, the principles set out in Clause 19 mean that local authorities must give more weight to parents’ wishes, and as a result we may see local authorities naming home education more often. However, the choice to home educate is a choice to opt out of the state-supported system and is therefore not the same as the choice of a particular school or institution. Therefore these amendments would shift the balance too far.
Where a local authority makes a plan that does not specify home education, this does not prevent parents from home educating. In such circumstances the local authority can only absolve itself of its duty to secure SEN provision in the plan and ensure that the child’s SEN needs are met if it is satisfied that the parents’ provision is suitable for the child’s SEN. I know from the debate on Report in the other place that there are differences of view on this legal point, and these amendments aim to shift the balance of responsibilities between local authorities and parents. However, our view is that not only do local authorities have this duty but it is right that they do.
I should emphasise here that local authorities do not have draconian powers available to them to make this check. For instance, they have no right to enter the parental home to check the provision that is being made. They can enter the home only at the parents’ invitation. The check on the suitability of the parents’ provision could be made through the parents providing a description of that provision or by the parents passing on examples of the child’s work. Neither should they define “suitable” as necessarily being the same as the provisions specified in the plan.
Once a local authority has assured itself that the provision being made is suitable, it is no longer under a duty to make any provision. However, it retains the power to make provision in the home where this will help parents make suitable provision for their children and where parents are willing to receive this help. We encourage local authorities to make such provision and we have made this clear in the code. The same applies to the provisions to support home-educated children who have special educational needs but do not have a plan.
As to Amendment 101A, I can assure my noble friend that the local authority will include provision that would be available to home-educated children.
I hope that what I have said will reassure my noble friend that we continue to support parents’ right to home educate. There is nothing in the Bill that will threaten that right and the greater focus on parental wishes in the new system will mean a better deal for home educators. The code of practice includes a specific section on home education. Following a recent meeting with my noble friend, officials have undertaken to work with representatives of home educators to develop it further during the consultation period. On that basis I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendments.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I listened to the Minister’s response with particular interest as my sister home educated her children for some time.
Perhaps I may raise a tenuously related but important question. It arises from previous debates and is relevant to this clause: how will the local offer help parents to help children in their learning? It is good to see in the code the great pains that the Government are taking to ensure that parents and young people are consulted about what is on offer to them, but we know from all the evidence that family learning is tremendously important to children’s outcomes. In my experience of fostering, helping foster parents to gain the confidence to sit with their children on a regular basis over a period of time, and teaching them the techniques of paired reading with their children, is immensely beneficial for the literacy of those children. Anecdotally at least, it strengthens the relationships of the foster carers and the children.
I have been a follower and supporter of the charity Volunteer Reading Help—now Beanstalk—which works in more than 1,000 primary schools using a paired-reading technique. It works with vulnerable children, particularly; volunteers make a commitment of at least one year and turn up regularly to support the children, with the result that the children make great strides in their literacy.
My question to the Minister is whether it is quite clear how local authorities will offer help to parents to help their children in their learning. Might it be helpful to have guidance somewhere that this is a good approach to take? I am talking particularly about paired reading but it could help with numeracy. I confess to ignorance about the specifics of special educational needs but I appeal to those with expertise in the area to consider the models of good practice there already are of paired reading and parents being assisted to help their children with their numeracy.
In her recent report, Family Learning Works, my noble friend Lady Howarth highlighted that family learning can improve children’s educational outcomes by between 10% and 15%. Therefore, I should like to see this approach adopted as widely as possible in supporting families who have children with special educational needs.
Lord Nash
I think I can assure the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, that local authorities will be able to include provision such as paired-reading schemes in their local offers. We want to see extensive and helpful local offers that include the full range of provisions to support children and young people with SEN, including support for parents and carers. We are happy to look at the guidance and the code in more detail to ensure that that is absolutely clarified.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for that reply. I will read it with care but I cannot, at first listening, think of anything else that I could possibly ask him for. As he is right to say, Clause 19 is a great advance in terms of responsiveness to parents. He is also right to say how immensely helpful his department has been. The all-party parliamentary group has been extraordinarily successful and most productive. It is the parliamentary group that I have attended that has made the most difference to the way that things work in the world. That has been largely due to the help that my noble friend’s department has given it and the interest it has taken in it. As he correctly said, we had a very productive meeting with officials. In particular, I thank Stephen Kingdom, who has been helpful before, but he is by no means alone in that. It has been a very rewarding experience to work with his department on this over the past few years. As I said, I am grateful for what my noble friend has said and I have pleasure in begging leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
My Lords, the amendments in this group each refer to a particular aspect of the local offer proposed in Clause 30. I shall speak specifically to Amendments 103 and 109.
Amendment 103 seeks to ensure that the local offer includes information on independent special schools and colleges, outside of a local authority, which have been approved by the Secretary of State under Clause 41. We tabled this amendment before we had seen the more extended draft code of practice, because that requirement was not in the original draft. I acknowledge that it is in the current code of practice but I should be grateful if the Minister could clarify on the record what the words in the draft code mean in terms of the local offer.
Page 47 of the draft code lists the kinds of issues that have to be included in the local offer. It says that it has to include:
“Where to find the list of non-maintained special schools and independent schools catering wholly or mainly for children with SEN, and Independent Specialist Colleges”,
and so on which have been approved by the Secretary of State under Clause 41. However, I am not clear about this. If what is in the local offer is where to find the list, does that mean that parents can expect their child to have access to one of those schools if they satisfy the criteria for any particular school? What the code of practice does not say is that the special schools in other local authority areas are part of that individual local authority’s offer; it is simply about where to find the list. That is not clear enough in terms of specifying such provision as a possible element in the local offer of that local authority. The Minister should state the Government’s intentions and not say, “We will wait until the consultation has ended and then give our response”. That would be helpful to everyone—people outside as well as inside this Committee.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, we have heard a lot about the local offer and I suspect that we will hear a lot more. The local offer sets out in one place information about provisions that a local authority expects to be available for children and young people in their area with special educational needs, including those who do not have an education, health and care plan.
The two amendments that I have tabled are about ensuring that the local offer includes information about how schools and local authorities cater for disabled children in their area. This should include how schools and local authorities are satisfying their statutory obligations under the Equality Act 2010 to disabled pupils. That duty has already been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, so she will understand how important it is to ensure that this duty is fully taken on and included in the Bill. If adopted, my amendments would ensure that duties owed to disabled pupils by the Equality Act were recognised and carried out by schools.
Amendment 106A proposes to insert at the end of line 6 on page 24,
“a summary of relevant information from the SEN information reports for schools in the local authority, as under section 65”.
This first amendment will ensure that the local offer includes the information required by Clause 65. Clause 65(3) is particularly relevant for disabled pupils, as it provides a requirement that the special educational needs information report, which has to be produced by all mainstream schools, includes information on,
“the arrangements for the admission of disabled persons as pupils”,
and,
“the steps taken to prevent disabled pupils from being treated less favourably than other pupils”.
“Mainstream schools” includes schools maintained by the local authority, academies and free schools. The report must also include the facilities provided to assist access to the school by disabled pupils and information about the accessibility plan that the school is required to publish.
The accessibility plan demonstrates how the school is increasing the access of disabled pupils to the school curriculum, improving the physical environment and improving information about the school for disabled pupils and their parents. The requirement to develop accessibility plans applies to all schools and Ofsted can look at the performance of these duties by schools.
Amendment 106B, the second of these amendments, proposes the insertion in Clause 30, at the end of line 36 on page 24, of the words,
“the strategy prepared by the local authority under paragraphs 1 and 2 of Schedule 10 to the Equality Act 2010 (accessibility strategy)”.
This amendment will ensure that the accessibility strategy prepared by the local authority will be included in the local offer. The accessibility strategy is a written document that specifies how maintained schools in the local authority area will increase disabled pupils’ access to the school curriculum, improve the physical environment for disabled pupils and improve information for them. Strategies must take into account the preferences expressed by pupils and their parents and should be reviewed regularly. Local authorities must have regard to the need to allocate adequate resources for the implementation of the strategy.
I very much hope that the Minister will understand and accept the importance of making clear to everyone just how vital the Equality Act is in ensuring that all the things that we want, and the Government want, are actually carried through. I hope that, under those circumstances, the Minister will feel able to accept these amendments, no doubt with a little refinement on their own part, and make them part of the Bill.
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Sharp is not able to be in her place at the moment so, in her absence, I am speaking to the amendment in her name, Amendment 106. This is a probing amendment intended to obtain reassurances from Ministers that the entitlements of children and young people with SEN and their families will not be weakened by the passage of the Bill or by the revision of the statutory SEN code of practice.
The local offer, as currently described in Clause 30, imposes a significantly weaker and more narrowly defined duty on local authorities than the equivalent provision in the Special Educational Needs (Provision of Information by Local Education Authorities) (England) Regulations 2001, which remain in force. These regulations set out what information a local authority must provide, including, among other things, requirements to provide information about the action that the local authority is taking to promote high standards of education for children with SEN, and what action the local authority is taking to encourage schools in their area to share best practice in making provision for children with SEN. There must also be information about the general arrangements, including any plans, objectives and timescales for: monitoring the admission of children with SEN—whether or not they have a statement—to schools in their area; providing support to schools in the area with regard to making special educational provision for children with SEN; auditing, planning, monitoring and reviewing provision for children with SEN in their area; securing training, advice and support for staff working in their area with children with SEN; and securing training, advice and support for staff working in their area for children with SEN.
The information that I have just listed is important for parents, but it also incorporates a set of important principles in relation to education for pupils with SEN: the recognition that pupils with SEN need high standards of provision; that these standards should be regularly monitored and reviewed; that teachers need training, advice and support; and that schools should collaborate to share good practice.
Clause 30 merely provides that regulations may make provision about the information to be included in an authority’s local offer. It is important that the information listed in the 2001 regulations is collected and publicised by local authorities. The local offer should carry this forward into the new framework. It is not clear that this will be the case with the loose wording of the Bill. As far as I can see, there is nothing proposed in the code of conduct which would impose these duties on local authorities. Are the 2001 regulations going to be carried forward? What is the position? I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify the situation.
Lord Addington
I shall speak to my Amendment 108A. I should probably declare again the interests I have already mentioned. I declare another interest: I am a convert to the fact that assistive technology and computing generally can transform somebody’s life because I use assistive technology for everything I send out. Without voice operation, I cannot send an e-mail unless I take a week over it, and I cannot guarantee to send it properly. This is due to dyslexia. However, there are dozens of different types of assistive-technology solutions for dozens of different types of problems. You can now get a computer which bounces light off the user’s eyes to transfer the user around the screen. This was pure science fiction a few years ago. You have to run to keep up with the ideas and even the names of the technology at the moment.
The technology allows people to act independently. I could have stuck something at the end of another list about independence. I could have added a paragraph (d) to subsection (3) to provide that when you go into adult life you get a package to go with you. You probably already do. Access to work will give you some assistance, so there is a degree of consensus around this. Getting assistive technology early is very important because it allows people independence. I hope my noble friend will be able to give me some idea about how it is being taken on. What is being done to allow people to work like this? It is great to have somebody at your shoulder who assists you all the time. Unfortunately, you cannot take them home with you or guarantee that they will be with you when you are middle-aged, so learning to use other forms of assistance is vital. I hope that we will get a positive answer there.
The idea of the expression “assessment settings” is to find out how we will integrate the use of information technology into the examination system. The noble Lord, Lord Nash, has proved himself tough, durable but human by not being here. I have had some discussions with him on this subject. The Government seem interested in making sure that you can get into the examination system properly—I will return to this subject when we reach apprenticeships—but only if you make sure that the examination that is set online is compatible with the assistive technology that is used. If you get the wrong format, the two computing systems cannot talk to each other, so you cannot take the examination. In many parts of the examination system we go back to nurse—an amanuensis or extra time. It does not take a genius to figure out that those are two fairly blunt instruments. The first removes a great deal of responsibility from you, and the other is of limited utility. Extra time has attracted a great deal of attention because people say people are getting more of it. I have always wondered how much assistance extra time is if you do not know the answer. I suspect that 25% extra time to stare at a blank page does not help very much.
However, some idea of how that is progressing in the Government’s thinking would be extremely helpful at this time, as it all ties into the important standards of education—examinations. I look forward to what my noble friend will say about this and I hope that this is the start of a positive discourse on the subject.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
I shall speak to Amendment 106, to which I have added my name because of the word “monitors”, which I shall refer to on my Amendments 117 and 123. I shall also speak to my Amendment 115.
Regarding Amendment 115, I make no apology for continuing to major on speech, language and communication needs, despite the Minister’s welcome reassurance to me that they were climbing up the list of priorities. As I have said, bearing in mind that speech, language and communication needs are a growing 21st-century scourge, I would like to see them coupled with special educational needs in education, health and care plans, which are made for everyone—not just those with such needs. Amendment 115 is a probing amendment to ensure that children and young people with speech, language and communication needs who are not eligible for an EHC plan will not be overlooked by services available under local offers. In that connection, I am very glad to see that paragraph 11(a) of the schedule to the draft code of practice states that local offers must set out what speech language therapy provision is available. The Government should therefore also stipulate that local authorities’ local offers must be backed up by evidence-based research, on which I commend to the Government the Better Communications Research Programme, whose reports they published last year.
I move on to Amendment 117. Local offers, however well intentioned, are bound to end up as postcode lotteries if we are not careful—hence my call for a strategy. The Minister told the Committee that a strategy was in place for the period when a child was in school during its nought to 25 pathway, but it is not apparent for the periods before and after that, or indeed in linking those three periods together in what I call the child development strategy. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for his recent letter on teacher training but I am not wholly reassured. He referred to assessments and professional judgment but did not confirm whether child development is taught, compulsorily, during all teacher training to enable teachers to do what he describes in his letter. I would be grateful for confirmation that that is so.
The Better Communications Research Programme, which I mentioned, showed that too many children enter school without their speech, language and communication needs being satisfactorily addressed, or even identified. This is being addressed in the early years foundation stage. I have already drawn attention to the need for health visitors and others who carry out assessments to be trained by speech and language therapists to identify the indicators of speech, language and communication needs. In an overall strategy there would then be a “So what?”—remedial treatment designed to enable every child to engage with its teacher, and so with education, to the best of his or her ability. However, to ensure that this happens, local authorities must be held to account for their service provision, including their mechanisms for identifying needs. I believe that is best done by independent quality assurance by an inspector or regulator.
I have mentioned before the crucial role played by health and well-being boards, because they are the only organisations which are in touch with every individual from nought to 25. In this connection, I admit to being wary about Ofsted, which suggests that whatever method is selected for holding local authorities to account, it should preferably be independent of either education or health to ensure objective judgment. I give notice that when we come to Part 5 I shall be reflecting that the Children’s Commissioner might be ideally situated to take on this role.
Much has already been said about the need for information. The purpose of Amendment 123 is to ensure that a school’s special educational needs provision is consistent with local offers and that schools have to think about their provision of special educational needs as a whole. I hope that the amendment is designed also to ensure greater transparency for parents—an issue that has already been raised several times in this Committee. Therefore, I hope that the probing will result in due consideration being given to these proposals.
Lord Northbourne
I very much hope that I am not wasting the time of the Committee but I need to seek some guidance from the Minister. I am trying to put myself in the position of a local authority or the relevant responsible people in a local authority. The better the service they provide or purport to provide, the more people they will have to provide that service for because people will immigrate into their area. Does the money follow the quality of the service that is being supplied or is the pupil premium all they get? If the latter, the local authority has a very strong incentive to tone down its prospectus as far as possible because it does not want to attract more people into its area at the expense of the council tax payer, or indeed to overload the social services of that authority.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, I should like to say a few words about Amendment 109. I welcome Clause 30(3) because it outlines the provision to assist young people in preparation for adulthood. This preparation includes, among other things, assistance in finding employment. This is welcome but I am not sure that it goes far enough, and that is why I think that Amendment 109 would take us that step further.
The amendment would help to prepare young people to stay in work or to access any benefits that they need or are entitled to. The inclusion would also form part of a genuinely supported transition to adulthood. In addition to finding employment, many skills are involved in retaining it. Support in this area would surely aid young people in making the proper transition that the clause commendably strives to achieve. Similarly, in difficult economic times, with high youth unemployment, it is important that young people are aware of the benefits support they can get in order to progress into employment.
In the other place, the Minister referred to the code of practice. He said that,
“the local offer must include information about, for example, job coaches, who can support people who are already in employment, supported internships, apprenticeships, traineeships and support from employment agencies”.
He continued:
“The code also says that local authorities should provide some signposting about where young people can obtain advice and information about the financial support they can have not only when they seek employment, but after they are employed”.—[Official Report, Commons, Children and Families Bill Committee, 21/3/13; col. 435.]
Clearly, Ministers are aware of the vital importance of aiding young people to retain employment and access the benefits support that they need at appropriate times. This is necessary to ensure positive outcomes and real transitions for young people into adulthood.
In the letter that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, sent to noble Lords following the Second Reading, he said:
“Local authorities should ensure that early transition planning is in place for all young people with an Education, Health and Care Plan, focusing on positive outcomes and how to achieve them … When a young person is anticipated to be leaving education within two years, reviews of EHC Plans must plan for phased transition into the key life outcomes listed, with a greater emphasis on pathways to independent living, higher education and paid employment”.
These statements from Ministers are most welcome but remain a little vague. More specific skills training and support could be set out in the Bill, thereby placing within the legislation a real commitment properly to prepare young people for adulthood. That would be making considerable progress.
Baroness Northover
My Lords, the amendments in this group seek in different ways to put more detailed information in the Bill regarding the local offer. Let me deal with the issues that noble Lords have raised.
Amendment 103 of the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, seeks to ensure that the local offer includes specialist provision made in the independent sector, in particular that made by institutions covered by Clause 41. I thank the noble Baroness for acknowledging that this issue is in fact covered in the draft code of practice. I think she said that.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
Perhaps I may clarify for the noble Baroness that I acknowledge that there is a reference to the issue in the code of practice. However, as it requires the local offer only to contain information about where to see the list, that is not the same as including the provisions in the local offer. Can she clarify whether the code of practice does include them?
Baroness Northover
Indeed. We agree that such provision plays a valuable role in supporting children and young people with SEN. This is reflected in Clause 30 and the associated regulations. The noble Baroness said she recognised that the provisions were mentioned in the draft code of practice in terms of the information to be published, and she pushed for further details about that.
Schedule 1 of the regulations made under Clause 30 will require local authorities, as the noble Baroness noted, to publish information about the services they expect to be available for children and young people with special educational needs for whom they are responsible. I can assure her that this specifically includes provision by institutions approved under Clause 41 both within and outside its area. This is also made clear in chapter 5 of the draft code of practice. I hope that this provides the necessary clarification that she asked me for. Parents can request that independent and non-maintained schools be included in the list produced under Clause 41, and we make that clear in chapter 7 of the draft code at page 111. I hope that that reassures her on that point.
I turn to Amendment 106 from my noble friend Lady Sharp, which was also spoken to by my noble friend Lady Brinton. Schools play a vital part in making special educational provision and have a clear responsibility for ensuring that children with and without education, health and care plans receive appropriate and effective support. It is right that information relating to training, the sharing of good practice and local authority support is made available. We believe that this detail is best placed in the regulations and the SEN code of practice. We believe that Clause 30, the associated regulations and the guidance in the SEN code of practice provide a common framework for the local offer that is sufficiently robust and clear.
Schedule 1 of the local offer regulations states that local offers must include information on
“the special educational provision secured by the local authority in mainstream schools, mainstream post-16 institutions, pupil referral units and alternative provision Academies”,
and,
“how expertise in supporting children and young people with special educational needs is secured for teaching staff and others working with those children and young people”.
The draft SEN code of practice elaborates on this by making clear that the local offer should include information on,
“local arrangements for collaboration between institutions to support those with SEN (for example, cluster or partnership working between post-16 institutions or shared services between schools)”.
Noble Lords will know that there is a lot more detail in the code of practice, and I hope it will be of assistance to them.
Lord Addington
I thank my noble friend for that offer. However, before we do that, will she consider how the whole chain needs to be put together, including the examining bodies, providers, teachers and so on? This comes from experience of a breakdown in this area.
Baroness Northover
I am very happy for us to look right across the board. We need to focus on the individual child or young person and their experience throughout the system.
Coming to Amendment 109, we can assure the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, and the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, that the term, “finding employment” in the Bill goes wider than providing support for young people in looking for jobs—important though that obviously is. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, noted, the draft code of practice refers to the local offer including information about support available for job coaches, for example, who can support young people when they are working, and the financial support available, including accessing any benefits from the Department of Work and Pensions, both when looking for work and when employed.
Noble Lords pressed harder about support to stay in employment, which is extremely important. I assure them that we are well aware of that. Preparing for adulthood is an important element in the SEN reforms. Clause 30(2) requires local authorities to include in the local offer,
“provision to assist in preparing children and young people for adulthood and independent living”.
That term is defined in subsection (3) as,
“finding employment … obtaining accommodation … participation in society”.
Support for preparing for adulthood would include the kind of support that young people can expect when they are in employment. I hope that noble Lords find that reassuring as a very important point is being made there.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said that he was pressing the case again, rightly, on speech and language communication, and the provision for children and young people. No doubt we will continue to discuss this as it is a very important area. We recognise the importance of this, and the Government are supporting the work of the Communication Trust—I expect he knows that—including through a grant of £550,000 over two years to pilot an online speech, language and communication qualification for early years practitioners. That shows our commitment. We are also providing £1.5 million to the trust to identify gaps in provision and services, which will no doubt spark more amendments from the noble Lord, to promote and extend the What Works database of evidence-based interventions and to implement the reforms in Part 3. I hope that that is an indication of the seriousness with which we treat this.
Regulation 10 of Schedule 1 to the draft local offer regulations sets out the requirement to include:
“Speech and language and other therapies, including any criteria that must be satisfied before this provision can be provided”.
The noble Lord makes a very important point about how practitioners, from health visitors to those supporting children in school, need to work together. That is one of the reasons for the local offer: to try to bring all this together so that support for these children is delivered in a much more effective way.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, asked about child development and is expecting a letter from my noble friend Lord Nash. I think that that is in train, if it has not already come out. If it has not come out, I am sure that it will speed along.
Lord Ramsbotham
Perhaps I should explain to the Minister that there has indeed been a reply from the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I was saying that I am not wholly reassured by what he said. In the letter, he talks about assessments and judgments, but there is no confirmation that child development is on the syllabus of every teacher training course. That is what I want to discover.
Baroness Northover
I will refer that to the department for it to look at further. The department will know, as do I, how determined the noble Lord is, so I am sure that it will look at that very seriously.
I remember the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, dealing with Amendment 117. I assure him that Clause 27 already requires the local authority to keep its education and social care provision under review. I believe that we talked about that in earlier groups, but if I have not addressed the noble Lord’s questions adequately, or he wants more information, I am very happy to add to that. I am sure that we will be coming back to that in due course, by the looks of the groupings.
I hope that I have addressed most of the issues that noble Lords raised and that the noble Baroness will be happy to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her comprehensive response to the various and important points of detail that Members of the Committee raised in relation to Clause 30.
I will make two comments. First, I thank the Minister particularly for the clarification in respect of Amendment 103. That is now written into the record. Although she said that it is made clear on page 111 of the draft code of practice that parents can request a school in that sector, I think that Chapter 5 could be clearer. However, I am glad that she has put that on the record.
Secondly, the Minister said that Amendment 106B, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, would be taken back and considered in the round in the context of the longer debate that we had about inclusion of all disabled children. That is welcome. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has raised some important points in the publication that most people will have received in the last day or so on aligning the Children and Families Bill with the reasonable adjustment duty in the Equality Act. I believe that was the main point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. That is another angle from which to come to this issue about the inclusion of disabled children, and we will consider it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Low of Dalston
“( ) A local authority’s local offer shall be subject to inspection by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission.”
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, the amendment is in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. I shall speak also to Amendment 114, which is also in our two names and is in similar terms to Amendment 112 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Jones.
The amendments are about introducing a degree of accountability, consistency and quality control into the local offer. These ideas have already been broached but the amendments seek to take the discussion further and perhaps anchor it even more firmly. I imagine that I am not alone in having received extensive briefings from concerned parents, practitioners and policy experts from organisations such as the Special Educational Consortium emphasising the importance of accountability in the new system.
The local offer will provide a great deal of information for children, young people and their families to enable them to know what is available and help them to exercise choice, but we cannot expect those the information is intended to benefit effectively to police the system by assuring its quality and by providing the necessary checks that like is being compared with like, and so on. Of course local offers will not all be the same. I understand that the Minister will not want to overprescribe the form and content of local offers, thus removing the scope for innovative development and responsiveness at the local level.
However, in the introduction of new systems such as this, it would be rash not to build any element of accountability or quality control into the process. The amendment therefore seeks to have both Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission involved in reviewing local offers to make sure that they provide an accurate picture of the services available to young people and their families so that they have access to accurate and quality information. This would ensure that the services provided by all providers were described and assessed on a comparable basis. Under current arrangements there is no parity between providers, which all have different audit and inspection arrangements, thereby making it difficult for young people and their families to make like-for-like comparisons of services included in the local offer.
I shall not say any more about this but leave it to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, to expand on the questions of accountability and inspection from all his vast experience of these matters, should he wish to do so. I am sure the Committee will be greatly benefitted if he does.
Amendment 114 is in similar terms to Amendment 112 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Jones. The amendments seek to establish a minimum level of provision that local offers should contain. This should not be seen as overprescriptive but simply as providing a measure of reassurance that local offers will be, as I said in relation to Amendments 101 and 102, robust, accessible and effective, and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said, consistent. Accountability must be at the heart of these reforms and these characteristics are a precondition of accountability. I hope the Minister will agree that local offers can still be responsive to local needs while meeting minimum standards and exhibiting the qualities of robustness, accessibility, effectiveness and consistency.
It is noteworthy that the Education Committee in another place, in its pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill, took the view that the local offer needed strengthening. It said:
“The weight of evidence received by our Committee clearly supported minimum standards and we recommend that the Pathfinders be used to inform what should constitute minimum standards for Local Offers, particularly to address the provision that will need to be made available in schools to support pupils with low to moderate SEN without EHCPs. We also recommend the establishment of a national framework for Local Offers to ensure consistency, together with accountability measures by which they can be evaluated”.
It seems that that committee is very much on the same page as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and me here.
In summary, these amendments are about ensuring two things: first, not only that parents and their children have access to information about the services available to them but also that there is a quality assurance mechanism in place that gives them a means of holding the local authority to account; and, secondly, that the local offer has some guaranteed substance that families can rely on. I beg to move.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I take up the offer made by my noble friend Lord Low to say a little a bit about the quality assurance I have in mind. Noble Lords may remember two extremely good safeguarding reports produced by the joint inspectorates involved in education, health and the criminal justice system, one in 1999 and the other in 2003. Those came about in the balmy days before the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Gordon Brown, axed what had been the Social Services Inspectorate and became the Commission for Social Care Inspection. The role of social care responsibility for children was then taken on by Ofsted and that of adult social care by the Care Quality Commission, which was instigated by the reforms that had to follow the axing of the Social Services Inspectorate. I have always regretted strongly that although this House was able to preserve Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons we were unable to preserve the Social Services Inspectorate. Frankly, we have been reaping the wind ever since.
My feeling about what we are talking about here is that we need something akin to the inspections for the safeguarding of children carried out by the joint inspectorates. They were led by someone with overall responsibility but able to call on the quality assurance addition of the inspectors of particular elements of the system. In this case, we have healthcare and education but also other things including the local offer, how that is made and so on. That is why I laid this false trail, as it were, to the Children’s Commissioner. I suggest to the Minister that in thinking about the quality of what we are proposing—and what the Government are very definitely interested in introducing—the assurance on that is carried out by those best able to do it working together, rather than giving it to any one person, because there are so many aspects to it. Quality assurance is absolutely essential and must be objective and consistent in every part of the country where local offers are handled.
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 113 in my name and to Amendment 114 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Low. Amendment 113 is a probing amendment to seek clarity from the Government on whether they are willing to provide a national or common framework to support the development of local offers so that parents can easily identify how provision varies. Parents of children with sensory impairments support proposals to improve transparency. This amendment was suggested to some of us by the National Deaf Children’s Society, RNIB and Sense. Some parents have reported that under the current arrangements:
“We have fallen across possible choices and information quite often by chance”.
Another parent said:
“I got an information pack when my child was diagnosed, but half of it wasn’t relevant to deaf children and it didn’t include information on the local deaf school”.
The three charities I mentioned support the concept of the local offer, and it is very important to the 75% of deaf children and 57% of children with sight loss who do not have a statement of SEN. The draft code of practice and regulations set out what information is to be included as part of the local offer and are very detailed. However, they do not specify how information should be broken down, nor do they set out a template that local authorities should work to that would make that comparison easier. In the absence of a common format, I am not sure that I can believe that the local offer will genuinely improve transparency over what help is available to these children. The local offer will be helpful only if local authorities are required to publish information about support available for different types of SEN. The needs of children with SEN are very different; for example, sensory needs are very different from the needs of autistic children. If the Government are not minded to create a set template so that parents can easily compare provision between different areas, I hope they will discuss it with the Local Government Association so that it can create a common template, because it would ease local government’s passage into the new arrangements if there is one framework to follow.
Moving to Amendment 114, the overall accountability framework around the Bill looks somewhat weak. Noble Lords will have gathered that from my previous amendment. There seems to be very little to stop a local authority publishing a weak local offer that is poorly understood or inaccessible. Despite the Bill frequently referring to improving accountability, the available rights of recourse for parents are limited. It is good that parents have the right to leave comments on the local offer and that they will be published, but there is no obligation on the local authority to address any of the concerns raised. Parents have the right to seek a judicial review against the local authority for failing to meet the requirements set out in the Bill, but this is not an option that many parents will be able or willing to pursue.
As well as being limited, the framework relies almost entirely on parents to respond and take action. Many parents are busy being parents. As one parent told Sense at an event held to discuss the Bill:
“We’re forever chasing, and it’s a headache. I often don’t have enough time to be making phonecalls and people don’t always come back to you so you’re just chasing and forever trying to sort everything out. You’ve got to think all the time—which are the bits worth fighting about?”.
Many parents do not know what they do not know. They are not in a position to assess whether the quality of a teacher is as good as it should be, nor do they have the time to research whether provision in other areas is better.
The Government’s White Paper Open Public Services stresses the importance of ensuring the quality of provision in any move to create diversity of services and providers. It states that the Government,
“will ensure that providers of individual services who receive public money … are licensed or registered by the appropriate regulator”.
A significant amount of funding is spent on supporting children with high needs. More than £500 million has been allocated by the Department for Education for this year. Many are concerned that there is relatively weak oversight of how this funding is spent and of whether it leads to improved outcomes. As well as leading to doubts about whether SEN provision is effective, it also raises questions about value for money and scrutiny of expenditure. There needs to be a stronger external accountability around the local offer. As has been already outlined by the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Low, this could be taken up by Ofsted or the Children’s Commissioner.
In another place, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families stated that he was exploring with Ofsted how concerns about SEN provision could be covered under Ofsted’s existing programme for inspecting local authority school improvement functions. This statement was made in the spring of this year and, unfortunately, no update has been provided since. I am sure that there needs to be further certainty on the local offer and accountability before the Bill progresses to Report.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 112, standing in my name; to Amendment 118, tabled by my noble friend Lady Wilkins, to which I have added my name; and to Amendment 114, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Ramsbotham.
All the amendments reflect the strong view that the local offer should be strengthened to ensure that it is a statement that parents, children and young people can rely on and for which, particularly—the noble Lord, Lord Low, stressed this—the local authority can be held accountable. In order to do this, the amendments would create the minimum standards that have been called for both by the SEN sector and by the Education Select Committee.
It is right to acknowledge that in the lead up to the Bill arriving in this House, and, indeed, while it was in the other place, there was considerable debate across the sector as to whether minimum standards for the local offer were a good idea. People tried to evaluate the impact of having minimum standards or not. It is also fair to say that the broad and strong consensus now is that minimum standards are necessary to ensure reliability and accountability, otherwise there is a danger that we may end up with a postcode lottery of services. Again as the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, this is not about being prescriptive with local authorities but rather ensuring that no child or young person is left behind or suffers from a poorer service because of where they live.
The Government have said, and probably will say again, that they feel that minimum standards will create a race to the bottom, that they will constrain parents’ and young people’s ability to influence the local authority to increase service provision, and that that is to be avoided. The opposite is true. Equally one could argue that if you do not set a minimum there is a risk that councils will deliberately weaken their offer and undercut other councils to avoid families moving in because of resource constraints. There is a real risk that the quality of service locally will be entirely dependent on budgets and will be reduced.
Some organisations within the sector, for example, the RNIB, NDCS and Sense, have said that in the absence of any expectations on minimum standards, local authorities with better provision could reduce it in line with poorer neighbouring provision, and that too many services—I agree with this—are already at the bottom or below what parents should reasonably expect. The Government should move on this.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, I seem to be a lone voice in the Committee today as I support Clause 30 in its current form. We should resist making any further amendment to the clause that would make the measures more prescriptive than they are already. To do so would needlessly hinder local provision for local issues that are not foreseeable from a national point of view. I therefore cannot support Amendment 118 and the others in the group which seek to introduce minimum standards for the local offer.
It is of concern to me that by introducing central prescription we would reduce the flexibility of local authorities to allow for local solutions. Government departments are unable to see the detail that is based on the daily contact and conversations with parents and young people and are unable to respond to individual and local needs. They cannot do that in the way that a local authority can. With a variance in funding for education, including SEN provision, across the nation’s local authorities such prescriptive measures could damage in a very real way the ability of local government to cater for the needs of local residents.
SEN provision varies between local authorities due to the nature and size of the local population, with greater needs for levels of service in some areas and much less requirement in others. By allowing local authorities to control their own provision, which these amendments would restrict, those authorities will be better able to provide those required specialist services. I always think of the example of a child with severe autism, who may require ballet lessons which would not be part of an offer. If a local authority is stretched to provide financial support for the things that it has to do, this removes its flexibility to deal with individuals on the basis of their need.
A serious concern regarding these amendments is that they would place duties on local authorities to secure a minimum level of health provision, when the body responsible for this is not the local authority but the National Health Service. It is entirely understandable that local authorities should be very wary of being responsible for provision over which they have no direct control. I agree with the references made earlier to the Minister’s view that too much prescription can severely limit flexibility and innovation in service provision.
We often heard negative comments today about local authorities’ provision. There is of course always room for improvement but with so many good quality provisions being made and so much work going on with parents and children in local authorities, our view should be that the aim of local authorities in this area is to provide a good service. We should not set expectations at a level that just will not be available but allow flexibility, and allow local authorities to create the right services for the people in their locality.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, is not alone in having some reservations about setting minimum standards as they may well stifle innovation and individual programmes. Perhaps more thought could be given between now and Report to how we ensure that local authorities provide a range of services. I know that the code says quite a lot about this. My great worry is that if you do not have something which can be inspected and monitored, and an expectation of a range of services, some local authorities might end up with very little indeed in their local offer—and it will be a postcode lottery. There is a real dilemma in how you maintain that flexibility yet ensure that families have something they can turn to which is monitored by either Ofsted or the Care Quality Commission. It would be quite useful to give some thought to this between now and Report so that we can come up with a better solution than a rigid framework, but with something ensuring that the services are there.
Baroness Wilkins
My Lords, belatedly, I will speak to Amendment 118 and in support of Amendments 112, 113 and 114. I will be brief because most of what I was to say has been said. The aim of Amendment 118 is to improve accountability around the local offer by requiring local authorities to meet basic expectations around provision for children with special educational needs. This issue is particularly acute, as we have heard, for children with low incidence special educational needs because local authorities are often ignorant of the support that these children need.
A number of organisations, including the National Deaf Children’s Society, the RNIB and Sense, are concerned that the Bill is extremely weak on overall accountability, particularly on the local offer, with a system that relies solely on the parents of children with sensory impairments—many of whom are, as we have heard, busy being parents. A system that relies on them policing it across all 152 local authorities is not likely to deliver the significant change that many of these children need here and now. Other noble Lords have also spoken on the need for increased accountability.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I have a few additional comments to make in support of Amendment 113, to which I have added my name. I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, that in our amendment we do not seek a one-size-fits-all approach as far as local authorities are concerned. Of course we understand, and hope, that the provision made will vary from area to area, depending on the needs of the local population. We are simply looking for some commonality in the way the offer is expressed. The advantage would be that it would not just be helpful to parents in enabling them to choose between one local authority or another if they were able to move from one to another; there would be two other benefits.
First, it would deter a local authority from publishing a weak offer, because it would be very obvious that it was a weak offer. The “very little indeed”, as expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, would jump off the pages if there were some commonality in the way that offer was expressed. Secondly, it would help policymakers because this is a very new system. Undoubtedly the Government will wish to monitor how it is going and assess where it is going well and where it is going badly, and whether the regulations need to be tightened up at some point in the future. It would be very much easier to do that if there were a common way in which the local offer could be expressed; otherwise, I can see civil servants spending months digging into all the different local offers, expressed in different ways, in order to dig out that information.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
My Lords, briefly, I would like to record my support for all these amendments, for all the reasons given. It seems to me that the very welcome reforms of the local offer remain quite insubstantial if there are no minimum standards and if there is insufficient transparency and no inspection. I recall the Minister’s letter to those of us who spoke at Second Reading on this point. He said:
“Regulations and the SEN Code of Practice will provide a common framework for local offers”.
I am worried that a common framework is really not specific enough. The draft SEN guidance is silent on the real monitoring of inspections. Without a power in the Act to achieve these, I should like to ask the Minister how the regulations are going to do the job which we have all been asking for. What is going to be in them?
Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
My Lords, I also support the gist of the amendments but I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton. I knew that local authorities would have genuine concerns. However, I really want to support the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, because I thought that that was a good way forward.
My instinct is that there needs to be some monitoring or inspection, or some notion of a common format or minimum standards. I say that because, looking back, I find it difficult to think of a new service being introduced that has not had that infrastructure under it, at least to begin with. I am concerned about just plonking it out there in the system with no monitoring, no inspection and no minimum standards. I am not saying that local authorities will deliberately set out not to provide the service, but I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, would have to admit that in the present circumstances, when local authorities have really tough spending decisions to make, those who have no legal or regulatory protection might end up being at the end of the list when it comes to the decisions that local authorities take on expenditure. Therefore, the amendments would offer that protection.
With this new system, I think that the whole Bill could fall if parents did not quickly have confidence in the offer. That is my concern. This service is central and new. It is a new idea, and it has to retain the confidence of the people who use it. I think that there is an added complication, as has already been mentioned, that these are busy people who are already fighting other bits of the system. It is also not something that affects every citizen. This is a small and particular group of people. It has not got the voice of the nation behind it. It is not like “all our schools”, “all our universities” or “all our elderly care people”, it is a very small group of people who will have to fight the good fight. So my starting point is that I am not entirely confident that there is enough in the system at the moment to guarantee that it will grow into a strong part of special educational needs protection.
Lord Northbourne
My Lords, I should just like to follow up on that suggestion, as it fits in with what I was saying earlier. What is needed is a positive rather than a negative incentive to the local authority that wants to take on and do a good job with especially difficult cases. Would the Government consider the possibility of a variable pupil premium that could be larger for the children and young people who have real problems?
Lord Storey
I think we have heard some very wise words from a number of noble Lords. I was particularly taken with the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, which I thought were spot on. However, my interpretation, or end result, is slightly different from hers.
I think that we are all trying to aim for the right result and that we are probably getting there. I have a number of fears, which were expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton. First, there must be some sort of quality assurance. We must be assured about what is happening in the local offer. In a sense the clue is in the title: it is a local offer, not a national offer, and that is really important, so I am not sure that wielding the inspection stick is the right quality assurance. I think that it has to be more of a partnership assurance. I fear that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, said, there would be not so much a race to the bottom as a race to the minimum. Many local authorities would be in that position.
I am not involved in the Local Government Association, which is there not always to save money—it prefers to spend money. However, I was very taken with its wise words. It said that it does not support the introduction of minimum standards for the local offer as,
“we are concerned that central prescription could reduce councils’ flexibility to allow for local solutions, based on a conversation with parents and young people, to respond to individual and local needs”.
How true that is. It also rightly says:
“SEN also varies from one local authority area to another because of the nature of the local population. There are higher levels of need in some areas, which allows the local authority to provide more specialist services than other areas, which have less need for that specialist service or have different needs”.
I am sure the Minister will listen carefully to what it says. I was quite taken with the comment of my noble friend Lady Brinton about having, if you like, a common template. She was right on that and was right to say that if the Government do not do it, someone else will. We have to draw together the strands because we all want the same thing. If we want the local offer to work, parents will have to have confidence in it, and it will have to have the quality that would provide that confidence.
Lord Ramsbotham
Perhaps I may respond to the noble Lord, Lord Storey. This is precisely what I was saying: the best inspections—and I am talking about the safeguarding reports—were not inspections carried out by one organisation; they were partnership inspections. I call them inspections because they were carried out by inspectorates but they were partnerships of all the people involved. The theme always was looking for the Government saying “what” and leaving the “how” to the local authorities.
The other benefit of having that kind of partnership looking at these matters is that you can identify good practice somewhere, and you can spread it in the hope that it becomes common practice everywhere.
Baroness Northover
My Lords, this has been a wide-ranging, constructive, informed and thoughtful debate. There has been a focus in these amendments on the accountability of the local offer; they consider the issue of inspection; and some of them seek to place in the Bill requirements for minimum standards in the local offer. The noble Lord, Lord Low, referred to accountability, consistency and quality, and those themes ran through the debate.
On Amendment 111, the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Ramsbotham, raised the issue of whether the local offer should be inspected by the Care Quality Commission and Ofsted. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, indicated that he was thinking widely around this area, as did other noble Lords. We certainly believe that accountability to parents and young people will be improved by the transparency which the local offer will bring, with the direct involvement of children and young people with SEN and their parents in shaping and reviewing it.
We recognise the importance of joint working between clinical commissioning groups and local authorities in developing the services in the local offer. We understand the views that have been expressed about the value of external inspection in relation to accountability, a major theme of the debate. I would point out that the democratic accountability that local authorities must face is one element of the issue. We have heard what noble Lords have said and I hope that they will be pleased that we have asked Ofsted to study and report on how best to identify best practice in preparing for SEN reforms—a fact picked up by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris—and to consider particularly whether there is a need for an inspection framework to drive improvements. Ofsted will link with the CQC in this work and I hope that noble Lords will welcome that. We will flag this debate to those organisations because it will help to focus minds and inform them.
I hope noble Lords will agree that, at this point, we should not place a requirement to inspect on either the CQC or Ofsted until we have the findings of that study. Once the survey is complete, I assure noble Lords that we will reflect upon its implications and on whether an inspection regime is necessary.
The noble Lord, Lord Low, and others are right to say that we would not wish to be over-prescriptive. There was a wide-ranging debate about the pros and cons of that approach. We want the local offer to encourage local authorities to be innovative, develop a sense of partnership with local children, young people and families, and reflect local need. I thank my noble friends Lady Eaton and Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, for their understanding and support on that perspective. I certainly found very encouraging the reports that we heard the other day from the pathfinders on the different, imaginative approaches they take to this area. I hope that noble Lords who were not at that meeting will have an opportunity to hear more about that.
Some noble Lords referred to minimum standards. I can tell the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, that indeed we feel that minimum standards could weaken parents’ and young people’s ability to influence their local authority and provide local accountability. As other noble Lords indicated, local authorities could simply point to the fact that they have met the minimum standard and that would be that. There could indeed be a race to the bottom, which we must avoid. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that we want a race to the top.
On Amendment 113, I recognise the good intentions of my noble friends Lady Brinton and Lady Walmsley in terms of the format of the local offer in the Bill. Again, I stress that transparency and accessibility are key themes of the local offer and we agree that a level of consistency will help with that. The local offer regulations and chapter 5 of the code of practice, in our view, provide a common framework to secure consistency. I know that noble Lords recognise that and debated whether it was really the case but we feel it provides a common framework so that families have the information they need to make comparisons between local authorities. Noble Lords may wish to look specifically at page 44 of the new code of practice, which lists what a local offer must include. However, we deliberately did not require a specific format for the local offer because we want to see local people shape each one, including the format it should take. We have already seen this happening on the ground, as illustrated in what the pathfinders said.
On the review that my noble friend Lady Brinton referred to, I point her to page 57 of the code of practice, which says:
“Local authorities must publish their response to those comments in the local offer alongside an explanation of what action they are taking to respond”.
That rather puts them on the spot in terms of criticisms made of them and how they deal with those. Bearing in mind that they are locally accountable to the electorate, it will obviously act as a pressure upon them.
There is clearly widespread agreement that the local offer is a major step forward. We welcome that and thank noble Lords for their emphasis of that. We hear what noble Lords said about how this is best delivered and the variation in approach to how it might be done. I hope that I have reassured the noble Lord and that he will be content at this stage to withdraw his amendment, noting the study that I referred to in my opening remarks.
Baroness Morris of Yardley
When does the Minister expect the study to be completed, so that we have a timeframe? For example, I am not sure whether it would be before or after Report.
Baroness Northover
It would be a more in-depth study than delivering it before Report would allow. We expect it to report in the spring. However, I am very happy to write to the noble Baroness with more particulars and to copy that to other noble Lords who participated in that issue. There is always a balance between trying to deliver something in the timetable of a Bill—as she will know only too well—and getting something thorough and right. As I say, I will write to her with further details about that.
Baroness Morris of Yardley
Can the noble Baroness reassure us also that if this legislative opportunity is lost but the report recommended some sort of framework, it would be possible to enact that quickly? I cannot remember or work out whether primary legislation would be needed for that. If it was required, we could end up waiting for years.
Baroness Northover
I understand that primary legislation would not be needed. We seem to be busy legislating all the time, but it could be done through secondary legislation.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in what has been a wide-ranging and thoughtful debate. It has certainly given me plenty of food for thought. I also thank the Minister for her response.
At the beginning of the debate we were going along quite nicely and there was a lot of agreement on four propositions: first, that the local offer is a statement of expectation, not provision; secondly, that the local offer is essentially a statement of information on education, health and social care provision; thirdly, that 25% of children and young people with a disability do not have a special educational need and therefore would not be able to access the local offer; and, finally, that the local offer is not enforceable. Therefore, while parents are given information about provision there is no requirement on the authority to make the provision.
Then the debate widened. I want to avoid saying that the rot set in with the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, because, as I will make clear, the contributions from her, my noble Friend, Lady Howarth and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, towards the end of the debate added a considerable element of richness and sophistication to the discussion, and we need to take them on board. The noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, was worried that there was an anti-local authority spirit in the amendments, and she and others were concerned that the thrust of the amendments was too prescriptive. I want to be clear that there was no intention on my part or anyone else’s to be anti-local authority or to manifest a down on those authorities. Anyone who is familiar with the educational work of local authorities, especially in the field of special education, knows the vast amount of good work that they do. I am very happy to put that on record.
On whether the amendments are prescriptive, I should say that this would not be the first time that there was guidance from the centre on the implementation of policy locally. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, who I think has a background in local government—she was leaning to embrace the local authority perspective—got it absolutely right when she said that it would be too risky to dispense with guidance entirely when implementing a wholly new system of this kind. We have to strike the right balance as regards central guidance. The noble Lords behind these amendments had no intention of talking in terms of dictation. What we had in mind was essentially guidance—a framework within which local authorities can introduce their local offers. There is a balance to be struck and we need to get the balance right.
I very much respect the reservations that have been expressed. These amendments may not have got the balance quite right and I welcome the request for Ofsted to examine this issue, consider this debate and come up with proposals, which the Minister told us about. In this debate, we have identified the dimensions of a discussion which needs to be pursued further. Thanks to the contributions from the noble Baronesses, Lady Eaton and Lady Morris and my noble Friend Lady Howarth, we have the parameters within which we need to carve out a legislative formula that will enshrine the balance that we are seeking and do justice to the desire for local responsibility and the need, identified by most noble Lords who spoke, for some guidance which can be seen as helpful, especially when introducing new legislation such as this.
We have identified the parameters within which I hope it will be possible to identify a formula that we can live with and that will stick in the legislation for years to come. I hope that we will be able to have a discussion with Ministers and the department on these issues, basing ourselves on this debate which has identified the parameters of discussions within which we need to forge a legislative formula. I hope that we can pursue those discussions after today and come back with something that we can unite around on Report. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel) (Lab)
My Lords, there is an error in Amendment 119. It should read, “Page 26, line 16, after the first ‘responsible’, insert ‘and children’”.
Lord Low of Dalston
Lord Low of Dalston
This is beginning to feel a bit like hard work. I shall speak also to my Amendment 126, which is in this group. I am not quite sure why it is in this group but it is, so I shall speak to it. Clause 33 provides that a local authority is not required to secure the education of a child or young person with special educational needs in a maintained nursery school, mainstream school or mainstream post-16 institution where it is incompatible with the provision of efficient education for others. This reproduces the wording of the current legislation relating to school education but is not present in the current learning difficulty assessment guidance that covers learners moving to and within post-16 provision. It has been put to me that subsection (2)(b) should be deleted to ensure that colleges and post-16 institutions continue to make the necessary adjustments to include disabled applicants. This includes making adjustments to provisions, criteria and practices, and the provision of auxiliary aids and services.
In the context of post-16 education, the retention of subsection (2)(b) could undermine students’ existing rights and protections under the Equality Act, and provide an excuse for colleges to exclude learners with learning difficulties and/or disabilities on the grounds of cost or inconvenience to other students. In other words, it would interpose a hurdle that does not exist at present in relation to post-16 education. Furthermore, there is an inconsistency in that those learners without an education, health and care plan cannot be refused a place on these grounds. The implication is that a disabled person with a plan potentially has fewer rights than one without. It is not quite clear why subsection (2)(b) is needed when the Equality Act is clear on the requirements around reasonable adjustments.
These arguments clearly have force so far as post-school education is concerned but, thinking about it, they have just as much force as regards school education. In any case, in a Bill which introduces a unified approach for all those aged nought to 25, it seems clear that the language should be consistent across the whole age range. It therefore seems only right to delete subsection (2)(b) altogether, which is what Amendment 123A would achieve.
The purpose of Amendment 126 is to protect a child or young person with a special educational need and ensure that they get the education and support best suited to them. The provision contained in Clause 34(9) would allow a special school, academy or free school to admit a child without a statutory assessment of their needs and without an education, health and care plan. Currently, any child who has special educational needs but who does not have a statement must be educated in a mainstream school. The change that Clause 34(9) would bring about undermines a long-standing consensus that children and young people should be placed in special schools only where this has been identified as being the most appropriate placement, following a statutory assessment process, and where it is in line with the wishes of the parent.
The draft code of practice suggests that an individual professional, such as an educational psychologist, could provide a report to support a child’s admission to a special academy or free school. This could constitute a diminution in parents’ rights to express a preference for a particular school in the full knowledge of the nature of their child’s needs, as assessed by a range of professionals. Inclusion of this provision seems to devalue the assessment and planning process which sits at the heart of the Government’s reforms. It seems obvious, too, that any head teacher would want as much information as possible about a new child or young person with a special educational need to be sure that the school could meet their needs.
There is also concern that a placement agreed in this way without an assessment and a plan would provide parents and carers with no entitlement to an annual review or any right of appeal. This provision would also make it easier for those head teachers who are reluctant to accept a child or young person with a special educational need to try to persuade parents that their child would be better off in a special school, thus undermining the principle of inclusion we were talking about last week. Therefore, it seems clear that the process of admission of children and young people with special educational needs to special schools should continue to be based on assessment, as at present. It would be dangerous to dispense with that, as I think would be the result of Clause 34(9). I beg to move.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I shall speak to our Amendment 124 in this group and support the arguments which the noble Lord, Lord Low, has put forward in support of his amendment.
We began this debate about inclusion and access to mainstream education in Committee last week, but I am very pleased to have the opportunity to return to some of those issues. During that debate, the Minister sought to reassure us that duties were already in existence, including under the Equality Act 2010, to prevent discrimination against disabled people and that that addressed some of the issues about which we were concerned. However, I support the amendments that have been tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, because she has identified some of the remaining contradictions between the Equality Act and some of the duties that this Bill is spelling out. It is important that those issues are bottomed out, and I support her amendments.
We remain concerned that, by agreeing to this wording unamended, we will be introducing a get-out clause which would allow schools to duck out of their responsibilities to provide mainstream education when requested. As the noble Lord, Lord Low, pointed out, Clause 33 places a duty on local authorities to ensure that children and young people with an EHC plan are placed in mainstream education. There are two important caveats. The first is if a place is incompatible with the wishes of the child’s parents or the young person. Obviously we support that caveat. As we have said before, parental choice and the views of young people are crucial in identifying the best educational provision for a particular child.
It seems to us that the second caveat goes against the whole spirit and intent of the Bill. Clause 33(2)(b) provides that local authorities can opt out of providing mainstream education if it is incompatible with,
“the provision of efficient education for others”.
We feel that we should have moved on from that wording at this stage.
The wording raises questions about who defines what level of disruption is incompatible with efficient education. For example, could it be argued that any child with health issues in a school environment could potentially interfere with the efficient education of others? Or could any child whose educational needs required additional attention from a teacher arguably be taking the teacher’s time away from others, thereby affecting their education? How far are we going to apply this wording?
The Minister said that the Equality Act protects against discrimination, but is there not something rather worrying about defining disabled children’s rights by the level of inconvenience that they might cause? Therefore, our amendment would remove that reference and replace it with a much more positive commitment to meet the specific needs of children and young people.
Reference has been made to the draft code of conduct. It appears to me that it adds a further reason why a request for mainstream education could be refused, and that is the incompatibility with the efficient use of resources. As I understand it, this used to be a factor that schools could fall back on, basically arguing that it was too costly to educate children with SEN in mainstream schools. However, it was removed by the previous Government in 2001, so it now appears that we are going backwards, making it more difficult to access mainstream education.
We believe that ensuring that the needs and wishes of children, young people and their families ought to be the only justifiable basis on which they should be placed in a non-mainstream setting. We acknowledge that many mainstream schools still lack the capacity to provide a good education to children with certain learning difficulties and disabilities, but surely the solution is to address those failings in a structured and positive way within a given timetable, not to give those schools an opt-out. However, we have to accept that some schools are reluctant to admit children with special educational needs or to take the steps necessary to modify their facilities, particularly with the pressure of league tables uppermost in their minds. There is no doubt that some academies and free schools are seeking to operate more stringent admissions policies. This comes back to the issues raised by the Equality and Human Rights Commission about the alignment of the reasonable adjustment duty with the duties in the Bill. We need to make sure that they are properly aligned. Our concern is that the provisions in the Bill and the draft code of conduct give schools an excuse not to make any changes.
At Second Reading, this issue was addressed with some passion by several noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. We feel there is a need to address the failings in the Bill and the code in this respect. The Green Paper referred to creating a bias towards inclusion. If we are serious about that, we should remove Clause 33(2)(b). In his letter to Peers after Second Reading, the Minister referred to the fact that the Bill already provides for the wishes of children, young people and their parents to be taken into account and, of course, it does, but that misses the point if their wishes can be overridden by the needs of so-called efficient education for others or the efficient use of resources. I hope the Minister will take these issues seriously and look again at what we believe is increasingly backward-looking wording which goes so far against the spirit and intent of the Bill and that we can come back with a more positive form of words.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I have three amendments in this group, two of them on equality rights. I shall start with Amendment 125, which is a probing amendment regarding a concern of the Association of Educational Psychologists. There are two more amendments later, but I want to deal with this amendment because in answering the Minister may be able to give reassurance.
Currently any child who has special educational needs but does not have a statement must be educated in a mainstream school. There are no exceptions to this duty, which helps ensure that children and young people are not inappropriately placed in special schools. The concern is that Clause 34(3) allows special academies, including free schools, to admit children or young people permanently without them having had their special educational needs statutorily assessed or an EHC plan having been put in place for them. This proposal seems to undermine the principle that a mainstream school must be able to make provision for all children without a statement or plan and for most children with a statement or plan.
Although special academies will need to make it clear through their funding agreement that a child or young person with SEN but no EHC plan should be placed there only at the request of their parents or at their own request and with the support of professional advice, such as a report from an educational psychologist, the concern is that there is no formal role for the local authority in this process. The worry is that this proposal will make the local authority’s role of planning provision for pupils with SEN, including provision for children and young persons with EHC plans, extremely difficult.
If this proposal went through, there would be a danger that mainstream special schools would be incentivised to persuade parents that their child would be better off in a special school just because they do not want them in their schools. This would take us back to the situation that existed before the Education Act 1981. There could also be a situation where special academies increasingly enrolled pupils with less complex needs, which would beg the question of where children with complex needs would go. If this clause remains, I would question the point of mainstream places within a special school.
I fear that this proposal would result in medical labels determining whether a child secures a place in a special academy. If a special academy had been set up for a particular type of SEN—for example, SpLD or ASD/Asperger’s—would it result in an increase in the number of children being diagnosed with that condition? How can the Government ensure that there is a framework process so that inappropriate placements do not occur?
There are also concerns about the practical impact on admissions and places. Would decisions be taken solely by schools and parents, and how would educational psychologists’ views be protected and advocated? How would places be allocated within school year groups? If there was parental demand, could the funding agreement be varied to allow more non-EHC plan places? The policy also begs the key question of what the aspiration would be for a child without an EHC plan in a special academy. Would there be an exit plan? Who would set the child targets and ensure that they are making adequate progress?
This amendment has been tabled because it is hoped that the Minister will look again at the proposals and help to allay serious concerns in the SEN sector that this clause could result in children and young people being inappropriately placed in special schools. Ideally, the Association of Educational Psychologists would like to see the clause amended so that special academies are not able to admit children and young people without an EHC plan. I hope that when the Minister replies he will be able to dispel those doubts.
I turn now to Clause 33, which relates to children and young people with education, health and care plans, and Clause 34, which relates to children and young people with special educational needs but no education, health and care plans. Amendment 124A seeks to insert a new subsection in Clause 33 which states:
“This section does not affect the duties of schools imposed by section 85(6) of the Equality Act 2010, which places a duty on the responsible body of a school to make reasonable adjustments for disabled persons”.
Amendment 126A seeks to insert a new subsection in Clause 34 which states:
“This section does not affect the duties of schools imposed by section 85(6) of the Equality Act 2010, which places a duty on the responsible body of a school to make reasonable adjustments for disabled persons”.
The amendments are about ensuring that schools and local authorities are fully aware of the reasonable adjustments duty owed by schools to disabled pupils where the child has special educational needs. Some disabled pupils will have special educational needs and may be receiving support via school-based special educational needs provision or have an educational, health and care plan under the new arrangements. Just because a disabled pupil has special educational needs or an education, health and care plan, it does not take away a school’s duty to make reasonable adjustments for them.
The Earl of Listowel
Listening to noble Lords speaking to this string of amendments I am reminded of the challenges that our school workforce faces. The best teachers know that inclusion benefits the whole school. It is nevertheless challenging to try as far as possible to include every child in schools. I am reminded of the reputation of Finland, which has an inclusive school system, a high-status teaching profession and for many years has successfully recruited and retained high-calibre graduates who work seamlessly with health and other social services in that country.
This is a good opportunity to thank the Minister for his recent letter following our debate on child development training for teachers. He highlighted that, in these standards for teachers, there is a now a clear standard for child development. That is very welcome. I think of an experience a few years ago, working with a child psychotherapist on a paper. He provided support to staff groups in 10 schools in Brent, north London. He found that teachers and school staff who had this support—a group discussion of work in the school—on a regular basis were found, over a period of time, to have a lower rate of sickness absence because they had the opportunity to think about what they were doing, and were supported in that by a professional. He also offered the service to Westminster School, around the corner from here, of which he was a former pupil.
To make this happen, and make our schools as inclusive as possible, we need above all to recruit, retain and support the workforce that can do this. I am encouraged by what the Government have done in making it clear in the standards that child development is now very much expected to be well understood by our teaching workforce.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford (LD)
My Lords, my name is attached to Amendment 125. I was slightly surprised by this amendment and spent some time puzzling as to what the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, meant by it. I am not totally sure when my name got attached to it but it did and I therefore briefed myself accordingly. I think I am right that the noble Baroness previously argued for the deletion of Clause 34(9) rather than subsection (3). She argued against special academies and so forth. Subsection (3) says:
“The child or young person may be educated in an independent school, a non-maintained special school or a special post-16 institution, if the cost is not to be met by a local authority or the Secretary of State”.
As I understand it, the noble Baroness did not argue about that subsection at all.
Nevertheless, I have a question about this area. I really saw this as a probing amendment because I cannot quite see how it is compatible with Clause 59, which deals with the local authority paying fees for special educational provision and makes it quite clear. My reading of Clause 34 is that it effectively says that no child may go to a special school except in very special circumstances and when everybody else agrees. Then Clause 59 makes it clear that a child without an EHC plan may be at a special school and paid for by a local authority. Yet it may be that that child, without an EHC plan and paid for by a local authority, needs to be assessed and sent to a special school. It strikes me that there is an incompatibility between those two.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
To make it clear, I suggested that it was a probing amendment. As it had been tabled, I felt it was my duty to put the case given to me. I am sorry that the noble Baroness and I did not have time to discuss it.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
I am sorry about that, too. While I am on my feet, I should say that I have a great deal of sympathy with the other amendments in this group. In particular, I sympathise with the arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Low. In some ways, my preference would be for Amendment 124 because it seems to me that there are occasions when perhaps a special school is appropriate. The wording of Amendment 124 makes it absolutely clear that, when it is in the interests of,
“the specific needs of the child or young person”,
this might be the case. That is why I think that that amendment has some merit. I also very much support the amendments put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, concerning the Equality Act. I think that it is very important that we make it quite clear that this Bill in no sense overrides the responsibilities of local authorities under the Equality Act.
Lord Nash
I thank noble Lords for their amendments on inclusive provision. This is the second debate that we have had on the principle of inclusion. Today’s debate has focused on how decisions are made about where individual children and young people with EHC plans are taught. As I said in responding to our earlier debate, our aim with this Bill is to build on what has gone before and to create a new framework that improves both support for children and young people so that they achieve better outcomes and choice for parents and young people.
I will take Amendments 123A and 124, from the noble Lord, Lord Low, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Jones, together, as they both relate to the factors that local authorities should take into account when naming an education setting in a child or young person’s EHC plan, where no request has been made for a particular institution or the parent or young person’s request for one has not been met. The statutory provisions in the Bill are designed to ensure that a mainstream place is considered thoroughly and properly, recognising that, with the right support, children and young people with special educational needs are successfully supported in mainstream settings. They also recognise that there will be occasions where a child’s inclusion in a mainstream setting would significantly impact on the education of others, whose interests should also be safeguarded. This could occur, for example, when the extremely challenging and disruptive behaviour of a child or young person could not be managed. The provision for local authorities to consider the efficient education of others is important in this respect.
I understand concerns about this condition being used indiscriminately. Clause 33(3) and (4) guard against this. A local authority can only rely on it if there are no reasonable steps that could be taken to prevent the placement of the child or young person being incompatible with the efficient education of others. In section 7.11 of the draft SEN code of practice, we set out a number of examples of reasonable steps that can be taken to support inclusion. I believe that provision on meeting the specific needs of the child should not be the preserve of a single clause. It is at the heart of Part 3 and is reflected in Clause 19 on general principles, Clause 36 on assessments and EHC plans, Clause 42 on duties to secure provision in EHC plans and Clause 62 on the duty on schools to use their best endeavours to meet children’s needs.
Regarding the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Low, that the Bill gives FE colleges a get-out clause by allowing them to refuse entry to disabled students that they previously would have accepted in line with their duties under the Equality Act, I can assure noble Lords that the Equality Act 2010 will continue to apply in full to colleges, and that they must continue to make reasonable adjustments to support the participation of disabled young people. Nothing in this Bill overrides these very important duties imposed by the Equality Act.
We believe that the principle behind Clause 33 is the right one. Young people with EHC plans should have the right to be educated in a mainstream setting if that is what they want. This Bill, for the first time, gives young people the right to say where they want to study, by requesting that a particular school or college is named in their EHC plan.
I understand the motivation for Amendments 124A and 126A from the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. During our helpful debate on disabled children and young people last Wednesday, I made it clear that we had drawn attention to the Equality Act duties in the SEN code of practice, in Chapters 1 and 6, and referred to other relevant guidance on those duties. We recognise the importance of making appropriate links between SEN and the Equality Act duties in the code of practice, and in last Wednesday’s debate I undertook to look again at the scope for improving the draft code of practice on this. I hope that that reassures the noble Baroness, Lady Howe.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, in welcoming the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, to the Committee, now that she has been able to get away from her previous commitments, I offer her an apology. I had undertaken to make it clear when I moved Amendment 101, which she put her name to, that she wished her support for it to be placed on the record. I am afraid that I neglected to do that, so perhaps I may be permitted to rectify that omission now.
I thank all those who have spoken. This debate has enriched in detail the one we had about inclusion last week. It is clear from the interchange between the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and my noble friend Lady Howe that we have got our amendments in a bit of a tangle at one or two points, so we may have some work to do to sort them out. I am sure, however, that in the course of the further discussions which the Minister promised we should be able to do that. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, for her support for my amendments. I agree with her that placement in a special school as provided for by Amendment 124, if it is in the interests of the child, makes sense—provided that that is the conclusion of a proper process of assessment. I hope that she would accept that.
We had two particularly valuable speeches from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and my noble friend Lady Howe. I wish that I had made them myself in moving the amendment. I must find out where they get their briefing from. However, those contributions have enriched the debate that we had last week in detail and will clearly feed into the further discussions that we are to have.
Finally, I thank the Minister for his careful exegesis of the law as it is enshrined in the Bill. This will provide a helpful background to the further discussions he has promised us, and which I am sure it will be important for us to have before Report. I conclude by hoping that this debate, like last week’s, will feed into those discussions but, with that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Northover
My Lords, this may be a convenient moment for the Committee to adjourn.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, the Committee stands adjourned.
House of Lords
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Introduction: Lord Holmes of Richmond
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Taxation: Tax Law Enforcement
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Phillips of Sudbury
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they will enable those who enforce the tax laws to accomplish their tasks better.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, this Government are investing in HMRC, so that it will be collecting £10 billion a year more from its compliance activities by 2015-16 than it was at the start of this Parliament. The number of HMRC staff in compliance roles fell under the previous Government; under this Government there will be around 2,500 more staff tackling tax avoidance and evasion in 2014-15.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
My Lords, at a time when decent Brits are struggling to pay their full taxes, is it not wholly counterproductive that many of our richest citizens and companies are evading and avoiding tens of billions of pounds in taxation? According to the HMRC calculation, every extra pound spent on enforcement resources yields £10 to £30. Although the statistics are encouraging, surely we should be doing yet more to avoid the citizen disenchantment that is currently brewing.
Lord Newby
My Lords, I absolutely agree with my noble friend. I would remind him that this Government reinvested an additional £917 million in compliance activities in the 2010 spending round. They added another £77 million in last year’s Autumn Statement. Therefore, we have a track record of providing HMRC with additional funding, should it come forward with proposals that result in additional tax yield. It is not inconceivable that HMRC might come forward with such proposals in respect of this year’s Autumn Statement.
Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)
My Lords, should Ministers not be taking some initiative, irrespective of HMRC and its officials? Are Ministers aware of the level of anger in the country, and not just against the multinationals? We all recognise that that is a challenging nut to crack and needs international co-operation. Internal British companies—not least the energy companies—are able to locate their senior companies in offshore tax havens in order to avoid paying their legitimate tax. Is the Minister not aware that action is necessary from Ministers and not just from HMRC officials?
Lord Newby
I think the decision taken by Ministers to give an additional £1 billion for compliance activities was pretty clear. Many of the problems that we see with multinationals paying less tax than would appear appropriate are international by nature. That is why we have put a lot of resources into the OECD. We put another £400,000 into the work that it is doing following the G20 summit earlier this year. There is a determination across the international community, to a degree that has not been apparent before, that companies cannot get away with avoiding taxes. This must be dealt with internationally, and that is what we are promoting effectively.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that what the Treasury should be about is maximising the revenue that is taken in tax, and that the best way to achieve that is by having a lower, flatter, fairer tax system?
Lord Newby
My Lords, one of the things I learnt as a junior Customs and Excise official—
Lord Newby
It was a very long time ago, my Lords. While there are many good theoretical principles on which taxes need to be based, the single most important is the ability to collect the tax in the way you want. That must be a guiding principle. I do not believe that there is an easy answer to generating higher levels of tax revenue just by having a straightforward tax system. If it were as simple as that, it would have been tried by now.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, what additional mechanisms, procedures and arrangements are being put in place to maximise the potentially substantial income available from the letting of residential property, particularly in London, by people overseas? At the moment that revenue is often not collected.
Lord Newby
My Lords, as the noble Lord will know, in last year’s Budget and Finance Bill, the stamp duty payable on high-value properties in those circumstances was significantly increased. That has led to a substantial increase in the overall yield of stamp duty on property transactions.
Lord Tebbit (Con)
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that a very good precedent has been set on the avoidance of tax by the immediate past Prime Minister, Mr Brown? He does not pay tax on the earnings that spring from the things he does as a former Prime Minister because he gives all those earnings to charity. Is that not an example which might be followed by other former Prime Ministers?
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, I am not going to continue this attack on Sir John Major because it is disgraceful. With respect, the Minister has been giving us the same answer about extra staff for almost the past three years, yet we have illustration after illustration of evasion. First it was Starbucks, then it was Amazon, then it was Philip Green and Irvine Laidlaw; one after the other has been avoiding tax. Has the Minister not yet come to the conclusion that what is needed is legislation to close the tax loopholes?
Lord Newby
My Lords, leaving aside the fact that, sadly, I have not been a Minister for three years, the question of closing tax loopholes and dealing with companies that are international by their nature is an international problem. The level of activity now being undertaken via the OECD is on a scale that we have not seen for a generation. Some 15 work streams are currently under way, looking at different aspects of this problem, with a two-year deadline to resolve them. If it were possible to legislate in one country and deal with all these issues, not only we but the US, Germany, France and other countries that find themselves in the same boat would have done it. You cannot operate against multinationals on a domestic basis alone; it must be done internationally. That is what we are doing, and we are putting huge effort and impetus into that work.
EU: UK Contribution
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Vinson
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to raise public awareness of the United Kingdom’s net contribution to the European Union’s budget over the last six years exceeding £53 billion, as set out in the HM Treasury Pink Book 2013, and the effect that has on the United Kingdom’s public sector borrowing requirement.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, to ensure transparency and increase public awareness, HM Treasury publishes details of UK contributions to the EU in its European Union finances and public expenditure statistical analyses publications. The previous Government gave up a significant portion of our abatement, and consequently our net contributions were always likely to increase. Following the real-terms cut to the 2014 to 2020 payment ceilings negotiated by the Prime Minister in February, they will now be going up by less.
Lord Vinson (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his considered reply. Perhaps I may illustrate my point. Recently, the Chancellor returned from China, pleased that he had raised £13 billion to build the new nuclear power station so desperately needed for our energy security. Is it not paradoxical that over the past six years our net contribution to the EU, which is substantially used for infrastructure, has been over £50 billion? That is enough to build at least three nuclear power stations. How is it that we can find the money to build other people’s infrastructure but not our own?
Lord Newby
My Lords, by looking at the net contribution to the EU, the noble Lord is concentrating on only one dimension of our relationship with the Union. He is ignoring the very substantial economic benefits that we enjoy through increased internal trade via the single market, increased external trade via, for example, the recently concluded EU-Canada trade agreement, and increased investment in the UK by companies such as Nissan. He is also ignoring the non-economic benefits of membership in the fields of the environment, justice and external affairs.
Lord Tomlinson (Lab)
Will the Minister take urgent steps to gain control of expenditure in the European budget? That can best be done by introducing a system of zero-based budgeting, such as my noble friend Lord Kinnock sought to introduce when he was a Commissioner. The Government have always said yes to this in principle but done nothing in practice.
Lord Newby
My Lords, the first thing that we sought to do on the European budget was to ensure that it was not increasing in real terms. As the noble Lord knows, the agreement made by the Prime Minister at the European Council in February will result in €80 billion less expenditure over the next budgetary period than the Commission proposed. The first step in getting the budget dealt with appropriately was to cap it.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
Could the Minister say how many nuclear power stations the Government could have built with the rebates that we have received since 1975 under Mrs Thatcher’s arrangements?
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
Does the Minister agree with two things about the net payment to Brussels of £12.2 billion for the past year alone? First, that it equates to the £30,000 per annum salaries of 1,100 nurses, policemen or any other public servant per day. Secondly, that there is no such thing as EU aid to us, because for every £1 they now send us back we have sent them £2.56.
Lord Newby
My Lords, I am not going to get into a statistical analysis with the noble Lord, but I revert to my earlier point. Our membership of the EU brings with it a whole raft of benefits which do not simply relate to the EU budget. One area of expenditure that we incurred some time ago was dealing with a war in the Balkans, which cost this country more than £1 billion. Since the Balkan wars finished, Croatia has joined the EU and other Balkan states will join. We will not fight other Balkan wars. That does not fit into the noble Lord’s narrow formula.
Lord Marlesford (Con)
My Lords, following the good point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, about the need to control the EU budget, does the Minister recognise that in the 1970s, when government spending in Britain got totally out of control, it was brought under control to a considerable extent by the noble Lord, Lord Healey, when he was Chancellor? Helped by Sir Leo Pliatzky, the Second Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, he introduced cash limits. At the moment, the Commission constantly argues that more money is needed to fulfil the obligations of earlier policy undertakings. Cash limits would do it, or help do it. Will the Government try to get the EU to introduce cash limits?
Lord Newby
My Lords, there is a cash limit. There is an overall payment ceiling of €908.4 billion over the next budget period. That is a cash limit.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)
Regarding my noble friend’s last answer, I do not know how much the European Union spent on creating a sustainable peace and a functional state in Bosnia-Herzegovina. However, I wonder if my noble friend would accept from me that, however much was spent, the figure amounted to tens of times less than it would have cost everybody, including British taxpayers, if there had been a return to conflict.
Lord Newby
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. I completely agree with him.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon (Ind Lab)
Will the noble Lord confirm that the gross cost to the taxpayer is not £55 million per day but £18 billion every year? If we were not paying that amount in exchanges, would not the Government be able to reduce the deficit on expenditure very much more quickly than they intend to at the present time?
Lord Newby
My Lords, the net payment over the past six years has been about £34.8 billion. This equates to less than 1% of our total public expenditure over that period. It is a very substantial amount, but, as I have now said several times, you have to set against that amount all the economic and other benefits, including those mentioned by my noble friend Lord Ashdown, that the UK derives.
Schools: Curriculum
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Massey of Darwen
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether free schools and faith schools will be required to deliver a broad and balanced curriculum which addresses the needs of all pupils.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question in the name of my noble friend Lady Massey at her request. She has had an accident and sends her apologies today.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, perhaps the noble Baroness could send a message to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, that we wish her a speedy recovery.
All mainstream academies and free schools, whether they be faith schools or non-faith schools, must deliver a broad and balanced curriculum. That is a non-negotiable element of their funding agreements. Other state-funded schools, including faith schools, must also deliver the national curriculum and a broad and balanced education for their pupils, as specified in Section 78 of the Education Act 2002.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
I thank the Minister for that reply and will pass on the good wishes that he has expressed in the House to my noble friend Lady Massey.
Is the Minister aware that, in the light of concerns over many months about the extent of new risks to young people from social media, the internet and grooming, Members across the House and in the other place, schools, children’s organisations and now even Nick Clegg and the Daily Telegraph are calling on the Government to update the guidance to schools on the sex and relationship education curriculum, which was first issued in 2000? Would that not be eminently sensible, and can the Minister tell the House why the Secretary of State has refused to do so?
Lord Nash
My Lords, we looked at that recently during the PSHE review and concluded that the SOE curriculum provides a good foundation on which teachers can build. We trust teachers to deliver the education that pupils need and adjust it for the modern world. Technology is moving very fast, and we do not think that constant changes to the regulations and top-down diktats are the way to deal with this.
Lord Quirk (CB)
I wonder why Her Majesty's Government do not insist that those schools should teach the national curriculum, as all maintained schools have to; or, to put it the other way round, what parts of the national curriculum will the Government be happy to see ignored in schools that do not have to teach it?
Lord Storey (LD)
My noble friend is aware that the national curriculum is neither national nor has to be a curriculum for all schools. How do we ensure that those areas of child development and education, about which we have all expressed concern in this Chamber, which are essential to young people and children are taught in all schools—whether academies, faith schools, free schools or what were called county schools?
Lord Nash
All good schools seek to develop their children’s character through a PSHE programme. We do not feel that the programme should be legislated for in its content. Circumstances of the different schools and pupils in them vary greatly, and we should leave it for teachers to decide exactly the approach that they take.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, given that the charity Mentor said, to cite the Home Affairs Select Committee report, Breaking the Cycle:
“We are spending the vast majority of the money we do spend on drug education on programmes that don’t work”,
and given that his department said it does not monitor the programmes or resources that schools use to support their teaching, is the Minister content with such a casual and laissez-faire approach on the part of the Government in an area where young people are so vulnerable?
Lord Nash
The noble Lord implies that casual equals laissez-faire; we do not accept that. As I said, we accept that most schools should do what all good schools do, which is to have an active programme of promoting their children’s interest, including drugs education, which they must be taught about in science classes anyway. Often, the best way to engage those pupils with those difficult issues, such as forced marriages or gangs, is not for teachers to do that—they often will not open up to their teachers—but for outside agencies and charities with skilled people in those difficult areas to talk to them about that.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, will my noble friend confirm that the overwhelming majority of free schools have been rated good or outstanding in Ofsted inspections? How does that compare with the performance of schools as a whole?
The Lord Bishop of Lichfield
Does the Minister agree that the use of the phrase “faith schools” can be profoundly unhelpful in the context of this discussion? Schools of a religious character come in many forms. Is it not true that the nearly 4,700 Church of England schools sit very firmly within the mainstream of English education, and that even C of E free schools and academies are linked to diocesan boards to ensure that the education that they provide is broad and balanced, academically challenging, personally inspiring and serving the needs of the whole local community?
Lord Nash
I agree entirely with the right reverend Prelate. Faith schools are a long-established and highly valued part of our educational establishment, and church schools are, too. Church schools consistently outperform maintained schools; they are very popular and often highly oversubscribed. The applications procedures of many of them do not rely heavily on faith; they have a much wider intake.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister return to the answer that he gave to the noble Lord, Lord Quirk, who asked him an extremely apposite question about which bits of the national curriculum he would be content to see any school ignore? I did not hear him answer that question.
Lord Nash
As I said, they must teach English, maths, science, and religious education, and they must follow a PSHE course. We will have a best eight assessment criteria, whereby schools will have to include other subjects. Then we have destinations, because we want our pupils to be work-ready and for them not to turn out as recently evaluated by the OECD—that is, that after 13 years of the Labour Government we have the most illiterate school leavers in Europe and, according to Alan Milburn, the most socially immobile society in Europe.
Banking: Co-operative Bank
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Sharkey
To ask Her Majesty’s Government to what extent their aims of producing more diversity in banking and of reforming banking culture will be affected by the change in ownership of the Co-operative Bank.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, the Co-op Bank is negotiating a deal on its capital with its creditors. It will cease to be fully mutually owned, but will continue to compete in retail banking markets. The Government’s reforms will make the banking sector safer, more competitive and diverse. We are implementing the recommendations of both the independent and parliamentary banking commissions. These fundamental reforms will be unaffected by the change of ownership for the single bank.
Lord Sharkey (LD)
The fact is that the Co-op Bank will now be owned by a couple of vulture funds, which I suppose is diversity of a sort. What advice would the Minister give customers who are looking for ethical values in retail high street banking?
Lord Newby
My Lords, the Co-op is undoubtedly having a significant change in ownership, but one would hope that even vultures will be able to see that the Co-op’s USP is its particular ethical stance. Its strength appears to me, at least, to be very much in that direction. So for the development of the Co-op, one would hope that they would see continuation of those traits being in their own interests, as well as those of anybody else. Of course, there are other mutuals that the discerning customer can put their money with; the Nationwide is very successful, as are other building societies. We must be clear on the difference between “for profit” and “ethical”. I would not want to brand every other high street bank as unethical just because they are also making a profit.
Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his comments on the Co-operative Bank, which after all is one of the few which did not go to the Government and to the taxpayer for support during these difficult times. However, what is the Minister proposing to do about increasing bank competition? Some 55% of the British population have never switched their accounts. The degree of switching and of competitive banking is low. Large banks owe their pre-eminence to historical development and being early in the field. Surely the Minister is going to take advantage of the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill to enact some of the proposals from the banking commission, chaired by Andrew Tyrie MP, and also amendments being tabled by the Labour Opposition to increase competition in the banking sector, which it sorely needs.
Lord Newby
My Lords, the banking Bill incorporates many of the proposals of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. On switching, a new seven-day switching service was introduced last month. In its first month, there has been an 11% increase compared with the previous year in the number of people who switched their bank accounts. One would expect that number to increase as the service becomes better known. This year the big change in terms of new entrants to the market is that the regulators have greatly reduced the time that it takes to become a new bank and greatly reduced the amount of money it takes to establish a new bank. Those are key drivers for getting new competitors into the market.
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, has pointed out, it is perhaps somewhat of an irony that the Co-op Bank should being bailed out by hedge funds. The crucial point is that the Government have made clear that the time of taxpayers bailing out banks is over. Bluntly, if a bank cannot organise its own financial affairs, the resolution mechanism is the only alternative.
Lord Newby
My Lords, one of the key purposes of the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill is to provide, in ring-fenced retail banks, relatively risk-free places for ordinary customers to put their money. Beyond that, the key thing is that the Bill’s resolution provisions will require banks to put in place mechanisms to be activated if they got into financial difficulties, such that they would not need to come to government in those circumstances.
Lord Tomlinson (Lab)
Is the Minister aware that when giving evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee yesterday, the former chief executive of the Co-op Bank said that he was assured by the financial regulator about the safe state of the Britannia Building Society? The Co-op Bank takeover of the Britannia Building Society has given rise to the liquidity problems in the bank. Will he acknowledge that and inquire what the financial regulator was doing in giving that assurance?
Lord Newby
My Lords, I think the merger with the Britannia Building Society was one of the material causes of this problem. I cannot comment on what the regulator may have said. Generally, where banks of all sorts have sought to make large acquisitions and they have then gone wrong, the principal responsibility for due diligence rests with the management of the bank involved in the takeover. The role played by the regulator, whatever its scale, does not detract from the fact that responsibility for major corporate decisions of that kind lies primarily with management.
Lord Naseby (Con)
Will my noble friend confirm for all of us who believe in mutuality and are sorry that the Co-op Bank has got into its current situation—I believe that mutuality is supported by both sides of the House—that when the new owners have got the bank onto a stable footing and making a profit they will possibly return it to mutuality?
Lord Newby
Well, my Lords, that is possible but, as noble Lords know, the sad truth is that the process has tended to be something of a one-way street with regard to mutuality. When mutuals have ceased to be mutuals, they have tended to cease to be mutuals for good. Still, one can always hope. I should also have mentioned the raft of provisions in the banking reform Bill to bring building society legislation up to date and make it easier for them to compete in the marketplace.
Pensions Bill
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Alan Turing (Statutory Pardon) Bill [HL]
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Sharkey (LD)
My Lords, I record my gratitude to all those who have helped the Bill’s progress, particularly my noble friend Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon for his words at Second Reading and my noble friend Lady Trumpington for her constant support and enthusiasm.
Lord Tebbit (Con)
My Lords, I have no intention of obstructing my noble friend Lord Sharkey’s Bill. As it continues on its journey towards the statute book, though, there is something that should be said. As we know, Mr Turing committed, and was convicted of, an act that would not be a crime today. So have many others, and many other crimes have been committed similarly. I hope that the Bill will not be used as a precedent. Even more, I hope that we will never seek to extend the logic of the Bill to posthumously convict men of crimes for acts that were not criminal when they were committed, but would be if they were committed today. There is a dangerous precedent within this Bill.
NHS: London
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health in the other place earlier today on changes to health services in London.
“With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on the Shaping a Healthier Future programme, a locally led review of NHS services across north-west London.
The NHS is one of the greatest institutions in the world. Ensuring that it is sustainable and that it serves the best interests of patients sometimes means taking tough decisions. The population of north-west London is growing, and will reach approximately 2.15 million by 2018. Around 300,000 people have a long-term condition.
However, there is great variation in the quality of acute care. In 2011 there was a 10% higher mortality rate at weekends for emergency admissions, and the number of hospital readmissions differs considerably across the area. The Independent Reconfiguration Panel expressed concerns that the status quo in north-west London was neither sustainable nor desirable, and might not even be stable.
In order to address these challenges, the NHS in London started the Shaping a Healthier Future programme in 2009. It proposed significant changes to services, including centralising A&E services at five hospitals rather than nine; 24/7 urgent care centres at all nine hospitals; 24/7 consultant cover in all obstetric wards; a brand new trauma hospital at St Mary’s Paddington; brand new custom-built local hospitals at Ealing and Charing Cross; seven-day access to GP surgeries throughout north-west London; over 800 additional posts created to improve out-of-hospital care, including a named accountable clinician for all vulnerable and elderly patients, with fully integrated provision by the health and social care systems; and increased investment in mental health and psychiatric liaison services.
These changes represent the most ambitious plans to transform care put forward by any NHS local area to date. They are forward thinking and address many of the most pressing issues facing the NHS, including seven-day working, improved hospital safety, and proactive out-of-hospital and GP services. The improvements in emergency care alone should save around 130 lives per annum and the transformation in out-of-hospital care should save many more—giving north-west London probably the best out-of-hospital care anywhere in the country.
The plans are supported by all eight clinical commissioning groups, the medical directors of all nine local NHS trusts, and all local councils except for Ealing. It was as a result of a referral to me by Ealing Council on 19 March 2013 that I asked the Independent Reconfiguration Panel to conduct a full review. The panel submitted its comprehensive report to me on 13 September 2013, which I have considered in detail alongside the referral from Ealing. I am today placing a copy of the panel’s report in the Library, alongside the strong letters of support for the changes I received from all local CCGs and medical directors.
The panel says that Shaping a Healthier Future provides,
“the way forward for the future and that the proposals for change will enable the provision of safe, sustainable and accessible services”.
Today I have accepted the panel’s advice in full, which will be published on the panel’s website.
The panel also says that while the changes to A&E at Central Middlesex and Hammersmith hospitals should be implemented as soon as practicable, further work is required before a final decision is made about the range of services to be provided from the Ealing and Charing Cross hospital sites.
Because the process to date has already taken four years, causing understandable local concern, I have today decided it is time to end the uncertainty. So while I accept the need for further work as the IRP suggests, I have decided that the outcome should be that Ealing and Charing Cross hospitals should continue to offer an A&E service, even if it is a different shape or size to that currently offered. Any changes implemented as part of Shaping a Healthier Future should be implemented by local commissioners following proper public engagement and in line with the emerging principles of the Keogh review of Accident and Emergency services.
I have written today to the chair and vice-chair of the Health and Adult Social Services Standing Scrutiny Panel of the London Borough of Ealing Council, the chair of the IRP—Lord Bernard Ribeiro—the chief executive of NHS England and local MPs, informing them of my decision. These much needed changes will put patients at the centre of their local NHS, with more accessible, 24/7 front-line care at home, at GP surgeries, in hospitals and in the community. More money will be spent on front-line care which focuses on the patient. Less will be wasted on duplication and underperforming services.
Let me be clear that, in the joint words of the medical directors at hospitals affected, there is a,
“very high level of clinical support for this programme across NW London”.
Local services will be designed by clinicians and local residents and be based on the specific needs of the population. None of these changes will take place until NHS England is convinced that the necessary increases in capacity in north-west London’s hospitals and primary and community services have taken place.
I want to put on the record my thanks to the IRP for its thorough advice. As the medical directors of all the local hospitals concerned said in their letter to me, these changes will,
“save many lives each year and significantly improve patients’ care and experience of the NHS”.
When local doctors tell me that is the prize, then I will not duck a difficult decision.
I commend this Statement to the House”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for repeating the Statement. I refer noble Lords to my interests, particularly as chair of a foundation trust.
Decisions on hospital reconfiguration should always be made on the basis of the best clinical evidence available. The noble Earl’s announcement today means the closure of a number of accident and emergency departments in London, with the centralisation of A&E services at five, rather than nine, hospitals. That is to happen at the same time as accident and emergency departments are under heavy pressure up and down the country, not least in London. Taking all major A&E units together, London as a whole has missed the Government’s A&E target in 48 out of the past 52 weeks. Is the noble Earl convinced that the system will be able to cope with the reduced number of A&E departments in London?
I note that the chief executives of the three major health regulators have been summoned to meet the Prime Minister to discuss the pressure that services are likely to come under this winter. These meetings are complementary to the weekly meetings that the Secretary of State has with these eminent people. Apparently these discussions are dominated by winter performance planning, particularly relating to accident and emergency departments. What measures are being taken to increase capacity in the community, to enable the flow of patients and their discharge at the right time?
What is being done about the accessibility of general practitioners? We heard much from the Prime Minister about a move to seven-day-a-week access, which the noble Earl will know has provoked a lot of opposition from primary care interests, citing cost at a time when the NHS is cash strapped and when there is a shortage of general practitioners. Does that mean the inevitable merger of smaller GP practices? Can the noble Earl spell out the Government’s intentions? In the Statement, we are told that there is to be seven-day access to GP surgeries throughout north-west London. Can the noble Earl confirm that that means that all surgeries will be open from 8 am to 8 pm, seven days a week? If that is not the case, what happens to patients in practices which are not prepared to open seven days a week?
I now turn to the noble Earl’s announcement about Charing Cross and Ealing hospitals. Very simply: is this a permanent reprieve? The report of the Independent Reconfiguration Panel says that the future of the proposed local hospitals at Ealing and Charing Cross, and the final decision about what might best be provided from each location must be the subject of a specific programme of work which should address the needs for in-patient services for the vulnerable and frail elderly, and that its outcome would determine whether there is a need for further consultation. In his Statement, the noble Earl has said that, whatever the outcome of that further work, Ministers have decided that Ealing and Charing Cross hospitals should continue to offer an A&E service, even if it is a “different shape or size” to that currently offered. Can the noble Earl spell out what, exactly is meant by that? Can he guarantee that both Charing Cross and Ealing hospitals will continue to run full, 24-hour A&E services in the long term?
The Statement is about hospitals in London. I was surprised that the noble Earl made no mention of Lewisham Hospital. The victory won by the people of Lewisham in the Court of Appeal yesterday will give hope to patients everywhere. Back in the summer, the Opposition explicitly warned the Secretary of State to accept the first court ruling. Instead, he ploughed on with a hopeless case, wasting taxpayers’ money in a cavalier fashion. Will the noble Earl confirm that there will be no further appeal to the Supreme Court? Will he give the people of Lewisham and the staff who work in Lewisham Hospital a commitment that their accident and emergency and maternity units will be protected in the long term? Given that the Lewisham clinical commissioning group opposed those changes, what does it say about the assurances that he gave during the passage of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 that the whole purpose of those misguided changes was actually to let local clinicians decide? What happened to that in Lewisham?
The noble Earl tabled an amendment to the Care Bill only a few days ago, which he described as making a small change, so he will of course know that the Government have sought, very rapidly and very quietly, to change the law so that what happened in Lewisham cannot happen again. My interpretation of that amendment is that in the future there is a risk of services being shut down without the agreement of local people, without extensive consultation and without agreement from local commissioners. We, on this side of the House, support reconfiguration of health services when supported by the clinical evidence, but it must be on the basis of a requirement to go through a properly defined and structured reconfiguration process with extensive consultation with the local community.
From all we have learnt, we know that successful reconfigurations need to take the form of open and honest leadership, a patient process of engagement and consultation and proper consideration of the wider impact. The changes that the Government seek to make in legislation will ensure that that does not happen in the future. I hope that the noble Earl will be able to say that, in the light of yesterday’s ruling, the Government are giving second thoughts to their intentions in this regard.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, for his questions. I preface my answers by saying that this is the first significant set of local reform proposals under the Government’s NHS reforms and it is a set of proposals that has been led clinically by the CCGs. There is an unprecedented level of clinical support for the changes that I outlined. The chairs of all the local CCGs wrote to the Secretary of State personally expressing absolute support; the medical directors of all the local hospitals affected wrote to him expressing absolute support; and the Independent Reconfiguration Panel report is crystal clear that the principles of this scheme are right and will benefit patients.
The noble Lord asked me about A&E services, in particular, at a time when we know that A&E departments are under pressure—a fact which I do, of course, readily acknowledge. The key to these recommendations is twofold. First, the way investment will be deployed will mean that we shall have centres of excellence in emergency care which will copy, in some respects, the way that stroke and trauma care has been centralised across London. This was controversial at the time but is now acclaimed by clinicians and, I think, politicians alike as proving to save hundreds of lives every year. There will be more critical care consultants on duty 24/7; more obstetric consultants on duty 24/7 on labour wards; consultants in other specialities, such as paediatrics, on duty between 12 and 16 hours a day, seven days a week; more trained and experienced emergency doctors on site 24/7 in A&E departments; and more investment in mental health, so that psychiatric liaison services can better co-ordinate care for vulnerable mentally ill people. In general, we will have all nine of the hospitals concerned across north-west London with urgent care centres open 24/7.
That is one half of the equation; the other half is investment in the community. I mentioned that there will be access to GP surgeries seven days a week across north-west London. That is not to specify which surgeries —the key is access to GP services. It will be for the local commissioners and NHS England to work out which surgeries they should be. Eight hundred additional posts will be created to improve out-of-hospital care and some £190 million will be spent recurrently every year on GP and other local services by 2017-18. Therefore the preventive aspect of these proposals should mean that fewer people land up in A&E in the first place.
The noble Lord asked me about the proposals for Ealing and Charing Cross. The IRP’s advice is clear that the current problems and future challenges faced by the NHS in north-west London require large-scale change in the way that services are designed and delivered. I concur with that entirely. However, it also says that while the changes to A&E at Central Middlesex and Hammersmith Hospitals should be implemented as soon as practicable, further work is required before a final decision is made about the range of services to be provided from the Ealing and Charing Cross Hospital sites. As the process to date has already taken four years, as I mentioned, my right honourable friend has decided that it is time to end the uncertainty. Therefore, while he accepts the need for further work, as the IRP suggests, he has decided that the outcome should be that Ealing and Charing Cross Hospitals should continue to offer an A&E service, even if in the end that is of a different shape or size from that currently offered. What does that mean?
In the first instance, we are clear that a 24/7 urgent care service should be run from both those sites, involving senior consultant cover and the ability to admit patients 24/7. Any changes implemented as part of the Shaping a Healthier Future proposals should be done by local commissioners following proper public engagement and in line with the emerging principles of the Keogh review, as I mentioned. However, none of the changes to these critical services will take place until NHS England is assured that all the necessary increases in capacity in north-west London’s hospitals and primary and community services have been satisfactorily developed.
The noble Lord asked me about Lewisham. I will not disguise the Government’s disappointment at the result of the court judgment yesterday. However, we respect that judgment. Our priority now is to end the uncertainty for patients in south London. It is time for the new Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust to move on and work with its commissioners and the community to develop a local solution that is clinically and financially sustainable. The proposals that we came forward with earlier in the year cannot be proceeded with in their entirety. In our view that is a pity, because we now have a local health economy with an annual financial shortfall, which has to be addressed in some way. In so far as we can assist local commissioners to find a way through that problem, we will be happy to do so. However, it is largely up for local determination.
As regards the appeal, we felt that that was the right and responsible thing to do. This is the first time that the trust special administration provisions have been used and it was important that the law should be tested to be absolutely clear what it meant. We make no apology for the fact that our interpretation of the law as Ministers was different from that of the judge. However, as I said, the judge has made his ruling, and we need to respect it.
I hope that I have answered most of the noble Lord’s queries. However, he ended his remarks by observing that, as he perceives it, the Government have created a situation where service configuration can take place in the future without local clinical support or consultation. I would just like to assure him that that is not so. Indeed, the importance of having local clinical support could not be stronger. We see it here in the example of north-west London, and even in the rare case where trust special administration is required, the consultation involved is clearly set out in legislation. Local people will not be left out of the dialogue. I hope that that is of some reassurance to the noble Lord.
Baroness Hanham (Con)
My Lords, may I say how glad I am to hear that the proposals have support from all the clinicians and the CCGs? The noble Lord will know that I was chairman at St Mary’s Hospital when the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust was formed —and it was formed on the basis of full support from clinicians and the local community. The local community is not always at one with change, so I shall ask the noble Lord a couple of questions. First, this is not a short programme. These proposals will not take five minutes to implement. Most of the changes in the health service over recent years have taken an enormous amount of time, and it would be fair to say that the Imperial Trust, which includes Charing Cross, has probably only just completed its previous reorganisation, and now it is being reorganised again. The first question is: what is the proposed timescale?
Secondly, the noble Lord mentioned consultation, and may I say that it is absolutely vital that the local community be brought along with this? Otherwise, it will take even longer. Thirdly, there is an expectation that there will be a lot of new consultant and other medical posts. I am aware that A&E is not flush with clinicians taking up the specialty, so may I ask what encouragement is being given, by the colleges in particular, to ensure that there will be enough staff available to deal with the new services? Finally, may I say how glad I am that St Mary’s has figured again in trauma services?
Earl Howe
My noble friend, with her experience, asks some very pertinent questions. On the question of timescale, we believe that it will take between three and five years for the proposals to be actioned to their fullest extent. It will be necessary to take that kind of time. Some elements can happen relatively quickly, but my noble friend is absolutely right that there are important workforce issues to be taken into account. Indeed, one of the IRP recommendations was that the NHS should review its workforce programme and ensure that it has the means in place to deliver what is required. I am sure that in working through the proposals, local commissioners, as well as NHS England, will need to satisfy themselves on that point—not least with regard to the new posts to be created in the community, but also in terms of accident and emergency consultants in the A&E departments of the relevant trusts. On local communities, again I agree with my noble friend. As the Shaping a Healthier Future proposals are developed by the clinical commissioners, it will be vital that any further proposals are consulted on locally, and that there is real buy-in from patient groups and the public generally.
Lord Winston (Lab)
I declare an interest as a member of Imperial College London and a practitioner who has been a consultant in north London for a long time. It is right that the financial shortfall means that there has to be considerable reconfiguration. In this case that is a move in the right direction. However, it raises a number of questions to which I would be very grateful if the Minister would respond. One is that if you close casualty you affect the training of surgical trainees. Do the Government have a view on that issue?
The Minister also referred to obstetrics in west London. As he will almost certainly know, the neonatal paediatrics department at one of the best obstetric hospitals in the country—Queen Charlotte’s, based at Hammersmith Hospital—has always been somewhat threatened. Is that secure, given that one of the issues in north-west London is undoubtedly that of duplication in many hospitals, which is expensive? Does the Minister feel that this is the only reconfiguration that will be required, given the amount of duplication that there is?
Earl Howe
To answer the last point, it is clear from the IRP report that its authors believe that this is a comprehensive set of proposals which will stand the test of time in north-west London. It is a very thorough set of proposals which takes into account every aspect of healthcare provision. On maternity and paediatrics, I can tell the noble Lord that under these proposals there will be more obstetric consultants on duty 24/7 in labour wards. As he will know better than anyone, that, of course, is designed to reduce the number of complications during birth and to ensure one-to-one midwifery care for women during labour. Consultants in other specialties such as paediatrics will be on duty, as I mentioned, for 12 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, providing much better cover than at present.
It was very striking in the IRP report that the first point made by the noble Lord, Lord Winston, did not elude the panel. The panel concluded that the pragmatic and explicit approach used by the NHS reflected the clarity of the aim to improve quality outcomes by implementing life-saving standards through the establishment of major hospitals. The report referred to the economic realities of the NHS and the urgency of making progress in the light of known risks to the sustainability of emergency services such as the abilities of staff, A&E and emergency surgery rotas, and the desire to minimise the negative impact on access of concentrating services. That was shorthand—as the noble Lord will see if he reads the rest of the report—for saying that the desirability of concentrating expertise in centres of excellence is a clear imperative for the quality of care that patients receive. As regards surgical experience, I think that if my noble friend Lord Ribeiro were here, he would confirm that that is absolutely the direction of travel, but that we must ensure that surgical expertise is built on a sufficient number of hours and cases for the quality of care to be maintained. That is exactly what underlies this whole set of proposals.
Lord Walton of Detchant (CB)
My Lords, since the relevant professional bodies, not least the British Medical Association, have decided that they wish to support a move towards the provision of all acute and relevant services in the NHS for a full seven-day period, it is inevitable that there will be major reconfiguration of services not just in north-west London but in many other parts of the country. This will involve the concentration of specialist services in fewer hospitals and could even result in the closure of some smaller hospitals. However, that is not immediately relevant. The point I will make is that it is good to know that the clinical commissioning groups and the local hospital trusts have all supported this proposed reconfiguration.
However, I must ask the Minister a couple of questions. First, is he satisfied that the five A&E departments into which all accident and emergency services are to be concentrated, with four others closing, have the capacity to provide facilities for all the relevant staff and to deal with the increased number of patients who will go through those five hospitals? That is point number one, which is crucial.
Secondly, is the Minister satisfied that this concentration of services, with the new 800 posts in the community to which he referred, can be carried out within the existing financial constraints? Have these changes been costed? As the Minister knows, under the so-called Nicholson challenge, the NHS is required to make substantial savings across the country over the next year or so, and it is crucial that he can reassure the House that the necessary money will be available to provide this reconfiguration, which is clearly in the best interests of patients and their communities.
Earl Howe
My Lords, the noble Lord raises the important question of capacity. The key point is that none of these changes will be implemented until such time as commissioners and the relevant providers are satisfied that the necessary capacity exists. That is a key point. Secondly, on the costing and the financial aspects of the proposals, the way in which we will be able to spend more money on front-line care and better-quality facilities is by spending less on duplicated facilities, underperforming services, and badly designed and out-of-date buildings, which cost a lot to maintain. Therefore, as part of this package, there will be new custom-built hospitals at Ealing and Charing Cross, costing about £80 million each, designed to deliver the specific services needed in those respective communities. That will be part of the way in which the money released will be invested for the betterment of patients in the area over future years.
Baroness Barker (LD)
My Lords, the most important part of this Statement is the part stating that none of these changes will come into effect until NHS England is convinced that the necessary primary and community services are in place. How will that be determined by NHS England? Secondly, who will be responsible for the integrated commissioning of community and primary services to bring about the necessary preventive services on which this reconfiguration is based?
Earl Howe
Largely, the judgment by NHS England will be made by local area teams—but not in isolation. It has to be a collaborative exercise, which is my overall answer to my noble friend’s second question. The successful integration of services must depend on close collaboration between the different constituent parts of the NHS but also with adult social care and local authorities. It is striking that already we are seeing this happening in north-west London, as we are in many other parts of the country. For the system to work as we want it to, all the constituent parts need to be effective and efficient. The integration of services, which is one example of how the NHS can become more productive in the future, as well as more clinically effective for patients, is an essential way of ensuring that we have a sustainable NHS in the future.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
Will the noble Earl confirm, first, that there will be no further appeal in respect of Lewisham hospital after the decisions of two courts; and, secondly, that there will be no attempt to change the law in respect of Lewisham hospital? What lessons have been learnt by the noble Earl and his ministerial team that they can apply to what is going on in north-west London? We are all aware that the Minister has never visited Lewisham hospital; the last ministerial visit was in May 2010. Will he tell the House—if not from the Dispatch Box, then by writing and placing a copy in the Library—when Ministers last visited the hospitals in north-west London that have been mentioned?
Earl Howe
I can certainly find out the answer to that last question. As regards the appeal, we have only just received the judgment, as the noble Lord will know. But that is only the outline judgment. We have not received the full text. It is important that we read that and inwardly digest it before we finally decide on the way forward. The lessons of Lewisham are very clear. I confirm that we shall not be legislating around Lewisham and the recent provisions in the Care Bill were not retrospective, as the noble Lord is aware. I have not personally visited Lewisham, which is clearly an omission that I should at some point rectify, but it is important for me to put on the record that the concerns expressed by the people of Lewisham are, and have always been, entirely understandable. Ministers greatly respect the wish of local residents to see their hospital thriving, as it always has in the past. Nevertheless, as I said earlier, Lewisham and Greenwich now have a challenge. There is a financial issue that needs to be addressed and I hope that commissioners and providers, acting together, can do that successfully over the months ahead.
Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)
My Lords, can the Minister say whether, if A&E departments are shut, hospitals will be downgraded? Will the resources of the ambulance service be increased to transport ill patients around, as the ones with A&E departments may not have enough capacity to treat them?
Earl Howe
I do not think that it is appropriate to talk about downgrading in this case. However, it is appropriate to talk about changing the way in which services are delivered to the local population. In the case of two hospitals, we are seeing fully fledged A&E departments becoming 24/7 urgent care centres. That means that the most serious A&E cases, such as trauma and cardiovascular emergencies, will be taken to centres of excellence where patients will have a much higher chance of survival. That is a pattern that we are seeing throughout the NHS and one that has been proved to be successful and in the interests of patients. On ambulances services, we are already seeing in London, for example with stroke care, ambulances taking patients to centres of excellence for stroke care. Eight of these centres now exist compared to 32 some years ago. That means longer journeys in an ambulance but also much higher survival rates for the patients. I do not think that we should look on the kind of reconfiguration that I have described in a negative way. On the contrary, the whole thrust of these proposals is to improve the quality of care for patients.
Lord Rea (Lab)
The noble Earl said that, as part of this reconfiguration, there will an increase in the services available in the community. Can he say whether this will be done in co-operation with the royal colleges and the British Medical Association rather than being imposed from above? The latter solution is unlikely to work.
Earl Howe
The noble Lord is absolutely right. These solutions should not be imposed from above. Indeed, the Shaping a Healthier Future proposals were designed by local clinicians in consultation with their patients. It was not a prescription dreamt up in Whitehall. We are very clear that the local NHS should continue to feel local ownership of these ideas as it takes them forward. I have no doubt that, if it feels it necessary, it will turn to the royal colleges for particular kinds of advice. It is free to do that as it wishes.
Lord Tomlinson (Lab)
Is the noble Earl aware that on this side of the House he is very highly regarded as a model of clarity? However, in the second part of his answer to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, today, he was somewhat equivocal in relation to the future of Lewisham Hospital. I hope that he will accept an invitation to visit Lewisham Hospital. I declare an interest as somebody who lives in that area and has opposed the closure. Does he also realise that such is the strength of feeling in Lewisham, he had better have read the whole judgment carefully and cleared all his lines before he goes there? The threatened closure created such community anger as I have never seen before and he would be most unwelcome unless he were able to give a clear and unequivocal response about its future.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I certainly understand the noble Lord’s strength of feeling on this. It is certainly my intention to read the judgment when we receive it in full. Nothing is closing in Lewisham. The service remains as it has been. There is nothing that Ministers intend to do to change that situation. However, as I mentioned earlier, there is an issue to be addressed in Lewisham and indeed in Greenwich. It is a pressing financial issue that commissioners as well as the hospitals themselves have to face. I have no doubt that a visit to Lewisham would benefit me enormously and I shall await an invitation to that effect.
Media Convergence: Communications Committee Report
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord Inglewood
That this House takes note of the Report of the Select Committee on Communications on Media Convergence (2nd Report, Session 2012–13, HL Paper 154).
Lord Inglewood (Con)
My Lords, we speak at a moment of high drama in the politico-media world. Lord Justice Richards, sitting with Mr Justice Sales, earlier today dismissed PressBoF’s application for a judicial review of the Privy Council’s decision to reject its charter on press self-regulation, and will dismiss its application for an injunction on the Privy Council’s sealing of the alternative all-party charter later today.
Barring any attempts by PressBoF to challenge this decision at the Court of Appeal, I believe that, as things stand, the Privy Council is still due to meet to seal the royal charter on the self-regulation of the press later this afternoon. I dare say that historians of the media will one day find it ironic that at the same time this House met to debate media convergence, a phenomenon which raises the question: for how much longer will the press truly require its own discrete self-regulatory arrangements at all as distinct from those which may yet come to be established in the future, which will have a wider focus and include forms of news media available online, in text, audio or indeed audio-visual form, with which the activities of what we now know as newspapers may have seamlessly merged? It is a coincidence of events that must generate at least a little Schadenfreude.
Of course, until recently, separate media industries were actually distinct. They were easily distinguishable by the way in which they delivered their content; for example, newspaper businesses were newspaper businesses to a great extent because their content reached us on large sheets of thin paper rather than over the spectrum or through the flickering light of a projector at the cinema. Media convergence, however, has changed all this. Alongside their individual traditional delivery mechanisms, content providers increasingly digitise their material and distribute it through the use of internet protocol, known as IP. Conveyed by IP, content, which has been reduced down to packets of data, can be assembled as text, image, video, sound or however else technology permits. This occurs on a growing range of devices, both fixed and mobile.
In turn, this has stimulated media providers of all kinds into a search for new ways of delivering their content, many of which have been straightforwardly borrowed from industries they each used to consider neighbours. This has blurred the boundaries between them. These experiments, in turn, have given audiences all kinds of ways to consume virtually any content, at any time, anywhere and on any device. In some instances, the impact of this revolution is far-reaching and often entirely positive, not just for the regulation of content standards, but also for content creation and competition. Barriers of all kinds are dissolving.
The impact of all this may not be fully felt at once, or even for some time, across the whole population. A recurring theme of our deliberations in this inquiry was the need, therefore, for haste rather than panic. As they say, we were looking for an evolutionary, rather than a revolutionary response. However, equally clear was that some thinking, some preparation and, to some extent, action, is required now to ensure that the evolutionary path is smooth and that we do not allow the regulatory architecture for the media as a whole to become entirely mismatched with the technological and commercial landscape which it oversees. I hope that our report and my remarks will make it clear why.
In our report, we submitted recommendations under three main headings. First, content standards; secondly, content creation and thirdly, competition. I should like to take each briefly in turn.
On content standards, which occupied us the most, it is worth saying that this country’s content standards framework has to date proven remarkably resilient. However, we found that the confidence and trust which the public have grown to enjoy in it will come under increasing pressure in two areas in particular. First, there is news content. Newspapers are not just printed, but are online and they carry video packages with the look and feel of traditional television. Broadcasters publish websites, including text-based articles, similar to online and print. The scheduled news programmes are still broadcast, but are also available on demand, both on digital channels and on a variety of websites. It is tremendously exciting, but potentially rather confusing because the regulatory framework has been left behind.
Broadcast news is required to adhere to the broadcasting code, with its full range of protections relating to accuracy and fairness, as well as an obligation to uphold due impartiality. While the emerging press regulator, with oversight of participating newspapers and websites, may well include some of these protections in its code, it will certainly not include an obligation to uphold due impartiality. It bears saying that this is a good thing. The abiding difference between the balanced, impartial news provided by the broadcasters, and the vigorous, partisan news provided by the press, has helped to create a beneficial tension and a valuable mixed ecology. Nevertheless, the impact of convergence means that the providers of the one will become increasingly difficult to distinguish from the other. The binary distinction between impartial and partisan news will no longer be mirrored in the difference between the news which UK audiences happen to watch and the news which they happen to read. In order to ensure that UK citizens continue to be able to identify and have confidence in the provision of impartial news coverage, and that they can identify and bring accurate expectations to partisan content, these blurred lines should be tidied up.
The second area that will come under increasing pressure is what we might call non-news, audio-visual content—sometimes known as TV and TV-like content. Perhaps the sharpest example of this pressure point can be seen in the content now available to the public through internet-connected televisions. On these, regulated and unregulated content, licensed and unlicensed services, sit side by side on one device. Increasingly, the public will be able to switch seamlessly between them. As the European Commission says in its Green Paper, Preparing for a Fully Converged Audiovisual World: Growth, Creation and Values, from the consumer’s point of view, the difference between linear and non-linear services might blur. Providers under no obligation to observe the watershed, for example, are increasingly only one press of the button away from those that do. The clues which the public might have used to sense that they are entering a different environment, in which different standards are to be expected and to be found, are disappearing. With that comes the risk that regulators will no longer be able to be sure that the public can confidently make sensible decisions about what is suitable for them and their families.
I turn now to our recommendations on content standards and want briefly to make one preliminary point. During the inquiry, we received a number of thoughtful proposals for a complete overhaul of the regulatory framework. These aimed for a new, logically coherent system. While some of the thinking that had gone into the proposals was impressive, we felt that they did not account for one or two important points. For example, the pace of media convergence is contested, and it was put to us repeatedly during the course of the inquiry that traditional services such as linear broadcast television remain hugely popular and resilient. What is more, there are very marked generational differences in the ways that younger groups are using media compared with their older peers. This meant, we felt, that it would not be right, in considering reforms of the content standards framework, to try to set a course for the promised land. Rather, we should look more simply for a framework that enables audiences to make good decisions in the circumstances of the time about the content which suits them and their families. The framework will almost certainly need updating from time to time to the extent that it fails to achieve this, and fails by extension to earn or deserve their trust. To that end, we made two recommendations which could and should be adopted in the short term, and we postulated on a basis, one that is entirely up for debate, around which further change might occur in the medium to longer term.
First, in the shorter term, broadcast licences should be amended to ensure that standards similar to those set out in the Ofcom broadcasting code, amended for the relevant environment, would apply to any service using the same channel name or brand as a licensed broadcast service. It is at present an anomaly that the BBC, to give an example, is required to uphold the broadcasting code when it broadcasts, but not when it makes content available through the iPlayer, and especially in light of the director-general’s recent announcements about online commissions, we feel that this is an important step. Secondly, there is a case for positively encouraging other non-broadcast providers to join the framework in return for some form of public recognition or kitemark. Were such an opportunity to be provided, I suspect that some of them would seize it, not least for their own commercial advantage but equally so that the UK public could build accurate expectations of the standards and character of their products.
We also made a number of recommendations as regards the content standards framework that focus on the medium to long term, but I do not propose to rehearse the detail of these. In a nutshell, we recommend a slight reconfiguration of the regulatory framework involving the establishment of four different approaches to content standards across four clearly defined types of content. The first one is public service broadcasters, the second one would be non-public-service broadcast news providers, the third would be non-news television and television-like content, and the fourth would be the open internet. Some of the impact of this reconfiguration might seem to be a bit striking at first blush. For example, no longer would broadcasters other than public service broadcasters be required to uphold an obligation to due impartiality. In place of the watershed, a standard system of age-based classification would be adopted for TV and TV-like services, providing the public with useful information to take into account in making their own decisions about what they and their family should look at. Ofcom would be given a new proactive role with regard to the content available to UK citizens over the open internet, with a duty to consult on and publish UK citizens’ expectations of the responsibilities of digital intermediaries, and to monitor performance against those expectations.
While we believe that these recommendations point in the right direction, they are entirely up for debate, one that we would welcome and thoroughly encourage. The Government’s response to our report was, as I said at the time, disappointingly thin—albeit that that is probably better than being thick. They deferred the substance of any response to our report to what was at the time a forthcoming policy paper called, Connectivity, Content and Consumers: Britain’s Digital Platform for Growth. However, the Government appear to have avoided the major questions, saying that they will look to industry and regulators to provide clarity on the right approach to content standards and regulation in the digital world. But because we believe that what is required is a reconfiguration of the framework around the media as a whole, there is an important and necessary role for the Government in setting out a view and leading debates that can be orchestrated sensibly only from that particular podium. For example, there are matters of principle: should we, generally speaking, adopt a more libertarian approach in which the public are expected to make their own choices about which media and content to use, informed by appropriate information, or should there be a more paternalistic approach in which regulators impose certain standards and help make those choices on behalf of the public? As our recommendations show, our report tends to lean towards the former over the latter. However, where the line is drawn is an important matter for genuine and legitimate debate.
Secondly, there are matters of process. How can we bring about evolutionary change to a system of regulation which is cemented in statute, and which in recent years has been subject to a slow cycle of change—10-yearly or thereabouts—imposed by the parliamentary timetable as much as anything else? In our report we propose a new approach, including the use of the super-affirmative procedure. We believe that this would avoid the “stop/go” approach, and provide the legislative mechanism to ensure smoother evolutionary change in an era when time for primary legislation is allocated elsewhere. In summary, I urge the Government and the industry to read carefully the thinking behind our recommendations on content standards, and to engage properly with this important set of debates.
I now turn briefly to the two remaining aspects of our report, which address content creation and competition. On content creation, convergence has made it possible for new investors to reach audiences outside the traditional broadcast environment. Your Lordships will be aware that my noble friend Lord Dobbs recently had a great hit on Netflix, entirely funded by that enterprise. Our congratulations go to him. However, investment in content from these new entrants remains dwarfed by the investment from the five public service broadcasters and their spin-off channels, which still represent something like 90% of UK spend on first-run, originated output. This seems very likely to remain the case for some time to come. In that light, it is important to recognise that the ability of the public service broadcasters to continue investing in content depends on their ability to reach large audiences in this country.
We therefore recommend that the Government consider the implications of changes in the way that public service content will be discovered and accessed by viewers on new connected TVs and other converged devices and, specifically, what interventions on prominence and “must carry online” obligations may be appropriate and possible in non-linear environments. In our view, as far as possible the on-demand services offered by public service broadcasters should achieve due prominence on any relevant home screen or guide which directs users to content.
Having said that, the way that the public access content is almost inevitably going to change, and the range of brands they choose to consume is likely to widen. Against that background, convergence can be seen to raise some very important general questions about public investment in content creation. As audiences continue to fragment and models for funding content creation adapt, exactly how public service broadcasting is provided, by whom, and the contestable process of allocating public money to pay for it, are all matters which deserve debate. The issue again is that these questions must be considered from a higher vantage point, and in a manner which is more holistic—to use a word I dislike—than is currently the case.
To date, decisions about each type of public service broadcaster—the BBC, Channel 3, Channel 4 and Channel 5—have largely been made independently of each other. In future, given the paramount importance of sustainable and sensible funding in order to safeguard public service broadcasting, we think that it is crucial for its future to be considered in the round by the Government. However the detail may be configured, a stable and sustainable future is required for the system as a whole, not just for each player within that system.
We believe that the Government would be well advised to get ahead of the curve, rather than waiting for difficulties to arise. Therefore we recommend that as preparation for, and in advance of, the next BBC charter review, the Government consider fundamental strategic questions surrounding the public service broadcasting system as an interconnected whole, and the potential impact on it of convergence. For example, what is the right scale and scope of PSB? What purposes should it serve? How can it best be sustained in a converged world?
On matters relating to competition, it is equally clear that convergence has sharpened long-standing debates over Ofcom’s ability to promote competition across media markets. While we did not have the time to carry out a comprehensive review of broadcasting competition powers, it was clear from the evidence we received that clarification is required of Ofcom’s existing ex ante competition powers for the audio-visual sector. The aim of such clarification should be to enable Ofcom to take effective action where necessary, but also to ensure a high hurdle before any ex ante approach can be adopted. It is important for there to be clarity for all those who might be affected.
In my conclusion, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Bragg and Lord Gordon, both widely knowledgeable and constructively hard-working members of the Communications Committee at the time of this inquiry, who have since left it. Their contributions to our final report were significant. I know that they are both sorely missed at our regular Tuesday afternoon meetings.
Finally, I also thank our specialist adviser, Robin Foster, for his expertise and enthusiasm throughout the inquiry. On a subject of often thorny complexity, Robin’s advice was always forensic, clear and logical, and his easy and droll manner equally helped to make the committee’s whole experience of this inquiry a pleasure.
I look forward to the debate and to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.
Lord Gordon of Strathblane (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure immediately to follow the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, and thus be the first to have an opportunity to congratulate him not only on securing this debate but on his skilful chairmanship, navigating us through the undergrowth of a very difficult subject, which could easily have led us off in tangential directions. Instead, we managed to focus on some main issues, which he adumbrated this afternoon.
I am one of those who believe that the invention of the internet may well turn out to be more important in human history than the invention of printing. One known unknown is that we cannot predict the nature of the change that is coming about, any more than people could have forecast that one of the prime uses of mobile phones would be text messaging. One known, however, is that it will all happen very fast. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, was right to draw attention to the importance of flexibility in the Government’s response. For that reason, the super-affirmative procedure is probably the best way forward from a legislative point of view. I add a further suggestion: it would be useful if the next communications Act did not try to go into too much detail. After all, we have got by in public service broadcasting for a very long time with the simple words, “inform, educate and entertain”. If we left legislation giving us general objectives and then left it to regulatory authorities to use common sense in applying those in the circumstances of the time, the legislation would stand the test of time rather better.
The Communications Act 2003, to which reference has already been made, did not contain much in the way of references to the internet, although I seconded a successful amendment, tabled by the Earl of Northesk, making it an obligation of Ofcom to ensure widespread access to high-speed data transfer, which is the same thing as broadband. The internet was felt then to be different from broadcasting, in that it was a pull-down rather than a push-out medium. Therefore, both libertarians and others united in thinking that we did not need to regulate the internet. My sense is that that is not the public feeling today; we most certainly do need to regulate it. At a minimum, we all agree that we should not allow child pornography on the internet, or incitement and aid to terrorism. However, if we are able to do it for those two subjects, we could do it for a whole range of others, so the decision is about whether we want to regulate, not whether we are inhibited by the technology from doing so at all.
I would like to concentrate mainly on the main theme of the report, content standards. We would all concede that the main argument for public service broadcasting has lost two of its main pillars of support; scarcity of frequencies does not now apply. But as Professor Tommaso Valletti told the committee during the inquiry, the economic argument has gone, but the BBC is the envy of the world—“Why break it?”. That is very much my feeling. It could also be said that PVRs have reduced the power of programme scheduling to create high-quality programmes and get a large audience for them. Some 45 years ago, I presented a political programme on television which secured a somewhat larger audience than would normally be expected for political programmes. I would like to think that it was the intrinsic quality of the programme; realistically, I think that it had a lot more to do with the fact that it was sandwiched between “News at Ten” and “New York Police Department”, and remote controls had not yet been invented, so people could not be bothered to get out of their armchairs to switch me off.
Public service broadcasting is worth preserving and, indeed, encouraging outwith the traditional sector. How can we do that? One way is charging for spectrum. The report is ambivalent on whether we should do this but draws attention to its difficulty. It would remove more funds from public service broadcasters which could otherwise be concentrated on programming. I firmly think that there should be no charge for spectrum for public service broadcasters. That would provide an incentive for more people to provide public service programming.
The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, referred to EPG prominence, which is also important. I suggest that getting some payment from the platform provider could be addressed. If the trade-off is that there should no longer be a “must carry” obligation on the part of the platform provider, it would enable us to find out what the real market rate for a programme was. After all, the bulk of viewing on Sky is still of traditional PSB broadcasters. It would not want to do without the BBC. Why should it get a payment from the BBC for broadcasting programmes that are one of its main attractions? It is interesting and somewhat ironic that, in the United States, Fox Television is leading the charge for precisely that—payment from cable providers over there.
We also face new forms of broadcasting, to use that omnibus word, and we will need regulation to ensure prominence in non-linear broadcasting television sets. During a visit to the BBC’s Blue Room, the committee was somewhat taken aback to find what we would regard as a traditional television set on which programmes came fairly well down the line. First, you are exposed to various products of the television manufacturer, gaming, online games and everything else and then, finally, you get through to an EPG programme guide. I think that we have all assumed that television sets are passive; they are not now. We must ensure that broadcasting—public service broadcasting in particular—gets due prominence. That was alluded to by Mr Simon Pitts of ITV, whose remarks were reported in paragraph 163 of the report. That will clearly be an issue.
The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, also referred to what he called TV-like content: things that are received on the same television set side-by-side with traditional public service broadcasting programmes. I think that most of us would shy away from the idea that they should all be regulated as public service broadcasters, but I think that there was a general sense that it would be a good idea if they aspired to produce good programming. Perhaps the kitemark idea is the best way forward. After all, people have a vested interest in being respected. The advertising industry supports the Advertising Standards Authority. Ofcom ensures that it operates, but the industry does it itself because it is in its self-interest. I do not want to go to a chemist who is unregulated; I do not want to go on holiday with an unregulated travel company. Regulation is in the self-interest of the provider.
The British Board of Film Classification has established age categorisation that has stood the test of time and, I think, could be expanded into other spheres of programming. People will make substantial edits to their film to secure a better classification that will ensure a wider audience. That is a good example of enlightened self-interest.
Moving on to what has been referred to in the report as the wild west of the internet, it might be made a little less unruly if the internet providers—four big companies control 85% of the market—could be persuaded that it was, again, in their self-interest to ensure that the more undesirable aspects of programming were simply not broadcast. Name and shame them if they do not do it and they will come round to the idea. We could make a lot of progress in this way.
Finally, the BBC represents a major market intervention —in general, overwhelmingly for the public good. However, during our visit to the Telegraph Media Group, our attention was drawn to the danger of the BBC crowding out other providers by its expansion on to the web. If the BBC is providing a good free online service, it is increasingly difficult for newspaper publishers to erect paywalls and thus to secure payment for content that is often expensive to provide.
The collection of the licence fee has been greatly aided by a requirement to notify of a purchase of a television set. A licence fee request will then follow. However, television can now be watched on smartphones, laptops and other devices. Requiring anyone who buys a smartphone to buy a television licence would, I think, be unsupportable and could well lead to the loss of the licence fee altogether. The alternative is to find another way of funding the BBC. On that gloomy note, I renew my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I follow the noble Lord, Lord Gordon, in congratulating my noble friend Lord Inglewood on his lucid introduction and on his excellent chairmanship of our committee. This was an extremely timely report. Even since it was written, digital media in the UK have developed further. Only yesterday, we heard in committee about the growing success of digital regional media.
The tablet that I am holding represents convergence. There are newspapers in digital form delivered over the internet with news clips embedded. There are news and sports apps with clips and text commentary. There are programmes made for television delivered on demand through non-broadcast apps. There are broadcasters’ catch-up services. These are subject to wholly different regulatory regimes: contrast the Ofcom regime over commercial and public service broadcasters with that over newspapers. Incidentally, I welcome today’s judgment on the alternative royal charter.
My noble friend Lord Inglewood is right.The Government’s response was disappointing. It was effectively a holding response. It did however anticipate last July’s White Paper, Connectivity, Content and Consumers: Britain’s Digital Platform for Growth. Much of the focus of both the response and the White Paper was on child safety on the internet and connected television. That is a clearly defined area where action is required. It is a matter of current concern and I commend the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for their proactive stance and the subsequent actions of ISPs and mobile phone service providers. I commend the Government, too, for the new tax break for animation and high-end television production.
However, the Government’s response to our report promised a holistic strategy for the communications sector. There is little sense in the White Paper of such a strategy in the area of content, despite talk in the White Paper of getting ahead of the curve and despite a long gestation period of more than two years in setting out a strategy. The imperative in an age of converging media—which is common ground between the committee and the Government—is to maintain public trust in the regulatory regime applied to different types of content on the internet, despite the blurring of boundaries. We proposed,
“a new content standards framework”.
The questions are: what content falls into what regulatory regime, and into what regime, if any, should content fall? The Government in their proposals assert that,
“people still expect different standards from their TV, radio, newspapers and social media”.
The committee’s paper examines that proposition extensively. One size certainly does not fit all, and the committee recommended a “graduated approach to regulation”. However, we strongly recommended that research be carried out into public expectations of standards for various media content. Do the Government themselves have plans to do this?
The Government use the phrase “flexible, industry led approach”. I would prefer the initial leadership to be provided by the Government, but either means being clear about what kind of new elements need to be built into a new Bill, even if they need to remain flexible.
The Government promised to outline:
“Targeted updates to our legislative framework”.
However, they do not set out what they believe should be done by primary legislation in a new Bill and what can be done by voluntary action. Indeed, there is clearly some doubt about whether there will be a new communications Bill in the first place. What are the Government’s intentions? Will there be a Bill in the remaining months of this Parliament? I certainly hope that there will be.
There was some discussion of Ofcom’s ex ante competition powers in the White Paper. We are promised a consultation on this, but surely it will be an important part of any Bill. Competition must be able to flourish, and great content to flourish on a plurality of platforms. We need a debate and some certainty about Ofcom’s future role in this area. The committee itself was not convinced that we need to go further than ensuring clarification, rather than extending some powers.
There are other areas where primary legislation may be relevant, on which Ofcom itself gave a useful detailed response in June. These include some of the committee’s recommendations on, as my noble friend Lord Inglewood mentioned, giving the Secretary of State power to vary Ofcom’s powers by super-affirmative resolution so that where appropriate it could introduce a common co-regulatory framework for TV and TV-like content; the guidance that should be given to Ofcom on the establishment of any co-regulation system, and imposing a duty on Ofcom to advise the Secretary of State on the timing of any such order; the whole question of the removal of the duty of impartiality for non-PSB news services; a more proactive role for Ofcom regarding the internet, as the noble Lord, Lord Gordon, has stated; and perhaps the issue of EPG prominence, especially in the light of the kinds of television that we saw, as the noble Lord also mentioned, in the BBC’s Blue Room.
The need for flexibility in legislation is common ground. The landscape is changing rapidly. As the Government rightly point out in the White Paper, YouTube did not exist back in 2003 when the Communications Act was passed. There are, of course, areas where voluntary action may be more appropriate. Clearly, linear viewing will remain strong, certainly in older generations, but, as viewing habits begin to markedly differ, have the Government taken a view on the idea of a common system of age rating classification for on-demand material, which could be by the BBFC, as the noble Lord, Lord Gordon, said?
There are other areas where we need more public debate. Is it not essential, as the committee recommends, that we assess the role of public service broadcasting in the age of convergence? It faces risks and threats but also great opportunities. As we have heard, there are major issues about retransmission for public service broadcasters and the carrying terms for PSB channels. The Government say that they want to see zero net charges—that is, fees cancelling each other out. However, some of the commercial PSBs claim that their investment is being put at risk by an,
“outdated system, which tilts the channel and platform relationship in favour of pay-TV platforms such as Sky and Virgin Media”.
They say that,
“these arrangements require PSB channels to subsidise pay-TV platforms by providing their main PSB channels to pay-TV platforms for no payment, or in the case of Sky to actually pay them to carry them to carry those channels”.
As a result, there is concern that none of the revenue that pay-TV platforms make from these business models reaches the PSBs that make the original investment, or the talent who make our programmes possible. PSBs are the cornerstone of our current broadcasting ecology. Their role is changing rapidly but, rather than welcoming the fact that these reviews by Ofcom take place, the Secretary of State has proposed that Ofcom’s duty to review PSBs every five years should be phased out.
I sense in all this no really coherent strategic intent, and perhaps no real intent at this stage to amend the Communications Act 2003. I look forward to the Minister’s reply but if we are not careful we will bumble along until well after the next general election, and that would be a mistake, as I think the committee’s report clearly shows.
Lord St John of Bletso (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, for his able chairmanship of this very topical, broad-ranging and fascinating inquiry. The speed of the technology revolution of the past decade has been nothing less than remarkable and, as the report said:
“Converged devices have become a mass market reality”,
with audiences expecting everything any time and anywhere. The possibilities for multifaceted smart devices with ever-greater interactivity seem limitless. In a very short time we have moved from an analogue to a digital, to an on-demand and now to an interconnected age. The emergence of common standards has meant that we are more connected than ever.
There is no denying that the younger generation are at the vanguard of media convergence. I have to admit that, as the father of four young teenagers, I rather pine for the days when my children were not constantly on their iPads, iPhones and BlackBerrys. The digital evolution with media convergence has presented huge opportunities but, as this report aptly puts it, with a number of major challenges. While the UK market for on-demand services is one of the most advanced in the world, it is reassuring that linear broadcast TV still remains largely popular and resilient with most of the population getting their news from television. I noted in the recent Ofcom report that UK households currently spend less than 10% of their TV viewing time watching on-demand content.
A key observation of this report is that new technologies and behaviours are evolving more quickly than regulatory protections. The Government’s forthcoming White Paper on communications will certainly need to address some of the regulatory challenges on content, content creation and competition. Statute is a blunt instrument and should be used only when totally necessary, but a regulatory framework needs to keep pace with this ever-changing world in an evolutionary manner.
Clearly the competition regime for media markets should seek to promote choice, innovation and competitive pricing. The new platforms to distribute content over the internet and via satellite have allowed UK viewers increasingly to take advantage of international content and businesses to globalise. While this provides opportunities for wider economic growth, it raises the thorny issue of jurisdiction over the content of some of these programmes. This should and could affect a number of areas of regulation and enforcement, particularly as Ofcom has the ability only to regulate services that originate in the United Kingdom. The impact of globalisation on national regulation of media content raises a major challenge.
The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, gave us an excellent overview of the key findings and recommendations in this report. Without repeating his points, I will touch briefly on the safer internet, which was briefly raised by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. It was summarised in recommendations 220 to 222. It is essential that adequate protections are put in place to ensure that children’s use of the internet is controlled in a safe manner. I know that the Government are working closely with the UK Council for Child Internet Safety to pursue a self-regulatory approach to keeping children safe online. However, I do not believe that simply installing filters on IP smart devices, including mobile phones, iPads and computers, is sufficient. Parents need to be better educated as to their responsibilities to ensure parental controls on these devices. It is also essential that ISPs, mobile phone operators, device manufacturers and retailers as well as software developers all work together to ensure adequate protections.
One area of the Internet of major concern to me is the “deep web”, sometimes referred to as the “invisible web”, which is accessed through an anonymous network called Tor. This was originally developed by the US Navy, but is currently being used as a hub for illicit activity, including the notorious website Silk Road, which was fortunately shut down by the FBI recently. Sadly, similar websites are cropping up as we speak. The deep web has also been used as a source of child pornography.
Normally, file-sharing and internet browsing can be tracked by law enforcement through each user’s unique IP address, which can be tracked back to individual computers or iPads. The Tor network on the deep web effectively hides the IP address, opening the internet to unsavoury elements. A lot more focus needs to be placed on trying to control this content which is not part of the surface web.
I briefly draw reference to paragraph 155 of the report, where we pointed out that one of the risks of convergence is the fragmentation of audiences and revenues, which could impact adversely on investment in high-production-value content. As ITV pointed out in a recent briefing note, the sustainability of their investment in content depends on their ability to make a viable financial return on their investment and also, obviously, to reach large audiences. I entirely agree with ITV that in a digital age, an effective intellectual property regime is vital. It is essential that any exceptions from intellectual property protection are as narrowly and well defined as possible. Advertising revenues are no longer sufficient to ensure continued investment in world-class drama programmes. I call on the Government to give assurances that a strong intellectual property framework will be incorporated into the forthcoming communications White Paper.
I noted that, in the Government’s response to our report that, while the process of convergence poses a challenge for how we continue to ensure public expectations about content standards, the time is not yet right for convergence of linear and non-linear regulation. There should be no movement to reduce the amazing opportunities that are presented by convergence and the internet more broadly. Regulation should not stand in the way of innovation but, equally, more needs to be done to address the challenges facing media convergence. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Gordon, that there is a need for some form of regulation of the internet.
In conclusion, there needs to be an evolutionary approach to the regulatory framework to keep pace with this rapidly changing world. I wholeheartedly support the recommendations in this report and hope that many of them will be incorporated into the forthcoming communications White Paper.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the committee for its excellent report. I probably should say “latest in a range of excellent reports” because in recent years the committee has been doing exemplary work, stalking around the areas to do with communications and the audio-visual sector more generally and bringing forward a range of proposals and ideas which are fantastically useful to those who are interested in this area. Indeed, it confirms the rightness of your Lordships’ House in deciding that the committee should continue; long may it do so. I also thank those who have contributed to the debate today. We are small in number but high in quality. We have certainly given most of the main recommendations in the report a good whirl.
The report starts in relatively easy mode. It takes as its typical reader someone—not unlike myself, I suspect—who does not really understand what exactly they are talking about, and tries to explain what media convergence is. I was okay for the first three or four lines. In fact, I think I could answer a certain number of questions on the first three or four paragraphs. I liked the bit that said that it was a technological phenomenon where the various platforms come together, but that does not really help us get into the question of how, when and on what basis regulatory and other measures might be needed to deal with this brave new world.
I was happy to read the quote from Lara Fielden, who explains in essence what we are talking about:
“Newspapers are not just printed but online and carry video packages with the look and feel of traditional TV; broadcasters publish websites including text-based articles similar to online print offerings; scheduled programmes are broadcast but also available on-demand, on digital channels and a variety of websites; user-generated material vies for online audiences alongside professionally produced content; professional and amateur bloggers share the same debates”.
As the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, said, our kids consume all of this, and more, all the time. I often come home to discover them lounging on a settee watching television, plugged in to an iPod, listening to other music that is playing loudly and also texting and doing other things. How do they do it? Indeed, it occurs to me that the need for regulation is probably in inverse proportion to the number of platforms a person consumes on average. Think about it.
The value of this sector to the UK economy is some £53 billion. The sector is growing, providing jobs and new business opportunities, creating exports and boosting inward investment, generating benefit for the UK. All the signs are that this will continue. As the report recognises, intellectual property is a crucial element in this mix and while the report acknowledges it, it is a pity that the committee has not, so far, dealt with it. I hope that it will return to this topic. That aside, it seems to be generally accepted that convergence has the potential to increase the value that this sector generates even further, allowing new business models to emerge and offer people exciting and innovative new products and services which will bring about great benefits for consumers and businesses alike.
However, I have some sympathy with those who warn that, while technology and consumer behaviours are changing, it is important to remember that the process of convergence is taking place unevenly. Different media are becoming more converged in different ways and at different speeds and we find that audience expectations have not changed as fast as the technology or the markets. It is interesting that audiences have continued to distinguish between content on the basis of where they find it and on what service it is provided. Indeed, in that respect they may be ahead of both this report and the Government.
If I have one concern about the report, it is that it implicitly gives the impression that, other things being equal, more convergence will require more regulation. I can see the arguments for that, but I am not sure that the evidence is there yet. It may be that smarter, different regulation is what is required, but, at least in the interim, I hope that we can all agree that there should be no movement to reduce the amazing opportunities that are presented by convergence and the internet more broadly. I agree with the committee’s assessment that a flexible, industry-led approach will be key to addressing the challenges and making the most of the opportunities of convergence.
The Government say that they have been undertaking a wide-scale review of the sector over the past two years—it seems like a lot longer than that—and it has been good to read that, shortly, they will be publishing their strategy and vision for the sector. Will the Minister enlighten us on the timetable for legislation? Are we to see more publications along the lines of the ones that have already been produced, perhaps even the long-promised White Paper, first referred to in this House in about 2010, but which seems no nearer publication?
We have had a good discussion about the detail and I shall pick up on two points. The committee points out that the process of convergence poses a challenge in ensuring that public expectations about content standards are met. I note that the Government do not believe that the time is yet right for convergence of linear and non-linear regulation. I should be very grateful if the Minister could say more about that because we do need clarity here—indeed it came up as a Question in the House only yesterday. The committee makes good points about news and its imaginative proposals for non-linear news provision have some merit. I hope that its suggestion of legislating early on the principles but holding back on the detail will catch the eye of the Government. It may be that the age-rating system that was referred to during the debate could work, although I have to say that I have my doubts, particularly if the British Board of Film Classification system was to be expanded wholesale.
There are some recommendations for content standards in the section on “A safer internet”. That area has many challenges. Clearly, we need to make sure that children experience the internet in as safe a way as possible. However, their parents have major responsibilities in this area, and it is also important that the internet is open and transparent, in line with the aspirations of its founding parents. At this stage a self-regulatory approach is surely the right one for non-broadcast material. As has been said, securing the engagement of industry and organisations across the whole value chain, from internet service providers, mobile phone operators and device manufacturers, to retailers, software developers and parents, should deliver results. It would be good if the Minister could outline his Government’s expectations on this issue.
The quality and diversity of our content is something for which the UK is admired internationally and UK-originated content is a successful export. Research commissioned by PACT and UKTI shows that the revenue generated from international sales of UK television programming and associated activities grew by 9% between 2010 and 2011. We all want to ensure the continued health of the industry as a whole and continued investment in UK content both by public sector broadcasters and non-public sector broadcasters. That suggests a need for stability and certainty in the sector to avoid any potentially chilling effect on such investment in the longer term.
As my noble friend Lord Gordon noted, the report rightly raises the importance of ensuring that terrestrial television has sufficient spectrum to enable it to compete effectively with other platforms. The report covers the worries that exist in the industry about the long-term future of DTT and makes points about the possible impact of Ofcom’s administered incentive pricing scheme. Again, it would be useful if the Minister could share the emerging thinking on this point.
Finally, before my voice finally deserts me, the committee should be congratulated on an excellent report, and on being so far ahead of the game—so far ahead that it has produced a very limp response from the Government so far. As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, says, what is the strategy here? I should be grateful if the Minister could enlighten us.
At the start of his remarks the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, drew attention to the royal charter sealing which was scheduled for about now. He may not know it, but we have been able to find out—by skilful use of devices on a multi-platform basis—that an appeal has now been lodged in the Royal Courts, and so the sealing may be delayed. Nevertheless, that means that we are thoroughly up to date. We are catching up with the committee, which is far ahead of us at all times, but it has left us with a very good report that we hope will stimulate the long-needed debate in this area.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)
My Lords, I in turn thank my noble friend Lord Inglewood and all members of the committee for their report. The Government very much welcome this second report into media convergence. Noble Lords have asked a number of questions, some of them a shade too technical for me. I hope that they will forgive me if some of the answers come in written form; perhaps they will then get a better response. Like the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, I congratulate your Lordships on setting out in the report an excellent description of what convergence in the world of media content means. I must say that it was extremely helpful to me.
Each of us enjoys content, be it news or entertainment, and modern technology offers a plethora of ways of accessing that news and entertainment. Only last week I read that viewing of BBC TV programmes on mobiles and tablets accounted for 41% of the 176 million requests for the iPlayer in September of this year. The noble Lord, Lord Gordon of Strathblane, raised the issue of this new technology for so many that is proving so popular. That is why convergence is an exciting prospect and a daunting challenge.
The Government have recently completed a review of the legislative framework that governs the media and telecommunications sectors to ensure that it remains appropriate for the digital age. That culminated in the publication in July this year of our strategy paper, Connectivity, Content and Consumers: Britain’s Digital Platform for Growth. Our discussions with industry, regulators and consumer groups demonstrated that the present framework is broadly working well, is generally working for the consumer, and is supporting economic growth and innovation. I was particularly taken by what a number of your Lordships said about the need for evolutionary rather than revolutionary change. That has been borne out in the discussions that have taken place.
The internet and the growing technology to access it both create advantages. There is the advantage, to which my noble friend Lord Inglewood referred, of being able to move seamlessly from television channels regulated by the broadcasting code to channels streamed directly from the internet. There are also the disadvantages for users confronted with unregulated content that they might not have wanted. I understand that point.
The committee’s valuable report presents a comprehensive overview of the converging media landscape and the opportunities and challenges that it creates. We must look at how best to address those challenges. We know that some issues will need to be discussed on a European or even a global level in the future. However, we are not yet living in a fully converged world, so the Government seek to address issues that can be tackled on a national level to achieve the best outcome for our country. We also seek a safer internet environment by working closely with member states as part of the EU Commission’s Safer Internet programme.
The value of the media sector to the UK and the economy is not to be underestimated. Over the past decade it has gone from strength to strength. It is also crucial to us all as consumers, allowing us to communicate as never before and giving us access to ever more sources of information and content. However, sometimes having more information does not necessarily mean that we receive better information, so we should look at ways in which we can be sure of the reliability of that information.
Convergence has the potential to increase the value that this sector generates even further, allowing new business models to emerge that offer people exciting and innovative new products and services, and bring about great benefits for consumers and business alike. We therefore fully agree with the committee’s view that there should be no movement to reduce the exceptional opportunities presented by convergence and by the internet more broadly.
We have also taken into consideration wider international discussions that will impact on the audiovisual sector—for example, about issues such as copyright—and which are briefly mentioned in the report. I shall take this issue a little further to draw attention to the UK’s support for a comprehensive multilateral treaty that protects the same rights in different technologies, and covers traditional wireless broadcasting, as well as internet broadcasting and rebroadcasting.
As your Lordships’ report states,
“the fluidity of change is uncontested; dramatic developments in media industries and audience behaviour will continue to run on in the wake of convergence”.
While technology and consumer behaviours are changing, it is important to remember that, as noble Lords have already mentioned, different media are converging in different ways and at different speeds. Indeed, people still expect that their television, radio, newspapers and social media will encompass and embrace different opinions, different values and, indeed, different levels of partiality. My noble friend Lord Inglewood also referred to this. What is important is that we should identify the source of the news or content we are accessing, so that we can feel comfortable in applying those expectations.
The Government believe that our basic approach to regulation in this area, through Ofcom and the Authority for Television on Demand, strikes the right balance between the freedom of the internet and the tighter regulation of live broadcast material. It is impossible to predict with any certainty how convergence will continue to develop and at what pace. All noble Lords who have spoken referred to this. We do not want to make the mistake of attempting to predict the course of developments and of inadvertently stifling growth. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, hit the nail on the head: we must be careful that we do not choke off desirable advances by seeking to regulate. That is an important feature that we need to study carefully. In many respects convergence has not yet significantly affected consumer behaviour, but predictions for future developments regarding technical development and consumer behaviour are uncertain. That continues to bear out our approach.
The Government therefore favour greater partnership working and collaboration with industry across the media market. Your Lordships’ report reflected comprehensively on the issue of common media standards. We agree that non-broadcast content providers should be positively encouraged to ensure that there is a common framework for media standards in preparation for a more converged future. However, we want industry and regulators to work together on a voluntary basis to achieve this.
The recommendations in the committee’s report for content standards refer to content standards on TV and TV-like services. We agree with the committee’s characterisation of the emerging environment for content standards with the convergence of live and on-demand TV-like content, and the increasing role of the internet in providing content. We are also in agreement with your Lordships’ report that the process of convergence poses a challenge to how we continue to ensure public expectations about content standards are met. However, we believe that the time is not yet right for convergence of broadcast television and television-like content regulation, because, since the process is incomplete, we can only speculate at this moment on how best to manage it.
The noble Lords, Lord St John of Bletso and Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, spoke powerfully about the recommendations on content standards in Chapter 4, headed “A safer internet”. We agree with the committee’s findings about the challenges and opportunities of the internet, and what UK citizens expect in relation to this. The Government have been working through the UK Council for Child Internet Safety and with industry to drive action that will help ensure that parents can keep their children safe while online. My noble friend Lord Clement-Jones rightly referred to the major speech that the Prime Minister made on 22 July, in which he set out a range of measures that he has asked internet service providers, mobile network operators, public wi-fi providers and Ofcom to deliver to ensure the UK stays at the forefront, internationally, of delivering a safer internet.
Much online activity takes place in the home. Providing parents and guardians with easy-to-use and effective tools to help limit the content that children can access is a key aspect of the overall package of measures that should be available. The Government recognise that some parents may be less comfortable using the internet and may feel unsure about how to go about keeping their children safe. That is why we have charged the internet service providers with making the parental control tools they are developing as simple as possible. The noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, raised the question of awareness. Internet service providers will run an awareness campaign early next year with advice to help parents become more confident in setting up parental controls tools.
In addition, as part of the Government’s reforms to the national curriculum, we have strengthened the requirements to teach e-safety as part of the changes to the new computing programmes of study. From September next year, e-safety will be taught to pupils at all key stages.
The Government have been working with industry to secure the commitment that, by the end of this year, the four largest internet service providers will provide, free of charge, family-friendly network-level filtering for new customers. This means that, when someone sets up a new broadband account, the settings to install family-friendly filters will be automatically selected and will cover all devices in the home connected to that service.
Internet service providers have also committed to contacting existing customers during next year and providing them with an unavoidable choice on whether to set up filters. The Government believe that working with and through industry is the most effective way in which to increase the safety of children online through securing the engagement of industry and organisations across the whole sector. This is an essentially international situation. I know that the Secretary of State visited America precisely to have discussions on this issue.
Ofcom has been asked to report, by the end of this year, on a number of areas in relation to child internet safety, predominantly around parental awareness of—I hope that that will be endorsed by the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso—and confidence in using, the available internet safety tools.
The recommendations on content set out a clear picture of how public service broadcasters—PSBs—have an important and continued role within the wider context of content creation and commissioning in the UK. I listened very carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Gordon of Strathblane, said. Indeed, the Government are about to update existing regulation on PSB prominence. The quality and diversity of our content is something for which the UK is admired internationally, and the PSBs are central to this success. I applaud all the channels that work so hard and are so much part of our creative industries. They invested £2.8 billion last year in UK content. Non-PSBs have also increased the amount they invest in UK content. In addition, UK-originated content is a successful export. Research commissioned by the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television and UKTI shows that the revenue generated from international sales of UK television programming and associated activities grew by 9% between 2010 and 2011 to a figure of £1.475 billion.
We want to ensure the continued health of the industry as a whole, and continued investment in UK content both by PSBs and by non-PSBs. Further, we are mindful of the need for stability and certainty in the sector, to avoid any potentially chilling effect on such investment in the medium to longer term. Again, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, referred to that. We need sometimes to be cautious. That is why we have set out the outcomes that we want to see, and the action that we will be taking in working in partnership with the industry.
All noble Lords asked about legislation and consultation. The Government will consult on a range of issues. There will be a consultation on broadcasting competition, to which my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones referred, and if necessary, legislation may follow. We will also consult on electronic programme guides and the level of payments. We intend to legislate on nuisance calls, spectrum, switching the bundles, R18 video on demand content and premium-rate services. The Government believe that the right way forward is to legislate on the key areas of concern and not have—I think the committee’s report endorses this—new and radical root and branch new legislation that would be unhelpful to the sector.
A dynamic and competitive broadcasting industry is essential to boost growth, encourage creativity and innovation and improve consumer choice. We recognise that the current competition regime is not perfect, particularly in a converged world. This reflects the thrust of the committee’s report in this area. We are looking at how we can improve it for the benefit of consumers and industry. We committed to consult on broadcasting competition, as I have said, in our paper, Connectivity, Content and Consumers. We will keep the legislative framework under review, but we do not consider that wholesale changes, either at national or EU level, are necessary or appropriate. It is important that EU regulation in this area could be a negative if it were to stifle growth. We need, again, to be careful and cautious on that.
In considering how best to address the challenges and, indeed the issues of regulation, I believe that there is no single bullet. Technology is constantly changing, as the noble Lord, Lord Gordon of Strathblane, said. I agree entirely with him that legislation should be less complex and more understandable, but there are occasions when the draftsmen defeat us all. I believe that we should avoid legislation with a short shelf life, particularly in a changing environment. We must, however, have a framework in which the industry can grow and in which consumers—most important of all—are protected. Various strands of ongoing work are in place that aim to address many issues set out in the committee’s report, and there are still further developments to consider all the time as convergence evolves.
The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, challenged me on what might be called the strategic priorities for the Government. That is why the paper was produced. The Government wish to establish world-class connectivity throughout the UK, to support the production of world-beating, innovative content and services that originate in this country, and to ensure consumer safety in an increasingly online world. We also wish to keep the cost of living down by ensuring that consumers have choice.
I assure noble Lords that we have discussed both the committee’s report and the paper, Connectivity, Content and Consumers with colleagues and officials. The Select Committee’s report has given great insight into many issues with which we are all having to wrestle during this continuing process. I assure your Lordships that we think that much of what the committee proposes should be developed further. I renew my thanks to all who have worked on this report and acknowledge it as a valuable resource that has indeed helped enormously in addressing the challenges that undoubtedly lie ahead.
Lord Inglewood
My Lords, I thank all those who have taken part in this debate. I hoped that we might have been slightly more numerous, but I know that the particular circumstances today have meant that a number of noble Lords who would have liked to take part have been unable to do so. I begin by thanking all those, in addition to the Minister, who took part. They endorsed and underscored the approach of the committee, pointing out, as I said, that the issue is complicated and not straightforward. Wider implications are involved and nothing is clear.
I turn specifically to the Minister. It is true that, in my opening remarks, I commented on the physiognomy of the initial response. Rest assured, we did not write the report in order that we might get a clap on the back from the Government. We wrote it, and believe it is important, because the kind of things that I and other Members of your Lordships’ House described are going to happen. That has huge implications for the country, and we need to respond to the changes, working with the Government to bring about the best for the country.
I will make one point in response to something that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said. There is a difference between regulation and the regulatory framework surrounding this sector. We are not necessarily keen on seeing more regulation; we believe that the regulatory framework within which this sector operates will have to adapt. If we have made a positive contribution —as I believe we have, from what the Minister said—towards trying to bring about an evolving policy that is sensible, realistic, workable and effective, we will feel that we have done a constructive job. I beg to move.
Tackling Corporate Tax Avoidance: EAC Report
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market
That this House takes note of the Report of the Economic Affairs Committee on Tackling corporate tax avoidance in a global economy: is a new approach needed? (1st Report, HL Paper 48).
Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to introduce the report of the Economic Affairs Committee entitled Tackling Corporate Tax Avoidance in a Global Economy: Is a New Approach Needed? I declare my interests, although I think they are pretty remote for this inquiry, as chairman of the British Energy Pension Fund Trustees and of the Eggborough Power Ltd Pension Fund Trustees.
I begin by paying tribute to the Leader of the House and the business managers for giving us an early opportunity—and in prime time in the Chamber—to debate this Select Committee report. This is a welcome and swift response to criticisms by Select Committees that they have often had to wait a long time to get a debate and response from the Government, and then get one only in the Grand Committee Room.
I am grateful to all the witnesses who contributed oral and written evidence to the inquiry and to our specialist adviser Professor Michael Devereux, director of the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation and associate dean of research at the Said Business School. Professor Devereux’s knowledge, expertise and advice made an essential contribution to our report. I am also very grateful to our committee clerk, Bill Sinton, and his staff for their first-class assistance.
We decided to undertake this inquiry because of the rising public, media and parliamentary concern that multinational companies are not paying their fair share of UK tax. We also decided to make it a relatively short one, over the spring and early summer, because, given the topicality and urgency, we did not think that we should carry on the hearings after the Summer Recess and into the winter. The Public Accounts Committee in the other place was concurrently holding its hearings and we had the benefit of having the chairman of the PAC as one of our witnesses.
Before and as we launched our inquiry, there was a steady stream of stories in the media about multinational companies that in practice pay little or no UK corporation tax, even when they are doing very good business here. Examples included Google, Amazon and Starbucks, as well as the British-based Vodafone, Thames Water and Cadbury before its takeover by Kraft. This practice undermines public trust in the fairness of the system, calls into question corporate sector responsibility, raises doubts over the effectiveness of HMRC in ensuring compliance with corporation tax, reduces the tax revenue to HMG that should legitimately be coming here, and can place UK-based firms at a competitive disadvantage if they operate mainly or solely in this country and pay their full taxes here. This can in particular affect small to medium-sized businesses that are attempting to compete and grow.
In some cases, UK corporation tax seems to a considerable extent to be a voluntary tax for multinationals. Starbucks’ volunteering of extra payments in the UK after bad publicity suggests that it recognises that. As the PAC noted, Google generated $16 billion revenue from the UK between 2006 and 2011 but paid just $16 million of UK corporation taxes in the same period. Even after accounting for all its expenditure, it is still a huge gap.
There is a serious issue of avoidance of corporation tax to be tackled. Part of the problem is the complexity of the UK’s tax system but the main scope for corporate avoidance arises from the international tax system, which allows multinational companies to shift profits between countries to lower-tax regimes and reduce their tax liabilities in the UK, even when they are doing good and substantial business here.
Our report, based on the evidence, fully recognised that the Government are giving priority to tackling these issues but, recognising the challenges and concerns, also made some further recommendations. I have to say that I find the Government’s response somewhat disappointing, defensive and perhaps slightly complacent. That may not have been the intention but the impression is given that it can be summarised as, “Of course there is a problem but we are doing all that is required to tackle it”, and they are dismissive of any other recommendations.
Two key points underlie our analysis. First, international companies, like all others, are entitled to frame their tax policies with a view to minimising tax within the rules, although multinational companies are diverting huge resources to exploiting to the maximum what the rules enable them to do. I will have something to say later about whether HMRC is sufficiently resourced to ensure that companies are paying their proper share. Secondly, we recognise that fundamentally this issue can be fully and properly tackled only at the international level because it is so often the difference between the tax regimes that makes the exploitation and ability to minimise the tax possible.
I will turn briefly to the areas in which we are in agreement with the Government’s response and where we actually said so very firmly in our report. We acknowledge that changes are being carried out throughout the corporate tax road map and steps are being taken to simplify the tax system and make UK corporation tax one of the most competitive in the world. We acknowledge all the efforts to tackle tax avoidance, in GAAR, DOTAS and so on. We acknowledge and support the increased resources and manpower for HMRC to tackle tax avoidance and evasion, and the successes it has achieved. Above all, we acknowledge the key importance of international action and the Government’s leading role in the OECD multilateral project on base erosion and profit-shifting. All this is agreed and supported by our committee.
However, three of our recommendations were not accepted. The first is our proposal for an urgent review, to be undertaken by the Treasury, of the UK corporation tax regime, which should report back with proposed changes to be made at home and pursued internationally. Our report lists six issues for this review, of varying importance. The one I would single out is a review of alternative tax structures, such as a destination-based cash-flow tax, which we analyse in some detail.
I will explain the reasoning for that recommendation. There is general agreement that the various individual countries’ tax regimes do not reflect the changing business models, the domination of multinational corporations and the challenges of the digital economy. This is well recognised in the G20 Leaders’ Declaration of September 2013. Their solution is the OECD’s action plan on base erosion and profit-shifting, to be completed in two years.
One attraction for doing the work into alternative tax structures that we are recommending is that there is no certainty, to put it mildly, of a successful outcome of the OECD’s BEPS—as it is known—action plan within two years. One needs to look only at the OECD’s plan of action, published in July, to see what a truly formidable range of work has to be undertaken, let alone agreed among so many Governments. There is a serious risk at international level that we are putting all our eggs in one basket and that three or four years on we would be no better off. The advantage of the destination-based cash-flow tax is that it could be introduced unilaterally.
Secondly, I note that the Government have by implication rejected our recommendation that HMRC should be better resourced, by outlining all that has already been done. I acknowledge that the evidence so far is that extra resource has been more than self-financing in the revenue it has produced. I have looked at this quite a few times in the past and our recommendation for more resources was designed to help and support HMRC in the good work that it has been doing. That is why I am disappointed that the Government have dismissed our recommendation. As a former Chief Secretary, I have to say that it is the kind of extra resource I would encourage. It is difficult to judge how much extra resource is needed but the evidence is that it would well justify itself.
Thirdly, I regret that our recommendation of a joint parliamentary committee, along the lines of the Intelligence and Security Committee, to oversee HMRC has been rejected on grounds of taxpayer confidentiality. The same argument about confidentiality could be used against the existing intelligence committee on grounds of national security, but there has never been a breach or leak. Meanwhile, Parliament has to take it on trust—relying on the National Audit Office, another body of officials—that all is well in HMRC with the resources that it has. I hope that this recommendation will be looked at again.
Finally, I have three specific questions for the Minister when he comes to wind up. Can he update us on progress since publication in July of the OECD Action Plan on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting? Is the way ahead any clearer? Can the Minister also update the House on progress on some of the Government’s other anti-avoidance initiatives, such as giving HMRC the ability to name high-risk promoters of tax avoidance schemes? I understand that consultation on this ended on 4 October. Can the Minister brief us on the current status of the Government’s proposals to exclude companies whose tax affairs are not in good standing from bidding for public procurement contracts? How would such measures be consistent with that respect for taxpayer confidentiality which the Government invoked against the idea of naming and shaming users of aggressive tax avoidance schemes, as well as their advisers?
I shall leave it to other noble Lords, who have practical experience of corporate issues, to focus on some of the matters I have not had time to deal with, such as debt equity finance. I look forward particularly to the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley.
I conclude by saying that our committee is composed of many with great experience and knowledge in business, finance, tax and academia, and they have brought that business experience and wider knowledge to bear on this report. I am indebted to them all; it is a privilege to chair such a committee. I beg to move.
Lord McFall of Alcluith (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to participate in this debate and to have been a member of the Economic Affairs Committee under the wise chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor. As he said, this is a short report which will advance matters a small amount, but it contains the opportunity for the Government and others to act on issues and to take them forward.
Our report asks whether a new approach is needed. The answer is an unequivocal yes. At the heart of the report is the statement that the UK has serious problems with the avoidance of corporation tax. As the noble Lord mentioned, that is partly due to the complexity of our domestic tax regime, but principally it is because of an international tax system which gives multinational companies the ability to shift profits between countries in ways which minimise their tax liabilities in the UK. The effect of that is to damage the economy and undermine trust in the taxation system. It has both social and economic consequences. We are witnessing democratic failure here and the electorate have caught on. They are unconvinced that the political class will solve these big issues, and there are no issues as big as this to solve. The electorate are of that opinion because they see the social contract as broken—the social contract which was founded on the premise that everyone got a slice of the pie. Over the years, some got a bigger slice, but now we find that, while some are still getting a big slice, others are getting nothing.
The noble Lord, Lord King, the former Governor of the Bank of England, made the point recently that wages and standards of living in 2017 will be the same as they were in 2007. Professor Joseph Stiglitz, who is a professor at Columbia University and a former chief economist at the World Bank, stated, in his book, The Price of Inequality, that the global economy is sick, has been sick for a long time, and that that is infecting our politics. He cited figures to show that, in the US since 1979, output per hour has gone up by 40%, but pay has barely increased. Meanwhile, the top 1% in the US takes home more than 20% of national income. He asked whether the great recession has made things worse. It has made things worse for 99% of people, but 95% of the gains between 2009 and 2012 went to the top 1% of society.
We can see the same trends in our own country. The electorate feel that their views are less important than those of the banks and financial institutions, the energy companies and the multinationals like Google and Starbucks. Our report backs that up when it says that multinational companies are unique in that their corporation tax payments are largely a voluntary activity. That is endorsed by Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP, among others. However, it is not a voluntary activity for the rest of society. The message from HMRC at the end of the year will be that people better get their self-assessment tax returns in by 31 January otherwise they are liable to a £100 fine per day. Rightly so, we should say. But, if we are to have a level playing field, and the chance to restore both economics and politics to health, then we must urgently look at this situation.
Earlier this month, HMRC estimated that there was a £35 billion tax gap which it was failing to collect. The noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, made the point that our proposal for HMRC to have extra resources had been rejected. If it had those resources, as it has done in the past with positive results, then some of that £35 billion could be clawed back. If the Chancellor had that £35 billion in his hands, he could reduce the basic rate of tax from 20p in the pound to 12p. There is a big pot to get hold of, but we need the resources to do so, and it is disappointing that the Government have rejected that proposal. Tax evasion is relevant to the everyday lives and struggles of us all, particularly at this present time of austerity.
Is the UK a soft touch here? It does seem so. The recent examples of Starbucks and others who shifted their profits elsewhere illustrate that point. Since their naming and shaming, the voluntary payment of £20 million by Starbucks is welcome, but it is not the answer. We need to change the structure. The use of outlandish gimmicks to shelter profits in other countries must cease. Google is claiming, absurd though it is, that its intellectual capital resides in Bermuda. That would be okay if it was not for the fact that it was approved by the US Internal Revenue Service. That illustrates just how difficult the situation is and how we need to tackle it globally. In my capacity as a member of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, we saw how our own domestic banks—HSBC, UBS, Standard Chartered, Barclays and others—were fined almost $4 billion by the American authorities for engaging in money laundering activities. The HSBC evidence to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards was very clear. It admitted that, on day one of assuming control of a Mexican bank in 2002, there was an e-mail from the head of compliance which made it clear that there was no recognised compliance or money laundering function in the company. Yet it allowed that to fester for years.
Why do I mention that in the context of a global financial situation? It is not a victimless crime. During the period of HSBC’s ownership of that Mexican bank, 35,000 individuals in Mexico died at the hands of local drug gangs. So there is a moral as well as an economic case to be looked at. We need international co-operation. We cannot do this alone. The G8 took place in Lough Erne, where warm words and a forced solidarity of leaders gave some reassurance. However, the mild language in our report where we say that we are not yet clear how effective the proposed solutions can be or whether they are achievable within the timescale puts a question mark against the purpose of the G8 in ensuring that this issue is tackled.
I want to put forward a few proposals for what we need to do. First, we need to tackle the opacity of the international structures. They are giving companies an easy advantage in using differences in tax rates between jurisdictions to avoid paying tax legally. The International Financial Reporting Standards, which are overseen by the International Accounting Standards Board, need to be urgently reviewed. Presently the International Accounting Standards Board is an independent, non-governmental body comprised of representatives from the accountancy and tax professions, but it is not overseen or regulated by government. Given the state we are in, there has to be a role for government oversight of this issue. We have to look at how tax structuring is based in the IFRS and elsewhere. The Government need oversight of these accounting standards.
Secondly, we need also to ensure that we remove the lack of transparency of, lack of control over and lack of accountability in the basic tax system that we are now witnessing. Thirdly, in promoting transparency and more democratic accountability, we need a stronger culture. A public beneficial ownership registry is an important aspect of that. Both the Government and the EU have carried out cost-benefit analyses on it. The Government’s cost-benefit analysis produced a figure showing a saving of £30 million in police time alone, while the European Commission has said that the United Kingdom could save €420 million if this register was created. It would be the correct thing to do to have such a register so that we know who owns the companies and what benefits they bring. Apart from revealing savings and costs and being able to tackle money laundering and fraud, one of the key aspects of such a register would be transparency.
For example, in the recent horsemeat scandal, the key companies were set up by the same Cypriot professionals who helped the infamous arms dealer, Viktor Bout, to create his web of secretive companies. If such a register was established, it would provide business with important information about partners, suppliers, investors and customers, and it would ensure that the law enforcement and tax authorities, including those outwith the UK, would have quick and guaranteed access to information. That would be helpful to us all. At the G8 summit the Prime Minister promised,
“to push for more transparency on who owns companies”.
We need this public register. I know that this Thursday and Friday the Open Governance Partnership will hold its summit meeting, and I would like to think that the Government will take up this recommendation and ensure the establishment of a register.
I turn now to transfer pricing and the many ways companies find to shift profits between countries. As the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, said, the Government’s response on this issue is inadequate. Stepping up the fight, as they say, misses the point. Our report shows that currently there are legal ways to avoid paying UK taxes that are owed because of the very many existing loopholes. We need to identify and close those loopholes. If I was asked to choose between name and shame or ensure transparency, I would ensure transparency on the basis that if we name and shame the “bad” acts, we will see that many of those acts are perfectly legal at this time. Transparency is the key here.
In the end, Starbucks did us a favour because the public finally became aware of an international financial structure that has substantially reduced government tax receipts in a way that directly affects the daily lives of many lower and middle income families in the UK and around the world. The question should not be “How much is Starbucks paying in tax and is that fair?” but “What are all UK companies paying in tax?”. Paragraph 86 of our report makes this point clearly by stating that,
“large companies operating in the UK should make public disclosure of their UK corporation tax returns”.
If the amounts are low when we see the figures in the public domain, the Government can review the applicable tax structuring and identify what legal arrangements are needed to allow these companies to continue operating in the United Kingdom.
In addition, it is essential to make country by country financial reporting publicly available in order to identify problematic tax arrangements. The charity Christian Aid has identified the fact that $160 billion are lost from poor countries every year due to tax dodging. That is more than all the developing countries together receive in aid. This haemorrhaging of the much-needed resources that are required to combat poverty and hunger and to fund vital public services is a continuing scandal. The situation is being allowed to continue to fester.
As the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, said, the OECD has been charged with some responsibilities, but it has stated that the information from country to country reporting should be made available only to tax authorities, not to the public. I suggest that if that practice continues, we are not going to advance this issue by one whit. The Government urgently need to take this on as part of an international agenda and ensure that country by country financial reporting is secured. Professor Paul Collier of Oxford University has done much to highlight the social and economic injustices of global tax structures. He has noted that the G8 countries are now beset by the corporate opacity that Africa has faced for decades. He identifies the G8 as being far more important now, in times of austerity, than it was in the easy years of the rising economic tide.
I suggest that this short but sharp report can help us to think about the bigger picture, one that we should use to put our own house in order so that at last we can do something beneficial not only for our own citizens, both rich and poor, but for the poor in developing countries around the world.
Lord Smith of Clifton (LD)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market for introducing this debate and for his consistent and exemplary chairing of the committee. I also join with him in thanking our clerk, Mr Bill Sinton, and our special adviser, Professor Michael Devereux.
The very widespread practice of exploiting low-rate foreign tax havens and corporate tax avoidance facilities should be placed in the wider context of the contemporary character of commercial behaviour in the UK and, indeed, in other major western economies. We have witnessed a plethora of scandals in banking, insurance, fund management and elsewhere; hardly a sector remains untouched. All of these scandals derive from the nature of modern business which is based on greed and the quest for quick bucks while ignoring long-term considerations, and has contributed to a mindset that induces corruption, bribery, fraud, insider dealing and other criminal actions. These have been all too little investigated in the past, although the prosecution rate is now increasing, particularly in the United States. The UK has some way to go in order to catch up in this respect.
Turning a blind eye to such illegalities has encouraged a lowering of standards across the board. If criminality goes unchallenged, sailing close to the wind, stretching the rules and following only the letter but not the spirit of the law become par for the course. We live in an economic polity where much, probably excessive, reliance is placed on regulators to monitor activity in the public interest. The system simply cannot cope, and there is hardly a regulatory agency in this country that is fit for purpose. The BBC Trust, the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the Care Quality Commission, the Serious Fraud Office in particular, Ofwat, Ofgem, Ofsted et al have all been subject to severe criticism. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is as pertinent a question today as ever and is one that Her Majesty’s Government should seriously ponder. Perhaps the Minister could comment on the merits of this observation. It is a problem that will not go away.
As this report shows, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is also a deficient regulator when it comes to policing tax avoidance by companies. Unlike tax evasion, avoidance per se is not criminal. However, it is unethical and flies quite blatantly against the spirit of the law. Its widespread practice is indicative of the contempt so much of UK business has for high standards and ethical conduct—in other words, contempt for the public in general.
In the report the committee points to the extent of the practice and the deleterious consequences that follow from it, and acknowledges the difficulties of securing internationally agreed rules to minimise it. The report also points to the growing discontent among the public, which the noble Lord, Lord McFall, also referred to. This is all too understandable in a period of austerity. Why should large corporations, which are either resident in the UK and/or making huge profits here, escape paying corporation tax and behaving like good citizens? The report also raises the question of how far HMRC falls short as a regulator, and how difficult it is to assess this given the secrecy in which it operates. It suggests that HMRC’s resources are too meagre for the job it is required to do.
The report questioned the appropriateness of employing secondees from the big four accountancy firms to advise on how best to deal with the problems of tax avoidance, given that these very firms earn considerable sums advising major companies how best to minimise their corporation tax liabilities. As we noted, only two days ago the Public Accounts Committee again questioned HMRC senior staff on the apparent feebleness of its treatment of what Mrs Hodge called the “immoral” tax avoidance schemes employed by Google, Starbucks, Amazon and many others. Accordingly, we recommend that HMRC has better resources, that company tax advisers should be regulated, and that a joint parliamentary committee be appointed to oversee the work of HMRC.
Her Majesty’s Government’s official response to these rather modest proposals, according to my rough calculations, was to “agree” with three of our recommendations and “disagree” with eight, while merely “noting” 11. This tally, which is in effect a complacency index, is disappointing to say the least, as the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, mentioned. In view of Her Majesty’s Government’s attitude as revealed by this tally, “deplorable” might be a better description. I ask my noble friend Lord Newby whether he thinks that this is an acceptable tally.
Perhaps because of this official complacency, the Independent and its sister newspaper the Independent on Sunday were very recently prompted into a week-long, detailed analysis of offshore tax avoidance by major companies. They concentrated on the quoted Eurobond exemption loophole created in 1984. The papers revealed that the practice is far more widespread than our report showed. More than 30 companies across a wide range of economic activity use the loophole, at an estimated loss to the Exchequer of £35 billion. Companies being advised by the big four accountancy firms to exploit this loophole range across high street retailers, care and health providers, and public utilities in gas, electricity and transport.
While these companies are clearly not model citizens, the former editor of the Independent, Andreas Whittam Smith, concluded last week that Her Majesty’s Government are the real culprits, because they speak with a forked tongue. Using the helpful terminology of Murray Edelman, “exhortatory” political language is used to beguile the public, and to stress that the Government believe in fair taxes and are fully committed to stamping out “aggressive tax avoidance” schemes. However, the Government employ Edelman’s secretive bargaining language of politics to give businesses a nod and a wink that the Government will turn a blind eye to all but the most blatant practices, in order to encourage home and overseas investment. That helps explain the feebleness of HMRC.
Most tax havens are of course British Crown dependencies. If the Chancellor promised to rein them in, he would have a powerful card to play in seeking internationally agreed tax avoidance rules. But I fear that Mr Osborne will not play that card, as he is clearly intent on making the UK itself a tax haven.
What is the result? Business is aware of how low it has sunk in public opinion. Its PR advisers polish up the tried and trusted—at least by them—technique of owning up to shortcomings in a very generalised way, and initiating new dialogues about the need for greater ethical concern. Unsurprisingly, as I speak, this is already being diluted to “integrity”, which is a lesser word in this context. Hence the meeting on 24 October of some 200 senior business executives with religious leaders, headed by Archbishop Vincent Nichols with the support of Archbishop Justin Welby, to discuss the draft for a “blueprint for better business”. I wonder whether they arranged a conference call to seek the views of Sir Richard Branson from his Caribbean tax haven.
In a similar vein, Sir Richard Lambert has been asked to direct a standards board for the banking industry. Although I do not doubt the sincerity of those involved, the truth is that as always their proposals will be but the latest edition of the “Book of Proverbs”. They will have as much practical impact on the pursuit of business life as other such endeavours, from the Cadbury report on good governance in 1992 to the more recent Vickers and Davies reports. Is that too cynical a view? Remember that our report stated that Cadbury had been aggressively avoiding tax for years, long before its acquisition by Kraft. Nothing alters, it seems.
In the light of the Independent’s revelations and the findings from the Public Accounts Committee’s questioning of HMRC officials last Monday, will the Minister say how the Government will adopt a much stronger approach to tax avoidance, or will this be yet more empty rhetoric?
Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)
My Lords, I start by thanking my noble friend Lord MacGregor for his outstanding chairmanship of the committee, and for introducing this debate today. He has been outstanding. He has been a friend of mine for a very long time, since before either of us entered the House of Commons, let alone this very illustrious House. Indeed, for part of my time as Chancellor he was my Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and I could not have had a better one. He has proved that he is a man of many talents, because he is as good a chairman of a Select Committee of your Lordships’ House as he was a Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
This report is called, Tackling Corporate Tax Avoidance in a Global Economy: Is a New Approach Needed?. Our answer was yes and the Government’s answer was no. That is a slight difference between us. My noble friend Lord MacGregor, who is a man of great understatement, said that in his judgment the Government’s response to our report was complacent and inadequate, as indeed it was, and in many ways it was also appallingly petty. I will refer to one or two things in a moment, but first let me reflect on why it was quite so bad.
One change that has occurred since my time has concerned me more and more. During my time there were two revenue departments—the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise. The Inland Revenue was an absolutely first-class department, and it was a privilege to be the Minister responsible for it. Customs and Excise was very different; it was excellent on the drugs side. Its intelligence network, which is of the greatest importance in combating drug imports, and so on, was considerably superior to that of the police. It was also pretty good in its anti-smuggling responsibilities. Where it fell lamentably short of the standards set by the Inland Revenue was on the tax side. What happened is that subsequently, after my time, the two departments were merged and, instead of the standards of the better department being the standards of the whole, it has gone more the other way round. That happens very often with mergers of one kind or another, which look extremely rational but have that result.
Another thing that has greatly weakened tax policy in this country is that, again in my time, there was a very small tax policy division in the Treasury, but there was also a powerful tax policy division in the Inland Revenue. Since then, tax policy has been put entirely in the Treasury. There is now no tax policy division in the Inland Revenue, with the result that people on the policy side know nothing, or very little, or certainly very much less, about how the system works in reality. The knitting together of policy and administration is crucially important. So I am not surprised—although I do not think that it is the only reason—that the Government’s response to our report was so pathetically lamentable. I think that that has contributed to it.
Before I say anything more that my noble friend the Minister might find disagreeable, I will say one thing that pleased me about the Government’s response. Perhaps he would like to speak about it. One recommendation that we made was that the Government should look again at the different treatment of debt and equity capital in a company’s accounts. This completely different treatment, in which there is a tax allowance for interest on debt but no allowance of any kind for the dividends paid on equity, encourages the accumulation of debt. The noble Lord, Lord McFall, mentioned that he was a member of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, as was I. We made a recommendation on that, because it is real Alice in Wonderland; you have the regulator telling the banks that they must have less debt and more equity and the tax system saying that they must have more debt and less equity. That really cannot be very sensible. Even apart from banks, as the Mirrlees report pointed out, and as we point out in our report, there are very good reasons why this should to be looked at seriously.
I am glad of one good deed in a naughty world. The Government said in their response that they welcome,
“the Committee’s interest in this area. In response to the recommendation of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, the Government is reviewing the wider case for an allowance for corporate equity. The tax treatment of debt is one of the issues being explored by the OECD BEPS project”.
I am very glad to hear that, and I hope that my noble friend the Minister will tell us where they have got to on that, and what is their latest thinking.
For the most part, I am afraid that this is an extremely disappointing reply—and that is an understatement. I will give the House a flavour of the reply. On our main recommendation the Government say that they,
“do not consider that a fundamental review of the corporate tax system is necessary or would add value at this stage … and to change the rules unilaterally could undermine our attractiveness as a location. Changes on this scale could impose significant transitional costs on HMRC and businesses”.
There are a number of fallacies there. First, it is certainly desirable that we should have in this country as benign a tax regime as we can, consistent with finding the finance to pay for necessary public expenditure. But in my experience, what people look to when they are thinking about where to locate their investment and do business is, first, the size of the market, and how prosperous and good it is; whether the rule of law can be relied on; and whether the overall tax regime is attractive. The personal tax regime has, in my experience, more of an effect in many cases on how people see the jurisdiction than corporate tax or other forms of taxation. They also take into account the social legislation and whether there is too much regulation. All those things are taken into account. The idea that somehow, if we go it alone on corporation tax, we will no longer be attractive, is totally absurd.
We have to go it alone, because there has been a fundamental change in the world economy. Nothing in this world that I have ever come across is all good; there are always some disadvantages. Some of our witnesses tried to pretend that a lot of modern commerce has become dematerialised through the internet age. Nothing could be as material as a cup of coffee, yet Starbucks was among the most prominent of the early users of tax avoidance, which, I may say, is totally legal. That is the point: it is totally and completely legal. But globalisation has changed things—and, overwhelmingly, it has done good. If I had to choose the single best thing that has happened as a result of globalisation, it would be the success of so much of the developing world. The emerging world has really emerged successfully, which would not have been possible without globalisation or the freedom of trade and capital movements. Those private capital movements dwarf aid flows into complete insignificance, as well as being of rather better quality than aid flows. Globalisation has enabled China and a number of other countries, most but not all of them in Asia, to develop in the most wonderful way in the past 25 years. But nothing is without its drawbacks and disadvantages.
The Government have to face up to the fact that globalisation means that the corporation tax system is no longer fit for purpose, and will not and cannot be fit for purpose, because multinational companies will move profits legally to wherever the tax regime is lowest. A number of ill effects flow from this. One is that the Chancellor loses much needed revenue—and I feel for him, particularly when we have a deficit the size of the one we still have, although happily it has gone down a great deal. Loss of revenue is a serious business. A second flaw, defect or downside, as other noble Lords said, is that it brings the whole tax system into disrepute. That is not a good thing at all.
The third thing is that it is grossly inequitable. Although all those multinationals—I have nothing against multinationals—can shift their profits and intangible assets around the world in such a way that they pay little or, in some cases, no UK corporation tax, the backbone of this country is the small and medium-sized enterprises that are national companies, not multinationals. They still have to pay the full rigour of corporation tax. There is no level playing field. It is a totally inequitable system.
What are the Government doing? They are just prancing around and saying, “We are talking about it with our opposite numbers from other OECD countries and other European countries” and goodness knows what. They love going to conferences, and every so often they go to a conference and make a statement that they have reached a great understanding or agreement, but they have not. The system is just the same. The problem is just the same; it has not gone away. Then they say, “We will approach it this way, but we could not possibly take a lead”. God forbid that the United Kingdom should take a lead and introduce a sensible tax system of its own, which would probably comprise—although we do not lay down what it should be—a very low level of tax on corporate profits with a low level of corporate sales tax, because sales in this country are sales here that could be taxed here.
So what is the answer? We should take a lead, but instead, nothing happens. I have to say to the Government, “You’re not even getting nowhere fast; you’re getting nowhere slowly”. This simply will not do. They have to realise that corporation tax in the modern world has had its day as a major source of revenue. We have to find a new system. The modest proposal that we made, which was that there should be a review, is incontrovertible. I hope that my noble friend will sing a different song from the pathetic government response which this committee was accorded.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, it is a genuine pleasure to speak after the noble Lord, Lord Lawson of Blaby, and not just because I rise while the sense of the Government getting a bit of a drubbing is still in the air—although I am not unhappy about that. The noble Lord’s robust, challenging interrogation of the Government’s position did the House a service beyond just making life difficult for the Government. I apologise to the Minister for glorying in that a little. The noble Lord shared with us some common sense, straightforward arguments based on his extensive experience that made many points with which I agree much more understandable to me than they were before I rose to speak.
I look at the list of those who have chosen to speak in this debate. Excluding those who speak from the Front Benches, I see that there is an unwise minority of us who are not members of the distinguished Select Committee. As I am the first of that unwise minority to speak, it falls to me to thank the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market, and his committee for the service that they have provided to the House not only in taking on this short inquiry but in producing such a readable, comprehensive and accessible report in an area of great complexity. The committee has produced a series of serious, simple recommendations. I join the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, my noble friend Lord McFall and the noble Lords, Lord Smith of Clifton and Lord Lawson, in expressing regret and disappointment that the Government’s response was so self-congratulatory. It was not just disappointing but complacent.
I intend to devote a significant amount of my short contribution to expanding on the argument, which has already been made, about whether the Government are entitled to any degree of complacency or self-congratulation in this area. There is significant and recent evidence provided through the witness examination of the Public Accounts Committee that there is no room for complacency or self-congratulation, but that the challenges are still significant and growing.
In its report, the committee justifies the whole process in the first phrase of the first sentence of the summary, which states:
“The UK faces a serious problem of avoidance of corporation tax”.
The last sentence of that paragraph states:
“This damages the economy and undermines trust in the tax system”.
I know from previous debates that the Minister shares the view that that is a serious and significant challenge. That view has gone well beyond those who are in the know about the detail of what happens in the Treasury or in her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. The people of the United Kingdom know in spades that we face a serious challenge on that, and there is an expectation that we will respond in a serious manner to those challenges.
When we search for some proxy for describing the nature or the scale of that challenge, in previous debates, we have gone to the tax gap. I now know, although I did not fully appreciate this, that the avoidance of taxation by the methods referred to in this report are not included in the tax gap, but the tax gap is a good proxy indicator of the scale and nature of the challenge.
I last spoke on these issues in your Lordships’ House on 6 June, when we debated a Motion moved by my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock that this House take note of the economic and social consequences of tax evasion and avoidance. In the Official Report, at col. 1308, the noble Lord, Lord Newby, followed the estimate that we were all using that the tax gap was about £32 billion—not all of which, of course, is avoidance of tax by corporate bodies, and none of which, it would appear, is avoidance of tax by multinationals operating the devices referred to in this helpful report.
It was said to be £32 billion and falling. To test whether the Government’s confidence in what they intend to do to reduce tax avoidance is well-placed, I go to the first answer given by a man by the name of Edward Troup, who is the tax insurance commissioner for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, when he gave evidence before the Public Accounts Committee only this Monday, 28 October, at a hearing of the committee to which the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Clifton, has already referred. The transcript is a veritable mine of useful information to test whether what we are doing as a country to address this issue is having any effect at all, or any measurable effect.
I should say that this is the uncorrected transcript of the oral evidence, and it may be adjusted later, but the very first question put to Mr Troup is about the tax gap. He says that it is £32 billion and falling but that it,
“has gone up from £34 billion on an adjusted basis last year to £35 billion in cash”.
I am not sure whether those two figures are comparable, because I am always conscious of vocabulary, but he says that it has gone up from £34 billion on an adjusted basis last year to £35 billion in cash. Thereafter follows some significant to-ing and fro-ing between the members of the Public Accounts Committee and the witness. That to-ing and fro-ing is calculated to leave everybody utterly confused about how those figures are made up and how reliable they are. What is unequivocal is that the tax gap is going up. That is the evidence that was given only a few months after the Minister who will respond to this debate unfortunately told your Lordships’ House that it was lower than that and going down. That was the best information with which he was provided from the same sources. I understand that because I have been in that position myself. The first proxy for this that we can find indicates that the situation is getting worse, not better.
My first question is: what is the current estimate of the tax gap? Is it £32 billion, the figure which was being deployed in June? Is it £34 billion which was apparently the unadjusted figure for last year? Is it the £35 billion cash figure for this year, and is the gap going up or down?
Secondly, this evidence makes it clear that the tax gap does not include any estimate of the taxation we as a country are being denied by the practices identified in this report, with which we have all become familiar. This is for good reason. As the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, said, this is not illegal. Until the policy and the law change, there is no way of estimating what it is. From page 8 onwards in the transcript of the evidence there were some interesting exchanges between Austin Mitchell, a Member of Parliament, and the same witness. The committee tries to put some scale to the taxation avoided by these processes. The way it does so is interesting. The scale is drawn from information communicated to the SEC in the United States of America by companies discussed before in the debate—Google, Starbucks, others—about the scale and nature of their sales in the United Kingdom. The disparity between the figures is astounding. These companies are telling the United States regulators and others that they are doing billions of pounds’ worth of business in the United Kingdom whereas they are telling Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs that they are doing at most hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of trading here.
The most interesting thing about this evidence is that nowhere does there appear to be any estimate of the revenue lost. Nowhere does there appear to be an estimated figure we can put to the nature and scale of this problem. That passage of evidence alone—I shall end on this because I want to do service to this report but I cannot go into all the detail of it—generates an incontrovertible argument for the recommendation of the Select Committee for some method of coherent and appropriate accountability to Parliament. That method should follow the example of the Intelligence and Security Committee. The reason the argument is incontrovertible is that as you follow the evidence you discover that HMRC witnesses cannot give any answers. They cannot answer for policy because apparently they have no involvement in policy. They cannot answer for estimates because their business is collecting the taxation that is due, not estimating. They cannot answer in relation to individual taxpayers’ experience with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs because that is confidential. Thus there is no accountability at all.
This is not a question of confidence in the taxation system being bolstered by a process in which there is no accountability. It is an example of confidence in the taxation system we have in this country ebbing away because there is no accountability for it. Rebuilding confidence will require Her Majesty’s Government to realise that transparency, accountability and a shared knowledge of what is going on inside our tax system lie at the heart of the matter. As to what the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, has suggested about restructuring the taxation system, I should have to look at the details carefully, but what is necessary is accountability in Parliament. We, at least, need to know who owes what or who should have been paying what, and we do not.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
My Lords, it is with great pleasure that I rise for the first time, to speak on this important issue of tackling corporate tax avoidance in a global economy, in the same debate as my noble friend Lord Lawson whom I have admired for so many years, for reasons connected to this debate, which I will come on to shortly.
I want to start by thanking the many people here who have helped me in so many ways, particularly since my introduction. This includes those who work here, for what seems to be very long hours, and who have guided me through the past few weeks. I am very grateful to my supporters, my noble friends Lord Feldman of Elstree and Lord Fink, who have been close personal friends for some time, and with whom I have had the honour to work in my role as a treasurer of the Conservative Party.
I understand that it is customary in a maiden speech to make a few remarks about oneself. Members of my family first arrived in this country in 1780, whereas other scions arrived here later in the 1880s. My ancestors probably left the Middle East some 2,000 years ago. I suspect that in that time, during their itinerant travels, no country has treated my family better than this one.
I hope to contribute to this House in a number of areas, not least because some 25 years ago I started my own business with one partner and one assistant and it has grown to become well established in its field of expertise. Accordingly, I have spent the last 25 years advising businesses, principally entrepreneur-owned small and medium-sized enterprises, and have some understanding of the issues that SME businesses face, partly as I started one and still have an interest in one, and partly from talking to those entrepreneurs on a daily basis. I hope that my daily interaction with these businesses, together with my activities within my other communities, will enable me to contribute to the House.
My early career started in chartered accountancy at a large multinational firm where I specialised in tax. In addition to serving on the council of Institute of Chartered Accountants I qualified as a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Taxation some 30 years ago, before moving to my current specialist field of mergers and acquisitions. Accordingly, although it might seem a little early for me to make my maiden speech so soon after my introduction, I was keen to have the opportunity to speak in this debate on tax matters.
I congratulate my noble friend Lord MacGregor and his colleagues on this excellent report. Reflecting upon my time as a tax adviser, albeit nearly 30 years ago, it is interesting to see how much has stayed the same and how much has changed. Equity financing as opposed to debt financing was an issue, as every inward investment had to have an agreed structure negotiated in advance. At that time, some 30 years ago, the mood was changing dramatically and suddenly the United Kingdom became an attractive place to invest after years where businesses had felt that there would be no point in coming here, either because they were not going to make a profit, or simply because they felt unloved. We need to ensure that we never go back to those very dark days.
This takes me back to my earlier reference to my noble friend Lord Lawson, who did so much to change the climate of taxation in this country, taking bold and imaginative steps dramatically to reduce both the legislative and fiscal burdens, which helped us to have a boom for the subsequent 25 years. It is with that in mind that I am nervous to read about proposed fiscal steps that might make multinationals feel less than encouraged to come to the UK, either because there is a feeling that this country might become anti-business or because there is uncertainty about how their tax affairs will be treated.
As the OECD report on base erosion and profit shifting notes, in the past 30 years there has been a huge change in the way multinational corporations arrange their finances. They are now perfectly able to choose in which country they want to invest, where their profits arise and, frankly, where to pay taxation.
The rules that I had to work with then, and many are still extant, are not fit for purpose as domestic tax regimes fail to interact globally, sometimes leaving gaps but sometimes doubling up. As a result, an enormous amount of legislation is being churned out to plug holes, which may work but frequently just creates other inequalities. For example, the aforementioned worldwide debt cap, which HMRC introduced some five years ago to limit the total tax deduction for interest that the UK part of a corporate group can claim as a fair deduction, has in fact produced an absolute bonanza—but only for the firms of accountants that have charged millions in fees trying to calculate this elusive proportion.
Accordingly, a wider holistic approach to this problem is needed. The UK has a track record in leading the way. Our approach to CFCs is regarded as the best in class worldwide. I welcome the Government’s decision to contribute a further €400,000 to the OECD to establish a global solution to these issues. This is important, as there is nothing so frustrating and annoying to hardworking entrepreneurs in the SMEs than the belief that a large multinational competitor is somehow avoiding paying its fair share of tax to the community from which it derives its income.
There are of course other organisations that benefit from a reduction in tax by the use of debt finance, whose activities are entirely based in the UK but whose use of offshore tax havens to shelter interest payments—and thus, of course, profits—may need further investigation.
I could comment much more on the report, particularly on my concerns over the regulation of tax advisers and the very good points made about the secondment of staff to HMRC, but my Whip, my noble friend Lady Jenkin, has given me excellent advice on many matters, particularly timing, for which I am grateful. So this time—it is the first and it may be the last—I will abide by her instructions and resume my seat, with thanks to her and to many others in this House.
Lord Hollick (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great privilege and pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, in his maiden speech. He is very welcome to this House. He and his family have been on the most interesting journey. His 30-year or so perspective on the tax matters that we have been looking at is most helpful. It is interesting that he was grappling with some of the same problems then, although there are also some new ones.
What struck me is that when the noble Lord said that tax arrangements were not fit for purpose, and he speaks with great authority, he used the expression that the UK was “leading the way”. One of the most disappointing things about the Government’s response is their failure to pluck up the courage to lead the way. This is something that as a country we rather hold our heads up high about and say that we believe we can find a way forward on these difficult matters, but unfortunately that has not been the response of the Government. I thank the noble Lord for his remarks.
I also thank our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, for leading us at a brisk pace through a complex area, and for coming up with some important and sharp points that need to be taken on board and considered at length by the Government; indeed, I hope that the House will remind them of the need to do that.
I declare my interests in several companies and partnerships, which are listed in the register of interests. As has been said, corporation tax makes an important contribution to public finances, accounting for between 9% and 10% of total tax receipts over the past decade. As we know, for the vast majority of companies—SMEs and companies that are based here—tax payment is a matter of routine: taxes are calculated, reviewed and audited, and payment is made. However, for many large companies, some based here but also some multinational companies headquartered elsewhere, the tax charge can be manipulated downwards—in some cases, near to vanishing point—to boost profits, to the great benefit of owners. This is because of the sheer complexity and asymmetry of tax laws here and in other countries.
These large companies therefore have the opportunity effectively to game the system. They are aided by a sizeable army of advisers—the big four accounting firms, top legal firms, specialist tax advisers and of course banks—all of which make a very grand living from providing that advice. Of course, many of those people also advise the Government and HMRC on the detailed framing and operation of tax regulations—tax regulations that they are then free to game when they return to the commercial world. It is a case of foxes having a free entry pass to the henhouse. The opportunity to play these games, as we heard, arises from the historic structure of corporation tax based on physical presence in one country, but this has been made redundant by globalisation and digitisation.
When I started in business in the City, tax planning used to fall into two categories: avoidance, which was legal, and evasion, which was not. Today there is a third category, aggressive avoidance, which amounts to a no-holds-barred exploitation of loopholes in national and international statutes. The activities may be contrary to the spirit of the law but they are, just, within it. The Prime Minister put it well when he said at the G8 that forms of aggressive tax avoidance,
“raise ethical issues and it’s time to call for more responsibility”,
from companies,
“and for governments to act accordingly”.
The stock defence for companies that engage in aggressive tax avoidance is that they have a duty to their shareholders to maximise their profits. Farrer, the firm of lawyers, based on opinion from leading counsel, recently published an opinion that said:
“It is not possible to construe a director’s duty to promote the success of the company as constituting a positive duty to avoid tax”,
so that defence falls away. When the Chancellor hailed the G20 communiqué that stated:
“Cross-border tax evasion and avoidance undermine our public finances and our people’s trust in the fairness of the tax system”,
he put his finger on the uncomfortable truth that while most companies and individuals are expected to pay their fair share of tax and are vigorously pursued if they do not, large companies with deep pockets to fund the defence of their tax arrangements are treated quite differently. This is the case with Goldman Sachs and Cadbury—and, I am sure, many others that we do not know about—which are able to negotiate an advantageous settlement that rarely sees the light of day. A tax system that is mandatory for all but the very biggest, for whom it is voluntary, is grossly unfair and, as many noble Lords have said, undermines the trust and sense of responsibility that are essential to the proper functioning of the tax system.
Many witnesses confirmed what business leaders say in private and sometimes in public: that the panoply of schemes to shift profits abroad, and to load up companies with debt, enables them to choose the tax charge that they wish to pay, safe in the knowledge that HMRC will not pursue them. In HMRC’s eyes, legal form triumphs over substance, so a business that earns a substantial economic rent in the UK can divide up its activities—such as purchasing, marketing, brand ownership and financing—into different corporate entities located in different countries, to take advantage of the low tax rates in those countries.
This structure completely defies the way the business is actually run. Nevertheless, it is accepted by HMRC. Google has been referenced. Interestingly, the group profit margin of Google is 22.5%. Assuming that the UK, which is one of its largest markets, would achieve the same margin on a turnover last year of £3.5 billion, it would make a profit of just short of £800 million, on which nearly £200 million of corporation tax would be paid. This compares with the £11 million that was actually paid. That is the scale. As my noble friend Lord Browne mentioned, the tax gap does not include any of this. It is a very difficult number to put your finger on but in one company, Google, that is probably the scale of tax avoidance. Eric Schmidt, the Google chairman, pointed out that Google is only following the rules and it is for the Government to determine the rules, and when they do the companies will respond accordingly. He has a point: it is the Government’s responsibility.
Cadbury, which was investigated in a most illuminating article in the FT recently, appears to have strayed a very long way from its founding Quaker principles. Its tax planning was so aggressive that it decided that a couple of schemes were so likely to raise a red flag that it stopped them after 11 months. Therefore, by the time the year-end came around Cadbury did not have to be audited. However, in the 11 months it had spirited away £30 million of profit. I would be interested to hear from the Minister on this point whether HMRC is now looking at intra-year schemes which might not appear on the books but generate considerable savings. I appreciate that he may wish to write to me on that point.
In response, the Government state that they support the principle that profits and taxing rights shall be linked with economic activities, but to achieve this we need better rules. Indeed, the OECD work is important but, as the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, colourfully described, it makes very slow progress and getting multilateral agreement will be particularly difficult. EU agreement might be easier and it would be interesting to know from the Minister whether the Government are prioritising the co-ordination of rules within the EU to reduce manipulation. Many of the schemes we heard about were in fact EU-based.
Of course, there is scope for unilateral action. In his evidence, Professor Picciotto said that,
“it is inappropriate to treat firms which are economically integrated and centrally directed”—
most of the companies we have mentioned today are—
“as if they were a collection of independent entities”.
He claimed that there was discretion under the existing transfer pricing rules of the OECD for countries to take a dim view of this and to say, “That’s not right, it doesn’t work, it’s a sham”. We should have the courage to look into that because the way these companies are reporting for tax purposes is a complete nonsense. It is a complete fiction.
The Government say—and previous Governments have made the same point—that they do not want to frighten away large companies or do anything to upset them. To be fair, as the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, said, it is important that we have a welcome mat but we do not have to lie down and be run over. Large companies such as Google, Amazon, Starbucks and Apple are not going to leave the UK, which is a major market for them, where they make a great deal of money, simply because we require them to pay the right level of tax. It is important that the Government summon up the courage to close the door on these tax avoidance schemes. Yes, as the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, said, we must be clear and consistent about it, but we must also be disciplined if we are to have a fair system. That will actually help competition because it will create a level playing field with international companies having to pay the same level of tax in the UK as the currently disadvantaged UK-based companies. Perhaps a corporation tax system that requires all companies in the UK to pay, in the PM’s words, a “fair rate of tax” will significantly boost revenues and open the door to far greater reductions in corporation tax. A wider net will raise more money, help the Exchequer and allow corporation tax rates for large and smaller companies to come down substantially below the levels that are currently planned.
Yes, these measures will threaten Luxembourg’s remarkable position as the largest coffee exporter in the world and outlaw such mouthfuls as the Dutch sandwich and the Irish double dip but, frankly, these are all based on fictitious accounting and so we should shed no tears. Will the Minister confirm that the Government will look again at the discretionary measures available to them under OECD guidelines?
Mention has been made about high levels of debt. Having worked in the City and in private equity I am very familiar with the benefits and, occasionally, the disadvantages of high levels of debt. Because of the asymmetry between the tax treatment of debt and of equity as the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, and others have pointed out, the incentive is to pile on more debt. That needs to be looked at but the arrangements at the moment mean that debt can be raised to finance foreign activities and to shift profits out of the UK. The Government and HMRC need to look closely at what is going on here.
The noble Lord, Lord Smith of Clifton, mentioned the Eurobond scandal. This rather curious loophole costs the UK some £500 million a year. Yet the Government, having consulted 30-odd people in the City—the usual suspects—decided not to score. They were in front of an open goal with £500 million as the prize. For the Government to claim, as they do in this response, that they are protecting the UK Exchequer from aggressive loan financing is palpably absurd. As the Prime Minister said, it is really time for them—he did not say “them” but I will—to wake up and smell the coffee. This is now a rampant activity, which is losing the Exchequer a great deal of money.
Informed discussion of the tax system and the performance of HMRC is bedevilled by opaqueness. The Prime Minister put it in a nutshell in Davos in January this year when he said:
“We need more transparency on how governments and, yes, companies operate”.
He prefigured our report. His words have been ignored by the Treasury, whose refusal to embrace transparency for companies and to produce effective parliamentary oversight of HMRC smacks of arrogance and complacency. Without specific details of aggressive tax manipulation schemes, it is impossible for Parliament and the public to comment sensibly on the massive tax leakage the UK is suffering. It is helpful that the newspapers have been able to shed light on this but it should be a matter of public record.
In response to the report’s call for parliamentary oversight, the Government trumpet the appointment of the Tax Assurance Commissioner. Now, he is an HMRC insider. He is marking his own homework and doing his own scorecard. Perhaps the Minister can help us here. Why was this not set up as an independent body answerable to Parliament? It would have more credibility and give more comfort to taxpayers. The response also says that the National Audit Office has full access to HMRC. That is a good thing but how much detailed oversight does the National Audit Office actually take of the workings of HMRC? Can the Minister tell us what resources are deployed by the National Audit Office to oversee HMRC’s performance? How many investigations have been carried out annually over the past decade?
That the Treasury’s response to our report is supine is perhaps not wholly surprising. Our recommendation that the Treasury should review a range of radical tax proposals and promote a more assertive approach to profit manipulation probably falls into the “Too difficult, don’t bother me with that” category. Transparency and effective parliamentary oversight would put the performance of the Treasury and HMRC in the spotlight, which might prove to be uncomfortable. The Treasury and the Government are beguiled by those smart folk in the City and large companies, and do not want to disturb a cosy relationship. Of course, ignoring or sidelining the wishes of the Prime Minister, which have been very clearly set out, is a long-established Treasury pastime.
Lord Bilimoria (CB)
My Lords, I declare my various interests in this area. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, on initiating the debate. I also congratulate my friend the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, on his excellent maiden speech. He is a fellow chartered accountant and we have known each other for many years. As he humbly said in his speech, he is also a fellow entrepreneur and a successful one at that. I read a book by a Wharton professor about givers and takers: in life you have givers, takers and matchers. It is not necessarily the case that the givers will get further in life, but when they do get there they always get there in a much better way and have a more sustainable, happier future. The noble Lord, Lord Leigh, is a giver. He has given to this House today his expertise as an entrepreneur, as an expert in corporate finance and as a chartered accountant. We welcome him here.
The noble Lord, Lord MacGregor started with the complexity of the UK tax regime. He spoke about multinationals and the infamous example of Starbucks which, from 2006 to 2011, had UK revenues of $18 billion yet paid UK corporation tax of only $16 million. As the noble Lord said, there is a serious issue of avoidance. The Select Committee on Economic Affairs—I am proud to have been a member of the Finance Bill sub-committee every year—has produced a thorough report, Tackling Corporate Tax Avoidance in a Global Economy: Is a New Approach Needed? The report says right up front that the present system is not working and urgently needs reform. It says that it is confident that the Treasury will bear this in mind as it conducts its proposed review. However, we have heard that the Government have not really listened to the report, and will not be taking much of it into account.
The report highlights that UK corporation tax, having come down to 20%, is the lowest in the G20. The German rate is 29%, France’s is 33% and the United States’s is 40%. This is wonderful news. On the other hand, the report also highlights something which is not understood by the public: a significant feature of the UK’s corporation tax regime is the low rate of allowances for capital spending. Our regime does not encourage investment. In fact, within the OECD and the G20 countries, only one country, Chile, has a less generous allowance than the UK. We must look at this as a whole.
The other major point which has not yet been highlighted in today’s debate is how much corporation tax yields as a percentage of GDP. Again, the report lays this out clearly in a table comparing us with other countries such as France, Germany and the United States. Our UK share of corporation tax receipts has held up pretty well in spite of falling headline rates. As a percentage of GDP, in 2005 corporation tax was 3.2%; today it is 2.7% in spite of rates having fallen. The nub of it all is that, of the contribution by tax to total HMRC receipts, corporation tax stands out in that it is only 8.7%. It is dwarfed by income tax at 32.2%. National insurance contributions constitute 21.8% and VAT constitutes 21.4%. This clearly shows that, yes, everyone is getting upset about corporation tax not being paid by certain companies, but are people talking about all the other taxes that these companies are generating, predominantly through creating employment? Employment generates a far greater proportion of taxes than corporation tax. We are not quite getting the context of and perspective on this. I will come back to that point at the end of my speech.
In fact, 81% of UK corporation tax is paid by the top 1% of companies. Here we are getting upset about 1% of companies; 99%—SMEs have been mentioned—are paying the full rate of corporation tax in many cases. We are losing a sense of perspective. The report says:
“In total, PwC say that Hundred Group members contributed around £8 billion in corporation tax in 2012 and a further £16.8 billion in other taxes borne”.
A multinational company is not taxed as a single entity but as a number of legally distinct, individual companies all over the world. The present tax system around the world encourages multinationals to move their profits around the world. That is the reality. We are trying to stop that. The report recommends ways of stopping it. When I was on the sub-committee for the previous Finance Bill, we focused on the GAAR. As the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, said, when he came up in the business world he was taught the distinction between evasion and avoidance. To a chartered accountant it is very simple: evasion is illegal; avoidance is allowed. Now we are going one step further and saying “abuse” as well. However, it is clear that the GAAR will not catch everything. It is narrowly focused. It will not, for example, catch the Starbucks situation at all. That needs to be communicated. I am glad that the Government have listened and that the GAAR will be communicated to the public.
I am proud to be a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. The report says:
“The ICAEW offers advice to its members that appears to go well beyond the Code of Conduct. It states, for example, that ‘Although tax avoidance may be legal, whether something is within the law isn’t the only thing that matters. You are under a duty to take into consideration the public interest and at all times to comply with ICAEW’s Code of Ethics … The boundary between legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion is not always clear and there’s a danger that what starts out as legal tax avoidance may slip into illegal tax evasion’”.
Who is competent to catch all of this? The noble Lord, Lord Lawson, raised the point of the structure of HMRC, this merged entity. Is it fit to deal with this? What about the relationship between the Treasury and HMRC? A lot of the policy is formed in the Treasury and HMRC is meant to execute it. Can the Treasury make this policy properly?
Then there is the question of reputation. In my business, our most valuable asset is our brand. The threat of naming and shaming companies is serious. We, as companies, are all very concerned about our brands. Much more can be done in this area by naming and shaming companies.
The Government actively promoting the implementation of the G8 proposals on the movement of funds between companies is very good. We need to continue to do this. Again, however, it will not solve everything. A unitary tax system, treating multinational companies as single entities in the global economy, is attractive in theory, as the report says, but is quite frankly utopian. In practice, we cannot even get the EU to agree on corporation tax rates. How on earth are we going to get the whole world to agree on something? We have to realistic and practical about this.
The setting up of a Joint Committee to supervise and oversee this matter is a great idea. The expertise of the House of Lords in this area is far greater than the expertise in the other place. This expertise is used in the Finance Bill sub-committee. If it could be used on a permanent basis, that would be great. Will the Minister consider forming such a committee to oversee the issue on a general basis? I think that the confidentiality argument is absolute nonsense, as was said by noble Lords earlier.
I now come to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, which I thought were excellent. He hit the nail on the head. He said that corporation tax in the modern world is inequitable between multinationals and SMEs and that, in the way it is structured at the moment, it has had its day. He has summed it up. The noble Lord, Lord Browne, talked about a tax gap of £32 billion and said that the tax gap is going up. I want to refer to a friend of mine, Vindi Banga, who is a former head of Unilever in India and was then on the main board of Unilever here in the UK—companies do not get more multinational than Unilever. He wrote an excellent article earlier this year in the Telegraph, headed, “Tax compliance should be judged by rules and not morals”. This was when the Starbucks issue was at its height, when it was being bashed by politicians—the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, referred to this. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, said:
“Companies must wake up and smell the coffee”.
One cannot get more specific than that. Vindi Banga then talked about IP royalties; the way companies move profits around the world, perfectly legally. One way, of course, is to charge royalties from where the IP is headquartered. Let us say that the IP is headquartered in a country outside the UK; royalties are charged and paid, reducing the tax here in the UK. However, what we overlook is that the UK is also a recipient of royalties and we encourage IP. We encourage the innovation of IP, the generating of IP and the holding of IP. In net receipt terms, the UK receives more royalty income than we pay out. So it will go against us if we stop that in trying to address tax evasion.
The other point that Vindi Banga made—this is my main point—is that our tax system has to be competitive because we, as companies, operate in a really competitive environment. In fact, while evasion is immoral, avoidance, if it is legal, is a duty: companies almost have a duty to try to pay as little tax as possible in order to be as competitive as possible and to survive and compete in the global environment. However, there is something that could and should be done. Could the Government bring in even more regulation for companies to disclose all the tax that they are paying in one simple table? Every company would disclose how much it generates as a result of its operations in terms of PAYE paid, employer national insurance paid, employee national insurance paid, VAT collected as a result of sales, and corporation tax. In my company’s case, there would also be the excise duty generated as a result of the company’s existence. That would put into perspective how much tax a company is generating.
The noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, made a very valid point about the legislation that exists because our tax code is so complex. In spite of all the efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, we still have such a complex tax system and legislation is constantly plugging holes. The noble Lord, Lord Leigh, said, very correctly, that it is not fit for purpose and that we must continue to try for a global solution. He spoke very clearly about SMEs, which are paying too much tax, in relative terms, unfairly. As a country, we do not have a competitive tax regime overall. Our corporation tax rate may be one of the lowest, but our capital allowances, on the other hand, are not good enough and our top rate of income tax, at 45%, is still very high. The overall tax burden on the consumer and on companies is actually very high. Do the Government have the guts to address the overall situation?
I conclude by getting to the crux of all this, which is that we should not really be focusing on corporation tax, although we must address that. My dream is for us to have a simpler, fairer tax system that is competitive, attracts investment and promotes spending, saving and growth.
Lord Brennan (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, on a maiden speech of elegance and economy. It is a remarkable example for his fellow accountants. I also commend the Economic Affairs Committee on the high quality of this report. It applies clarity to the complex and gives its recommendations succinctly and to the point. It should be required reading—where necessary, rereading—for those in government dealing with financial affairs who are given to policy complacency or the intellectually superficial. I declare an interest as chairman of Global Financial Integrity, a Washington think tank working on tax issues and illicit cash flows. It works with several Governments in a task force dealing with tax reforms. Its work informs much of what I am about to say.
I want to deal in particular with the international aspect of corporate tax reform. It was described by the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, echoing the Government, as a topic of key importance. So, what can be done internationally that will prevent our country losing its competitive advantage and yet achieve a more stable and just tax regime? We want to achieve as level an international playing field as possible. The importance of this topic was recognised this year by the G8, by the OECD it its initial report of February and its action plan of July, and by the G20 in calling for action in Mexico last year and in Moscow this year, endorsing the OECD action plan. What does the OECD say needs to be done? There are five principal points. The first is transparency: that is obvious. The second is evidence of beneficial ownership. Who actually owns which companies in which jurisdictions and how are they interconnected? The third is the automatic transfer of tax information. This already applies to the three NAFTA countries, applying to individuals and companies. It is a three-country market of 450 million people and hundreds of thousands of companies. It can be done: it is being done. The fourth and fifth are two interrelated topics: country-by-country reporting and transfer pricing.
The OECD, in its 15-point action plan—four points of which, as a matter of interest, refer to transfer pricing—says that country-by-country reporting and transfer pricing are an essential element in tax fairness across countries. The G8 agrees that this is essential. The OECD is neither amateur nor academic. It has a tax database and a tax policy centre and it is used to reporting on, and seeking to implement, tax reform. I quote from its report on transfer documentation practices, paragraph 71—a sentence that is tediously long but important:
“It seems possible for businesses to provide without undue burden individual country data based on either management accounts, consolidating income statements and balance sheets, and/or tax returns that would provide tax administrators with a general sense as to how their global income is allocated and where pressure points in the transfer pricing arrangements might lie”.
As far as I am aware, no one in the year or two since that was published has produced a plausible argument against its practicability.
Quoting these two issues in its action plan of July, the OECD promised an urgent response. That response was given 10 days ago, on 17 October. It precedes a consultation meeting in Paris in mid-November on country-by-country reporting and transfer pricing. By this rapid interim report it anticipates a set of rules to be developed that will include a requirement that multinational companies provide all relevant Governments with necessary information on their global allocation of income, economic activity and taxes paid in the relevant countries, according to a common template. That has been produced in three months. It requires a consultation response, including from our Government, by mid-November. Action is sought, and expected. Despite the understandable concerns of those in this House about the difficulty of obtaining international co-operation, the OECD reminds us all that the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and the Publish What You Pay initiative have both been put into practice by Governments and international energy companies. It can work and it is working. There is no reason why the OECD recommendations should not be accepted in the next month or two on these topics. However, we need to make more significant progress.
The Government and other interested bodies have to push the OECD. It is an important institution, and I praised it. However, Professor Picciotto, a witness to the committee, laments at paragraph 32 of its report some of the OECD’s past waywardness after it had made a good start. Indeed, he complains about the transfer pricing initiatives that it took, saying:
“Regrettably, the OECD officials have been allowed to go their own way, free from any parliamentary scrutiny, and develop the increasingly complex and inappropriate Guidelines”.
So they give the initiative, but the Governments ensure that they are quickly and practically produced for action.
We must next press the accounting profession. The International Accounting Standards Board is responsible for the creation of modern accounting standards, expressed in the international financial reporting standards —the IFRS. As far as I know, at present the standards board has no programme of any action in response to the OECD plan, and neither is any draft work being done on how the IFRS might have to be changed to meet the recommendations with which I have been dealing. Therefore, although Governments call for action, which requires accounting procedures to be in place, they have no oversight over the body responsible for creating them, nor on the profession that will implement them. That surely must be dealt with. We cannot have a two-year programme from the OECD and then a further lamentable year or two—or more—of introducing accountancy standards. A competent accountancy profession can produce a draft along with the OECD proposals.
Surely the third and last point is that this has to be kept in front of the public. It is a matter of serious public concern. We ordinary people pay taxes; why should these giants escape? It is simply not fair, and the public will not forgive politicians or Governments who forget that. It is important to note, to echo the words of Prime Minister David Cameron, that this is an issue whose time has come. I hope that the Government, Parliament and those responsible for these changes will not find themselves left behind.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market, for chairing our committee and for leading so effectively this speedy but very important inquiry. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, on his excellent maiden speech.
The days are long gone when tax collectors could stand at the gates of towns and cities and levy tax in cash on goods brought in for sale. They could raise taxation successfully by that means because there was a clear border and goods were visible. As we have heard, HMRC estimates our loss of tax today through avoidance, evasion and non-payment at £35 billion, which begs the question of how it knows. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that the figure is a great deal higher than that, as we heard earlier in the debate.
I remind the Minister that the coalition agreement of 2010 stated:
“The parties agree that tackling tax avoidance is essential for the new government, and that all efforts will be made to do so”.
Therefore it is reasonable for the Government to assess what has been achieved. Our report poses the question: “Is a new approach needed to tackle corporate tax avoidance in a global economy?”. The answer is, “Without a doubt”. The general public certainly agree, because they see it as an issue of fairness. Perhaps, therefore, the Government’s response to this report should have been a bit warmer. As the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Clifton, explained, that response can be construed in the verbs used. I will add one verb to his list of “agrees”, “notes” and “disagrees”. The Government “welcome” what we say just once.
The constant use of the word “notes” seems odd when the word “agrees” would be absolutely justified. For example, paragraph 138 of our report says:
“Corporation tax is a significant component of HMRC’s portfolio of taxes and makes an important contribution to the UK’s total tax revenue”.
That is self-evidently true, but rather than say that they agree, the Government in their response simply “note” what we have to say. I am puzzled as to why this should be. It seems to relate to the fact that the Government agreed at G8 that work to minimise avoidance is an international matter and that we should therefore await the progress of the OECD. It implies that there is little that the Government can do on their own. However, as we have heard, is this true? It is not.
Our report says in Chapter 1:
“It is primarily for the Government to correct the flaws in the UK’s corporation tax regime and to pursue agreement to make the international tax framework more rigorous”.
There is no doubt that following the G8 decision the latter is starting to be done. G8 and G20 countries have realised that something must be done about international rules which allow multinationals to shift profits across borders to avoid tax. Governments get less money, other taxpayers are short-changed, and the general public rightly wonder how this can be fair and what their Government will do about it.
I accept entirely that multinational solutions are needed and I welcome the OECD initiative. However, I have concluded that the Government must do more themselves to correct flaws in our corporation tax structure. Indeed, they have made 33 changes to tax law and are investing more resources in HMRC, which should repay that investment. That is welcome. However, the public expect that HMRC will be properly resourced to reduce the large amount of tax being lost. I hope that the Minister in his reply will be able to confirm that it will be resourced in the way we need.
In response to paragraph 141 of our report, the Government confirm that:
“Paying Corporation Tax is not voluntary; it is an obligation”.
Indeed it is. But if it is an obligation, will the Minister confirm whether it is true that a British multinational company can take out a loan in the UK, count it against its tax liability, and then place it in a finance company in a tax haven, which can then lend the money on to another company elsewhere in the world? If so, what if that company lent via a tax haven to a sister company? Would tax be saved twice—in the UK because the money is borrowed, and in the receiving country because it is borrowed there, too? Can the Minister tell the House how extensive this practice is thought to be, and what action HMRC is taking to block the loophole? I understand that many other countries are now doing that. Surely the UK should not encourage offshore tax havens at a financial loss to our own taxpayers.
We said in our report:
“As things stand, there are too many opportunities for multinational companies to manipulate their affairs to reduce their global tax payments”.
We also said that,
“ways are open, especially for multinationals, to shift profits between countries so as to reduce their overall tax liabilities, and to make UK corporation tax to a considerable extent voluntary for multinationals”.
Surprisingly, in response to paragraph 141 the Government have simply noted our comments saying, first, that corporation tax is not voluntary—when for some multinationals it clearly can be voluntary—and, secondly, that HMRC is to,
“step up its fight against those multinationals that do not pay their tax in accordance with the law”.
But not paying according to the law is tax evasion. Tax avoidance is about devising ways to get round the law. We have ended up with multinational companies able to avoid corporation tax and national companies unable to do so.
We refer in our report to the “tax avoidance industry”—and I think we are justified in talking about an industry because, from the evidence we received, there is clearly an industry at work. There is now little public trust in the corporate tax system and, as we have heard, it has become potentially very damaging to our democratic processes. So, why is there to be no Treasury review? Why is there no publication of corporation tax paid? Why is there to be no regulation of tax advisers? Why is there a refusal to review all statutory measures available to HMRC to combat tax avoidance, even aggressive tax avoidance? Why is there to be no Joint Committee?
As we have heard, developing countries are some of the worst affected by profit shifting. Christian Aid claims that developing countries lose more revenues as a result of tax avoidance and evasion than they receive in aid. That means that while we are delivering the 0.7% target through the front door, a bigger sum is seemingly going out of the back door. The problems of developing countries are implicit in our report, but perhaps we should ensure that as the OECD, the G8 and the G20 lead reform, developing countries get involved and that due account is taken of their needs. Effective tax collection is vital if poor countries are to reduce their dependency on aid.
Will the Minister comment on the practice of trade mispricing, in which multinational companies can reduce the amount of tax they pay in a developing country by buying raw materials at below market rate and reselling them on the international market at a much higher rate? For example, Christian Aid estimates that if Zambia had received the same price for its copper exports in 2010 as Switzerland did for selling on the copper, Zambia could have doubled its GDP. There is a remedy: international guidance prices, at which I hope the OECD will look closely.
I ask the Minister two things in respect of developing countries. Following the G8 declaration, what support are the Government providing bilaterally, and through the OECD and G20, to ensure that developing countries have a say in the renegotiation of global tax rules? Secondly, what other steps are the Government taking to ensure that the UK’s own tax rules do not allow or encourage any multinational enterprises to reduce overall taxes paid by artificially shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions? The general public think that tax should be paid where the profit is made. The problem is not going to go away. The mispricing of transactions, and the mislocation of the profits of economic activity into a tax haven to avoid tax, have become a very big political issue.
In conclusion, I ask: are the Government doing all they can? It has been reported that last year, for example, HMRC investigated only 1,000 out of 250,000 reports of transactions that were thought to deserve further inquiry. As we have heard, the Government must lead by example. I agree entirely, and I hope that, in summing up, the Minister will be able to confirm that we will do just that.
Lord Lipsey (Lab)
My Lords, as a member of the committee, it would not be seemly for me to blow its trumpet—although I do not mind giving a toot or two for our chairman, who did such an admirable job. The report was generally welcomed as a very balanced one. We did not accept the proposition put to us by many of our witnesses that all was for the best in this best of all corporate tax worlds—a suggestion that many of us ascribed to the fact that many of them made their money advising on precisely that system. But nor did we side with Richard Murphy and the Tax Justice Network, with their ambitious plans to milk the corporates.
It was a balanced report, and it went down well—except with Her Majesty’s Government. I have rarely read a more dismissive—and, I am afraid, at points arrogant—response to a Select Committee report. “No, we won’t review corporate taxation. What a silly idea”, “No, we won’t look at tax relief on interest”, “No, we won’t register tax advisers”, “No, we won’t penalise those caught under GAAR”.
I once wrote a book on the Treasury—little read today, I am afraid—and I am generally a supporter of it in all the difficult jobs it does, warts and all. But this response is a very big wart. What explains the tone of the response? The answer is simple. The clue is on page 2, where the Government say that they are taking action,
“first, to make the UK tax system more competitive … second, to clamp down on tax avoidance … and third, to drive forward reform of the international tax framework”.
I can paraphrase that as follows: “We would quite like less tax avoidance. However, if we do anything to get it, we shall put firms off locating in Britain, where we want them. So the best thing is to minimise national measures. We’ll have to do a few things to pacify the pop newspapers and Margaret Hodge, but meanwhile we’ll concentrate on international measures”. The result of that is that the Starbucks, the Amazons, the Googles and the food companies exposed by the Independent can laugh at us.
With this excessive tolerance we are encouraging an international race to the bottom. Corporation tax rates worldwide are falling. If others think like us they will act like us, and corporate tax will soon be a thing of the past. The noble Lord, Lord Lawson, would welcome that, as he said—and so might I, so long as it was replaced by something equally lucrative to the Exchequer, and preferably more, rather than less, progressive.
The “do nothing nationally” approach enshrined in the response is extended by the Government to measures that would not in any way affect the international competitiveness of our tax system. For example, the report canvasses a proposal for a register of tax advisers, which might facilitate action being taken against those who give egregious advice to their clients, and an accompanying code of conduct. The Treasury does not explain why it rejects this; that would be too much bother, I think. It just says that the Government,
“does not regulate the tax profession”,
as if their failure to do what the committee recommended was a decisive argument against doing so. Honestly, whether or not noble Lords share my view of the committee’s report, it deserves better than this. This is not the response of a Government who are seriously concerned to do anything about corporate tax avoidance and evasion. I hope that this complacency will not be repeated by the Minister in his reply this evening.
Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)
My Lords, I have read the report and congratulate the committee on the excellent work it has done and the judicious way in which it has presented its arguments. The chairman of the committee who introduced the report today—the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor—continued that pattern in identifying the committee’s arguments. He indicated that the Government had not responded constructively to an issue which the committee clearly recognises is one that exercises the public and is of considerable immediate importance. The chairman’s judicious and careful presentation was somewhat submerged in the subsequent debate in which noble Lords forcefully expressed the view that the Government’s response was utterly inadequate. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, called the response lamentable. Other noble Lords have indicated that the response goes beyond complacency and is not worthy of a government response to a Select Committee report.
I will comment on several of the speeches made in the debate but it also falls to me to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, on his maiden speech, in which he expressed himself with great precision. However, he also did something which is quite exceptional in this House in that he apologised for speaking briefly. He will not encounter brevity too often and he will never find it accompanied by an apology except on this occasion. However, we are grateful to the noble Lord for the points he made.
My noble friend Lord McFall wasted no time in identifying the context in which the report was presented. The committee feels very hard done by in terms of the Government’s response given the serious level of public discontent about corporation tax that has manifested itself over the past 18 months. The public outcry was sufficient for Starbucks to decide that it merited a gesture on its part in the form of making a contribution to the Revenue. My noble friend said that the public felt there was a breakdown of the national contract. That may not be putting it too high. After all, everyone knows that in this time of great austerity and difficulty, when wages have not increased over the past 10 years, people are paying their taxes, as they are obliged to do, and they find it scandalous that some large organisations can treat corporation tax almost as a voluntary levy to which they pay mere lip service. That is why the Government’s response ought to be much more positive.
We have encountered many difficulties with regard to these issues. My noble friend Lord Browne referred to the scale of the tax gap and asked whether that gap was increasing or decreasing. There are clear reports that in the last recorded year the gap was £34 billion, and that it has gone up £1 billion since then. However, as my noble friend indicated, it is very difficult to put the basis on which these figures are presented into clear perspective. That is why it has been constantly argued throughout the debate that the first thing we need is transparency on the part of companies and the second is accountability on the part of HMRC. We all know what the Government’s response was to the question of accountability. The committee stated:
“The threat of naming and shaming represents a reputational risk to companies; and may therefore have the effect of encouraging boards to make sure that the companies they run are not using inappropriately aggressive tax avoidance strategies”.
The Government’s response is that the Government are subject to taxpayer confidentiality rules that protect the tax affairs of all taxpayers. In other words, there is to be no advance in that area, or on the committee’s constructive recommendation that there should be parliamentary scrutiny not dissimilar to that which obtains with regard to the security services: that is, a parliamentary committee should be established to look at these issues on a confidential basis. However, the Government are, of course, utterly and totally dismissive of that proposal. This will not do. It certainly will not do against a background of a determination to make progress in this area at an international level, as my noble friend Lord Brennan indicated. Where is the UK to figure in this? The committee obviously hoped that we would be in the van of progress. The Government’s response makes them look as if they want to be as distant from such progress as they can possibly be.
The Minister has a significant task ahead of him in winding up the debate. I have not even reinforced the points which my noble friend Lord Hollick made about the successful use of eurobonds on the part of multinationals, and indeed on the part of some British companies which are not multinationals. Thames Water, which has approached the Government on the issue of a subsidy with regard to a big investment it wishes to make, is also reducing the tax it pays through the use of the eurobond device which my noble friend Lord Hollick identified. However, there seems to be no response whatever to that point.
Has corporation tax had its day, to use the colourful phrase of the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, who should know about these things? I do not know whether that is the case but it is certainly in need of considerable reform, as the committee identified. The Government’s response makes them look as though they regard those arguments as having being drafted on another planet and therefore are ones to which they have no need to make a coherent, consistent or constructive response. I hope that the Minister does rather better this evening.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to respond to this debate. I start by thanking the committee for its work and for the characteristically thoughtful way in which the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market, introduced the debate. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, on his maiden speech. I hope that his understanding of the advantage of brevity does not diminish with the passing of the years as, sadly, it sometimes does among other Members of your Lordships’ House. His speech was extremely thoughtful, in a House that prides itself on its expertise but which in fact has relatively few experts on financial affairs. Those we have are extremely distinguished. Compared to, say, debates on anti-social behaviour, in debates on any aspect of the economy or finances, we are pretty short on people with real current or past expertise, so I am doubly pleased to welcome the noble Lord to your Lordships’ House and look forward to taking part in many more debates with him.
I start with a confession. I am an alumnus of the lamentable side of Customs and Excise. I worked for a number of years in that part of Customs and Excise that provided tax policy advice to the Treasury at a time when it had virtually no tax officials of its own. Although things have changed, I like to think that we were at least able to match our colleagues in the Inland Revenue, with whom we had an extremely friendly rivalry at the time. I do not want to go into detail about the way in which tax policy is currently organised, but say simply that both departments have a clear remit. HMRC has a strong operational tax policy role, whereas the Treasury is responsible for strategic tax policy, but they work very closely together—literally as well as figuratively. When I worked in Customs and Excise my office was several miles away from the Treasury, which meant that even if I wanted to have a quick chat with somebody it was quite difficult. There is a common and regular movement of staff between HMRC and the Treasury, so there is quite a lot of joined-up working.
I shall deal with the complaint from all sides of the House that the Government are complacent about the issues. We are not complacent in respect of three aspects of the problem that we are facing. First, we accept and completely understand the level of public discontent. Secondly, we believe that that discontent is realistic and soundly based, and thirdly, we are dealing with a major problem. We are far from complacent about the need to do more. I hope to explain both what we are doing and why we will be doing more. One thing that I must say, having been a Treasury spokesman for the Liberal Democrats in your Lordships’ House for nearly 15 years, is that for the first part of that 15 years there was never any movement on the issues that we are talking about today. Pressure groups came year after year, asking why we were not doing this or that. Many of the things that we argued for to no avail for a decade have now been implemented, and a whole raft of other initiatives that have been started very recently have the ability to make fundamental improvements in how we deal with this problem. We are now in the middle of a rapidly moving series of national and international activities, which definitely goes in the direction that the committee wants, and I shall attempt to set that out.
I should perhaps state the blindingly obvious—that the Government’s view on corporation tax is that while we are keen to drive forward tax competitiveness, such a policy does not mean that we should be soft on tackling tax avoidance. We are determined to rebalance the tax regime to ensure that it supports growth and investment, and we want a corporate tax regime that improves our business environment, helps to attract multinational companies and encourages investment. That is why, alongside other reforms, we have reduced the headline rate of corporation tax. Having created a competitive tax regime, we expect companies to play by the rules and to pay the tax that is due. I completely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, that companies have wider duties than simply to minimise the amount of tax they pay. The Companies Act 2006 lays out clear directors’ duties as well as duties for the company as a whole in terms of having regard to the impact of its activities on society, which was a new and welcome initiative by the previous Government. It means that the two-dimensional view that anything that increases profit is good and anything else is bad is no longer acceptable and no longer recognised in law.
I shall deal with the question of whether corporation tax has had its day. Corporation tax at the moment raises 8.7% of HMRC revenue, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, pointed out. It is not as much as the top three but it is far above any other in that middle league. As I said earlier today, from a pragmatic point of view, a tax that raises 8.7% of revenue is one that should be made to work better but not, in my view, replaced. The Government have a credible record to date in dealing with companies avoiding tax. That has been demonstrated both through the legislative and operational changes we have made since 2010 and by HMRC’s success in litigating through the courts. The number of cases has not only dramatically increased manyfold; the proportion of cases heard in 2012-13 resulted in a more than 80% success rate for HMRC. So far, we have made 33 changes to tax laws to close down numerous avoidance loopholes.
As noble Lords mentioned, we have introduced the first general anti-abuse rule, which is designed to tackle abusive tax avoidance schemes and is a key part of our plans to drive down tax avoidance. Now that it is happening it is put to one side as though it is a little tick in the box, but we campaigned for years to get some movement on a general anti-avoidance law. At long last it has happened, and while I accept that, as the law beds in, we might over time want to strengthen it, it is a major shift for the better. We have updated the public procurement rules so that any potential government suppliers bidding for large contracts must now declare occasions of significant tax non-compliance. The noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, specifically asked me about this point. These rules were introduced on 1 April this year. It is not so much a case of naming and shaming suppliers who avoid tax but of suppliers disclosing occasions of significant non-compliance so that departments can have a number of remedies at their disposal, up to and including contract termination.
On top of our domestic action, we have taken a lead in the international field. Indeed, a lot of the debate today has been around the international initiative that is now being carried forward through the OECD. The noble Lord, Lord Lawson, said that the Government should accept that corporation tax was not fit for purpose. Indeed, that is why the Government have taken the lead in pressing for international action. A number of noble Lords said that it is about time the Government took a lead. They made it clear that in their chairmanship of the G8, tackling tax avoidance was their top priority. The OECD initiative has come about largely because this Government have taken an international lead. I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, that the OECD is a body that is capable of getting to grips with this. There is a key component that will be absolutely crucial in determining whether the good work that has started comes to a satisfactory conclusion, which is whether Governments keep their eye on the ball. If it is just left to the OECD and it is not being pressured by Governments to make quicker progress it will not.
We are seeing now a recognition, not just by this Government but by a number of Governments internationally, that they have to take firmer action and keep the pressure on. That is why we have agreed to fund the OECD to the tune of another €400,000, to make sure that it keeps up with the pace and produces what is an extremely ambitious work plan, and ensures that it has effect.
The noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, asked how that was going. The OECD has established 15 actions needed to deal with base erosion and profit-shifting, which include a specific task force to look into the tax challenges of the digital economy—what might be called the “Google and Apple Task Force”—and a review of transfer pricing rules, the “Starbucks Task Force”. This is being carried forward by a number of OECD working parties, which will report back next year and the following year.
Closer to home, as a number of noble Lords have said and as the committee pointed out, it is obviously key that HMRC is fit for purpose in tackling a very difficult issue and dealing with companies that have considerable resources at their disposal. That is why the Government are investing almost £1 billion over this spending review period, specifically to tackle tax avoidance and evasion and to reduce losses from fraud, error and debt. That will bring in an extra £9 billion a year by 2014-15.
The additional money is spent largely on people. There has been an increase in the number of graduate-level trainees and a significant increase in the amount of technical training inside the department, in part with the Association of Accounting Technicians and Manchester Metropolitan University. An increased number of people are working on transfer pricing, as the rules already allow us to deal with some aspects at least of egregious transfer pricing. That requires highly skilled people, and there are now more of them. As I said earlier today in your Lordships’ House, the Treasury will look at any request it receives from HMRC for additional resources in the run-up to the spending review.
We have also seen—and been actively participating in—a sea change in the way that tax information is exchanged between jurisdictions. Another major campaigning issue has been about the automatic disclosure of tax information between the UK and tax havens—between the UK and our Crown dependencies and overseas territories. That is now happening. Some have signed, while the others have agreed. That will make a huge difference to transparency, which a number of noble Lords mentioned and which we are keen to see promoted.
I will deal with a number of specific points, some from the committee and others raised de novo today. Staff are seconded from the big four to HMRC or the Treasury only when the Treasury or HMRC identifies a lack of expertise and knowledge. The number of people involved here is not huge. We believe that effective safeguards are in place to ensure that official information is treated confidentially. Although there is quite a lot of general talk about people going in and nicking lots of ideas from the Treasury and telling their clients about them when they get back to the private sector, I have yet to see any concrete evidence of that.
The noble Lords, Lord Lawson and Lord Hollick, talked about the rules on interest deductibility, which they felt were too generous. This is one of the areas being looked at currently by the OECD. A number of rules are already in place to limit how much interest a company can deduct from its tax liability, but I was rather depressed to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, quite how much of a bonanza that was proving for the professionals and tax experts.
On harmonising the treatment of debt and equity finance, I am afraid that I can only repeat what we have already said: we are reviewing the wider case for an allowance for corporate equity. Again, the challenge here is one of cost, because it would be very expensive to do it on a large scale. Would undertaking a comprehensive review of the operation of corporation tax add value at this point? As we are in the middle of the OECD process and of ramping up the number of people working in the area, we seem to have a process in place which, if successful, will meet the requirements of the committee. To have a major review of it in midstream would divert effort in the wrong direction.
A number of noble Lords raised the point about a joint committee. Perhaps this is because I was a taxman, but I personally find it extraordinary to think that we should be establishing a committee of politicians to review the way in which the tax authorities look at individual taxpayers’ concerns. If the Government had proposed it, there would have been absolute outrage. I believe that the way forward is for the NAO to undertake rigorous investigation in this area. If the Public Accounts Committee in another place feels that not enough resources are being devoted to it by the NAO, we hope it will discuss that with the NAO and we will get more resources devoted to it.
The increase in the tax gap from £34 billion to £35 billion, which the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, was very keen to hear about, was largely due to an increase in the VAT gap of 1.5%, caused by the rise in the standard rate of VAT from 17.5% to 20%. It had nothing to do with the issue that we are discussing today.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, asked a very specific question, which I will need to write to him about. In terms of what the Government are doing, bilaterally and through the OECD, to ensure that developing countries have a say in the renegotiation of global tax rules, we are, first, doing quite a lot with capacity-building via a joint HMRC-DfID programme, so that these countries are more capable of doing the job themselves. They are involved in various aspects of the task force work. A number of noble Lords raised the problem of mispricing. The extractive industry transparency initiative and the EU accounting directive now mean that there is a lot more country-by-country accounting in those areas and a lot more transparency, which will yield results over time.
The noble Lord, Lord Hollick, asked whether HMRC looks at intra-year tax avoidance schemes. Yes, it does. Corporation tax is calculated on the end of year accounts, and where a scheme to reduce taxable profits takes place during the year but has ended before the end of the year, HMRC will investigate. The DOTAS regime requires companies to disclose tax avoidance schemes when they are undertaken.
The noble Lord, Lord McFall, made a very powerful case about establishing a register for beneficial ownership. Such a register is being set up, and the case for making that public is currently under active consideration by Ministers. As I have always said, as a Leeds United fan, I would very much like to have known whether Ken Bates really did own Leeds United—that is the side of the argument on which my vote comes down.
I hope that I have gone some way to answering the points that have been made and reassured noble Lords that the Government are not in the slightest bit complacent. This is an area that we take extremely seriously and on which we will continue to focus.
Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market
My Lords, for a potentially dry and technical subject, we have had a lively and well informed debate. Of course, it is not a dry subject; it is a crucial one that is fundamental to the well-being of our citizens and our businesses.
We have had many excellent contributions from noble Lords this evening and I thank them all. I particularly thank my noble friend Lord Lawson for his overgenerous remarks about me. It has been hugely rewarding for me to have had so many opportunities to work with him over the years. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley on his maiden speech. He was modest in the length of his speech and temperate in his comments. But even in the short time he spoke, he demonstrated that he has wide expertise and knowledge, from which we will all expect to benefit in future.
It is also clear that the Government and the officials who drafted the response to our report gave too little thought to it. The Government gave the impression of complacency—that they are doing all that is required and reject all other recommendations for action. That approach means that they have not perhaps obtained enough credit for what they have been doing. The Minister certainly endeavoured strenuously to put that right in his response tonight.
I share very much the view of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, on the Treasury. Based on my experience, I thought that his book on the Treasury, which I have read comparatively recently, was good and very revealing. I hope that this debate has demonstrated that the Treasury will need to give much more serious consideration to some of our recommendations than it has done so far. Symptomatic, I think, was the terse rejection on false grounds of our recommendation of a parliamentary committee to oversee HMRC. The participants in this debate have demonstrated the expertise in the financial and commercial world that would make such a committee highly relevant.
Ours was a swift but intensely considered report. The debate tonight and the inadequacy of the Government’s written response have convinced me that it is a subject to which we will have to return.
Syria
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Coventry
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to address the humanitarian crisis caused by the ongoing conflict in Syria.
Lord Popat (Con)
My Lords, if Back-Benchers stick to eight minutes, we should be able to finish by 10 pm.
The Lord Bishop of Coventry
My Lords, despite the admirable diplomatic activity of recent weeks, the humanitarian costs of the ongoing conflict in Syria show no sign of abatement. As violence expands exponentially and cruelty abounds, no one can fail to be moved by the scale of the crisis, which is nothing short of a catastrophe.
This debate seeks neither to underestimate the efforts of Her Majesty’s Government to rise to the challenge of humanitarian support, nor to question their resolve to work towards a political resolution of the civil war. Rather, I hope that it will give an opportunity for your Lordships’ House to focus its expert attention on the humanitarian costs of the conflict and the humanitarian imperative of bringing the conflict to an end, and, in so doing, of checking that every stone is being turned in the cause of compassion and the pursuit of peace.
I am honoured that the noble Lord, Lord Bates, whose personal commitment to these issues is an inspiration to your Lordships’ House, will be replying on behalf of the Government. The Government are to be applauded for orchestrating the UK’s largest ever response to a humanitarian crisis. The United Kingdom is at the forefront of the humanitarian battle, leading others in the provision of strategic, targeted humanitarian aid. Such decisive, compassionate action is an important step towards healing the wounds of history that many of our past interventions in the Middle East have caused, which were powerfully explained by the noble Lord, Lord Bates, in a previous debate.
However, are we content that the humanitarian battle is being fought with the ferocity, skill, determination, sense of urgency and application of resource that are necessary in order to win this war on human suffering? I ask the Minister, therefore, for his views on how other Governments can be most effectively pressed to commit to the pledging conference that the United Nations Secretary-General has called in January 2014, and then to fully and speedily honour their commitments. Syria needs more than the current 50% return. The cost of the humanitarian aid to which we are committed is high, but it is a great deal lower than the cost of military intervention would have been.
Does the noble Lord agree that without more international generosity and a greater commitment to honour their promises of support, countries neighbouring Syria will be less inclined to keep their borders open? Indeed, I would welcome the noble Lord’s thoughts on what consideration has been given to the UK hosting or resettling a fair percentage of refugees to ease the pressure on Syria’s neighbouring countries, as requested by the UNHCR.
Returning to the January pledging conference, do Her Majesty’s Government accept that as well as increasing their funding commitments, donors must show greater flexibility and impose minimal bureaucratic restrictions on aid agencies, given the complexity of humanitarian operations inside Syria?
If you had one word for the British Government, what would it be? I put that question to a Lebanese humanitarian worker among Syrian refugees recently. His response was an impassioned call to invest—a word he used advisedly—our aid through locally based bodies whose scale and agility give them immediate access to need on the ground that makes them highly cost effective. It is a plea that I have heard from other agencies, several of them faith-based, which are doing remarkable work in Syria and surrounding countries.
I should like to pay tribute to those agencies that remain on the ground in Syria. I have just attended a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Rights which was addressed by members of the International Committee of the Red Cross. They spoke movingly about all sorts of subjects, including the kidnapping of three of their aid workers and the recent killing of more than 20 Red Crescent workers. Yet they are committed to remaining on the ground, engaged and seeking local solutions. It would be good to learn from the noble Lord what percentage of UK effort is directed to meeting emergency needs, and what percentage is earmarked for long-term humanitarian assistance.
The other impassioned word from the Lebanese humanitarian worker was that, without a comprehensive solution to the humanitarian situation in Syria, and to the conflict itself, the wider region will continue to deteriorate. The United Nations Security Council endorsement of Resolution 2118 of the Geneva Communiqué and the backing for a follow-up conference provides a much-needed consensus among the P5. Such impetus for a political solution is necessary to prevent the fossilisation of systems of aid into semi-permanent structures. We know, from that same region, that this can happen.
In the light of recent announcements from some elements of the Syrian opposition, it would be helpful to hear the views of the noble Lord on how the will for peace, upon which the success of Geneva II depends, can be engendered in the country itself. Securing a sustained and monitored cessation of hostilities in Syria, as set out in paragraph 5 of the original Geneva Communiqué, will not be easy. However, a ceasefire is essential to improve the humanitarian situation and to allow, at the very least, a short humanitarian pause in hostilities. Furthermore, surely a complete and immediate halt to arms and ammunition to Syria, as set out in paragraph 12 of the Geneva Communiqué, is another necessary component in the cause of peace. I would welcome the noble Lord’s reflections on steps that are being taken to halt the flow of arms into Syria.
The noble Lord is all too well aware that paragraph 5 of the Geneva Communiqué was given a renewed lease of life by the recent UN Security Council Presidential Statement. Parties to the conflict are still failing to uphold the basic obligation, under international humanitarian law, to facilitate the safe, unhindered passage of humanitarian convoys in areas under their control. In the light of the penetrating comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, in her United Nations capacity to the Security Council, it would be good to know the noble Lord’s views on progress towards implementing this provision and how it might be benchmarked.
At the meeting I have just come from, there was a very moving account from a British doctor who has just returned from Aleppo. He spoke about how access for humanitarian aid is absolutely critical. He asked: if it could be done for a weapons’ inspector, why could it not be done for an ambulance?
One issue sadly missing from the guiding principles of the Geneva Communiqué is any consideration of the wider refugee crisis and how the right of return will be provided for. This appears to be a glaring omission. Those displaced by the conflict need to be given a stake in Syria’s future. Perhaps the noble Lord will provide some insight into how this issue might be resolved.
In conclusion, if the existing humanitarian costs of this conflict are shamefully terrifying, the humanitarian costs of not reaching a political settlement at Geneva II would surely be intolerable for the moral conscience of the world. Even with a political solution, the scars of this conflict will take many generations to heal. It will require the continued generosity of the international community in a sustained and strategic humanitarian commitment. I hope that Her Majesty’s Government will continue to take a courageous lead and make this not the last business of a long day but the priority of every morning until the holy land of Syria is healed.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)
My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate for introducing this debate so ably and movingly. Like other debates on similar topics, I cannot help feeling slightly uncomfortable as we, so comfortably ensconced on these red Benches, appear to wring our hands and feel helpless in the face of the injustices being perpetrated on the innocent victims of this terrible war. How can we have any idea of what they are suffering and going through? How can we begin to put ourselves in their shoes? But, in the end, one of the privileges of being a Member of this House is to keep the topic both in our own minds and those of others who care about the tragedy unfolding in Syria, and I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for providing us with the opportunity to do so.
As a trustee of UNICEF UK, I have of course been briefed on a regular basis about its activities on the ground and I, too, pay tribute to it and to the other NGOs and agencies providing humanitarian aid in almost impossible circumstances. Operating any form of assistance in Syria is increasingly challenging, dangerous and highly complex. There is no security for aid workers and rising numbers of armed groups across the country will do little to improve stability or safety. Thousands of aid workers are risking their lives daily to reach those who are most in need. The pace of change in the conflict and the vast array of armed groups all threaten agencies attempting to provide aid. The safety of aid workers must be guaranteed if we are to effectively provide assistance to the people of Syria. The right reverend Prelate pointed out in his speech that we can take pride in the fact that Britain is leading the way in providing aid and assistance. We are the second largest bilateral donor and the £500 million earmarked by DfID for Syria will go a long way to alleviating the suffering of those on the ground, once effective aid routes are implemented and sufficiently protected.
There is so much suffering throughout Syria and in the neighbouring countries, but in the short time available, I wish to focus my remarks on the plight of women and the sexual violence, both in Syria and in the camps, which has tragically become a part of their daily lives. In January, an International Rescue Committee report surveyed Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan and identified rape,
“as the primary reason their families fled the country”.
As Erika Feller, the Assistant High Commissioner at the UNHCR, asserted:
“Syria is increasingly marked by rape and sexual violence employed as a weapon of war”,
to destroy,
“identity, dignity, and the social fabrics of families and communities”.
Alma is one woman who has dared to speak out about the horrors inflicted on women in Syria. She was a battalion commander in the Free Syrian Army from Damascus and was arrested by the Assad regime after attempting to intervene in an incident where a soldier was beating a 16 year-old boy. During her 38-day imprisonment Alma was whipped with a wire, strung up by her wrists and feet, and injected twice a day with a drug that made her feel high. She was gang-raped daily. The things she recalls the men saying as they allegedly raped her multiple times were so filthy that she is loath to repeat them, although she remembers them saying, “Here is the freedom you wanted”, which is a phrase similar to ones other women have reported hearing while being raped in Syria. She has recently received news that her husband, disgusted by the rape, has married a new wife, and her children have remained with him. Speaking out has been a decision she has made after many months of being told to stay quiet. “We have to share this with the entire world to show that women are fighters”, she says.
The reality is that the victims of sexual abuse have much to lose and little to gain from speaking out. It takes a lot of courage and strength for a victim to speak up and they may be on their own with little support as they do it. In addition to the shame and isolation a victim may feel, they now are living in an insecure environment due to the war. They may be in a large refugee camp with no privacy, surrounded by people they do not know or trust. If they tell someone, to whom and where does that information go? It may be hard to put their trust in a stranger when, time and again, there has been little justice for the victims of wartime rape. Added to that must be the physical, psychological and emotional trauma that victims are already suffering from the war and displacement. It is not surprising that they are reluctant to come forward.
However, there are others whose stories are beginning to come out. Now at a safe house in Turkey near the Syrian border, a 25 year-old Sunni woman spoke of how she was detained for more than eight months. Her first days in detention were largely spent without sleep and being relentlessly interrogated for information. She could hear the screams of fellow prisoners being beaten and was continually threatened with sexual violence. She was taken to a cell full of male prisoners in their underwear. Leering, the jailers told her that they would leave her alone with the prisoners, “to take care of her”. To a conservative young Sunni woman, this was unthinkable. She began to scream for them to let her out of the jail. “I thought I was being given to these men for them to rape me”, she said. “I think I screamed for three hours. They wanted to break me, and it worked. Finally I said, ‘Okay, I will tell you the truth’”. When speaking of the degradations she had experienced, she would not use the word “rape”. However, an NGO worker who had been looking after her confirmed that she had been subject to sexual abuse. “But she needs to rebuild her life, and you can imagine what rape means in Syria. She has said that she feels more than violated; she feels ruined”.
A recent UN Commission of Inquiry report on Syria cites five instances of women who committed suicide after being raped, so intense is the shame associated with the crime. The sheer misery of women who have been forced to flee their homes is difficult to convey, and once they have reached supposed safety across the border, the nightmare does not end. Along with the risk of maltreatment and food shortages, there are accusations that Turkish security forces have abused refugee girls and women. According to some Turkish media and news networks, since August 2012 some 400 Syrian women have been raped, with 250 of those rape cases resulting in pregnancy. Increasing numbers of women living as refugees report that they would rather return to their homes, under horrendous conditions, than remain at the risk of rape and sexual abuse in the camps. It is heartbreaking that these women flee their homes with their families seeking safety, only to exchange one place of violence for another.
I am proud that the UK, and our Foreign Secretary in particular, are leading the way in the global campaign against rape as a weapon of war. We should also be glad that so many countries have responded positively. In April in London, the G8 made a historic commitment to address this issue, and in June the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution bolstering the UN’s capabilities, but we need more than words.
Every one of the stories which I have used, and thousands I have not, is a human tragedy. I welcome the commitment by the Secretary of State for DfID to ensuring that vulnerable girls and women in refugee camps have safe access to facilities such as toilets and washing areas, and her commitment to helping tens of thousands of survivors of sexual violence across the region with clinical care and case management, mental health services and financial support. However, we need other donor countries to join us in stepping up and co-ordinating support for refugees. The terrible experiences of these women underline the need to find a political solution to bring this conflict to an end.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin of Kennington, for that quite remarkable speech. She vividly brought the plight of women in Syria to our attention. I also join her in thanking the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry for introducing the debate with such clarity, and indeed such conviction.
The conflict in Syria has obviously had a huge impact on the politics of the whole of the Middle East region, and of course it has divided opinion across the world. The deepening sectarian divisions in Syria and the countries around it, the role of Iran in supporting the Assad regime, and the respective roles of Russia and the United States in attempting to find a way forward to stop the fighting and the use of chemical weapons are issues all very well known to us.
The outlook is grim. Only this week United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi was told by Bashar al-Assad that the civil war in Syria would end only if foreign powers ended their support for those trying to overthrow him. Yesterday brought the depressing news of the sacking of the Syrian Deputy Prime Minister, who had been among those pressing for reform in Syria. He had been liaising with Russian and American officials about peace talks which it was hoped would end the tragic civil war. Qadri Jamil has now been dismissed for allegedly spending too much time outside Syria, neglecting his duties and holding meetings without co-ordinating with the Government.
Today we are not debating the politics of the situation but the impact of the failure of politics and the political process on people in Syria and its neighbours. More than 2 million people have fled Syria, according to the Red Cross. One million of those people are children. It is the worst refugee crisis in 20 years, and we have seen nothing like it since Rwanda in 1994. Every day another 4,000 people cross over into other countries to seek safety elsewhere. They are often women with their children, without their husbands or fathers who have been left to fight. They are escaping brutality and violence which, as the noble Baroness said a moment ago, are almost unimaginable to us. Yet I am bound to say that the appalling pictures that we see in our newspapers of dead and mutilated people, and the unimaginable horror of public summary executions, which sometimes take place in front of very young children, bring home to us the reality of what is happening on an almost daily basis.
Can the Minister please tell us whether and how our humanitarian aid is now being dispersed in Syria? The websites of all the aid organisations are clear that aid workers are hugely at risk. Twenty-two Red Crescent volunteers lost their lives trying to get aid through to those who need it most. Of course, mercifully for us, thousands of volunteers still try to reach those who are in need of their help.
I shall focus for one moment on one individual, Archbishop Yohanna of Aleppo, who disappeared on 23 April this year. I thank Ministers for the updates that I have received on this. The archbishop is a man hugely respected by people of all faiths in the region. I ask the Minister to assure us that the Government will do everything that they can to continue to try to find out where he is and to work for his release.
I concentrate the rest of my remarks on the impact of this humanitarian crisis on Syria’s neighbour, Jordan. There are now more than 600,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan, representing an increase in Jordan’s population of around 10%. That is like us having 6 million more people in this country. Since Jordan opened the Za’atari refugee camp 14 months ago, it has become a place where there are 145,000 Syrians, and it is now the fourth largest city in Jordan. The country has often dealt with the arrival of refugees in the past; what makes this influx so different is that the Syrians arriving in Jordan have little or no money, are living alongside their hosts and put a huge strain on Jordan’s limited resources and job opportunities.
Those of us who know Jordan well know that it is a terrific country; it is beautiful, has wonderful historic sites and vibrant and articulate people. But it has no natural energy source and little water. It has nothing like enough jobs for its own young people. Education, health and water infrastructure and the job market are under enormous strain. To accommodate the 78,000 Syrian children in the education system, schools are now working on double shift in Jordan. Health services are deteriorating, particularly in the northern governorates, and medicines and vaccinations are becoming heavily depleted.
The job market in Jordan is at breaking point. The International Labour Organisation estimates that 160,000 Syrians are now working in Jordan in construction, agriculture and service sectors, while unemployment among Jordanians is now running at something approaching 16%. This is a recipe for real tension between a host community and the refugees whom they are attempting to host.
Water and sewerage pose appalling difficulties in the refugee camps, both at Za’atari and Al-Azraq. The water is now being drawn into those refugee camps and away from established urban populations. The water bill for refugees has increased by more than $40 million in the past year or so. As a result of being good hosts to their neighbours, Jordanian communities are really suffering. What are Her Majesty’s Government doing to assist not only Syrian refugees in Jordan but Jordanian people in need? They, too, are part of this humanitarian crisis. The estimated additional costs continue to rise in hosting the more than 600,000 Syrians, and now stand at $1.68 million.
Jordan is, and has been, a very good friend to the United Kingdom. It has been a positive force for moderate politics in the region in relation to Israel and Palestine and in the councils of the Arab League. If the stability of Jordan comes under severe threat because of the internal strains that have been created by the huge influx of Syrian refugees, we shall all be the poorer. The security of all of us will be undermined. Wringing our hands about the humanitarian crisis is not enough; active and committed support is needed, and it is needed now.
The Earl of Sandwich (CB)
My Lords, I, too, pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry, whose name has a special resonance in this field of human rights and humanitarian aid.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, mentioned, we see our most experienced negotiator, Lakhdar Brahimi, revisiting President Assad, representing both the UN and the Arab League. Let us not forget that he was the Arab League’s special envoy to Lebanon when he brokered the agreement of 1989, which gradually ended the 15-year civil war there. He was also the UN representative in Iraq in 2004, following the American invasion when, as we now know, his proposals for Iraq were ignored by the Americans and ourselves, with tragic results. The war in Syria has to end sometime, and there is no one better qualified than he is, at least to start the process.
However, our hopes cannot be set too high. The regional powers will first have to come to some understanding. The diplomatic wheel is turning all the time, and it now seems that Turkey and Saudi Arabia are even aligning themselves with Israel in an attempt to prevent US rapprochement with Iran. I believe that some member states of the EU could take a much firmer stand to resist that process, because Iran is surely one of the powers influencing and financing the civil war. As long as there are proxy combatants inside Syria, the war and the suffering will continue.
Turkey, having so warmly welcomed the refugees, is usually seen as aligned with the opposition in Syria, but it also accommodates a substantial Shia Alawite minority in Istanbul. Only last week, a prominent Turkish socialist MP visiting Westminster criticised his Government for their open-door policy. It is obvious that Turkey is allowing arms and al-Qaeda fighters, among other jihadis, through the border with Syria, but it is also extremely wary of more Kurdish autonomy on its doorstep. That is another dimension.
I understand that Mr Brahimi has angered the Syrian opposition by advocating Iran’s presence at the negotiating table in Geneva. Of course, Iran is financing fighters, just like the Saudis, the Qataris and others. That is the whole point. I hope that the Minister will accept that all those engaged in those proxy wars should be invited to the talks, and Iran has already declared its willingness to attend. Meanwhile, as the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, said, Jordan is under severe pressure to look after a huge refugee population, which may now be equivalent to more than 20% of its own population. One can compare that situation to that of UNWRA with the Palestinian refugees in 1948 and 1967. Although Palestinians now have their own services through the United Nations, in Jordan, 90% of the Syrian refugees are not in camps but have had to be absorbed into already stretched urban areas. As has been said, that makes increasing demands on education, health and, especially, water resources.
One could suggest that a comprehensive agency like UNRWA be set up for Syrian refugees, but that would be a public admission that this could be a very long-term issue. Something has to be done. The enormous strain on limited resources is causing stress and increasing resentment among Jordanians. Those refugees must be helped, if only to save Jordanian society from stress and possible friction.
In these conflicts, it is of course the dead and the wounded who claim attention from aid workers and the media. The figure of 100,000 dead, which includes many civilians, is bad enough, but the media can rarely show the number of displaced. To the total number of refugees of 2.2 million must be added the number of people displaced or trapped in conflict areas—up to 7 million or 8 million. Those are the figures that really bring home the scale of the crisis. They are victims such as those described by the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin. They tell a desperate tale of a vicious civil war which we cannot imagine here and have not known since the time of Cromwell.
As a long-standing supporter of Christian Aid and Save the Children, I have a particular interest in the role of NGOs in conflict and peacemaking. Like others, I must mention the Red Cross and Red Crescent workers, who have been constantly on the front line in Syria—many as volunteers—and without whom there would be many more casualties. Another NGO is less well known: the Mines Advisory Group, or MAG. It is helping thousands of Syrians flocking into areas of northern Iraq, potentially riddled with landmines and unexploded ordnance. Christian Aid’s partner, called REACH, helped to respond to a sudden arrival of more than 46,000 refugees in northern Iraq in August over a period of only 11 days.
Can the Minister confirm not only that civil society and faith leaders will be invited to Geneva but that their voices will be heard? In the aid community, there are some very experienced NGOs with expertise in peace-building and conflict resolution. Sometimes, as the right reverend Prelate said, and as we saw on the news yesterday, there is a need for a local ceasefire, or at least an interval to allow humanitarian access or trapped communities to escape. These ceasefires are almost always brokered by NGOs and the community leaders who are able to contact commanders on the ground. They need to happen more regularly.
I know of NGOs providing this added value in conflict resolution in South Sudan, Nepal, Mozambique and elsewhere, ensuring that civilian leaders are always capable of sitting down with those who are still carrying weapons. We can be sure that although we are not told their names, some of our own NGOs and churches, Christian Aid among them, are already engaged with partners like the Orthodox Churches inside Syria, helping every day to ensure proper access and to negotiate free passage for humanitarian assistance. It is on these organisations that soldiers, politicians and diplomats should in the end be able to build a lasting peace.
Finally, there is the issue of cross-border assistance. Save the Children is asking whether UNOCHA, the UN agency responsible for humanitarian access, can do any more to reduce the obstacles to cross-border aid delivery when and where it is appropriate. The right reverend Prelate mentioned this, too. Will Her Majesty’s Government or DfID encourage OCHA, if possible with new resources, to develop a plan to monitor the border more effectively to ensure that people are more easily reached from neighbouring countries?
This is not a new problem. The Institute of Mechanical Engineers recently published a good report recommending greater preparedness and prepositioning in disasters and conflict. I can remember these arguments 30 years ago and as a world leader in this field, we still have to take them more seriously.
Lord Empey (UUP)
My Lords, like other speakers I congratulate the right reverend Prelate on securing this debate. Unlike many speakers, I do not have a particular expertise in this area, but I was motivated to speak by my frustration at what I see as a long-term policy of western Governments towards the Middle East which has been failing for many years. At the time of the Arab spring, and when the trouble began in Syria, we had leaders saying Assad was finished and that he would be going within a few weeks. The implication, and the encouragement that this was giving, led many of the opposition to believe that if they took up arms against the Government of Syria at that time, that Government could be overthrown. That reminded me of the rhetoric directed at the Marsh Arabs in Iraq. They were encouraged to stand up and fight for their freedom against Saddam Hussein. They were led to believe that the first Bush Administration would ride to the rescue. No such thing occurred and the Marsh Arabs were slaughtered.
The West does not do the Middle East well. We do not understand it. We arrogantly assume that our particular model of governance is the sort of governance that they should have. It is not; it just does not fit.
Secondly, if Governments were prepared to act militarily in that conflict, the time to have done it was 18 months ago. At that stage, anti-aircraft capability could have been provided to the rebels. It has largely been the air force that has allowed Assad to prosecute the war. However, did we do anything? No. Therefore, I do not understand the point of the rhetoric that encourages the opposition but is then not followed through, and we wonder why people are being slaughtered. If we are not prepared to put up, we should shut up.
I echo the concerns that other speakers have raised about Jordan, which is almost a refugee country and has been for many years. It is being overwhelmed, and indeed Lebanon is being destabilised, having just begun to get settled. If anyone thinks that people are going to leave these camps and walk back to some kind of Valhalla in Syria, they are gravely mistaken. I think that these refugees will be there for years; I deeply regret that, but I feel that they will.
The right reverend Prelate raised the issue of a right of return. We have been talking about a right of return in the Middle East for years but it has not happened. Indeed, for some people there is not even any physical opportunity to return, as their dwellings and properties have been concreted over and taken by others, so I fear that. I also fear the long-term traumatic consequences for individuals. Coming from a minor conflict zone by comparison, I know that 20 or 30 years down the road there will be vast numbers of people who will have been traumatised. What is happening to the children in this conflict is on such a scale that it is almost unimaginable.
While I am very pleased at the contribution that our Government are making, the fact is that vast amounts of money were about to be committed militarily. I wonder if the same people who have been supplying and were prepared to supply the materials for that war are prepared to sit at the table and put their hands in their pockets.
What are the Russians doing? They were quite happy to supply materials to the Assad regime, but are they prepared to do anything either to secure humanitarian aid or to influence the Assad regime by insisting that it has corridors so that people can get aid through securely? Let us face it, there is no more influential Government on the Syrian regime than the Russians. They have large resources of their own, and they ought to deploy some of those resources to help these people, who are facing a second winter under canvas while many parts of their country have been bombed back to the Stone Age.
When we started out by taking a particular side in this conflict, which was perfectly understandable, if we were not prepared to follow that through to its logical conclusion, we would have done better to stay out of it altogether. The debate that we held here in August, when there were 60 or 70 speakers, showed that the ghosts of Iraq were still walking these corridors. The question that I pose is: have we learnt our lesson? I think the jury remains out.
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, a polio outbreak in north-east Syria was the latest headline this morning on the “Today” programme. I am sure that your Lordships, like me, long for the day when nothing newsworthy is happening in that country. I, too, thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry for securing this debate, and of course, with Coventry’s long association with peace and reconciliation, it was apt for him to do so.
I pay tribute to the Governments of surrounding nations such as Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, who have kept their borders open and welcomed unprecedented numbers of refugees. I hope that if this country were ever in a similar situation, it would have the same response. On the figures that I have seen, the UN has now registered nearly 700,000 refugees in Lebanon and nearly 550,000 in Jordan. The level of the crisis is heartbreaking and the finances needed for the humanitarian response of £3 billion are eye-watering.
I, too, am proud of the generosity of Her Majesty’s Government on behalf of the UK taxpayer with their contribution of half a billion pounds worth of aid. I believe this is the largest ever UK response to a single humanitarian crisis. Of course, in addition to the DfID funds, funds have been raised by many UK charities. Again, I was impressed by the generosity of support for the Tearfund appeal for Syria, which raised more than £1 million. The UK has not been found wanting with the depth of its response. However, there have been disappointing responses from fellow G20 members, notably France, South Korea, Japan, China and, as already mentioned, Russia. I hope my noble friend the Minister can update the House on the progress in ensuring that the UN response is properly financed and can perhaps explain the reasons for the reluctance from other nations.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, outlined, there are more than 2 million refugees—75% are women and children, and half of them are children. They are traumatised and already very vulnerable and can be easy prey for trafficking gangs. We should not underestimate the tactics of those who run the second largest illegal trade in the world, that of people. There are already anecdotal reports of girls being sold and of labour exploitation. Can my noble friend confirm that, although this can be a chaotic situation, there are now proper child protection and security measures in place in the refugee camps? Has my noble friend any independent confirmation of the reports that men who are looking to purchase young women are seeking out Syrian refugees and that criminal gangs are being paid to traffic people including, apparently, to the UK? As the Syrian uprising and conflict has been going on now for two and a half years one can understand the desperation of people trying to escape this intractable situation, but we need to try to protect them from making dangerous crisis-driven decisions.
The difficulties in ensuring that aid is reaching those still in Syria was discussed in your Lordships’ House only last week. I was particularly struck by the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, that the UN inspectors looking for chemical weapons are gaining access to areas of Syria that aid convoys are not allowed to get to. In the past 24 hours, Reuters has been reporting that starvation of the civilian population is being used as a weapon of war. The UN states that 1 million people in Syria still cannot access aid. Can my noble friend the Minister outline whether the trajectory of aid reaching those in need is improving or deteriorating? Only a political solution will end this war but are Her Majesty’s Government looking at proposing at Geneva II a temporary ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid into these areas of Syria?
Only an hour ago, it was covered on Al-Jazeera Twitter that a temporary ceasefire had been brokered by the Red Cross in one of the suburbs of Damascus, which allowed a number of people to flee. Is there not perhaps an appropriate Muslim holiday such as the Day of Ashura on 24 November which, if honoured by the Syrian Government and opposition, would bring some brief respite to the fighting?
Although matters are obviously still desperate for so many refugees I want to look forward to peace in Syria for a moment when a political settlement has been achieved. Whether all its communities can return will depend on what that new Syria looks like. In this vein, on 15 October Margaret Ritchie MP asked whether Her Majesty’s Government will be establishing a resettlement programme in the UK for Syrian refugees. In response, Her Majesty’s Government said they have no plans to do so, but there are reports in the Lebanese press that Germany, through the International Organization for Migration, has accepted 5,000 refugees. Can my noble friend please outline what discussions we are having with our EU partners about responses to this refugee crisis and why the UK is not able to accommodate some refugees as Germany has?
I had the pleasure of hearing the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregorios III on his recent trip to the UK when he was appealing for reconciliation. He estimates that about 450,000 of the pre-war Syrian population of 1.75 million Christians have either fled Syria or are internally displaced. The patriarch was resolute in his view that the church in Syria would survive but the plight of religious minorities in any future Syria is uncertain. It is clear from the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, that the region may not be able to accommodate all of these people. Are discussions being held at EU and UN level about an appropriate response if, at the end of the war, it is not safe for some communities—whether Shia, Alawite, Muslim or Christian—to return home? Surely it is better to be prepared for this eventuality than being caught on the hop and seeing people fleeing into boats across the Mediterranean Sea or being vulnerable prey for the people-traffickers I have already mentioned.
In any event, there will need to be a huge process of reconciliation, akin to that which was undertaken in Rwanda. Just under a tenth of Syria’s pre-war population are in neighbouring countries and many, of course, are accommodated by the UNHCR. I have never visited a refugee camp, but I have looked closely at the images on the internet. One can see that there are satellite dishes and TV aerials on some of the tents and containers in which people are living. Arab culture is oral, which is one reason why TV is so popular even when people have barely enough to live on. Is this small opportunity being taken by the UN to ensure that the programming into these camps includes messages on reconciliation, on remembering the Syria where Sunni, Alawite and Christians lived side by side, and on how to forgive your neighbour? I know that some will consider this a premature drop in the ocean. However, it is never too soon to try to bring about reconciliation.
Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a former director of Oxfam. I warmly thank the right reverend Prelate for giving the House a further opportunity to review the huge humanitarian challenge that faces us. I also pay tribute—and am sure that other noble Lords would like to do so—to the humanitarian workers from across the world who are serving in this situation. Their courage and resilience has been of a special order.
I acknowledge that, in preparing for this debate, the briefs from the UK NGOs actively engaged in the front-line activities have been impressive and most helpful; I am thinking particularly of Christian Aid, Save the Children and Oxfam. HMG have won the support of all these NGOs and, I believe, of all parts of this House, for the good lead they are giving on behalf of the people of the United Kingdom.
It is important to recognise that, as we have been reminded, the UN estimates that 6.8 million Syrians are trapped in conflict areas and are in immediate need of assistance. A joint NGO assessment carried out in May 2013 found that, in fact, the need may be much greater, with 10.5 million people not getting enough essential supplies and seven northern governorates alone in special need. Moreover, at least 4 million Syrians, half of them children, are in need of emergency food assistance. Save the Children’s latest report, Hunger in a War Zone, shows how food is getting dangerously scarce, expensive and risky to access in Syria, and how efforts to address this are falling dangerously short.
The Syrian Government have permitted assistance provided from Damascus across conflict lines, but administrative, logistical and security constraints continue to prevent this being provided on anything like the scale required. The UN and its partners have faced major difficulties providing aid in this way. Between January and July 2013 only 21 UN convoys crossed the conflict lines.
Many parts of Syria can only, or can more easily, be reached by cross-border operations from neighbouring countries. Agencies have not been permitted by the Syrian authorities to do this; nor have neighbouring countries given their formal approval. The fast-changing dynamics of the conflict, coupled with frequent shelling and the multiplicity of armed groups also threaten the security of agencies delivering cross-border aid.
As we have been reminded, on 2 October, the UN Security Council adopted a presidential statement on humanitarian access to Syria. This called on the Syrian Government to allow cross-border aid deliveries where appropriate and called on all parties to the conflict to agree on humanitarian pauses in the fighting, including along key routes for relief convoys. It called on Damascus to take immediate steps to facilitate the expansion of humanitarian regional relief operations and to lift bureaucratic impediments and other obstacles. Obviously, the UN presidential statement must be urgently implemented. Four weeks after it was adopted, it would be helpful if the Minister could tell us just how much progress has really been made.
What are the Government able to do to urge states with influence over the parties to the conflict to implement the presidential statement? What are they able to do to encourage the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Security Council itself and all donors, both bilateral and multilateral, to expand relief operations and to vigorously pursue the removal of obstacles to cross-border aid delivery? The figure of more than 100,000 deaths is terrible enough, but there are also wider human costs about which we have been hearing in this debate.
Seven million men, women and children have been compelled to leave home. Two million have sought refuge in neighbouring countries such as Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. One million have gone to Lebanon alone and, as we have been reminded, others to Jordan, added to the Palestinian refugees already there. The number of refugees has now reached more than a quarter of the total population. Goodness knows what it will become in the future. We have to face up to the incredible hospitality being provided by neighbouring countries, which puts a huge moral responsibility on us to respond and to ensure that those countries get the support they deserve in infrastructure, education and all that is being done. If the Minister can reassure us of this, it would be very helpful.
I want to say a word about the children. The trauma and the disruption of their education will have long-term effects right into the future, hindering development and the rest. Then there are the horrific experiences of too many women and girls. Women and girls face a nightmare. The needs and opportunities of women must be a priority in all aspects of the response. Clinical care and counselling for victims of sexual assault and gender-based violence is another priority. Physical security, adequate water and sanitation, adequate cultural and gender-specific hygiene and dignity kits, adequate access to healthcare, facilities in camps and host communities—all these should be receiving our focused attention. We cannot neglect equal access for women to income-generating projects and to relief supplies in general. Can the Minister tell us that enough is being done?
We all yearn for peace, but I remind the House, in conclusion, of the wise words of Christian Aid:
“A key concern is that an over-reaching and hasty push for peace without a clearly planned process of moving towards ceasefires could generate an intensification of the conflict as the sides seek to establish facts on the grounds and gain territorial advantage. Initial areas of focus should concentrate on creating openings for looking at reinforcing locally defined ceasefires (of which there are several) into creating opportunities for wider ceasefires and humanitarian pauses. Geneva II should seek to establish a process of negotiation and efforts towards building the foundations of peace through … inclusive talks; civil society engagement, and establishing conditions for ceasefire”—
of which, as I say, there are already a number of examples.
Lord Williams of Baglan (CB)
My Lords, I, too, welcome this debate and commend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry for raising this critical issue.
Yesterday was the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the International Red Cross. I take this opportunity to salute the work of the Red Cross, whose efforts are as indispensible today in Syria as they were on the battlefields of Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. As other noble Lords have noted, no fewer than 22 of its Syrian volunteers have died in the course of their work. However, not just the ICRC is involved; the whole international humanitarian community has been mobilised by the crisis in Syria, and increasingly in the region. Alongside the Red Cross, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and UNICEF, many British NGOs such as Oxfam, Save the Children and others have risen to meet the horrors of the Syrian situation, just as they did in earlier humanitarian emergencies. I also pay tribute to the work of the Government and of DfID in particular for the immense contribution that they are making in so many ways. I am especially pleased that the department is doing its best to help vulnerable groups such as children and women, as well as the many victims of trauma.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to contain the Syrian conflict and the humanitarian crisis. Neighbours such as Turkey and Jordan have long been affected, but above all Lebanon, a tiny country where I was in charge of UN operations at the onset of this crisis in 2010, is in grave danger. Last week alone—in one week —13,000 new Syrian refugees were registered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Lebanon, bringing the total number there to over 800,000. That is more than two and a half times the population of the city of Coventry and more than the population of some of our largest cities such as Liverpool or Newcastle. The noble Baroness, Lady Symons, referred to the terrible burdens on Jordan, but those on Lebanon are even greater. By way of comparison, the equivalent of Lebanon’s acceptance of 800,000 refugees would be equivalent to the UK taking more than 10 million refugees over a period of less than three years. The conflict in Syria, a country linked by historical, economic and social ties with Lebanon, is severely and negatively impacting that country.
Inevitably, this puts great strains on Lebanon, its people and its economy. Lebanese schools, hospitals and homes have been opened to refugees in the spirit of generosity for which that country is renowned. However, given the country’s weak public finances the inevitably large costs are unsustainable. Furthermore, the Syrian conflict has challenged the already delicate balance between Lebanon’s myriad communities of Christians, Sunni and Shia Muslims. In order to help Syria in its hour of deep crisis more must be done to stabilise Lebanon lest the Levant as a whole is drawn into a vortex of deep sectarian violence. Already in recent weeks the situation in Lebanon’s second city, Tripoli, has deteriorated markedly, with sectarian violence between Sunni and Alawite communities. In Syria itself the situation continues to deteriorate. On the BBC’s “Today” programme this morning its intrepid foreign correspondent Lyse Doucet reported that thousands of civilians are trapped in three besieged suburbs of Damascus, especially the suburb of Muadhamiya.
In looking to the future we must be mindful that winter is fast approaching in the Levant, and especially in the mountains that will be particularly harsh. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, and other noble Lords referred to the recent Security Council meeting on 2 October, when a presidential statement was issued. A presidential statement is the lowest level of action that the Security Council can take. The Government, with partners, should strive to urge the council to adopt a resolution on the humanitarian situation itself.
Thirdly, more countries need to support the emergency humanitarian appeal of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Britain and European countries have done so generously. So have the United States and Canada, and also Russia. Only two Asian countries, Japan and South Korea, have responded, and only one Arab country, Kuwait, has so far answered this appeal. That may be because some Arab countries are taking action unilaterally, but they should be encouraged to do more within the context of the UN appeal than they are doing now.
Finally, next month my friend and former colleague Lakhdar Brahimi will chair a reconvened Geneva conference. The obstacles and difficulties are immense for perhaps the most skilled negotiator in the Arab world. The United Kingdom must do its best to support his efforts, and a conference as inclusive as possible in its representation. Given the problems that lie ahead, thought should be given to establishing a durable mechanism, such as a standing conference, to avoid the threat of early failure in Geneva. Tragically, there will be no easy or straightforward end to this conflict.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank the right reverend Prelate for initiating the debate. The scale and horror of this crisis are difficult to comprehend, but as the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, said, it is vital that we keep reminding people of precisely what is going on. Almost one third of the population have fled their homes due to violence, insecurity or a lack of basic services. It is extremely difficult to access water, food, medical and other supplies; 60% of all hospitals are affected by the conflict, with nearly 40% completely out of service. A further 2.1 million people have fled to neighbouring countries—an eightfold increase from 12 months ago, when there were 230,000 refugees. Over 100,000 people have been killed.
The noble Baroness, Lady Amos, in her UN capacity, said last month:
“Inside Syria, protecting civilians is paramount ... The rise in the level of sectarian and sexual violence and ongoing human rights abuses are a major concern”.
Families are being torn apart, and mothers and young children are being separated. Justin Forsyth of Save the Children, who recently returned from Lebanon and Jordan, described his shock at the,
“targeted and systematic violence against children”.
He said that the children he met had been,
“shot at, tortured, detained and separated from their families”.
Oxfam recently produced a report called Shifting Sands, which highlights the fact that many refugee women and girls no longer have access to the resources and services they used to have in Syria before the conflict began, which enabled them to fulfil their traditional gender roles. What assessment and action are the Government undertaking to understand and tailor policies to the impact of the crisis on the women affected, including, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, reminded us, by the increasing violence against women and girl refugees?
Syria’s neighbours have stepped up to the plate to provide support to refugees fleeing conflict, but as we have heard tonight, they cannot cope with the scale of the challenge. Approximately 1 million people have fled to Lebanon, and now represent a quarter of the population. As my noble friend Lady Symons said, officials in Jordan have estimated that the country needs a $6 billion investment in infrastructure as it struggles to cope with such a huge increase in its population—11% or even, as we have heard tonight, more—owing to the influx of Syrian refugees.
As the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, said, in Lebanon and Jordan the majority of refugees are living in towns and cities rather than camps, and basic services such as health, education, water and sanitation have reached their capacity. Will the Minister tell the House what the Government are doing to help the host communities not just to address the needs of the refugee population but to mitigate the impact on public services and the local economy, as we were so ably reminded by the noble Baroness, Lady Symons? Like everyone who has spoken in the debate, I pay tribute to the Government for the generous assistance provided by the UK, but despite this the humanitarian appeal for Syria is still only some 40% funded.
As many noble Lords have said, the UK Government must continue to urge the international community to fulfil their pledges of support for refugees and their host countries. Without more funding the Syrian Arab Red Crescent warned that 150,000 people might have to go without food in October. The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, acknowledged earlier this month that the Government would clearly have to work extremely hard to make sure that the pledges to which countries have committed themselves are delivered. While she expressed pleasure that the figure had reached the £1 billion mark, she also acknowledged that aid to Syria is a question not only of funding but of humanitarian access and respect for international humanitarian law. NGOs have repeatedly raised concerns about support reaching all areas of the country in both government and rebel controlled zones. As the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, said, my noble friend Lady Kinnock referred in the same debate to the MSF view that the Syrian people are now presented with the absurd situation of chemical weapons inspectors driving freely through areas of desperate need while ambulances, food and drug supplies are blocked.
Despite Security Council agreement on access for humanitarian aid, there has been little progress. With most aid being channelled through regime controlled Damascus there is a huge risk that relief is not being provided impartially on the basis of need. As my noble friend Lady Symons said, humanitarian access from Damascus is also being impeded by bureaucratic procedures imposed by the Government of Syria, including delays in issuing visas and lengthy customs procedures, multiple checkpoints on the road and fighting and insecurity which put many brave aid workers at risk, as we have heard. Will the Minister indicate what further action the Government are considering, in concert with the international community, to encourage the Syrian Government to grant those rights of passage for humanitarian reasons?
The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, also referred to the efforts being taken to bring forward the peace process with talks planned in November, as we have heard tonight, with the UK Government focusing efforts on bringing the opposition coalition to the talks. It is vital that these talks are carefully constructed to navigate the most likely path to peace. As we have heard, many NGOs are concerned that without a clearly planned process of moving towards ceasefires the conflict could intensify as the sides seek to establish or gain territorial advantage. Initial areas of focus should concentrate on creating openings for looking at reinforcing locally defined ceasefires, as so ably expressed by the right reverend Prelate, and creating opportunities for wider ceasefires and humanitarian causes. As the right reverend Prelate said, Geneva II should seek to establish a process of negotiation and efforts towards building the foundations of peace through inclusive talks, civil society engagement and establishing conditions for ceasefires in a much broader context.
Of course, a political solution is urgently needed to stop the fighting and to bring an end to the humanitarian crisis. However, until agreement is reached we cannot afford to stand idly by as the tremendous suffering of men, women and children continues.
Lord Bates (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to answer this Question for Short Debate, and would like to thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry for raising this very important issue and giving the House a timely opportunity to view what is currently being done and what needs to be done. In his introduction he used the term “catastrophe”, which pretty well sums up our view of what is happening there.
If noble Lords will bear with me I should like to update the House briefly on what Her Majesty’s Government are doing on the ground and then devote the vast majority of time to responding to as many of the questions as possible that have been raised by noble Lords. The Government are gravely concerned about the situation in Syria and across the region, and the UK has rightly been at the forefront of the humanitarian response. I would like to highlight three aspects in particular: our comprehensive funding approach, our efforts to improve the effectiveness of the international response, and our ground-breaking work to help avert a lost generation of Syrian children.
The UK’s total funding to Syria and the region is now half a billion pounds. Our support has reached hundreds of thousands of people across all 14 governorates of Syria, as well as Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey. It is providing food for almost 320,000 people, improved water and sanitation services to more than 1.2 million people, and medical consultations to more than 315,000 people. We are working with partners to ensure that our own and the international response addresses the immediate and longer-term development needs of Syrians and host communities. The UK has taken a leading role on the international stage. Following UK lobbying at the G20 and the UN General Assembly, $1 billion in new funding has been pledged by the international community. The UK also spearheaded efforts to improve the leadership and co-ordination of the humanitarian response and to improve humanitarian access into Syria. It is unacceptable that humanitarian organisations are deliberately prevented from reaching those in need.
The UK also lobbied strongly for the recent UN Security Council presidential statement which aims to secure safe, unhindered access inside Syria. We will continue to work with the UN and others to implement the actions set out in the presidential statement.
The UK has recognised the disproportionate impact that the conflict has had and continues to have on Syria’s children, to which many noble Lords referred. More than 3 million Syrian children have been affected by the fighting and 1 million Syrian children are now refugees. The UK will not stand by while a whole generation is lost to the conflict, which has now been going on for more than two years. That is why we have put in place a new £30 million lost generation initiative to provide education, protection and trauma care to children affected by the crisis. We are working with UNICEF and others on a comprehensive strategy to meet the needs of children in Syria and the region.
I turn to the remarks initially made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry. He raised a number of specific issues and I shall try to respond to as many of them as I can. He referred to the importance of ensuring that people honour the commitments made at the G20 and the UN General Assembly. It is imperative that that happens, but what pressure can we put on them other than leading by example? Many noble Lords referred to the commitment of this Government of $784 million in aid, which is the second largest donation. Several noble Lords asked what other countries were doing in this regard. It may be of interest to the noble Lord, Lord Empey, who mentioned Russia, that it has provided $32.8 million. My noble friend Lady Berridge referred to France, which has provided $69 million. We will come back to the point that much more needs to be done, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, said. Although vast sums are being poured in, the need is far greater, and only 40% of the pledged total has been reached so far.
Lord Empey
I am sorry to interrupt, but we should perhaps have mentioned the Chinese. I would be very interested to know what they are doing, as they are making plenty of money out of us and everybody else at the moment.
Lord Bates
I thank the noble Lord for his comment. The noble Baroness, Lady Symons, referred to the importance of Asian countries doing much more in this area. That is absolutely right—not just with aid but in the UN Security Council. The point is well made.
The right reverend Prelate talked about the impact on neighbouring countries. Several noble Lords referred to that and to the special pressure that it puts on those countries. Host Governments and communities have generously welcomed refugees. This has produced huge strains in neighbouring countries on services such as water supplies and education as well as on labour and rental markets. The UK is providing £167 million to meet the needs of refugees and host communities. We are working closely with the UN to support the development of an integrated approach to ensure that neighbouring countries continue to get the support that they need.
The right reverend Prelate and my noble friend Lady Berridge referred to the impact of refugees and asked whether Her Majesty’s Government would consider hosting refugees. The UK currently has no plans to resettle or offer temporary protection to Syrians at this time. The UK believes that the immediate priority should be to provide humanitarian assistance to displaced people in partnership with neighbouring countries and the UNHCR. With more than 2 million people now having been displaced from Syria, regional protection is the only realistic means by which the rights of the vast majority of displaced persons can be safeguarded. Accordingly, that should be our focus.
The right reverend Prelate also talked about the bureaucratic complexity faced on the ground. That is a big challenge. On the one hand, there is a sense of urgency—one wants the aid to get where it is needed as fast as possible—but it is also important to ensure that there is accountability for the funds that are being spent, and that there are robust systems. That is a very difficult balance to maintain but it is one that is certainly being pursued.
Noble Lords asked what percentage of the UK effort is directed to meeting emergency needs. All the UK’s humanitarian assistance at the moment is directed towards alleviating the emergency humanitarian crisis.
The right reverend Prelate asked about the recent comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Amos. We fully support the UN Under-Secretary-General’s call for reinvigorated efforts to find an end to the conflict and all that she is doing to seek to provide safe access. It is right for the House to pay tribute to one of our own—I think we can still say—who is doing such an immensely important job on the world stage at present.
My noble friend Lady Jenkin, who makes a significant contribution in her role as a trustee of UNICEF UK, raised the issue of sexual and gender-based violence. The UK is supporting survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, for example by providing clinical care and case management for 12,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan. We are also providing support to affected households and strengthening confidential support networks for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. We work to ensure that the needs of women and girls are specifically factored into humanitarian programmes and urge others to do so. When we make great policy statements of this nature, my noble friend Lady Jenkin, as she so often does, reduces the macro down to the micro. Her recounting of the story of Alma brought home the horror of this type of violence.
It is important that in the refugee camps there is greater resourcing and training, particularly for the Jordanian police, to enable them to take a greater role in the camps. There are also some fairly simple solutions, such as ensuring that we have proper lighting in the latrine areas and on routes and pathways.
As a distinguished former Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, has a great deal of understanding in these areas. She specifically mentioned Archbishop Yohanna. I know that my honourable friend Alistair Burt, the former Minister, did a lot of work in this area and was in contact regularly. Officials are in contact with the office of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, seeking to negotiate the safe release of Archbishop Yohanna and other clerics, who are now routinely being taken hostage.
The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, referred to Iran. He asked whether NGOs would be able to attend the Geneva II negotiations. I am afraid that there are no plans for that at the moment. But if the work of Geneva II is to be sustained on the ground, it is vital that it is a partnership.
The noble Lord, Lord Empey, said that the West does not do the Middle East well—to which we might all answer that nobody does the Middle East well. If there is to be a lasting, peaceful solution, it will be for the people of the Middle East, who understand the Middle East, to find it.
My noble friend Lady Berridge mentioned child protection. We are supporting the regional protection programme but UNICEF is in the lead on these matters. Reconciliation seems a long way off at the moment but it is right to keep the focus on it. Before there can be reconciliation, there needs to be truth, as well as justice for those who have perpetrated these crimes against humanity.
The noble Lord, Lord Judd, referred to hospitality and asked whether enough was being done. The answer is no, enough is not being done. Much more needs to be done.
The noble Lord, Lord Williams, who has immense expertise in this area, talked about the problems that are being faced. I note his endorsement of Special Envoy Brahimi and his potential to offer a breakthrough at the Geneva II negotiations next year.
Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Collins, gave a moving speech. When he recounted how Justin Forsyth, the head of Save the Children, who must have seen so many horrors around the world, found himself shocked, that brought home to all of us the catastrophe in the region.
In conclusion, the British Government are committed to continuing to support the needs of those affected by the humanitarian crisis in Syria and the region. However, in a country where more people are now displaced than any other, where it costs $30 million a week to meet the food needs of those affected, and in a crisis where the appeals remain chronically underfunded, the international community needs to do much more. That is the message of this debate, which is wholeheartedly echoed by Her Majesty’s Government.