House of Commons
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Prayers
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
I regret to have to report to the House the death of the right hon. Paul Goggins, the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East. Paul was a most assiduous Member, serving as a Home Office and a Northern Ireland Minister in the last Government, and most recently as a distinguished member of the Intelligence and Security Committee. I am sure that Members in all parts of the House will join me in mourning the loss of a colleague and in extending our sympathy to Paul’s wife, Wyn, his children, Matthew, Theresa and Dominic, his granddaughter, Eve, and his many friends and family.
Paul and I entered the House together, and I can honestly say that I have never heard an ill word spoken of him. Labour to his core, he was, yet, the least tribal of colleagues. Whether battling against poverty, campaigning successfully for the victims of mesothelioma, working for the rehabilitation of prisoners or striving for peace in Northern Ireland, Paul was the same: principled, eloquent and tireless, but unfailingly courteous, measured and respectful. He always played the ball, never the man or the woman.
An outstanding public servant who came into politics for all the right reasons, Paul’s passing is a loss on so many levels. The House has lost a valued colleague, his constituency a faithful representative, his party an outstanding ambassador and, above all, his family a loving husband, father and grandfather.
Prayers for Paul will also be said at the usual 12.45 service today in the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft.
Oral Answers to Questions
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
1. If he will estimate the cumulative real-terms change to the Welsh block grant over the present Parliament.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)
On what is a sad morning for the House, I am sure that colleagues on both sides would also wish me to mention the passing in December of the right hon. Lord Roberts of Conwy, who served the Welsh Office with such distinction for so many years. He was a doughty champion for Wales and the Welsh language, and I am sure that many Members on both sides will regret his passing.
The protections placed on health and education have insulated the Welsh Government’s resource budget from the extent of reductions faced by many UK Departments. In addition, the Welsh Government’s capital budget will increase in real terms by 8.4% next year and 2.4% the year after.
Mrs Moon
Does the Secretary of State not recognise that the Welsh Government’s budget has been cut by 10% since 2010—a cut of £1.6 billion? Their capital budget to date has been cut by a third, which has impacted horrendously on front-line services. In my Bridgend constituency alone, that has meant £30 million-worth of cuts in front-line services. Does the Secretary of State not recognise the damage of these cuts to the people of Wales?
Mr Jones
All parts of the United Kingdom are having to bear their part in repairing the economic damage that was sustained as a result of the downturn in 2008. However, I am sure the hon. Lady would recognise that since 2010 the United Kingdom Government have provided an additional £737 million to the Welsh Government, and it is up to the Welsh Government to live within their means.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
Given that the UK Government have given extra money in cash terms to the Welsh Assembly in the form of its block grant, does the Secretary of State find it as extraordinary as I do that the Welsh Assembly has imposed drastic cuts on local authorities across Wales that are bound to lead to increases in council taxes and reductions in public services?
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
May I first associate myself fully with the words of tribute to the late, greatly respected right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), and to the late Lord Roberts of Conwy?
I am sure that the Secretary of State will agree that reform of the Barnett formula is still an issue about which we are all very concerned. We in Plaid Cymru have campaigned about it for more than 25 years. It is interesting that the Labour party is now in favour of reforming Barnett, which it did nothing about for 13 years. In fact, when it was in government, it denied the existence of the problem. Does the right hon. Gentleman have any views on that issue?
Mr Llwyd
Which does the right hon. Gentleman think is worse—the self-serving preconditions set by the Labour party to block further devolution, or the failure of his Government to propose the full tax-varying powers contained in the cross-party Silk commission recommendations?
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
Barnett consequentials and, indeed, funding from the European Union have been key components of spending in Wales for many years. What representations has the Secretary of State made about Barnett consequentials and European funding to address the devastation that has occurred in recent days along the Welsh coast, not least in Ceredigion, but also in the constituencies of many other hon. Members?
Mr Jones
I have had many conversations with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Clearly, Aberystwyth has suffered extreme damage as a consequence of the storms of the past few days, and I assure my hon. Friend that, if any additional funding is provided, Barnett consequentials will follow in the usual manner.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
2. What assessment he has made of job prospects in the renewables sector in Wales.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)
This Government’s recent announcements on strike prices aim to make the UK, including Wales, one of the most attractive places to invest in renewable technologies. Our reforms will ensure that more than 30% of our electricity comes from renewables by 2020, attracting £110 billion of investment and supporting up to a quarter of a million jobs.
Ian Lucas
May I associate myself with the kind remarks of the Secretary of State relating to both Paul Goggins and Lord Roberts, who was a true servant of north Wales and a lovely man?
On renewables, I am very disappointed that the Minister did not refer to Sharp solar in Wrexham, which as recently as 2011 was expanding and providing more jobs. I spoke to the chief executive of Sharp solar in Wrexham before Christmas, when he told me that this Government’s catastrophic and chaotic renewables policy had contributed to its decision not to continue manufacturing in Wrexham, with the loss of 600 jobs. Will the Minister break the Wales Office’s silence and apologise to the people who have lost their jobs as a result of incompetence?
Stephen Crabb
I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s disappointment for his constituents. The news about the Sharp job losses was a bitter blow just before Christmas. I have been in touch with Sharp, and we at the Wales Office have spoken to them. It is just not correct to associate the decision taken by Sharp with the changes to the feed-in tariff policy. If he speaks to industry experts who are knowledgeable about these issues, they will tell him that it is much more to do with the wave of cheap Chinese imports of solar panels that have come into Europe and flooded the European market, so making domestic production very challenging indeed.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Whether power is generated from renewable or non-renewable sources, there is an increasing problem in Wales and the rest of the country in getting new power sources connected to the grid because of the shortage of power engineers. Will my hon. Friend work with the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Welsh Assembly Government to see how this issue can be tackled in Wales?
Stephen Crabb
As ever, my hon. Friend raises a very pertinent issue, of which both we in the Wales Office and, more importantly, the Welsh Government, who have devolved responsibility for skills, are aware. We are in discussions with the key players and stakeholders in Wales about how we can raise up a new generation of power engineers to take forward the changes that we are trying to effect.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
The loss of the Sharp solar panel factory in Wrexham, which was the biggest solar panel factory in western Europe, was a devastating blow to the Welsh economy. What can the Minister do to mitigate the closure, in which his Government are complicit? Specifically, can he help to draw down UK research funding to the solar research institute in Optic Glyndwr in St Asaph?
Stephen Crabb
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I am very aware of the important work being done at Glyndwr university, and we are in close touch with the university about its work. On what we can do to mitigate the job impact in Wrexham, I encourage both him and his hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) to give full-throated support to the £250 million that the Government are putting into Wrexham to create a new prison—something for which we have yet to hear full support from Opposition Members.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
Labour has called consistently for the devolution of energy consents for projects of up to 100 MW. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) for the amendment, which was not supported by the Government, that he tabled to the Energy Bill. Why are the Government opposed to the devolution of energy, which would allow the Welsh Government and the National Assembly for Wales to make their own decisions on energy and renewable energy in particular?
Stephen Crabb
I am surprised by the hon. Gentleman’s question, because there has been nothing consistent about Labour’s approach to energy policy either in government or in opposition.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
3. What assessment he has made of the effects on living standards in Wales of the measures announced in the autumn statement.
Dr Hywel Francis (Aberavon) (Lab)
7. What assessment he has made of the effects on living standards in Wales of the measures announced in the autumn statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)
The autumn statement set out further measures to ensure that there is a responsible economic recovery. That is the only way to achieve the sustained rise in living standards in Wales and across the UK that we all want to see.
Susan Elan Jones
May I associate myself with the tributes that have been given?
I thank the Minister for his answer, but many of us are dismayed that the autumn statement did little to address issues related to poverty. Does the Secretary of State really believe that it is right that food bank usage in Wales has gone up 1,400% since 2010? Surely that is not acceptable.
Stephen Crabb
We know that the Labour party discovered food banks only in 2010. Before that, Labour Members denied that they even existed. In the autumn statement and at the end of last year, we saw average wages in Wales increasing at double the rate of inflation and personal disposable income in Wales increasing. The situation is still very challenging for many households in Wales, but the overall picture is positive, and the hon. Lady should support that.
Dr Francis
In my constituency of Aberavon, real wages have fallen by £2,000 in recent years and some 5,000 households have witnessed a reduction in their working tax credits. That comes against the background of rising energy prices, which are higher in south Wales than anywhere else in Britain. Does the Minister agree—as a reasonable person, I am sure that he does—that the best way to address the squeeze in living standards on the people of my constituency and of Wales is to endorse Labour’s proposal of a freeze in energy prices, which would benefit 30,000 households in my constituency?
Stephen Crabb
We are going further than that by delivering a reduction in energy prices of about £50 per household. One of the best ways in which we can equip households in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and throughout Wales to face these challenging times is by returning more money to their pockets. We are taking 130,000 people in Wales out of income tax altogether and freezing fuel taxes, so that petrol prices are 20p per litre lower than they would have been under Labour’s plans. That is the way to help households meet the cost of living.
Jonathan Evans (Cardiff North) (Con)
As the only Welsh Conservative MP who had the privilege of serving alongside Lord Roberts of Conwy, may I associate myself with the Secretary of State’s remarks? May I also associate myself with your remarks, Mr Speaker, about Paul Goggins, whose untimely death has come as such a shock to us all?
On living standards, will my hon. Friend confirm that the cumulative effect of the autumn statement will be that petrol prices will be 20p per litre lower than they otherwise would have been and that the average taxpayer will pay £700 less?
Stephen Crabb
My hon. Friend is exactly right. The Government are taking those practical steps to help people on the lowest incomes in particular. We are determined that this should be a recovery for all sections of society in Wales.
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)
The autumn statement contained very welcome measures to reduce the burden of business rates on small businesses in England. What efforts will the Minister make to ensure that the Welsh Government follow suit, to support small businesses in Wales?
Stephen Crabb
In the autumn statement, we made resources available to the Welsh Government to take exactly the same action as the Government in Westminster have taken to help small businesses with their business rates. I was pleased that the Welsh Minister announced yesterday that they would take forward the cap on business rates in Wales. We have yet to hear whether they will deliver the £1,000 discount for small businesses that we are delivering.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
11. May I associate myself with your words, Mr Speaker, on Paul Goggins, who was a great friend, and with the Secretary of State’s words on Lord Roberts, who was a great Anglesey man? Wales is a net producer of energy, a major electricity generator and a major terminal for imported gas, but people in Wales are paying some of the highest prices in the United Kingdom for gas and electricity. Will the Minister look closely at the distribution companies that are passing on extra costs to the Welsh consumer to ensure that there is a level playing field on prices?
Stephen Crabb
The hon. Gentleman raises an important issue for his constituents and people throughout Wales. At the Wales Office, I regularly meet companies such as Western Power Distribution and National Grid to discuss why many consumers in Wales are paying those higher costs, and for all kinds of reasons. If he has specific questions that he would like me to follow up, I would be happy to meet him to do that.
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
May I, too, associate myself with the Secretary of State’s remarks about Lord Roberts and in particular express my sadness at the passing of our friend and comrade Paul Goggins? I worked with Paul at the Northern Ireland Office, and I can say from personal experience that he was a wonderful Minister, a lovely man, and a hugely dedicated Member of the House. All our thoughts are with his family; everybody who knew Paul will miss him greatly.
A moment ago, the Minister said that measures in the autumn statement would cut energy bills for families in Wales by £50. That was one boast made by the Chancellor in that statement, and it came to fruition in Wales this morning with the announcement by SSE—Wales’s biggest energy supplier—that it was helping families with a price cut. Will the Minister confirm what that announcement actually means for families in Wales?
Stephen Crabb
The action that we are taking across a broad range of measures—energy, fuel prices, income tax thresholds—means that we are helping people on the lowest incomes in Wales with the challenges of the cost of living at the moment. The hon. Gentleman does not refer to the fact that we are seeing improvements in wages in Wales and in personal disposable income, and he should welcome the overall positive picture that is emerging in Wales.
Owen Smith
I had hoped that the Minister would have made a new year’s resolution to be a little more straightforward with the Welsh people. The truth is that the announcement by SSE this morning, following the announcement by the Chancellor that bills will be cut by £50, is actually that bills will rise in Wales this year by £70. It is a con trick, plain and simple, and the Minister should admit that and urge his colleagues to adopt Labour’s price freeze as the only way to curb these profiteering energy companies.
Stephen Crabb
I am sorry to say this to the hon. Gentleman, but if he talks to people in industry out there who understand the economics of energy, they will all tell him that what the Labour party has proposed for energy does not make sense at all and has no credibility. The Government are taking real practical action that helps families at difficult times, and the picture that we are seeing in Wales overall is positive.
Martin Caton (Gower) (Lab)
4. If he will publish an impact assessment of the effect of the draft Wales Bill on cross-border areas.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)
The Government published a summary impact assessment with the draft Wales Bill, which examines the effects of the Bill’s provisions on cross-border areas. We intend to introduce the Bill in the fourth Session, subject to agreement of the fourth Session programme, and a full impact assessment will accompany the Bill on introduction.
Martin Caton
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer, but the draft Bill provides for a lock-step approach to varying income tax bands, against the wishes of all political parties in the Assembly and against the advice of the Silk commission. The reason given is concern about overall progressivity in the UK tax system. Will the Secretary of State elaborate on what he means by progressivity and say why he is adopting that approach?
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
15. One damaging consequence of devolution has been the abandonment of investment in cross-border road improvement in mid-Wales because the Department for Transport—quite reasonably—sees no economic benefit to England in improving access to mid-Wales. In the response to the Silk commission report, will my right hon. Friend rectify that damaging consequence of devolution for mid-Wales?
Mr Jones
My hon. Friend is quite right, and cross-border road routes are one unfortunate consequence of devolution, in that no overarching arrangement is in place. I have specifically asked the Silk commission to consider that issue, and I hope that it will address it in its report.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
I am sure that the Secretary of State will agree that certainty on taxation policy is key to boosting economic confidence in Wales. Although he has told us of his vision to use the Wales Bill for a 1p cut to all income tax bands in Wales, the leader of the Conservative party in Wales has said that he would cut only the top band of tax. Will the Secretary of State clear up that complete muddle about his Government’s position on taxation in Wales?
Mr Jones
We have made it absolutely clear that we believe a competitive Welsh economy would depend to a large extent on a competitive rate of tax. However, I must remind the hon. Lady that devolution of income tax is a matter for the Welsh Government, in that it would be the Welsh Government who would have to put forward a referendum to the Welsh Assembly.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
5. What recent assessment he has made of the potential effect of the roll-out of universal credit on people in Wales.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)
The roll-out of universal credit will reduce the historic dependency on benefits for the people of Wales by making the system simple and more flexible, and by increasing the incentive to work.
Ann Clwyd
Is it not a fact that repeated promises to deliver the project on time and on budget have been broken yet again? Officials are warning of further delays and more wasted taxpayers’ money, and Ministers are arguing among themselves while families and children in Wales live in poverty. What way is this to run a country?
Stephen Crabb
What universal credit represents for the country, including Wales—I think Opposition Members recognise this as well—is a generational opportunity to change the welfare system better to support those who need it. It is exactly right that we take the time necessary to get the systems and processes right to ensure that we get the outcomes right for people in Wales.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
Department for Work and Pensions Ministers have assured me that the online application process in Welsh will be consistent with the Welsh Language Act 1993. What discussions has the Minister had with DWP colleagues to ensure that it is also consistent with the new Welsh language standards?
Stephen Crabb
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question. I regularly meet Lord Freud, the Minister for welfare reform, to discuss the impact of the complete welfare reform agenda in Wales. The Welsh language, specifically, is an issue that I have discussed with him. We want to see high-quality Welsh language availability for the people who need it.
Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
6. What recent discussions he has had on future investment in transport infrastructure in Wales.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)
This Government are investing more in transport infrastructure in Wales than any other in the last century, and Wales is set to benefit directly and indirectly from almost £2 billion of investment. I will be meeting my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport next week to see how we can take this investment further.
Stephen Mosley
Like me, the Secretary of State is a regular user of the Holyhead branch of the west coast main line. The Department for Transport is setting up a taskforce to look at electrification of the line between Crewe and Chester. Does he agree that the taskforce should look beyond Chester and consider electrifying the north Wales main line?
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
One of the most important pieces of transport infrastructure for Wales is the Severn bridge. After decades, tolls have now gone up again: £6.40 for motorists, and double and treble that for vans and lorries. Is it not time to recognise, after all these decades, that this tax on the south Wales economy is a toll too far?
Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)
14. Good transport links are essential to provide opportunities for investment into Wales. Will my right hon. Friend update the House on the discussions he has had with the Welsh Assembly Government on updating road and rail links into north Wales, especially upgrading the A55?
Mr Jones
I have regular discussions with both the Welsh Government and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport on this issue. A business case is already being worked up, I hope, for electrification of the north Wales coast line, and I have already referred to the issue of roads.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
When it comes to the Wrexham-Bidston line, the Secretary of State is all talk and no action. When can we expect some action?
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
8. What discussions he has had with the First Minister on increasing tourism opportunities in Newport in the light of the NATO summit in Celtic Manor in 2014.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)
Hosting the NATO summit in Newport later this year allows us to showcase Wales on a global stage, and I—and the First Minister, I am sure—will do everything possible to ensure that Wales capitalises on the tourism opportunities it should bring.
Paul Flynn
The delegates will be guests in what is probably the best hotel in Britain, the Celtic Manor. Will they have the chance to visit the other major attractions of Newport—the Roman remains at Caerleon, the magnificent transporter bridge and the splendid Tredegar house—so that they can have a rich and unforgettable experience in Newport?
Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)
Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 8 January.
The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)
Mr Speaker, I hope you will allow me to pay some brief tributes. Captain Richard Holloway of the Royal Engineers was tragically killed after being engaged by enemy fire in Afghanistan on 23 December. He was a highly respected soldier, and our deepest sympathies and condolences should be with his parents, brother and girlfriend, whom he left behind. Our thoughts should also go to the victims of the US helicopter crash in Norfolk, about which details are still emerging.
I know that the sudden death this morning of Paul Goggins, MP for Wythenshawe and Sale East, will have shocked everyone across the House. He was a kind, brilliant man who believed profoundly in public service. He cared deeply about the welfare of children and the importance of social work, and he brought his own clear experience to bear as an MP and Minister. He did vital work as a Northern Ireland Minister, playing a quiet but essential role in delivering the devolution of policing and justice powers to Northern Ireland, particularly at the Hillsborough castle talks. He was liked and admired across the House and always treated everyone, in whatever circumstances, with respect. He will be greatly missed, and we send our condolences to his wife Wyn, his children and his family.
This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others, and in addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Mr Burns
I am sure the House will want to be associated with my right hon. Friend’s comments. In particular, Paul Goggins was a good and decent man, and I know that he will be sorely missed on both sides of the House.
Yesterday, the British Chambers of Commerce found that manufacturing exports and services were growing strongly. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this shows that, even though more work needs to be done, it is crucial that the Government stick to their long-term economic plan?
The Prime Minister
I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments, including those about Paul Goggins.
It is a welcome report from the British Chambers of Commerce, but there is still a lot more work to do: we must continue to reduce the deficit, create economic growth and get more people into work. There should not be one ounce of complacency, but the report did find that manufacturing balances were at an all-time high, that exports were up and that services were growing strongly. If we stick to this plan, we can see this country rise, and our people rise with it too.
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
I join the Prime Minister in paying tribute to Captain Richard Holloway of the Royal Engineers, who was killed in action in Afghanistan. His death, just two days before Christmas, is a reminder of the risks being taken on our behalf every day by members of our armed forces. He showed the utmost courage and bravery, and all our sympathies are with his family and friends. I also join the right hon. Gentleman in sending condolences to the families of the victims of the US helicopter crash in Norfolk.
I want to pay tribute to our friend and colleague, Paul Goggins. He was one of the kindest, most decent people in the House, and he was someone of the deepest principle. It shone throughout his career, as social worker, councillor, MP and Minister, and it is a measure of the man and his ability that he earned the respect, trust and affection of all sides in Northern Ireland. The Labour party has lost one of its own and one of its best. Our deepest condolences go to his wife, Wyn, to his children, Matthew, Theresa and Dominic, and indeed to his whole family.
The whole country will be concerned about the price being paid by those in communities affected by the floods and storms. I pay tribute to the work of the emergency services. Will the Prime Minister update the House on the number of people affected and on what action is being taken now to ensure areas that could be affected by further flooding have all the necessary support?
The Prime Minister
First, I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his very moving words about Paul Goggins.
The flooding provides an extremely difficult situation for those affected. We should remember that seven people have lost their lives since this began. The right hon. Gentleman is right to pay tribute to the emergency services, to the Environment Agency workers, to the flood wardens and to the many neighbours and individuals who showed great bravery, courage and spirit over the Christmas period in helping neighbours and friends.
As the situation is ongoing, let me bring the House up to date with the latest detail. There are currently 104 flood warnings in place across the whole of England and Wales. That means, sadly, that more flooding is expected and that immediate action is required. There are also 186 flood alerts, which means even further flooding is possible beyond what we expect to happen more rapidly. Although the weather has improved, river and groundwater levels remain so high that further flooding could come at relatively short notice. There are a number of particular concerns, including Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Somerset and Oxfordshire. Given these ongoing threats, which could last for several days to come, I urge members of the public to keep following the advice of the emergency services and the Environment Agency in those areas at risk. At a national level, we have co-ordinated this response via Cobra, which will continue to meet under the chairmanship of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs until the threat has passed.
Edward Miliband
I thank the Prime Minister for that answer. I know he and the Environment Secretary will keep us updated. He will recognise that some people felt that the response was, at times, too slow. In particular, will he explain whether it has become clear why it took so long for some of the energy distribution companies to restore power to homes over the Christmas period? What steps does he believe can be taken to ensure that that kind of thing does not happen again?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: in all these circumstances, no matter how good the preparation, there are always lessons to learn—and there are lessons to learn on this occasion. On the positive side, the Environment Agency warning service worked better than it has in the past and the flood defences protected up to a million homes over the December and Christmas period, but there are some negatives, too, and we need to learn lessons from them. In particular, some of the energy companies did not have enough people available over the holiday period for an emergency response, which I saw for myself in Kent. We need to learn those lessons, and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Government Policy will lead this exercise. The Energy Secretary is already looking at the levels of compensation and at the preparedness and speed of response from energy companies. I would, however, welcome hearing from Members of all constituencies affected by the flooding what they saw on the ground about the lessons that could be learned so that we can ensure that preparedness is even better on a future occasion.
Edward Miliband
Given the scale of risk exposed by these floods and the expected impact of climate change, will the Prime Minister also commit to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs providing a report by the end of this month, providing a full assessment of the future capability of our flood defences and flood response agencies and of whether the investment plans in place are equal to the need for events of this kind?
The Prime Minister
I am very happy to make that commitment. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, in this current four-year period, we are spending £2.3 billion, compared with £2.1 billion in the previous period. The money is going into flood defences. As I said, in the early December flooding, about 800,000 homes were protected by previous flood defence work and over the Christmas period a further 200,000 houses were affected. Whenever there is flooding, it makes sense to look again at the proposals in the programme for flood defence work and to see what more can be done. In addition to Government money, we are keen to lever in more private sector and local authority money, which is now possible under the arrangements. I am happy to commit, as the right hon. Gentleman asked, to the Environment Secretary coming back to report to the House on the level of expenditure in the years going ahead.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
Q2. Further to the Prime Minister’s remarks on the recent flooding, will he join me in paying tribute to Bournemouth borough council and Dorset emergency services, as well as local residents, in dealing with two evacuations in my constituency, one of which, owing to the River Stour bursting its banks, is still ongoing? Given the changing weather patterns we are experiencing, what more can be done in the long term towards improving river and sea defences?
The Prime Minister
As my hon. Friend knows, 290 homes have been flooded so far in Bournemouth and the Dorset area. I agree with him that the work of the emergency services and the Environment Agency has been excellent. Many local authorities, including my own, have developed very good plans and carried them out very competently. However, not every authority is doing so well, and there will be lessons to be learnt.
As for the Bournemouth and Poole area, about £14 million will be invested over the next five years under the Bournemouth beach management scheme. That should protect about 2,500 properties by 2018-2019, but I should be interested to hear from my hon. Friend what more he thinks can be done.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
Q3. The Prime Minister will be aware that the majority of new housing benefit claimants are in work. He will also be aware that private sector landlords are increasingly refusing to take tenants who are on benefit, or are evicting them. What does he say to hard-working families who face losing their homes because of his housing benefit cuts?
The Prime Minister
What we say to hard-working families is, “We are cutting your taxes.” In April this year, we will raise to £10,000 the amount of money that people can earn before they start paying income tax, and I think that that will make a big difference. For instance, someone earning the minimum wage and working a 40-hour week will see his or her tax bill fall by two thirds.
However, we must take action to deal with the housing benefit bill. Housing benefit now accounts for £23 billion of Government spending. When we came to office, some families in London were receiving housing benefit payments of £60,000, £70,000 or £80,000. [Hon. Members: “How many?”] Members shout “How many?” Frankly, one was too many, and that is why we have capped housing benefit.
George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)
Q4. If the Government decided to mitigate the scale of the cuts that they plan for the next Parliament, can my right hon. Friend tell me how I would explain to the students in Meon Valley receiving personal, social, health and economic education why they should make every effort to spend within their means to avoid taking on debt, but it is quite all right for the Government to ignore the same advice?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend has made an important point. We have made difficult decisions to get the deficit down and to get the country back on track: difficult decisions in terms of departmental spending, and also welfare. The Labour party is now back where it started: Labour Members are saying that they want to mitigate the level of cuts, and therefore they want to spend more, they want to borrow more and they want to tax more. We may be at the beginning of a new year, but they have gone completely back to where they were three years ago.
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
Does the Prime Minister recognise the concern of families and communities about the impact of fixed odds betting terminals, gaming machines on which people can gamble up to £300 a minute on our high streets?
The Prime Minister
I absolutely share the concern about that issue, and I welcome the fact that we shall be debating it in the House today. There are problems in the betting and gaming industry, and we need to look at them. I think it is worth listening to the advice of the right hon. Gentleman’s own shadow Minister who said
“I accept the argument that empirical evidence is needed before making”
any changes,
“because it might just create another problem somewhere else”.—[Official Report, Eighth Delegated Legislation Committee, 27 November 2013; c. 8.]
However, this is a problem, and it does need to be looked at. We have a review under way. We are clearing up a situation that was put in place under the last Government, but I think that if we work together, we can probably sort it out.
Edward Miliband
The Gambling Act 2005 limited the number of machines to four per betting shop, but it did not go nearly far enough. More action should have been taken. The Prime Minister asked about evidence. Local communities from Fareham to Liverpool are saying that these machines are causing problems for families and communities. Local communities believe that they already have the evidence. Should they not be given the power to decide whether or not they want these machines?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman has made a reasonable point, but let me first deal with the facts. The first fact is that fixed odds betting terminals were introduced in 2001 after the Labour Government had relaxed gambling regulations. The second fact is that there are fewer of these machines now than there were when Labour was in office. As for the right hon. Gentleman’s last point, councils already have powers to tackle the issue, and I believe that they should make full use of those powers. I am not arguing that that is “job done”—there may well be more to do— but we have a review under way. This is an issue for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. If the right hon. Gentleman has ideas, I ask him to put them into the review, but, as I said earlier, he may want to listen to his own shadow Minister, who, as recently as November, said
“there is no evidence to support a change to stakes and prizes for FOBTs”. —[Official Report, Eighth Delegated Legislation Committee, 27 November 2013; c. 20.]
There seems to be something of a change here, but if the right hon. Gentleman has extra evidence, he should put it into our review, and I think that we can then sort the matter out.
Edward Miliband
Our ideas are in today’s motion, and if the Prime Minister wants to vote for it, we would be very happy for him to do so. He says there are already powers in place, but the Mayor of London and the Conservative head of the Local Government Association have said that local authorities do not have the power to limit the number of machines. One in three calls to the gambling helpline are about these machines and they are clustered in deprived areas. For example, there are 348 in one of the most deprived boroughs in the country: Newham. Can the Prime Minister at least give us a timetable for when the Government will decide whether to act?
The Prime Minister
We will be reporting in the spring as a result of the review that is under way, and I think it is important that we get to grips with this. There is something of a pattern. We had the problem of 24-hour drinking, and that needed to be changed and mitigated and we have done that. We have the problems created by the deregulation of betting and gaming, which the right hon. Gentleman is raising today and we need to sort that out. We have also had problems, of course, in the banking industry and elsewhere that we have sorted out, so, as I said, if he wants to—[Interruption.] As I said, if he wants to input ideas into that review, I think that is the right way forward.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
May I pay tribute to Paul Goggins and say how much he will be missed in this House?
My right hon. Friend is on the record as saying he would very much like to see the A64 on the future roads list. Can he ensure that the present economy, which is very buoyant in north Yorkshire, is not held back by congestion and poor safety on that road? Will he join me to ensure that on his future visits he can travel much faster and in much greater safety on the A64?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this issue. The quality and capacity of the road system in Yorkshire has been, and is, a major issue. The Government have taken some important steps to help, but I know there is more work to be done. I know the Chancellor was listening carefully to what she had to say and I am sure we can look carefully at this for the future roads programme.
Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)
Q5. What plans do the Government have to close the loophole that allows businesses to pay agency workers less than fellow employees doing the same job?
The Prime Minister
I looked into this loophole carefully over the Christmas period when the Opposition raised it, and I discovered two things about this loophole. The first is that it was introduced and agreed by the last Labour Government and the TUC. That is loophole fact No. 1. Loophole fact No. 2—
The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman shouts “CBI”, and this is what the CBI had to say about it:
“further gold plating of EU rules can only cost jobs.”
Then we have the Recruitment and Employment Federation. It said this:
“These arrangements were agreed following consultation between the last Labour Government, business and the unions…Is the Labour party really saying they want to deny British temps the option of permanent employment?”
The Institute of Directors has, of course, added to that by saying—[Interruption.] It is very clear, Mr Speaker: Opposition Members want to know what we think about this, and this is what the IOD thinks:
“It’s a bad idea all round…The initial response to this from employers would be to employ fewer people on higher wages”.
What a great start to the new year: let us come up with an idea to increase unemployment! Only Labour could come up with an idea like that.
Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)
Q6. There is considerable interest from businesses in the maritime and marine sector wishing to relocate to Portsmouth to make use of its facilities and skilled work force. What can the Government do to send a clear message to entrepreneurs that Portsmouth is open for businesses and to facilitate businesses moving to, and expanding, there?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this issue. There are two specific things we can do to help Portsmouth at this time. The first is the Portsmouth and Southampton city deal, which we should put in place, that will bring jobs and investment. Secondly, we should emphasise the fact that the massive programme of modernising the Royal Navy, with the aircraft carriers, the Type 45s and the future frigates, will by and large be based in Portsmouth, creating jobs and making sure it remains one of the most important homes for the Royal Navy. But my hon. Friend is absolutely right: added to that there is a future in Portsmouth in other marine industries and commercial and private sector industries, and we should do everything we can to encourage business to locate there.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
Q7. I would also like to pay my sympathies to Paul Goggins’s family; he was a lovely, lovely man.The Government have cut £1.8 billion from the social care budget, which means nearly half a million fewer people are eligible for social care. With home care charges up £740 a year since 2010 and the Government’s care cap nothing more than a care con, why is the Prime Minister not being honest with older people about the real care costs they will face under this Government?
The Prime Minister
Of course, difficult decisions have had to be taken right across Government spending, but if we look at health and social care, we can see that we have protected the health budget so that it is going up in real terms, and we have put some of that health budget—up to £3 billion—into social care to help local authorities. We now want to get local authorities and local health services working even more closely together to deal with the problems of blocked beds and to ensure that there are care packages for people when they leave hospital. We can really see the benefits in the areas of the country where this is working, and we want to make that happen right across the country.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
Q8. Mr Speaker, our excellent local enterprise partnership estimates that Buckinghamshire has a £12 billion economy, with nearly 30,000 registered businesses and the European head offices of more than 700 foreign companies. They need the security of long-term economic policies. Given that our economic growth has clearly returned, will the Prime Minister assure me that, unlike the Labour party, he will not gamble with those companies’ future and that he will stick steadfastly to his tried and tested long-term economic policies?
The Prime Minister
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for what she says. There is a vibrant economy right across the Thames valley, including in Buckinghamshire, and that is going to be based on sticking to our long-term economic plan. What is particularly important for the companies that she has mentioned is to keep our rates of corporate tax low so that we attract businesses into the country and ensure that companies want to have their headquarters here. That is the right answer, rather than the answer of the Labour party, which is to put up corporation tax and to put a “Closed” sign over the British economy.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
Q9. A year ago, the Prime Minister said that he would make “damn sure” that foreign companies paid higher taxes, but in the Financial Times at the weekend, it was shown that companies such as Apple and eBay were now paying even less. Why is the Prime Minister’s tough talk not adding up to very much?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman is being a little unfair; I think we are making progress on this very difficult issue. At the G8, we raised the importance of having international rules on tax reporting and of more countries working together on that. Huge progress has been made, not least in the European Union, where countries such as Luxembourg and Austria, which have always held out against this exchange of information, are now taking part for the first time. The OECD work is also going ahead apace, and that is partly because Britain has put its full efforts behind this vital work.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Paul Goggins was a decent, humble man and, in my experience, one of the most effective and fair Ministers the House has seen. He will be very sadly missed.
The Prime Minister will know that the science is clear that the extreme weather conditions affecting our communities, including around the Kent estuary in Westmorland, are at least in part a destructive and inevitable consequence of climate change. Given that he has said that this should be the “greenest Government ever”, will he now agree to support the carbon reduction targets so that we can take real action to protect people and property?
The Prime Minister
I agree with my hon. Friend that we are seeing more abnormal weather events. Colleagues across the House can argue about whether that is linked to climate change or not; I very much suspect that it is. The point is that, whatever one’s view, it makes sense to invest in flood defences and mitigation and to get information out better, and we should do all of those things. As for carbon reduction targets, this Government are committed to them and we worked with the last Government to put the Climate Change Act 2008 into place. That would not have happened without our support. We also have the green investment bank up and running in Edinburgh, and we are going to be investing billions of pounds in important green projects.
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
Q10. Government cuts have closed the police cells in Bassetlaw, and I now discover that the police are having to patrol villages using public transport. If the police are waiting at a bus stop, having arrested someone, should they go upstairs, should they go downstairs, or should they not make the arrest at all?
The Prime Minister
The first thing to say to the hon. Gentleman is that he did not mention the fact that recorded crime in the Bassetlaw community safety partnership area is down by 27% under this Government. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Yes, 27%. What is noticeable is that every single Opposition Member is getting up and complaining about the need to make reductions in departmental spending. Frankly, this is like “Back to the Future”—we are back to where we were three years ago, when we said, “You’ve got to make difficult decisions. You’ve got to make some cuts. You’ve got to get the deficit down” and they lived in total denial. They are back to where they were three years ago. It may be the new year, but it is the same old Labour party.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
The royal pardon granted to Alan Turing two weeks ago has finally meant justice for this national hero. May I thank the Prime Minister, the Justice Secretary and everyone over the years who has paved the way to bring this about? May I invite the Prime Minister to visit Bletchley Park in my constituency to see for himself Alan Turing’s remarkable achievements?
The Prime Minister
I absolutely back what my hon. Friend has said. It is excellent news that a royal prerogative mercy, which is very rarely granted, has been granted in this very special case. I would be delighted to visit his constituency to go to Bletchley Park. One of my wife’s family worked there during the war and speaks incredibly highly of Alan Turing and what he was like to work with. Historians can argue about the degree, but there is no doubt that the work done in my hon. Friend’s constituency was vital to winning the war.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
Q11. Before Christmas, I was contacted by a seriously ill constituent who is waiting for a kidney transplant. He needs five-hour dialysis sessions three times a week, yet in the Prime Minister’s Britain he has been told by the jobcentre that he is fit for work. On Monday, the Chancellor promised to take £12 billion more from the welfare budget. Will the Prime Minister guarantee that there will be no further cuts to benefits for the sick and disabled?
The Prime Minister
First, on the specific issue of the hon. Gentleman’s constituent, if he wants to write to me about the individual case, I would be happy to look at that. In terms of making sure that dialysis machines are available and the expertise is available, we are putting more money into the NHS, even though the advice from the Labour party was to cut. The reason we have been able to put more money into the health service is because we have taken tough and difficult decisions about welfare. It is because we have put a cap on the amount of money a family can get that we have been able to invest in our health service; because we have put a cap on housing benefit—not giving £60,000 or £70,000 to some families—we have invested in our health service. We want to see more dignity, more security and more stability in the lives of Britain’s families, and we are making choices consistent with that.
Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)
Soaring car sales—they are back to pre-crisis levels—have helped supply chain companies such as Sertec in Coleshill in my constituency to create manufacturing jobs; 200 have been created in the past year, and a further 400 are planned. Does the Prime Minister agree that that shows that we are successfully rebalancing the economy and that we need to stay the course with policies that are clearly working?
The Prime Minister
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for what he says. I went with him to the opening of the new Ocado warehouse in his constituency, which has generated hundreds of jobs and, as he says, is going to be vital for the supply chain in his constituency. What these businesses want to see is a consistent economic policy: keeping interest rates down; getting the deficit down; cutting taxes for hard-working people; helping businesses to take more people on; and investing in education, in skills and in controlling welfare. Those are the elements of our long-term plan, and that is what we will stick to.
Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
Q12. Two months ago, I asked the Prime Minister whether Tory Councillor Abdul Aziz, who was suspended by the Labour party, should return to Pakistan, given the arrest warrant out for him in connection to a brutal killing. Councillor Aziz attended the Prime Minister’s party in October as an invited guest. So why is the Prime Minister still hiding on whether he thinks Councillor Aziz should return to face justice?
The Prime Minister
I will make two points to the hon. Gentleman, and I have written to him this morning. The first is this—[Interruption.] He will be interested to hear. The first is that the allegations he mentions are disputed and are currently subject to legal action, so I am limited in what I can say. But what he failed to mention to the House the last time he raised this is that the allegations date from the time when Mr Aziz was a Labour councillor. I am informed that during his time as a Labour councillor the Labour party did absolutely nothing about these allegations. So perhaps next time the hon. Gentleman stands up and asks a question in the House of Commons he will give us the full facts.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
Q13. May I associate myself with the tributes to Paul Goggins? His work on the reform of the law on child neglect will go on. Last year, one of my constituents, 23-year-old Christopher Scott, died as a result of taking the so-called legal high AMT—alpha-methyltryptamine. Will my right hon. Friend support my calls and those of the coroner and Christopher’s family to ensure that this dangerous drug and others like it are outlawed?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that issue. First, let me offer my condolences to his constituent’s family. As he knows with the rules that we have, hundreds of legal highs have already been banned, and our temporary drug orders allow us to outlaw substances within days of them coming on the market. However, we are not complacent and we have asked the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to renew our definitions of controlled drugs to ensure that we capture these newly emerging substances when there is evidence of harm. There is more work to be done here, but my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is absolutely on it.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
May I join the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in paying warm tribute to Paul Goggins? He was a fine, decent and honourable man who was a great friend to Northern Ireland and all its people. He will be sadly missed not only in this House but throughout Northern Ireland. We offer our sincere condolences to his wife and family at this difficult time.
I commend the Prime Minister and welcome the fact that he has made a commitment on the triple-lock guarantee for pensioners if he is returned as Prime Minister in the next Parliament in 2015. Will he clarify whether he will commit to retaining the winter fuel allowance under its current eligibility thresholds and as a universal benefit?
The Prime Minister
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for what he said about Paul Goggins.
On the issue of pensions, it is important to recognise that we are able to make a commitment to the triple lock, which has been important in this Parliament, only because we are committed to raising the pension age to 66, then 67 and so on. That means that the pension increase is affordable. We made a very clear pledge about pensioner benefits for this Parliament, and I am proud of the fact that we are fulfilling it. We will set out our plans in the next manifesto. I caution people against believing that not paying the winter fuel allowance or the other benefits to those, for instance, paying tax at 40p, saves money—you save a very small amount of money. Yes of course we will set out our plans in the manifesto, but it is absolutely vital that we say to Britain’s pensioners, “You have worked hard and done the right thing, and we want to give you dignity and security in old age.” The triple lock makes that possible.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
Q14. Is my right hon. Friend aware that at Thrunton in my constituency, there has been a large fire of waste carpet burning since 3 September last year? The local residents have been suffering from the fumes and smoke from what we now know may be hazardous waste. The fire brigade cannot put out the fire for fear of polluting the water supply. Can I have my right hon. Friend’s support in urging the Environment Agency and the local authority to get that material off the site and to give residents back their lives?
The Prime Minister
I will certainly look in even more detail at the issues my right hon. Friend raises. I understand the concern that it is causing him and his constituents. My understanding is that environmental concerns, particularly that waste might run off and pollute local water supplies, have hampered the efforts to extinguish the fire. I understand that the local recovery group is meeting later this week to see what more can be done to remove the waste, and I am happy to intervene on my right hon. Friend’s behalf to ensure that that makes progress.
Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)
Given that the Prime Minister’s anti-independence campaign launched an initiative this week, encouraging people outside Scotland to take part in the debate, why will he not debate with the First Minister on television?
The Prime Minister
The calls for this debate show a mounting frustration among those wanting Scotland’s separation from the rest of the United Kingdom, because they know they are losing the argument. They are losing the argument about jobs and investment. They have completely lost the argument about the future of the pound sterling, and they are losing the argument about Europe. Yes of course there should be a debate, but it is a debate among the people in Scotland. The leader of the “in” campaign should debate with the leader of the “out” campaign. Of course the hon. Gentleman, as the lackey of Alex Salmond, wants to change the terms of the debate, but I am not falling for that one.
Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)
Q15. In the 13 years before 2010, there was net migration of nearly 4 million people to the UK, mostly to England, and in many cases as a result of work permits issued by the then Government. Will my right hon. Friend give me an assurance that this Government will keep in place their cap on the number of workers from outside the European Union, and encourage employers to give a chance to talented young people here?
The Prime Minister
I can give my hon. Friend the assurance he seeks. We should keep the cap on economic migrants from outside the European Union. We should continue with all the action that we are taking to make sure that people who come here do so to work and not to claim, but I think what we need to do next is recognise that the best immigration policy is to have not only strong border controls but an education approach that educates our young people for jobs in our country and a welfare system that encourages them to take those jobs. There are three sides to the argument: it is about immigration, education and welfare, and the Government have a plan for all three.
Mr Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West) (Lab/Co-op)
Could I agree with the Prime Minister—[Interruption.] It is genuinely absurd that the leader of the no campaign in Scotland cannot get a debate with the leader of the yes campaign in Scotland, and that the leader of the yes campaign in Scotland demands a debate with somebody who does not have a vote. [Interruption.] In these circumstances, does the Prime Minister agree with me that, in politics as in shipbuilding, empty vessels make the most noise?
Mr Davidson
I am not finished! [Hon. Members: “More!] There is more. Without seeking to give offence to the Prime Minister, may I tell him that the last person Scots who support the no campaign want as their representative is a Tory toff from the home counties, even one with a fine haircut?
The Prime Minister
I accept every part of the hon. Gentleman’s question. I well remember when he came to Question Time not with an empty vessel but with a model of the vessel that he wanted to be built near his constituency, and I am proud that the Government are building that vessel and, indeed, another one like it. I humbly accept that, while I am sure there are many people in Scotland who would like to hear me talk about this issue, my appeal does not stretch to every single part. The key point that he is making is absolutely right: the reason the yes campaign head and the no campaign head cannot seem to get a debate is that those who want to break up the United Kingdom know that they are losing the argument, so they want to change the question. It is the oldest trick in the book, and we can all see it coming.
Mr Speaker
The right hon. Gentleman will have to raise his point of order after the statement.
Haass Talks
(10 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mrs Theresa Villiers)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement about the cross-party negotiations in Belfast that came to a close during the early hours of new year’s eve, but first I would like to express my sorrow at the news that Paul Goggins has died. He was a truly excellent and effective Northern Ireland Minister and I have to say one of the kindest, most sincere and most popular Members of this House. He will be much missed, and I would like to take this opportunity to express my sympathy and support to his family as they deal with this shocking loss.
Last May, the First and Deputy First Ministers announced a working group consisting of representatives from each of the five parties in the Executive to look at three of the most divisive issues for Northern Ireland: flags, parading and the legacy of the past. The initiative formed a key element of wider proposals to tackle sectarianism set out in the Executive’s strategy document, “Together: Building a United Community”. In July, former US diplomat Richard Haass agreed to chair the group. He served as the US special envoy to Northern Ireland from 2001 to 2003. Along with his deputy, Professor Meghan O’Sullivan, Dr Haass began work in September with the aim of reaching agreement by the end of the year.
From the outset, the UK Government, along with the Irish Government and the US Administration, have strongly supported the Haass process. We welcomed the fact that it was the parties within Northern Ireland that had taken the initiative in seeking progress on these complex and difficult issues as part of the work that the Government had strongly pressed them to take forward on building a shared society and addressing sectarian division.
All three of the issues under consideration in the Haass group have the capacity sharply to divide opinion in Northern Ireland. Repeated attempts to deal with the past have produced little consensus up to now, while disputes over parading and flags have frequently led to serious public disorder. Some form of accommodation on those issues that commands cross-party support could therefore have significant benefits for political stability, public order and economic prosperity in Northern Ireland.
Although the UK Government were never formally a participant in the Haass process, we have been fully engaged with it from the start. I had a significant number of meetings with Dr Haass and my officials remained in frequent contact with his team. During the latter stages of the talks, I spoke regularly with Dr Haass, as I did with the leaders of Northern Ireland’s political parties and the Irish Foreign Minister, Eamon Gilmore. The Prime Minister also maintained a close interest in the process. We worked to encourage an agreement, even where that meant the parties making difficult decisions to try to move things forward.
The Haass process reached its final, intensive phase of negotiation in the days before Christmas and between Christmas and the new year, when a number of drafts were circulated, the final one being presented to the parties shortly after midnight on the morning of 31 December. It proposed a new set of arrangements for regulating parades and protests, with responsibility vested for the first time in devolved hands. On flags and emblems there was no immediate resolution, but the document advocated the establishment of a new commission to look at wider issues of identity, culture and tradition in Northern Ireland. On the past, Dr Haass proposed two new bodies: an historical investigations unit, in place of the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s Historical Enquiries Team, to investigate troubles-related deaths; and an independent commission on information recovery.
It was of course disappointing that it did not prove possible to reach a comprehensive agreement within the timetable Dr Haass set, and it is clear that some of the parties have genuine concerns about aspects of what is in the final document, yet the clear message from the Prime Minister, from me and from the Irish Government is that this should not be seen as the end of the road.
The Haass process has seen much valuable work done and some real progress has been made. The discussions managed to achieve a considerable amount of common ground, which this Government believe can provide the basis for continuing discussions between the parties. From my many conversations with the parties, I have no doubt that there is a willingness to make progress on the issues that continue to be a focus for tension and division.
The momentum now needs to be maintained. I believe that Northern Ireland’s political leadership should lose no time in seeking a way forward that gets the parties back around the table to try to resolve their outstanding differences. For our part, the Government are continuing our dialogue with the parties and with the Irish Government to see how best we can help facilitate that. I firmly believe that there is still a chance to achieve a successful outcome from the work started by Dr Haass, and I have been speaking with party leaders to discuss the next steps.
At the same time, it is important that we do not lose sight of other important tasks for Northern Ireland, such as the need to continue to make progress on implementing the economic pact and boosting the economy, to take forward a range of measures to build a shared future and to move ahead with welfare reforms.
Finally, I would like to place on the record both the Prime Minister’s and my thanks to Dr Haass, Professor O’Sullivan and their team for the dedication they have brought to chairing the talks. I very much hope that, working together, we can now build on the valuable work that they have started.
Mr Ivan Lewis (Bury South) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for her statement and for giving me advance sight of a copy. May I also thank her for her kind words about Paul Goggins? I hope that hon. Members in all parts of the House will understand that I want to begin with a few words about my colleague but, more importantly, good friend, Paul.
Paul served with distinction as a Minister in Northern Ireland. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) said, he earned the respect of politicians, officials and community activists alike for his knowledge and empathy. He continued to take a close interest in all things Northern Ireland, and I know from my discussions with him that he had grown to love Northern Ireland.
But Paul was a lot more than an outstanding Minister. He was a man whose integrity, decency and values, rooted in a strong Christian faith, shone through in everything he did. He treated everyone with the same dignity and respect, whether a Prime Minister or a constituent living on one of the poorest council estates in Wythenshawe.
Paul and I had a special bond, for many years an affliction, of being avid Manchester City fans. We even set up the Westminster branch of the Manchester City supporters club together.
I will never forget Paul’s loyalty and friendship through the ups and downs of our shared political journey. He will be missed more than words can adequately express. Our thoughts and prayers are with Wyn and his children.
I pay tribute to Richard Haass and Meghan O’Sullivan for their professionalism and commitment in striving for a positive way forward on some of the most challenging issues facing Northern Ireland. Flags, parades and dealing with the past are running sores that continue to inhibit progress towards the priority objective of building a shared and better future. They have to be tackled in a way that respects the insecurity and sensitivities of both traditions while balancing strong convictions with necessary compromises.
It would be wrong not to acknowledge that the failure of the Haass talks to reach a final agreement was both disappointing and potentially damaging to public confidence in Northern Ireland’s politicians and the political process. However, it is important that we retain a sense of perspective and that all parties in Northern Ireland refrain from name-calling or engaging in a blame game. Significant advances were made that can form the basis of future progress, as the Secretary of State said. That is particularly the case in relation to dealing with the past, where victims’ groups deserve tremendous credit for submissions that were coherent and compelling.
We want to see all parties back round the negotiating table as soon as possible with a shared commitment to working together on shared solutions. The UK and Irish Governments have a crucial role to play, not only as guarantors of the peace process but because of the legislative and financial implications that would flow from any agreement.
In that context, I have a number of questions for the Secretary of State. What dialogue is taking place between her and the First Minister and Deputy First Minister on the potential legislation that will be required to implement any agreement? What discussions has she had with her counterparts in the Irish Government about the financial implications of a new infrastructure to deal with the past? Can she explain why, at this sensitive time, she has weakened the capacity of the newly appointed Parades Commission by reducing the number of commissioners and the number of hours that each commissioner will be expected to work? While I acknowledge her contribution during the course of the Haass talks, does she understand that at this time of uncertainty the widespread perception of disengagement by the UK Government is causing concern across a wide spectrum of opinion in Northern Ireland, and that this needs to change? Finally, does she acknowledge the negative impact that some of the welfare reforms mentioned in her speech, particularly the pernicious bedroom tax, would have on people in Northern Ireland?
Northern Ireland has made tremendous progress over the past 15 years. This has been possible only because of the determination of people to build a better future for themselves and their families—but it is also thanks to the vision and courage of Northern Ireland’s political leaders. There will be no turning back, but there can be no standing still. That is why we hope that the First Minister and Deputy First Minister will convene an all-party working group as soon as possible and ensure that the progress that has been made can be consolidated in an agreement that attracts widespread public support but will also stand the test of time.
Mrs Villiers
I echo and thank the shadow Secretary of State for his words on Paul Goggins. Paul’s example is one with which to counter the cynicism about MPs and about politicians, because he illustrated such a strong commitment to decency, integrity and public service. I also strongly echo the shadow Secretary of State’s point that Paul retained a genuine affection for Northern Ireland. He cared deeply about it, I am sure, when he was a Minister, and it was clear that he still did so in his discussions with me as Secretary of State some time after he had ceased to be a Minister. He had strong values, which I am sure were a great support to him in his work in this House and in Northern Ireland.
The shadow Secretary of State’s remarks illustrate that there is a lot of common ground between Front Benchers on a way forward. I agree that getting the parties together and back around the table in a working group to try to resolve the differences between them is the right way forward. That is what I have been urging the political parties to do. I also agree that an eventual solution needs to respect the sensitivities of the different traditions, but that it must also involve compromise on all sides.
It is important to recognise the progress made on the past, which is a particularly difficult issue for all of us, including, in some ways, the UK Government. I believe, like the shadow Secretary of State, that the voice of victims and survivors played a very positive role in taking things forward and that any eventual solution must place victims and survivors at its heart.
The shadow Secretary of State asked about the dialogue between me and the First and Deputy First Ministers. I have spoken to both of them in recent days to urge that a way forward be found and that the working group commence.
The legislation to implement what would be needed from the Haass proposals would come primarily through the Assembly and the Executive. The part this House would play would be, potentially, the devolution of parading. The mechanics of setting up the new bodies would be a matter for the Assembly and the Executive.
I have kept in close touch with Eamon Gilmore and the Irish Government—both before and after the talks broke up—on matters relating to the past and all the other issues under discussion in this process, including a discussion on finances. It is very clear that the UK Government face a significant deficit, which means that we have to take care with public spending. We expect the primary resource for the new mechanisms to be found from within the block grant to Northern Ireland, but we will, of course, always consider further applications for funding from the Northern Ireland Executive if they wish to press ahead with the measures. We will, however, be constrained in what we can offer by the need to tackle the deficit we inherited.
On reducing the number of commissioners, I strongly believe that we have a strong new Parades Commission that will do important work in the months to come. I am sure we all hope that a reformed system will take over in the devolved space if the agreements are eventually signed off by all the parties, but in the meantime I am sure the current Parades Commission will do an excellent job.
I wholly refute the perception of disengagement by the UK Government. The UK Government are strongly engaged with the Haass process and with Northern Ireland. We brought the G8 to Northern Ireland—one of the most successful events ever for Northern Ireland—and we followed it up with a strong investment conference. We signed an economic pact that sees us working more closely than ever with the devolved Government, including the commitment to meet the £18 billion of capital spending, and we are determined to press ahead with supporting the Executive in their moves on a shared future. We have responded when the Executive have asked us—for example, to devolve air passenger duty for long-haul flights. We stepped in to assist in the grave situation we inherited from Labour with the Presbyterian Mutual Society. We are continuing to work on the devolution of corporation tax. There is a whole range of ways in which this Government are working closely with the Northern Ireland Executive for the benefit of the people of Northern Ireland.
On welfare reform, we will continue our discussions with the Northern Ireland parties, but we believe that the compromises agreed with Minister McCausland are appropriate and will help adapt the welfare reform system to the particular needs of Northern Ireland.
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
As Chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, may I join the Secretary of State, the Prime Minister and others in expressing our deepest sympathies to the family of Paul Goggins, who has so shockingly passed away? He was a thoroughly decent and honourable man. When he was a Minister, I had the pleasure of shadowing him for about three years, and I have to tell the House that he was a very competent Minister. I say without any fear of contradiction that without his contribution I do not think we would be here today at this advanced stage of the Northern Ireland peace process, so highly do I value his work.
The Secretary of State is, of course, right in saying that it was the Northern Ireland parties that initiated the Haass process. I think Dr Haass was given a rather impossible task of finding quick solutions to problems that have existed for a long time. Is it not important now that those discussions between the parties in Northern Ireland and, furthermore, with community leaders in Northern Ireland continue, because such engagement is as important as any solutions that may come from those discussions?
Mrs Villiers
I agree with my hon. Friend the Chairman of the Committee. Four months was a very tight timetable in which to reach agreement on issues that some would argue have been a problem in Northern Ireland for very many years—some would argue that some of the issues date back hundreds of years in terms of identity. It was always going to be a tough ask to meet that timetable. I agree that the solution now is to resume those discussions between the parties. Although it is clear that some of the parties have expressed concern about the final draft of the Haass proposals, none of them is walking away. They are all saying that the process should continue and they all seem to be prepared to engage in that dialogue. I urge them to do so.
Paul Murphy (Torfaen) (Lab)
May I associate myself with the remarks of the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State about Paul Goggins? As a former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, I can testify to the fact that Paul’s work was instrumental in bringing forward both the political and the peace process in Northern Ireland. Like many others in this House, I have lost a good friend.
Even though the Haass talks have temporarily ended, what is the Secretary of State’s plan to engage her civil servants and Irish civil servants in work on the specific issues that are still a matter of controversy, so that those officials will be able to give advice, wisdom and evidence to the working parties that will soon be set up?
Mrs Villiers
My officials have worked with Irish Government officials throughout the process, just as I have kept up regular contacts at political levels. We also stand ready to provide advice, help and support to the Executive in taking these matters forward. The role of officials will obviously be crucial in coming up with a solution that is workable and practical and that can be implemented.
Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)
I also associate myself with the remarks of the Secretary of State and the shadow Secretary of State about Paul Goggins. I did not know him very well, because I was elected only a few years ago, but the intrinsic fairness and kindness he showed me as the Liberal Democrat Front-Bench spokesman on Northern Ireland was tremendously helpful.
On the Haass report, I appreciate the Secretary of State’s statement. We all know that it was very challenging: the Haass commission had about 100 meetings, met 500 people and received 600 submissions. It went into the process very strongly, but we have reached a point where we are stuck on the two or three things that I suspect most Members knew we would be stuck on. Are there any plans to bring Dr Haass and his team back to unlock the logjam at an appropriate time?
Mrs Villiers
In my conversations with Dr Haass I certainly floated the idea that he might come back in January, but that looks unlikely. He has professional commitments that would make it very difficult for him to re-engage in the same way, but I am sure he will continue to take a close interest in matters as they go forward. It is now important for the First and Deputy First Ministers to get the parties together around the table. They got very close to getting over the line in the run-up to the final discussions. Even the leader of the Ulster Unionist party was saying that perhaps 80% of what was on the table might be acceptable. Clearly, that party has serious concerns about the proposals, but it is indicating that it will continue to take part. Continuing this dialogue is the way forward.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
The breadth and depth of the outpourings of grief and tributes to Paul Goggins are a testament to the integrity and standing of the gentleman. I am sure that other right hon. and hon. Members on these Benches will want to add their own personal tributes.
I join the Secretary of State in thanking Dr Haass and Meghan O’Sullivan. I also thank our own talks team, my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Mr Donaldson), Jonathan Bell—a junior Minister in the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister—and Rev. Mervyn Gibson, who put in many hours over the holiday period, along with others in other parties, to try to make progress.
I welcome what the Secretary of State said in her statement. She will know that, under the terms of reference, it was for the parties themselves to come to an agreement on a set of recommendations. At the final plenary, four of the five parties could not support the final draft from Dr Haass in full, but it remains a necessity to try to make progress and for agreement to be reached among the parties in Northern Ireland. In our view, substantial progress has been made, although we are not there yet and there remain significant problems in certain areas. As the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) said, these issues have been around for many decades, if not centuries.
I also welcome what the Secretary of State said about the need to continue the process through talks between the parties. Will she do everything possible to ensure that those parties that have indicated an unwillingness to continue to talk to try to resolve these problems come back to the table and join the rest of us in trying to move Northern Ireland forward?
Mrs Villiers
I certainly give the right hon. Gentleman that assurance. It is welcome that the Democratic Unionist party has signalled very strongly that although it has reservations about aspects of the Haass proposals, there is much that it can support and that it wants the process to continue. Of course, as the largest party in the Executive, it will be crucial in taking these matters forward.
Like the right hon. Gentleman, I want to thank not only Dr Haass and Professor O’Sullivan, but all the participants in the working group. At one stage, Dr Haass told me rather wearily that he had not appreciated that politicians in Northern Ireland were quite so nocturnal. There were certainly many all-night sittings, so the stamina of all those taking part is much appreciated.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement and for being continuously involved throughout the Haass process. Will she continue to work with the parties, because it is vital for Northern Ireland to get inward investment, and the sight of such public disorder on the issues of parades and flags is perhaps a significant deterrent?
Mrs Villiers
Yes. It is clear that parades in particular, but also flags, have frequently played a part in triggering disgraceful scenes of rioting. If we can build more consensus on those issues, it will have tremendous benefits for the police, who have to deal with public order problems, as well as for inward investment, because few things put off inward investors more than political instability and street violence.
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State tell us whether her law-abiding, decent constituents in Chipping Barnet would have accepted the final Haass document, given that it equates victims of terrorism with terrorists, diminishes the role of terrorism right throughout the troubles and seems to many people to have ended up as a very one-sided attempt to change the history of what really went on over the past 30 years?
Mrs Villiers
I would hope that my constituents see the Haass proposals, as I do, as a workable basis for continuing discussions. It is obviously disappointing that the proposals are not yet in a state that means all five parties can sign up to them, but the reality is that getting any kind of solution to these issues will be very difficult.
The issues about the past, in particular, are very sensitive, not least because of anxieties about whether any process might end up with a disproportionate focus on state activity. We must, however, recognise the efforts made by Dr Haass and the participants in the working group to try to ensure that there are safeguards to prevent processes on the past ending up as one-sided, which is what the hon. Lady is concerned about.
Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)
The Haass discussions took place during a backdrop, in the run-up to Christmas, of increased efforts by dissidents to disrupt economic life in Northern Ireland. What recent discussions has my right hon. Friend had with the Chief Constable about the ongoing and future threat from dissidents?
Mrs Villiers
The attacks before Christmas by dissident republicans were disgraceful. It was particularly despicable that they were deliberately aimed at places where people were doing their Christmas shopping or were out for a festive drink, while the attack on commercial targets was deeply unpleasant. The message for these dissident republicans is that they will not succeed. These attacks are utterly pointless. They are disgraceful and they have been condemned almost universally across Northern Ireland. They have no political support and will achieve nothing. I am certain from my many conversations with the Chief Constable, the most recent of which was this morning, that the Police Service of Northern Ireland will leave no stone unturned in bringing to justice those responsible for the attacks before Christmas.
Dr Alasdair McDonnell (Belfast South) (SDLP)
I, like others, want to express my deep regret and sympathy to Paul Goggins’s family. Paul exhibited many good qualities, if not every good quality, that one would expect to be found in a decent human being—integrity, humility and genuine friendship, as well as a deep sense of social justice, to name but a few. I first met him when he was a Northern Ireland Minister. He was outstanding because of his sheer decency and sheer human qualities, and he played a very positive role, as other hon. Members have already said. In time, after I entered the House, he became a firm friend, a trusted source of good advice and a confidant. I have been very moved because, right across the House today, we all miss Paul, and we will miss him even more in future, with his good counsel and his wise advice. To his colleagues, friends and family, I add my condolences and sympathy. It is a sad day for all of us.
I welcome the Secretary of State’s endorsement of the significant progress made in the Haass talks. I express my appreciation for her involvement and that of the Prime Minister in the later stages. The Secretary of State will recall that when the Haass process has been mentioned on previous occasions, I have urged a much greater involvement at an earlier stage by both the British and Irish Governments to ensure a positive outcome and to put in place a determined implementation and legislation programme. The process was not just about the talks themselves and whatever conclusion they came to; there needed to be a major follow-through process, and that is still required.
I believe that a lot has been achieved—the glass is not half full; it is three-quarters full—but may I now urge the Secretary of State to ensure that her Government engage even more intensively, hands on and proactively with the parties, the Irish Government and Richard Haass and his team, and take the lead to ensure the implementation of the considerable progress that has been made, the initiation of legislation where it is required and the resolution of the outstanding issues?
Mrs Villiers
I certainly give the hon. Gentleman the reassurance that I will continue to be very strongly involved with the parties, the Irish Government and Dr Haass, as well as with friends across the Atlantic who have taken a close interest in the process. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words about my involvement and that of the Prime Minister.
The hon. Gentleman is right to raise the issue of implementation. Even had there been full agreement on new year’s eve, there would still be a lot of work ahead to turn Dr Haass’s proposals into legislation and into new institutions operating on the ground. The UK Government, the Northern Ireland Office, officials and I are very keen to work on the practical implementation process. Not least because of our current responsibilities in relation to parading, we are very keen and eager to input into the process of implementing any agreement if, as I hope, it can be agreed between the parties.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Speaking as someone who has lost friends, and not just soldiers, in Northern Ireland—as have so many friends who represent Northern Ireland constituencies—how can my right hon. Friend balance the competing claims of the requirement to find out what happened to so many people who were cruelly murdered and the requirement to encourage people to come forward, perhaps with limited liability, so that we can find out what happened to the many people who have simply disappeared in Northern Ireland?
Mrs Villiers
Clearly, those matters were at the heart of the work of the political parties and Dr Haass. My hon. Friend will be aware that the idea that was floated of a general amnesty was almost universally rejected. The current proposals include a limited immunity, whereby to encourage people to take part in the truth recovery process, their representations and statements would not be admissible in subsequent criminal proceedings. That is not to say that subsequent criminal proceedings could not go ahead on the basis of other evidence. It was clear from what was said by pretty much all the political parties and the public reaction to the statement of the Attorney-General that the option of prosecution must be kept alive. The proposals that are on the table do not seek to take that option away.
Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)
May I take this opportunity to express my sympathy to the colleagues, friends and family of Paul Goggins? He had an interest in Northern Ireland and a concern for its people that extended far beyond his tenure as Minister of State. That has been clear to me in my work in this House and, previously, as an Assembly Member. He was also a true gentleman. He displayed integrity, generosity and grace in his public service, but also in his private dealings. The House is much poorer for his passing.
As a participant in the talks process in Northern Ireland, I pay tribute to Dr Richard Haass, Professor Meghan O’Sullivan and their team. They have shown commitment and dedication to the process over the past six months and not just in its latter weeks, when it became incredibly intense. Richard Haass was clear throughout the process that the issue with finding a resolution was not the shortness of time, but the will to make the necessary compromises. Does the Secretary of State agree that any continuation of the process must remain focused on taking the difficult decisions, rather than avoiding them while creating an illusion of activity, if it is to deliver on the hopes that the public have invested in the Haass process?
Mrs Villiers
I agree with the hon. Lady. To achieve success on any of the issues, particularly on the past, compromise is needed. Compromises have sometimes been difficult in the history of Northern Ireland. They will no doubt be difficult on these issues too, including for the UK Government. We are very clear that if the parties are prepared to make compromises to make progress, the UK Government will back them.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I associate myself with the remarks that have been made about the late Paul Goggins. He was a man of profound Christian belief and that guided him in his work. That is an example to us all. I add my condolences to his family.
The Haass talks have reached a stalemate. One of the drawbacks of setting a deadline is that once it has passed, unless agreement has been reached, the impetus can be lost. The advantage of these talks appears to be that they were chaired by an independent organisation that brought true independence and experience to the process. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that there are no plans to introduce a further set of people as independent arbiters of the talks and that every effort will be made to bring back Dr Haass and his team at an appropriate moment when the parties have reflected on the work that has been done?
Mrs Villiers
As I said, I am not sure that Dr Haass is in a position to come back and perform the role of chairman, but I hope that he will continue to engage. Introducing another independent chairman is an option for the First and Deputy First Ministers. I am not sure that it is needed at the moment, but it is well worth their consideration. I hope that we have not reached a stalemate. That is not how I would characterise the situation. There is still an opportunity for the political parties to grasp. They can do that by getting back around the table to continue the discussions.
Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)
Thank you for calling me, Mr Speaker. It is so kind of you. With your permission, I would like to put on the record a personal tribute and a tribute on behalf of my constituents to Paul Goggins. The news of his sudden death was profoundly and deeply shocking not just to this House, his colleagues and most of all his family, but right across Northern Ireland. Paul Goggins had hefty and important responsibilities in the Northern Ireland Office. He was an exceptional Minister, particularly with regard to health and security. It will be widely regretted that he has died at the young age of 60—just 60. However, in those 60 years, he achieved an enormous amount. He has left a very positive legacy in Northern Ireland. As has been mentioned by other right hon. and hon. Members, he had a deep personal Christian faith. He lived that faith in the manner in which he treated everyone, irrespective of their political views or their faith.
I welcome the statement by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. I welcome the fact that an early opportunity has been taken to report to this House on the Haass talks. I draw attention to the fact that the Secretary of State did not suggest in her statement that if the parties cannot agree among themselves, the British and Irish Governments will impose the Haass proposals on the parties and the people of Northern Ireland. That suggestion has been made in Northern Ireland. Will she take this opportunity to reject it clearly and frankly, because that would not be acceptable?
Mrs Villiers
The hon. Lady is right that it would be very difficult to impose a solution from above. I agree with the calls on both Governments to continue to engage, encourage and facilitate. Ultimately, the best way to resolve these issues is through cross-party agreement within Northern Ireland. It was important to give this House the chance to debate the situation at the earliest opportunity so that we could send a strong message of support to Northern Ireland’s political leadership in their endeavours to reach an agreement on these issues, which have caused so much tension over so many years.
I share the hon. Lady’s sentiments on the shocking nature of the news about Paul Goggins. Even now, a few hours after learning the truth, it is very hard to believe that it has happened. This place will be all the poorer for his absence.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
I would like to express my sadness at the passing of Paul Goggins. As a near neighbour, I learned a lot from him and his approach to politics. He was an ardent campaigner and obviously a great Minister, but he was also an outstanding and dedicated parliamentarian. I learned a lot from his approach to tackling the problems faced by victims of mesothelioma and from the way he helped Manchester airport to have a vibrant future. He was an outstanding parliamentarian and he will be missed locally.
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for setting out clearly the progress that has been made in the Haass process. Does she agree that, although further progress is required, there must be no let up in the steps to improve economic regeneration in the region?
Mrs Villiers
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Rebalancing the economy in Northern Ireland by boosting the private sector is crucial. That is why we are pressing ahead with implementing our side of the economic pact. I will continue to work with the Northern Ireland Executive in taking forward their obligations in the economic pact. I am delighted to say that the first tranche of the new capital borrowing powers that have been granted as a result of the pact will in due course support a new shared education campus in Lisanelly, which will give many more children the chance to share part of their education with kids from different community backgrounds and traditions.
Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)
As the Secretary of State will know, 90% of the deaths in Northern Ireland during the troubles were caused by paramilitary and terrorist organisations, and yet much of the focus is on what the state did. We cannot have a process that is disproportionate, that seeks to rewrite the history of the troubles and to sanitise terrorism, and that ignores the needs of the vast majority of innocent victims who were murdered by the terrorists.
Mrs Villiers
I certainly agree that the processes on the past need to be balanced and must recognise the proper attributions of responsibility for the deaths during the troubles. I acknowledge that that is one of the most important things to get right. I am impressed by the degree of progress that has been made by the political parties. They have come a great deal closer to an agreement on the past than I ever expected. I hope that in due course we will reach an agreement and a conclusion on that matter.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
On the proposals perhaps to establish a common flag for all communities representing Northern Ireland, will my right hon. Friend say a little more about how the commission on emblems will operate, and tell us whether there is any time scale for it to report?
Mrs Villiers
The timing envisaged for the commission on identity and flags is around 18 months. I have always thought that there might be scope for the development of new shared emblems, and I hope that that will be considered seriously by the new commission, if it is set up. I genuinely think that there are merits in trying to have a broader conversation with civic society about moving forward on the issues of culture, identity and tradition that have proved so intractable up to now.
Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)
May I thank the Secretary of State for her statement, and associate myself with the remarks about the late Paul Goggins? He represented the epitome of compassion, humility, decency and integrity in this House, and during his time as a Minister in the Northern Ireland Office and the Home Office.
On the Haass talks, I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), and to Alex Attwood and Joe Byrne, who formed a sterling team at the talks on behalf of the SDLP. In view of the compelling need of victims and survivors, it is important that an implementation plan is put in process. Will the Secretary of State and the Minister of State take an active interest in ensuring that immediate discussions take place with the five parties to ensure that legislation, implementation and a resolution are found for those whether two people I talked to last week: one whose father was killed as a result of the activities of the military reaction force; and a widow whose husband was a policeman in Northern Ireland? Those people came from different perspectives, but they were suffering none the less owing to their tragic and sudden loss.
Mrs Villiers
I reiterate the tributes paid to all participants in the working group, including the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr Donaldson). Despite the fact that an agreement has not yet been reached, a remarkable amount of consensus has developed between the parties. We must build on that, and ensure that this is not a wasted opportunity and that the parties can get together again to resolve the remaining issues that divide them. On an implementation plan, as I have said already at the Dispatch Box, if agreement is forthcoming, of course the UK Government would be keen to provide support and advice on the practicalities of implementing the proposals across the three areas.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Given what has been said, it appears that no one is particularly surprised that the talks have not worked out, and that no one in particular is being blamed, as these issues are difficult and go back over a long period. Indeed, there is a good deal of satisfaction that this much progress has been made. It also appears that independent chairmanship worked. Although Dr Richard Haass is no longer available, it would be a shame to lose the momentum and the progress that has been made, so should not the Secretary of State encourage the Executive to appoint a new independent chairman and keep the process going while it is still warm so that we can cross that final finishing line?
Mrs Villiers
As I have said, that issue is well worth considering, and this shows one of the values of this early opportunity to debate in the House where things stand with the Haass process. No doubt the First Minister and Deputy First Minister will be given a read out of our proceedings, and I will certainly discuss with them the possibilities of appointing an independent chair, if they think that appropriate.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
I join my right hon. Friends the Members for Lagan Valley (Mr Donaldson) and for Belfast North (Mr Dodds), as well as other hon. Members, in their tributes to Paul Goggins. I knew him personally and found him to be someone who was set apart from many others. He was a person of great grace and tremendous integrity, and he was approachable by everyone, irrespective of which side of the House they were from.
I also thank the Secretary of State for bringing to the House her report on the Haass talks. She will be acutely aware of attempts by republicans to place the flag of the Irish Republic on an equal footing with our sovereign flag of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. There is one sovereign flag in Northern Ireland—the Union flag. As a professed Unionist, will the right hon. Lady assure me that the Government will never support any attempt to equate the sovereign flag with the flag of the Irish Republic, a neighbouring country?
Mrs Villiers
As the sovereign flag of the United Kingdom, of course the Union flag must have special status in Northern Ireland. One of the challenges that Dr Haass encountered was that it seemed difficult to distinguish symbols of identity from symbols of sovereignty when it came to an expression of Irishness. It is important that consideration continues on those matters, and I wholeheartedly endorse the hon. Gentleman’s assertion that, of course, the Union flag will always have a special status as the national flag as long as Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom. The Belfast agreement makes it clear that Northern Ireland will stay part of the United Kingdom unless and until its people vote otherwise.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
In the absence of a long-term solution on parading, does the Secretary of State believe that the new Parades Commission has sufficient confidence from all sides in Northern Ireland to ensure that this year’s parading season does not end in the awful scenes that we saw last year? Does she think that any action is required on her part to ensure that such scenes do not happen again?
Mrs Villiers
It is timely to remind the House of the vital importance of obeying Parades Commission determinations. We have had an extensive debate about reforming the adjudication system for parades, but unless and until an agreement on that is reached and implemented, the Parades Commission is the lawfully designated authority and its determinations must be obeyed.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
I thank you, Mr Speaker, for what I thought was an extraordinary, moving and wholly appropriate tribute to our colleague, Paul Goggins, at the beginning of this sitting. Paul was inspired by his Christian faith, and all hon. Members will hope that that same faith will be of comfort to his family at this time.
Does the Secretary of State believe that the difficulties she has charted ahead can be overcome by the downgrading of the Parades Commission’s work to just one day a week? Is she confident that that is an appropriate work load?
Mrs Villiers
I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Parades Commission is not being downgraded and that it will be able to complete its work. We have a strong new team of parades commissioners, and I reiterate the importance of ensuring that their determinations are obeyed and that the rule of law is respected.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
May I join in the tributes to Paul Goggins? He was an outstanding example of a humanitarian, as well as an assiduous constituency Member of Parliament. Paul and I worked closely a few years ago when he was a Northern Ireland Minister on the re-establishment of Magilligan prison in my constituency when there was a serious threat of its closure. He assured me at that stage that if a case was made, he would overrule some of the decisions that were going to be made in the higher echelons of the civil service. He was, as we all know, a man of his word, and he did that, and I pass on my sympathies to his family and his wife.
We all welcome the Secretary of State’s update to the House on progress regarding the Haass talks. Given the outstanding differences between the political parties to which she refers, does she agree it is essential that all parties get together as quickly as possible to try to hammer out those outstanding differences so that we get a widespread and comprehensive consensus, and can implement—voluntarily—a consensus across the divide that everyone in Northern Ireland will endorse?
Mrs Villiers
Yes, I agree with the hon. Gentleman on that. It is essential that all parties come together to try to resolve the outstanding differences between them.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
Mr Speaker, may I thank you for speaking for each of us in your very articulate tribute to Paul Goggins’s ethic and the esteem that he earned in this House and beyond? Paul was not a “selfie” politician. His question was not who would get the credit for a measure or change, but who would get the benefit from it. Those of us in Northern Ireland who benefited from his work are right, on this special day, to give him credit for so much of the progress that he helped to build.
Will the Secretary of State affirm clearly that, in respect of the past, the Haass paper has more balance and much more value than the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) sadly tried to suggest? Will the Secretary of State also affirm that the whole Haass process, and the papers we now have, do have the makings of a worthy, worthwhile and workable advance if the parties agree to work on that, and that what we need to do at this stage is not just maintain working contact between the parties, but have a clear and cogent working compact so that we deal with not only those areas of difference but, more importantly, those areas on which we have reached an understanding that is better than we have ever had before?
Mrs Villiers
I think that I can broadly agree with the hon. Gentleman on much of that. While I understand the concerns of the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), I think that what is now on the table is not as unbalanced as she fears—yes, I do think that it has the makings of a workable solution. These proposals can be the basis for further discussions. Clearly, they are not there yet, because five parties have not agreed, but they certainly form a workable basis for moving forward.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
May I also add my comments about Paul Goggins? I met him in my previous life as a councillor on Ards borough council, when I found him to be compassionate and interested in the issues that we were bringing to his attention. When I had the privilege of being elected to this House, he was one of the first to shake my hand and welcome me. There was not a time when he would not come over and say a word of encouragement over your shoulder. I very much appreciate not just his contribution to me as an individual in this House, but the fact that he has left a legacy that we can all be proud to have been part of.
In light of the fact that terrorist organisations have no track record of telling the truth about their past activity, does the Secretary of State accept the genuine fears that any process that is designated to discover truth has the potential to be one-sided if the forces of law and order are subjected to full investigation and the terrorists remain unlikely to the tell the truth?
Mrs Villiers
It will certainly be important to ensure that, when agreement is ultimately reached, the procedures on the past are as balanced as they can be. I well understand the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Vauxhall and others about the importance of ensuring that the process does not lead to attempts to rewrite history or focus exclusively on deaths when the state was involved, and I know that that is something on which the parties have been focused during the discussions. It is important for them to continue to work on that as they try to move forward from what is currently on the table to what I hope, in due course, will be a concluded agreement.
Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
Given the extremely deeply rooted nature of the issues involved in talks about culture, tradition and identity, what role does the Secretary of State anticipate that there will be for schooling and education in helping to resolve some of those issues in the much longer term?
Mrs Villiers
The hon. Lady makes a fair point. Involving young people in a debate about emblems and cultural identity could be very positive. I would have thought that it would be excellent if the commission engaged with children and young people to get their ideas on how to express identity in Northern Ireland in a way that is respectful to other views and communities.
David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)
I thank the Secretary of State for her statement and join all hon. Members in their tributes to Paul Goggins. In the journey of life, we all meet people who leave a lasting impression, and Paul Goggins certainly was one of those people. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family at this time.
Further to a point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Mr Donaldson), does the Secretary of State accept that there can be no fudging of the distinction between those who were the terrorist perpetrators of violence in Northern Ireland over the past 40 years and those victims who were on the receiving end of their violent deeds, and that, to that end, elements of the Haass text were deeply unsatisfactory?
Mrs Villiers
The UK Government have always made it clear that we would never find it acceptable for someone to draw equivalence between those who sought to undermine and destroy the rule of law through terrorism and those who sought to uphold it as members of the security forces. However, a lot of progress has been made on the proposals about the past—far more than most people expected. To make that progress and build up such a degree of consensus in just four months is encouraging. Some elements of what is in the Haass proposals are difficult, so I understand concerns about them, but this is an important opportunity to grasp and there is scope for compromise. The UK Government are prepared to be part of that compromise and we encourage the parties to continue to work on these matters.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
May I also join in the tributes to Paul Goggins? Unlike many Ministers who, when they leave Northern Ireland, forget all about the place, Paul was always interested and wanted to hear what was going on, which I think was an indication of the genuine interest he had in the job he performed in Northern Ireland.
Given the wide range of opinions and the deeply held views that were discussed in the Haass talks, does not the Secretary of State agree that no deal was better than a deal that would have exacerbated the divisions in Northern Ireland? While, as politicians and as a society, we have to continue to work at the issues, does she not agree that the best way of undermining those who want to wreck Northern Ireland is to change our education system, get young people into jobs and have a robust economy, rather than implement quick-fix solutions that simply involve more quangos and legislation?
Mrs Villiers
If any deal is to work, it is important that it commands a broad consensus. If we are to reach an agreement, some difficult decisions may be needed to get the compromises that are necessary. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that as well as working on the Haass issues, important though they are, it is crucial that efforts continue to be made to improve education in Northern Ireland, to boost the economy and to deal with all the other challenges with which the Northern Ireland Executive continue to grapple.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I, too, would like to be associated with the tributes that have echoed from both sides of the House to our dear friend Paul Goggins. When I was a Minister in the Northern Ireland Executive, he was a particular and specialist help and a source of encouragement. When I had the honour of becoming a Member of this place in 2010, he continued to be not only a friend but, as I saw in the many Committees on which I served with him, an expert on matters of security. His expertise was a particular help. This House will be the poorer for his passing, but his Father’s house of many mansions will be the richer for his presence.
May I also say, Mr Speaker, that I think your tribute to him was touching? You described him as a man who was Labour to the core, but the least tribal of Members. I think that that captured the man and the moment, and we are richer for that.
Turning to the Haass talks, I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson). You will appreciate, Mr Speaker, that I am known for speaking my mind and for calling a spade a shovel. I believe that my party was right to say no to the final text, and it will remain right to say no until it gets to a point when it is able to say yes to something that we can recommend to our community. I believe that we did the right thing, and we will continue to do the right thing when it comes to saying no at the right time and saying yes when it is appropriate to do so.
The Secretary of State said that it was disappointing that it had not proved possible to reach an agreement on an historical investigations unit to take the place of the HET. Why would she try to fund such a unit, with its panoply of lawyers and additional experts, when there is a shortfall of £60 million, starting in 2015, for the current arrangement, which is the cheaper option, and when there is an additional shortfall of £36 million for security? Will she commit now to finding the money to allow the police to function for the next five years, rather than pursuing this fanciful idea of an historical investigations unit?
Mrs Villiers
It is important that the parties continue to work to find an agreed position on all these issues. I welcome the statement from the First Minister that he feels able to support substantial parts of the Haass proposals. The hon. Gentleman is right to raise the issue of costs, which would need to be resolved in the event of an agreement. As I have said, the UK Government would expect the Northern Ireland Executive to fund that primarily from within the considerable resources provided by the block grant. We will obviously consider any application for top-up funding, but given that we have to deal with a deficit of such gravity, it is difficult to commit to additional funds at this stage.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I cannot help but feel that, by now, Paul Goggins would have made a contribution on this statement with his usual good sense, grace and compassion that would have added wisdom to our proceedings. That is why his passing is a loss not just to his family, friends and comrades, but to the House.
It might never be possible to agree entirely about the past, but it should be possible to agree that the future of Northern Ireland will be served only by continued dialogue in the present. To that end, will the Secretary of State do all that she can with Northern Ireland parties, the Irish Government and the shadow Northern Ireland team to maintain the momentum achieved through the Haass process?
Mrs Villiers
I can certainly assure the hon. Gentleman that I will do everything that I can to maintain the momentum, working with all the people he outlined.
I would like to close by once again thanking the two Members of the House who were direct participants in the Haass process: the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley and the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long).
Mr Speaker
I thank the Secretary of State, the shadow Secretary of State and all colleagues both for what they have said and for the way they have said it.
Points of Order
(10 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. No doubt, you will have seen today’s Guardian front page, which reports a major rift between the Cabinet Office and the Department for Work and Pensions over universal credit. Leaked documents in The Guardian report that the Cabinet Office has accelerated Government Digital Service withdrawal from universal credit. At the last Cabinet Office oral questions, I asked the Paymaster General for a full explanation of his role in universal credit, but he declined to answer. Has he given you any notice that he plans to come to the House to give us a full explanation of his role in the universal credit shambles?
Mr Speaker
I certainly confess to being a regular reader of The Guardian, among other newspapers. I have received no such indication, but the hon. Gentleman has put his concerns on the record, and they will have been heard on the Treasury Bench. I think that we will have to leave it there for today.
Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In late October, I raised a point of order with you about the Prime Minister’s refusal to answer questions from Back Benchers. Twice he refused not only to answer my questions, but to make any reference to them. Instead, he ranted about Unite the union. You gave me some sound advice, Mr Speaker. You told me to write to the Prime Minister, which I did, on 31 October, but I am still awaiting a response. You also suggested that I speak to the Table Office. I have spoken extensively to the Table Office, which, after long discussions, agrees with me, as I understand it, that there is no mechanism in this place, when a Minister either refuses to answer a question from a Back Bencher or makes no reference to the question, to ensure that the question gets answered. If that is the case, is that a concern for the House?
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for giving notice of it. All I can say today is that the Prime Minister is answerable to the House for his conduct in government, not for his private life. The hon. Gentleman can pursue the Government through all the procedural channels available to him. He has asked his questions and has received answers that he finds unsatisfactory. I am afraid that he is not the first and is unlikely to be the last hon. Member to have that experience. I can only encourage him to persevere. For today at least, we will have to leave it there, partly because I have nothing to add and partly because there are other points of order with which I need to deal.
Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. On 13 December, the House had its annual debate on fisheries, which was quickly followed by negotiations in Brussels on 17 and 18 December, at which the allocations for fish species were agreed. Following such negotiations, it is customary to have an oral statement in the House from the appropriate Minister. Have you received any indication of such a statement being forthcoming?
Mr Speaker
I have received no such indication, but the hon. Lady is an indefatigable Member. Her concerns will have been heard by the Deputy Leader of the House, and she will have to look for opportunities, either at Question Time or through the resources of the Table Office, to highlight her inquiries.
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. First, with your permission, with pride and humility, I would like to associate myself with the tributes paid to Paul Goggins, our dear friend—and particularly your tribute, Mr Speaker. He was involved in many activities. I remember most his commitment to international development, which was shared by his family and his son Dominic. I know that our thoughts, as expressed by you, are very much with them today.
During our eventful break, to their credit the television media covered the significant events in South Sudan. That is understandable, given that 200,000 people have been displaced, 500,000 are waiting for humanitarian aid and awful violence continues. Mr Speaker, have you been given any indication, either by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office or the Department for International Development, that a Minister intends to make a statement to the House? If not, may I seek your invaluable advice about how the matter might be pursued?
Mr Speaker
I have received no such indication from either Department. My advice to the right hon. Gentleman is to think forward to Tuesday 21 January, when there will be oral questions to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and his team. The right hon. Gentleman might think that a suitable opportunity to raise the matters of concern to him. Who knows? He might be successful either on the Order Paper or in seeking to raise a supplementary question.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Last week, the Cabinet Office released confidential documents to the National Archives relating to the then Government’s covert intervention in the 1984-85 miners’ strike. The documents confirmed what the National Union of Mineworkers and the Labour movement fully suspected at the time, but many people in the mining communities and the UK as a whole were alarmed to learn that senior Ministers and, indeed, the Prime Minister deliberately misled the people of this country. Have you been approached, Mr Speaker, by the present Government wishing to apologise and to put the record straight regarding the then Government’s real intentions back in 1984-85, which were to close 75 pits, not 20 pits, as they insisted? If not, will you advise the House how this injustice can be rectified by the House?
Mr Speaker
The short answer is no; I have received no such approach. It is, of course, open to the hon. Gentleman to seek an Adjournment debate, in which he could set out his thoughts more fully and elicit a response. I have a sense that that is a course that the hon. Gentleman will in all likelihood follow.
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. About 90 minutes ago, I raised a question with the Prime Minister about the situation of police officers patrolling by public transport in Bassetlaw, and the Prime Minister responded by saying that crime had gone down 27%—a fact that he miraculously repeated within seconds on Twitter, putting it out to the outside world. I have the statistics with me, and crime in Bassetlaw has not gone down by 27%; it has gone up by 2%, including in respect of all the serious categories. What advice do you have, Mr Speaker, about getting the Prime Minister to correct the record in relation to the objectively available facts about the change in crime in Bassetlaw?
Mr Speaker
My advice is twofold. First, all Members are responsible for the accuracy or otherwise of what they say. If a mistake has been made, it should be corrected. The procedure for making a correction will be well known to any and all hon. Members. Secondly, I simply say to the hon. Gentleman, with due affection, that I first met him when we served on the Lambeth borough council together in 1986, so we have known each other for 27 years. He always struck me as an extraordinarily persistent blighter then, and nothing in the intervening period has caused me to revise that judgment.
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In view of what you had to say to my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) regarding the release of papers on the year-long miners’ strike, we are not talking about a day or two; we are talking about the sentiments and points of view expressed over a long period in the House by Ministers. It was pretty clear, according to the papers that have been released, that many things said by Ministers were based on something that was not correct. It therefore gets to the heart of Parliament when we realise that those statements made over a year-long period were shaping the views of all people, including the judiciary, which learned what it wanted to know about the nature of the strike based on ministerial statements on a continuing basis. That is why this issue is so important retrospectively.
You, Mr Speaker, have several times heard the Prime Minister apologise for some incidents involving Governments from way back. That applies to previous Prime Ministers as well as this one. I therefore think that it is your duty, Mr Speaker—an adventurous Speaker—to use your good offices on this matter. Since you assumed your office, you have already moved into some such territories, so it is important to check all the statements made in this House in violation of what we now know as a result of the release of these papers. If you do that, Mr Speaker, we will then be able to see how the course of events in that year-long strike were shaped, resulting in the judiciary taking action—on sequestration, on the imprisonment of people, on blacklisting and on other events. What flowed from the mouths of those who occupied the Treasury Bench at the time was the utterance of statements that we now know to be untrue. That makes this a parliamentary issue rather than one that is just broadly political.
Mr Speaker
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order, and I hope that he will recognise, as the House will have noted, that I have treated it with great respect. I have listened to him while he fully made his point. I would say two things in response. First, rather than give an instant response, I would like to reflect on what he said. Secondly, while noting his observations about my spirit of adventure, it may be that what he seeks on this occasion could conceivably be beyond my spirit of adventure—I do not know. I will consider the matter and if I think it necessary to revert to the House, I shall do so. We will have to leave it there for today.
Driving Offences (Review of Sentencing Guidelines)
(10 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Secretary of State to undertake a review of the maximum penalties for driving offences causing death and serious injury; and for connected purposes.
I stand today to present this ten-minute rule Bill because of something that happened in the village of Overton in my constituency of Clwyd South in October 2009. That was when Robert James Gaunt, a nine-year-old boy, tragically lost his life. Robert was a schoolboy from the village. He was mown down by a driver while crossing the road. Young Robert was killed. The driver who so carelessly took Robert Gaunt’s life was unlicensed and uninsured. He hit Robert, killed him, and drove away. He not only failed to stop, but did not even report the accident. Even worse, he attempted to cover up his crime by re-spraying his car.
Robert’s life came abruptly and needlessly to an end—and for this, the driver incurred a pitiful sentence of 22 months. That was the very limit of what was possible under the law for that offence. This man hit a child, took a young boy’s life and, after driving away to leave that child to die, was sentenced to a grand total of 22 months and a four-year driving ban. The man served only 10 months in jail, which cannot be right.
After the injustice of this case and many others like it, people from my constituency launched a petition calling for sentences for this sort of crime to be raised. More than 1,300 names were added online and a further 2,000 collected on paper. The campaign continued, even though a change of Government meant an early closure to the online petition. Many of the people who signed the petition had probably never signed a petition before and perhaps never signed one since, but they did so on this occasion out of a passion for justice for Robert and for other victims of road accidents around our country.
As the local Member of Parliament, I stand here to give my support by calling for the law to be changed. This motion calls for the Government to bring in a new Bill to do exactly what the family of Robert James Gaunt was calling for back in 2009. We are asking the Government to look at the maximum penalties for driving offences that lead to death and serious injury.
Currently, those who cause death by driving face a number of charges and a large scale of sentences, ranging from mere months to 14 years. However, no driver has been handed a 14-year term since Parliament first lengthened the maximum sentence from 10 years in 2004. The reality is that sentencing guidelines mean that there must be a large and frankly improbable series of aggravating factors for a judge to issue anywhere near that sentence. Tougher penalties are not being used because judges are being held back by guidelines that prevent them from handing out longer sentences.
My own party in government was right to fight for higher maximum penalties in 2004, and the current Government, encouraged by the tireless campaigning of many hon. Members of all parties, are equally right to have incorporated into the Crime and Courts Act 2013 new rules on drug taking while driving and to have amended the Road Traffic Act 1988. Both Governments can rightly be proud of having brought in changes that go in the right direction—but, as we know, there is much further for us to go.
If a driver is caught driving with
“deliberate decision or flagrant disregard for the rules of the road”,
the starting-point for judges when choosing a sentence is eight years. This can be longer for a number of reasons, such as when a person is killed or when the driver is driving a stolen vehicle. Let us reflect for a moment on how subjective
“deliberate decision or flagrant disregard for the rules of the road”
is. If a driver is seen to be creating significant danger—the lowest level of seriousness—the starting point for sentencing judges is three years, and the maximum term is five years. If the driver is injured, the sentence is shortened; if the victim was a friend, the sentence is shortened; and on and on we go.
In general, I think it absolutely right that our criminal justice system distinguishes between those who make a mistake, commit a crime and acknowledge that crime, and those who, as in the case involving Robert Gaunt, flee, hide and pervert the course of justice. However, I feel that what we are seeing in relation to driving offences simply beggars belief. Drivers who plead guilty before their trials have their sentences automatically reduced by a third, and most will be released on licence after serving only half their given sentences.
The rules and guidelines set out by the law mean that drivers who end the lives of innocent people on our roads have their sentences reduced, reduced and reduced until, bit by bit, they decline to mere months. For the families of those who are killed, that is clearly not justice, which is why I am urging the Government to review the sentencing guidelines relating to penalties for driving offences that lead to death or serious injury. If we change the law and the sentencing guidelines are reformed properly, that will bring some measure of justice. I hope that it will also give people who are uninsured or unlicensed grounds to pause before they get behind the wheel of a vehicle.
Today, I have spoken about the tragic case of Robert James Gaunt, but cases similar to Robert’s happen all over the country. Innocent people are killed by drivers who are given risibly low sentences. Families throughout our nation have lost loved ones through reckless, dangerous or negligent driving, and the law is not doing enough to hold those who take lives in this way accountable. Why should a sentence be so short when the injury has been caused by a car rather than a weapon? Sentences for assault are much longer, even when the act is not premeditated. The average sentence served by drivers who kill or seriously injure another human being while driving is currently just 11 months. Since I have been a Member of Parliament, I have seen other Members who, while probably agreeing on precious little else politically, are at one in urging reform on this issue. We know that there is a tremendous amount of support for a review from Members of all parties.
I firmly believe that this is about finding justice for those who have been let down by the system, and ensuring that the punishment fits the crime. Tragically, that is often not the case at present. I wholeheartedly support the provision of a range of different sentences for driving offences; what I am calling for today is a logical development of the current system and more consideration of what sentences are given.
My constituents embarked on their campaign to secure justice for Robert. Of course we can never secure true justice for a young boy who was so tragically and needlessly deprived of his life, but what I hope that we can do is to take action that will save more families from similar heartbreak in the future. That is why I stand here today—on behalf of the family of Robert James Gaunt, the people of Overton, and people throughout the country who share our concern—and urge the Secretary of State to undertake a review of the maximum penalties for driving offences that lead to death and serious injury.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Susan Elan Jones, Chris Ruane, Albert Owen, Mr Mark Williams, Ian Lucas, Julie Hilling, Karl Turner, Mr David Hanson, Ms Margaret Ritchie and Mark Tami present the Bill.
Susan Elan Jones accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 28 February and to be printed (Bill 152).
Opposition Day
(10 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Housing
(10 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
16:00 - The House divided: - Ayes: 234 / Noes: 302 - Question accordingly negatived.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House notes that the Government has failed to tackle the acute housing shortage which is central to the cost of living crisis and over the last three years has presided over the lowest level of new homes built since the 1920s, with home ownership falling, rents at record highs and rising faster than wages and a record five million people in the queue for social housing; further notes that net housing supply under this Government has fallen to its lowest level since records began, and that affordable housing supply dropped in the last year by 26 per cent, homes built for social rent dropped to a 20-year low, while there has been a 104 per cent increase in in-work housing benefit claimants since 2009; believes that the Government should take action to tackle the housing shortage; and calls on the Government to boost housing supply by reforming the development industry and introducing measures to tackle landbanking, bringing forward plans to deliver a new generation of New Towns and Garden Cities and giving local authorities a new right to grow to deliver the homes their communities need.
Before I begin, let me say that I thought that Mr Speaker spoke for all of us earlier in his eloquent and moving tribute to our dear friend and comrade Paul Goggins. His death is a tragedy. He was as decent, compassionate, principled and, I have to say, cheerful a man as one could have the privilege to meet, and we will miss him dreadfully. Our hearts go out to Wyn and to their three children, Matthew, Theresa and Dominic.
The fact that we face a housing crisis is common ground across the House. Why do we face that crisis? Because people are living longer and staying in their own homes, which is a good thing; because our population is rising; because every relationship breakdown increases the demand for housing; but principally because, as a society, we have not been building enough homes. Whether we look at starts, completions or net housing supply, the failure to build over the past three years could not be more starkly obvious.
It is good to see the Secretary of State taking part in today’s debate. By my count, he has participated in at least four major housing launches, and his Department has made nearly 400 announcements about housing in the past three years. I have brought some of them along. They are headed “Building more homes”, “Welcome rise in affordable housing”, “Plans to boost UK housebuilding”, and “Prevention is best cure for homelessness”. This is the question that the Secretary of State should answer: is he proud of his record over those three years?
The Secretary of State’s Department tells us that an average of 232,000 new households will be formed in England each year over the next two decades. However, in the three years for which he has been in charge, the number of homes completed in England has fallen to its lowest level since Stanley Baldwin was first Prime Minister. The number of affordable homes built fell by 29% last year, and the number of social homes built fell to its lowest level for more than 20 years.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
I do not know whether my right hon. Friend noticed last week that house prices in Hammersmith and Fulham rose by 25% last year, and that the average cost of a property in the borough is now £693,000. Will he join me in condemning Hammersmith and Fulham council, which is selling off council homes by auction as they become vacant, and has just entered into a joint venture with Stanhope, a private developer, to empty and demolish council estates and replace them with market or near-market housing?
Hilary Benn
I shall come to the issue of house prices in London later in my speech. However, the situation that my hon. Friend has described in his own borough should concern Members in all parts of the House. Given the need for more social homes in London—and, indeed, in the rest of the country—it is hard to understand why a responsible council should take such action.
The number of housing starts fell by 11% last year, and, although it is now rising, it is still far from where it needs to be. Net housing supply is at its lowest level since the statistics began to be collected a decade ago.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman is keen to talk about the Government’s record in England. Will he comment on the fact that as of July last year the number of housing completions in England had risen by 34%, while in Labour-controlled Wales it had fallen by 32%? How can he explain that, if he believes that Labour has the panacea?
Hilary Benn
I am here today to talk about housing provision in England and if the hon. Gentleman wants to compare the Labour record with the Conservative record, I will take any time our record over 13 years in government—
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way? I can help him out on this.
Hilary Benn
Will the hon. Gentleman bear with me? That is help from an unusual quarter.
The record is 2 million more homes, 500,000 of them affordable. I watched with interest the contribution of the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) to Channel 4 News last night, and I would just say to him on social homes—council houses and housing association social homes—that the Labour Government built more social homes in their last three years, which were the most difficult because of the recession, than this Government have managed to build in their first three years in office.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend appreciate that in London possibly more than most places, because of the ridiculous cost of private rented accommodation, it is essential that we have a supply of social housing? When the Government made a commitment to replace homes sold under right to buy, they said there would be a one-to-one replacement. Does he share my concern that that promise turned out to be totally worthless as they are replacing only one property for every seven sold?
Hilary Benn
Indeed; my hon. Friend points out yet another failure with the promises the Government made on—
Pete Wishart
I know the right hon. Gentleman does not really want to talk about the devolved Governments Labour has run, but does he know how many houses Labour built in the last four years in government in Scotland? Obviously, it is a difficult question, but the answer is six: six houses, and none of them were on the Scottish mainland. Shetland was lucky enough to get six houses from the Labour Executive.
Hilary Benn
In Scotland and elsewhere local authorities have responsibility for building houses, but we are here to hold this Government to account, and homelessness—
Mr Hamilton
I would like to respond to the previous intervention and correct the record. Labour Midlothian council was building 1,000 council houses at that time, in what is the second smallest land-locked authority area, so the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) was talking absolute rubbish.
Hilary Benn
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for putting the record straight. Perhaps I should have trusted my initial judgment and not given way to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart).
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Tory Government have in fact cut the capital budget for Wales by 40% and obviously one cannot build more houses with less money?
Hilary Benn
That is an extremely good point and it matches what the Government have done in relation to England, which I shall come to in a moment.
The Government said that they wanted to prevent homelessness, but what has happened? It has risen every year under this Government and rough-sleeping is up by nearly a third since 2010. House prices, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) mentioned a moment ago, are racing ahead of earnings. They are up 8.4% in the last 12 months according to Nationwide and up 15% in London, and today it takes the average family over 20 years to save a deposit for a house. If we are talking about records, that figure in 1997 was three years, so no wonder the rate of home ownership is falling. Therefore, it is not really working, is it?
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
In Prudhoe in my constituency eight of the 10 houses that were purchased recently at the development by the hospital were bought under Help to Buy. Does the right hon. Gentleman now welcome the Help to Buy policy which has transformed the ability of people to bridge the difficulty he so correctly outlines?
Hilary Benn
I shall come to Help to Buy in a moment, but, yes, we have consistently said that we welcome measures that help people to buy, but there is a problem about supply and that is what this debate is about: the Government’s failure to ensure that enough homes are being built. The truth is we need to build a lot more homes as a country—roughly double the current rate. The question before the House today is not whether we are now seeing a rise in housing starts from the pitifully low level the Government have bequeathed themselves over the last three years. The question before the House today is: does the country have a plan that will see building on the scale required? Judging by the record so far, the answer is clearly no, and there is one bit of advice I suggest the Secretary of State takes, which he himself gave: he did at least have the modesty to put out one press release which was headed: “No complacency in the drive to build more homes.”
The Secretary of State should listen to the plans and proposals Labour have put forward about what more needs to be done. Let us consider affordable homes. What did the Government do? One of their first acts was to cut the affordable housing budget by 60%. [Interruption.] Indeed, it was the largest cut they made. We have tried to persuade them to use the proceeds of the 4G auction to build affordable homes and to listen to the International Monetary Fund calling for an infrastructure boost by providing more affordable homes. They have not done that.
I come now to the new homes bonus. The National Audit Office said there is little evidence that the bonus has significantly changed local authorities’ behaviour, and the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee says there is no credible data available to show whether it is working. Indeed, she has pointed out that the areas that have gained most money tend to be the areas where housing need is lowest and the areas that have lost most money tend to be those where the needs are greatest. That is a familiar story with this Government: whether it is local government funding or the new homes bonus, they like to take from those who are least well-off and give to those who are most well-off. What is more, the money that is taken from the least well-off goes to areas where in all probability the houses would have been built anyway, so in what sense is the new homes bonus
“a powerful incentive for local authorities to deliver housing”?
We know the new Housing Minister, the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), does not think it is an incentive because he told us so. On 25 November he told the House that
“the new homes bonus is not about encouraging people to build homes.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2013; Vol. 571, c. 11.]
That is what he said. If that is the case, what on earth is the new homes bonus for? Perhaps when the Secretary of State responds he could sort out the confusion in his own Department.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
When the new homes bonus policy came in, my local authority in Gateshead literally did not know what to do with its new homes bonus. Because the new homes bonus was netted off because of any demolitions that had taken place, Gateshead got a grand total of £64,000. We literally did not know what to do with £64,000 to implement a housing policy in Gateshead.
Hilary Benn
My hon. Friend illustrates the problem. As we know, this is money that has been top-sliced from all local authorities and is being redistributed in a way that clearly does not appear to be fair and, judging by the findings of the PAC and the NAO, is not terribly effective.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
In my constituency in Brighton increasing numbers of people are on the council waiting list as people struggle under the Government’s austerity measures, yet for the whole country the Chancellor has increased the borrowing limits to build council houses by a mere £300 million, which is nowhere near enough. The Labour motion refers to
“giving local authorities a new right to grow to deliver”
new homes. Will the right hon. Gentleman clarify that that means a Labour Government would completely remove the hugely damaging borrowing cap so more housing can be built, as well as ending the sale of council houses?
Hilary Benn
As the hon. Lady may be aware, the Lyons commission established by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition is looking at that question. Labour councils are outdoing Conservative authorities in building new council houses because of the reforms to the housing revenue account the last Labour Government put in place.
Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend rightly highlights the extraordinary story of the new homes bonus. The one thing he has not mentioned is the cost. Because it is a cumulative bonus that works over six years, the commitments that have already been made involve expenditure commitments of over £7 billion. Is it not extraordinary that a Government are committing to £7 billion-plus of expenditure on a policy that the NAO does not see having any effect and the Housing Minister does not believe acts as the incentive it is supposed to be?
Hilary Benn
My right hon. Friend makes an overwhelmingly powerful case. That is the problem with the new homes bonus and that is why we are urging the Government to think again about it. Indeed, when the Chancellor tried to persuade the Treasury Committee that the Government’s actions were going to boost supply, the Treasury Committee said the arguments being made were “unconvincing”.
I shall turn now to the Help to Buy scheme. I said in answer to an earlier intervention that we support measures to assist people in realising their dream of home ownership, but if one of the consequences is that house prices move further and further out of people’s reach, there will be a problem. We cannot boost demand for housing, which is what Help to Buy is doing, if we do not also increase the supply. There is a growing list of voices expressing concern about the scheme, the latest of which belongs to someone who happens to sit at the Cabinet table with the Secretary of State. I refer, of course, to the Business Secretary. Talking recently about the state of the economy, he said that
“we risk it being derailed by a housing bubble…It’s not my job to tell the Bank of England what to do, but I get a sense that the Governor of the Bank does understand this is a serious problem.”
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
May I urge the right hon. Gentleman to expand his remarks to cover areas beyond London and the south-east? As a Leeds MP, he will know as well as I do that there is not a housing bubble there, and that house prices are not running away. The Help to Buy scheme is making a real difference, because the price of a house in my constituency—and in many parts of his constituency—is eight to nine times more than the average salary in those areas. The scheme is really helping people there. He has made the point that prices are increasing in London, but will he please ensure that this debate is about more than just London and the south-east?
Hilary Benn
The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly fair point. As he knows, the housing market varies enormously between different parts of the country. In the city that he and I have the privilege of representing, the council’s assessment—which is supported by all the parties—is that we will need roughly 70,000 new homes in the next 15 years. That is a question of supply.
Hilary Benn
I have given way a great deal. I want to make some progress, because lots of people want to speak.
Let us look at the situation in London. Here, we see new blocks being built and marketed to foreign investors, making it much more difficult for Londoners and others to get a chance to buy those homes. The shadow Housing Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds), has said that that is wrong and called for action to require such homes to be marketed to Londoners and others who live in this country first, rather than being sold off-plan to investors abroad.
Hilary Benn
I want to make some progress.
In the capital, about 50,000 homes are now sitting empty. That is why Labour would allow councils to double the council tax on empty properties. We would also deal with the loophole that allows overseas owners to claim that a property is their second home, simply because they have put a table and chair in it.
I asked the Secretary of State a specific question last March about whether foreign buyers would be able to benefit from the Help to Buy scheme, and his reply could not have been clearer:
“This scheme will not be available for foreign buyers; this is a scheme to help people from this country.”—[Official Report, 25 March 2013; Vol. 560, c. 1311.]
Will he confirm for the record that EU nationals who have come to the UK will not be eligible for assistance from the Help to Buy scheme? I will give way to him to allow him to answer. I notice that he does not wish to intervene. Perhaps a nod would do. This is the third time I have asked him about foreign buyers in relation to the Help to Buy scheme, and it is the third time he has been unable or unwilling to give me an answer.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
Given that the Help to Buy scheme is such a major plank of Government housing policy, does my right hon. Friend not think that the Government should have made a detailed assessment of its likely impact on house building and house prices before introducing it? When the Treasury Select Committee asked officials from the Department for Communities and Local Government about that in November, they said that it was not a matter for them; they said it was a matter for the Treasury. When asked whether any officials at DCLG had had any discussions with Treasury officials about the impact of the scheme, they said no. Is not that a complete dereliction of duty on the part of DCLG with regard to this important policy?
Hilary Benn
I agree; my hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have called on the Bank of England to look into the operation of the Help to Buy scheme now, rather than in a year’s time, precisely so that those points can be taken on board.
I want to move on to discuss what else could be done to get the land, the finance and the planning consent required to build more homes. Ministers seem to argue that nothing is really wrong with the way in which the land market is working. I have to say to the Secretary of State that we disagree. The planning Minister, in his latest written answer to me, has said there are more than 523,000 units with planning permission, of which 241,500 have not yet even been started on site. That represents a lot of homes that could be built, yet companies are sitting on the land, with planning permission, waiting for it to increase in value and not building on it.
The Office of Fair Trading looked into this matter and found that strategic land banks, including optioned land, were worth 14.3 years, which is about enough land to build 1.4 million homes. That is why we think it perfectly reasonable for communities that have given planning permission to say to those who sought it, “Look, will you please get on and build the homes you said you wanted to build? And if you don’t, then after a time we will start levying a charge. After all, if you had built them, we would now be getting council tax revenue. In the most extreme cases, we will use compulsory purchase powers to take the land off you, with the permission, and sell it to someone else who will build the homes.”
I know that Ministers spluttered into their Cornflakes when we announced that policy, and that the Mayor of London described it as a “Mugabe-style” land grab, but I would gently point out that among those who support the idea of charging when permission has been granted but no houses have been built are the International Monetary Fund and someone who goes by the name of Boris Johnson, who, when I last checked, was the Mayor of London. Moreover, the planning Minister once called for a tax on land to “deter speculative land banks”. The hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen has also spoken up in favour of the proposal, and the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) has tried to claim it as a Conservative idea. With such illustrious backing, how could Labour’s proposal be anything other than a very good plan indeed?
Hilary Benn
I am going to make some progress.
When Kate Barker carried out her review of the housing market a decade ago she found two factors that we need to consider. First, she said that
“limited land supply means the competition tends to be focused on land acquisition rather than on consumers”.
Secondly, she found that
“many housebuilders ‘trickle out’ houses…to protect themselves against price volatility”.
[Interruption.] Hon. Members say that that was a decade ago, but it is still going on. Roughly translated, it means that not all house builders have an incentive to build all the homes for which they have planning permission as quickly as possible or as quickly as the nation needs them to. That is a problem, and we have proposed a way of dealing with it. Even when times were good, when mortgage credit was readily available and house prices were booming, the house building industry was unable to build the number of homes required.
Mr Marcus Jones
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the previous housing boom in 2006-07. Will he explain why the number of first-time buyers fell to its lowest level on record at that time, and why, following the moves made by the present Government, we are seeing the strongest growth in first-time buyer numbers for more than a decade?
Hilary Benn
As the hon. Gentleman is well aware, there was a very difficult period—[Interruption.] No, there was a collapse in the global economy. It is no good the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen shaking his head. The problems that we experienced in the United Kingdom were caused in particular by problems in the housing market in the United States of America. That is why we should be concerned by the threat of a housing bubble returning to the United Kingdom.
One of the answers must be to get more people building houses. [Interruption.] I am glad to see the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen nodding in agreement. Forty or 50 years ago, two thirds of the houses in this country were built by small and medium-sized builders. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman can carry on nodding; that is fine. I am grateful for his support. Nowadays, the figure is only one third, and when we talk to small and medium-sized builders about the problems they face, they mention two things: the difficulty of getting access to land and the difficulty in obtaining finance. Something needs to be done about both.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
In addition to the situation facing small builders, is it not also an indictment that, at 20%, we have the lowest level of self-builders in Europe? In the housing policy we develop we need to encourage communities such as the one in Saddleworth where more than 20 people want to build their own individual homes.
Hilary Benn
I agree completely, and I shall say a word about that in a moment.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
Let me take a step back in terms of land where planning permission has been obtained. We need to address the issue of big developers grabbing every large piece of land, as has happened in Stoke-on-Trent, and smaller developers who want to move on and develop land not being able to do so because the big pieces of land have already been snapped up and are held on to very firmly.
Hilary Benn
My hon. Friend makes a good point about the nature of the land market, why reform is required and why that is one thing we have asked Sir Michael Lyons to look at in his work.
The next problem the Government should start looking at is the difficulty faced by local authorities in places such as Stevenage, Oxford, Luton and York, which want to see houses built to meet demand but do not have the land and neighbouring authorities are not co-operating and making that happen. Ministers recognise that there is a problem, because that is why they put the duty to co-operate in the national planning policy framework.
Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way? On Stevenage?
Stephen McPartland
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way on the issue of Stevenage, where he went with some of Labour colleagues, without informing me, to launch their housing policy. Is he aware that Labour-controlled Stevenage borough council has still not asked neighbouring North Hertfordshire district council whether it will have any houses required in its local plan, because Stevenage borough council believes it can meet its need within its own administrative boundaries?
Hilary Benn
What the hon. Gentleman has just said absolutely does not square with what the leader of Stevenage borough council has said to me—
Hilary Benn
Excuse me. It also does not square with the figures that I have looked at on the proposals for development to the north of Stevenage, which have been consistently blocked. The truth is that a duty to co-operate is not a duty to help each other out or to reach agreement. So in those circumstances, what is a council supposed to do? That shows why the right to grow would provide a means of overcoming this problem by requiring neighbouring local authorities to work together to ensure that the houses that need to be built are built. It is not a top-down—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
No it is not. You are quite right, Mr Benn. I was just about to call Mr McPartland to make his point of order.
Stephen McPartland
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The right hon. Gentleman has just made an accusation about Stevenage. I would just like to clarify things to the House, and I wonder whether that is in order.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
That is not a point of order. Points of order are not clarifications of debates. The hon. Gentleman can, if he wishes, stand to try to catch my eye, but at the rate we are progressing through this debate he will be lucky if there is any time left, because this debate has to finish at 4 pm and a large number of Members are here. However, I am sure that he will try to pursue his point in other ways.
Hilary Benn
Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have two other points to make, one of which is about new towns and garden cities. The Government used to be very keen on those at one point, but they seem to have become less enthusiastic. I hope that the Secretary of State will say something about that when he responds, because it is hard to see how we will make progress without those things . We have to incentivise local authorities to come forward, which is why the Lyons commission is going to look at how we can help new towns and garden cities to be established and why a Labour Treasury would use guarantees—the Government are currently using guarantees for Help to Buy—for “help to build” for these new towns.
Finally, we need communities to take responsibility for building new homes. On that I am with the planning Minister, because I believe that neighbourhood planning is the way forward. For too long, we have had a system in which nobody has really taken responsibility for building new homes. Thame in south Oxfordshire provides a good example of the new community plan. If communities feel that the new houses that they give consent to will solve the housing problem in their own neighbourhood, they will be much more likely to give agreement. That is why we need plots for self-build and local allocation policies for social housing, and why we need to give local people first call on having the chance to buy new developments in their area. That will give communities confidence that the homes will meet their need.
The progress so far has not been considerable, but the task is. I do not know whether the Secretary of State in the end believed all his press releases and announcements, I do not know whether he thought that blaming councils would be enough and I do not know whether he was taken in by what I have to describe as the bombast of this Government’s first Housing Minister, who boasted consistently of the Government’s record. The problem is that the Secretary of State’s record speaks all too clearly for itself. Therefore, the country needs a new plan. The public need it because they are the ones paying the price for failure. Homes give us security and a sense of community: they are where we build and raise families; they are places for children to do their homework; and they are good for our health. However, rents are rising twice as fast as wages, house prices are moving out of reach of families, and 5 million people are in the queue for social housing. This country needs something different, and I urge the House to vote for this motion.
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
The right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) spoke with considerable sincerity and eloquence, as did Mr Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister, in paying tribute to Paul Goggins. Before we go on, I wish to say that I had experience of Paul as a Minister when I pursued a constituency case, and I found him to be courteous, diligent and helpful. I also had experience of him when I was the Minister, and he pursued his constituents’ interest doggedly but always with enormous charm. I think it is heartbreaking that a man who had so much to offer to this House and, far more importantly, to his family has gone so prematurely, and I will miss him.
I welcome this debate. We have been through a difficult housing crisis but this is only the second debate on housing that the official Opposition have called, and we had to goad them into calling one of those. Throughout the period, I have never felt under any pressure from the official Opposition on housing, and the right hon. Member for Leeds Central has eloquently demonstrated why that is. All Labour Members want to do today is talk down the economy, ignore the recovery and cast their heads in the sand about the sustained turnaround in the housing market. It has certainly taken some time to deal with the problems that Labour left us. The right hon. Gentleman referred to Stanley Baldwin’s housing figures, and when I walked through the door of Eland house the spirit of Stanley Baldwin and those figures met me. That was our baseline—that is what we actually started from. Once upon a time—
Mr Pickles
I will give way in a few moments. Would it be possible for me actually to say something before the hon. Gentleman intervenes?
Once upon a time, the last Labour Prime Minister, advised by the current Leader of the Opposition and shadow Chancellor, announced that he had abolished “boom and bust”. It was a debt-fuelled illusion of a boom, resulting in the biggest budget deficit in our peacetime history and a crash that devastated the housing market—all that was on Labour’s watch. Let us cast our minds back to 2008—
Mr Pickles
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman can remember 2008. The then Housing Minister, the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), was photographed outside Downing street with her speaking notes. No doubt the right hon. Member for Leeds Central was in the Cabinet and waiting to be briefed. This is what her notes said:
“Housebuilding is stalling…New starts are already down 10% compared to a year ago. Housebuilders are predicting further falls.”
The notes also said:
“We can’t know how bad it will get.”
We know now that it would become far worse.
Geraint Davies
Will the Secretary of State confirm that lending from banks for mortgages now is at the 2008 level but lending from banks to business and construction is 30% down, which is why house prices are escalating out of control and real wages are falling through the floor? When interest rates go up in a couple of years there will be a burst of the housing bubble and sub-prime debt.
Mr Pickles
The hon. Gentleman needs to look a little outside London given where he represents. He could even look in some parts of London. Newham, for example, saw a drop of just under 1% in house prices. If we take out the London figures—figures for parts of London can be very spectacular—and look at the rest of the country, we will see that the increase in house prices has been very modest indeed. Not even in London have the figures reached where they were in 2007, so to talk about a housing bubble is ridiculous.
Alec Shelbrooke
As I tried gently to prod the shadow Secretary of State during his contribution, may I now say that I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for moving the debate beyond London and the south-east to areas in which my constituency and those of a great many of my hon. Friends are based?
Mr Pickles
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for that. Our long-term economic plan is helping to pay off the deficit, keep interest rates down and let the housing market recover.
Mr Pickles
Of course I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, but just let me make a little bit of progress.
According to the Office for National Statistics, house building is now at its highest level since 2007, based on new orders in residential construction. House building starts in the last quarter were at their highest level since 2008. The National House-Building Council agrees, with new home registrations at their highest since 2008. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has declared that
“every part of the country has reported growth since the beginning of the market crash six years ago.”
Contrary to the Opposition’s motion, statistics on net housing supply show that 400,000 more homes have been delivered in the first three years, which is in line with figures before Labour’s housing crash.
Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
As the Secretary of State is referring to figures, will he confirm that his Department’s statistics show that in 2007, 176,000 homes were built, in 2008, 148,000 homes were built, and in the latest 12 months in which he has been Secretary of State, just 107,950 were built?
Mr Pickles
Basically, if the right hon. Gentleman walks through the door of Eland house and embraces Stanley Baldwin’s figures, he will find that it takes a wee while to start to make progress. He should congratulate the Government on what we have been doing to get the thing going again, and it is a matter of some pleasure that that is the case.
Mr Pickles
I will give way to the distinguished hon. Gentleman in a moment, but I would like him to consider that brick makers stayed at work over the Christmas period—very unusually—to catch up with demand for bricks to build new homes. Including empty homes being brought back into use, the new homes bonus has made available more than half a million more homes to buy and rent. I must say that I have, after a fashion, become attached to the right hon. Member for Leeds Central [Interruption.] I am not pleased. I am worried about what will happen when he returns to Leeds, because he has been talking about the new homes bonus. He has been saying that it is going to all kinds of places, but which authority is in the top 10 for the receipt of new homes bonus? Which authority is at number six and challenging for the top position? Yes, I am talking about Leeds metropolitan authority. The right hon. Gentleman is sticking his nose up at the prospect of the people of Leeds receiving £27.2 million.
Mr Betts
The Secretary of State will remember his visit to the Select Committee just after the Government were formed. I asked the then Housing Minister, the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), whether success for the Government, when they are eventually judged on their record,
“will be building more homes per year than were being built prior to the recession, and that failure will be building less.”
The right hon. Gentleman said:
“Yes. Building more homes is the gold standard on which we shall be judged.”
My right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) has just said that we were building more than 200,000 homes a year before the recession. When will the Government hit their own targets and hit that figure?
Mr Pickles
Well, as we leave behind the ghost of Stanley Baldwin bequeathed to us by the Labour Front Bench, the figures demonstrate that we are really starting to move. The hon. Gentleman should be rejoicing in the fact that our policies are working.
In the 2005 manifesto, the previous Labour Government pledged that there would be 1 million more home owners. In reality, home ownership fell by more than 250,000. Yet the aspiration of home ownership has returned. According to the Bank of England, mortgages to first-time buyers are at their highest level. Both the Council for Mortgage Lenders and the Halifax report the same. Thanks to the action taken to tackle the deficit, we have kept interest rates down. The number of repossessions is at its lowest level for five years and continues to fall. The Bank of England reports that the number of new mortgage arrears cases is at its lowest quarterly level since its records began.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State acknowledge that of the 20 local authorities with the worst repossession record for mortgages, 17 are in London? Although he may not wish to address the problems of London, they are substantial and need his attention.
Mr Pickles
I have looked most carefully at the figures. It is not a surprise that the number of repossessions is dropping, and that is something about which we should be pleased. Mortgage approvals are at their highest level for six years. The Mortgage Advice Bureau notes that the number of mortgage products available to house buyers has surpassed the 10,000 mark, and cites Government action as the cause.
We are taking action to help those with small deposits. Since April, under the Help to Buy equity loan scheme, there have been more than 20,000 reservations for new build homes, supporting house building and first-time buyers. Over 90% of the 1,200 house builders registered under the scheme are small to medium-sized developers.
The Help to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme has had a further 6,000 applications in the first month, helping hard-working families. The average house price guaranteed under the scheme is just under £160,000.
Mr Pickles
I am coming to supply in a moment. The hon. Gentleman should be a little patient.
Labour might not have supported the scheme, but Santander has said that Help to Buy has been
“a major cause of increased confidence in the housing market.”
We are also helping the less well-off. More than 150,000 new affordable homes have been built in England in the past three years, assisted by our £20 billion affordable housing programme. Thanks to our reforms to the Housing Revenue Account, more council housing has been built in the three years of this Government than in all the 13 years of the previous Labour Government.
Jake Berry
As my right hon. Friend is on the subject of social housing, perhaps he could also confirm to the House that the previous Government, after 13 years, left us with 421,000 fewer social homes than when they took office.
Mr Pickles
My hon. Friend is exactly right, and my speech will confirm that. The social housing stock on Labour’s watch shrunk by 420,000.
Debbie Abrahams
More than 2,300 households in Oldham are affected by the bedroom tax, and there are only 500 properties into which they can move. Furthermore, private sector landlords are not allowing tenancies for people on benefits. Where are those people meant to live?
Mr Pickles
The hon. Lady should get out more and stop reading reports in the newspapers. The private rented sector represents 70% of all homes and there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that such activity is widespread or happening in significant numbers. Why would people want to turn away good tenants? Frankly, I deeply regret the way in which she is stigmatising people on housing benefit.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
I did get out and I was standing at my local bus stop, where there is an estate agent, reading the adverts. Nearly 70% of them said, “No DSS”—of course, landlords have not yet realised that the DSS is no more. That is a big change, as I have not seen that for many years, but those of us who get out are aware that that is happening.
Mr Pickles
I am shocked to hear that that is the situation in Scotland, because in England we have a far more civilised way of dealing with these matters.
John Prescott’s pathfinder programme demolished Victorian terraces across the midlands, but this Government have scrapped the wrecking ball and worked with communities, not against them. We have already brought 85,000 long-term empty properties back into use. We have reinvigorated the right to buy, reversing Labour’s savage cuts and helping social tenants get on the housing ladder.
It is a shame that Labour councillors and Labour MPs oppose the right to buy. Who is the biggest enemy of the right to buy? It is Labour-supporting unions such as Unite, the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians and the GMB, waging class war against the working classes. By contrast, we are on the side of hard-working people. We have changed the rules on housing waiting lists to give priority to the armed forces and to local residents, whereas Labour doled out council housing to foreign nationals.
We are helping the vulnerable. Homelessness is half the average level it was under the last Labour Government. The average length of time households spend in temporary accommodation has fallen by a third. Housing waiting lists almost doubled under Labour, but thanks to the reforms in the Localism Act 2011, waiting lists have now fallen below the level we inherited. The Home Builders Federation notes that planning approvals for new homes are at their highest since 2007. A survey in September showed that the number of people wanting to extend their home has trebled, thanks to the flexible planning rules that we introduced to restore economic confidence, which were opposed by the Opposition.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State share my astonishment at the noises coming from Labour Members about house building levels when we all know that in the one area of the UK where Labour is actually in charge, house builders such as Redrow are pulling out? They are doing so because of the increased burden of red tape that the Labour-run Welsh Assembly is putting on the housing industry.
Mr Pickles
My hon. Friend makes a very important point and I shall come on to it in a few moments.
We have scrapped Labour’s regional spatial strategies, which enveloped the planning system in red tape and hindered local plan making. The number of planning appeals has fallen, meaning more local decision making and more decisions “right first time”.
At the same time, we have protected the environment. The latest official figures, produced last month, show that the number of homes built on the green belt is the lowest on record—four times lower than it was a quarter of a century ago. We have made it easier to get brownfield land back into use by allowing surplus office space to be converted into homes. A survey in September of just 15% of councils reported more than 260 different schemes under those new rights, but the Labour response, from Labour MPs and from members of the London Assembly, is to oppose those new homes.
We are not just backing large developers—we are supporting self-build by abolishing development taxes such as section 106 and the community infrastructure levy, getting the state off the backs of those who want to build their own homes. I hope that the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) will welcome that. Labour’s response has been silence, no doubt because Labour councils want to tax people to the hilt.
We need only to look at Labour’s policies, which we have heard about from the right hon. Member for Leeds Central. Labour has a five-year plan and has reinstated a national housing target of 200,000 homes a year. The previous Labour Government had a target of 240,000 homes a year, yet house building fell to its worst peacetime level since the 1920s. It is a little like the state targets for the tractors that failed to roll off the Ukrainian production lines.
How would Labour build new homes? I understand the Opposition have three policies. First, the shadow Housing Minister has called for five “new towns”. I remind her that the last Labour Prime Minister promised five new eco-towns in 2007, and then, when they were not built—perhaps in a silent, unconscious tribute to Nikita Khrushchev—increased the number from five to 10. Not a single house was built. Not one. The only thing that eco-towns built was resentment. Labour has simply dusted off and reheated its old policies under a different name. The Government are supporting locally led large scale development, with more than £500 million of investment. We have kick-started new homes in the likes of Cranbrook, Wokingham and Sherford, and Ebbsfleet will follow very soon.
Labour’s next policy is so-called land banking, as we have just heard, and is a solution to a problem that does not exist, according to the Office of Fair Trading, Savills and Kate Barker. Of the half a million units with outstanding planning permission, almost 90% have started or are working towards a start. The number of homes on stalled sites is just 59,000 units. The Get Britain Building investment fund, worth more than £500 million, is helping unlock those sites, and we have made things easier by enabling unrealistic section 106 agreements to be renegotiated, making such stalled sites viable—a move opposed every single time by the Labour party.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
In Stockton borough, planning permission for hundreds of houses on brownfield sites has existed for years, yet developers are not doing anything. Is it not time that they were helped and encouraged to build more homes on those sites by the idea that they might lose the land, as we suggest?
Mr Pickles
Perhaps we could nationalise them—[Interruption.] I thought that would get the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr Campbell) excited. Perhaps we should confiscate the land. Perhaps we should use a North Korean solution and start arresting and executing them for failing to do that—[Interruption.] I am afraid that it is that rather daft rhetoric that will dry up all housing supply.
Labour’s policy of new development taxes and state confiscation of land would have the reverse effect of that desired, discouraging developers from complex land assembly projects. House builders will just let their planning permissions lapse or be more cautious about applying for permission in the first place. It is a recipe for fewer homes and a slower planning system.
Labour’s third policy is the right to grow, another Labour land grab to allow Labour councils to dump urban sprawl on their rural neighbours and rip up green belt protection. Labour cites the likes of Stevenage—we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland)—Oxford and York. In every case, the green belt is providing a green lung for those towns and cities and the Opposition want Labour councils with no democratic mandate to rip it up.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way, not least because he missed Luton off his list of places that Labour has suggested might need a right to grow. In the period running through to 2030, Luton borough requires about 30,000 new homes to keep up with population demand but can only build about 6,000 within the borough. What should Luton do?
Mr Pickles
They should begin to talk to their neighbouring authorities, and stop trying to bully North Hertfordshire council—I have had an opportunity to meet that council—and using terror tactics and being extremely unpleasant. It is the return of Stalinist top-down planning, and the biggest threat to the green belt that the country faces.
Labour’s policies are like buses: you wait for years, then three come along at once. It has even asked Sir Michael Lyons to come up with a couple more. Under the Labour Government, Sir Michael was paid £400,000 for his last review of Department for Communities and Local Government policy, so I hope that the Labour party is getting him at a cheaper rate. For all Labour’s lame attempts at policy making, we can see what Labour would be like in reality, as my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) suggested. In Wales, where housing is devolved, Labour runs the Administration, and its record on housing there is a disaster. According to the National House-Building Council, while new home registrations are up in England, they have fallen successively in Wales. Labour has hit the housing market with extra red tape, adding £13,000 to the cost of a new home with measures ranging from building regulations, to fire sprinklers and waste site management plans. House builders Redrow say that owing to the burden of regulation:
“Wales is the most difficult area in the UK in which to operate”.
Persimmon Homes has pulled out of development in south Wales and the construction firm Watkin Jones has shifted its development to England rather than Wales.
Labour failed to support the housing market, and has belatedly introduced a help to buy equity loan scheme. Watkin Jones said that
“it is difficult to comprehend why the Welsh Assembly Government are failing to recognise the importance of following the UK Government’s lead in getting much needed homes built.”
The Welsh Government, true to Labour form, have slashed right to buy. In microcosm, this is the real face of Labour: high tax, high regulation, the enemy of the free market, and the enemy of aspiration.
I have outlined how the coalition Government’s long-term economic plan is turning the housing market around, but there is more to do to build more homes to meet demand and deal with demographic change. The next spending round will see a further £23 billion of public and private investment in affordable housing. We are looking at further reforms to the housing revenue account to help councils build more homes. Our £1 billion build to rent fund is bringing institutional investment into the private rented sector—something that no Government have achieved before. Further change of use reforms will make it easier for redundant and under-used buildings to be converted to housing. We will deliver fairness in social housing by ending taxpayer subsidies to high-income social tenants—people like Bob Crow.
Our economic plan is for the long term. Contrary to the doom and gloom of the Labour party, which wants to talk our nation down, our economy is on the mend, thanks to the hard work of the British people, and thanks to tough decisions to tackle the deficit left by Labour and to clean up their mess. Our policy is firing up the kilns, bringing the brickies on site, and getting Britain building again. I urge right hon. and hon. Members to reject the Labour motion, and I commend the Government’s housing record to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
There will be a four-minute time limit on all Back-Bench contributions. The next speaker is Ronnie Campbell.
Mr Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) (Lab)
I listened intently to the Secretary of State. I remember—this is going back a long time; I have been here 26 years—that when we came to power in 1997 on the back of 18 years of Tory rule, houses were crumbling and falling to bits. If Members look at the record, they will see that in that period Labour put at least £9 billion or £10 billion into refurbishing houses. In my constituency, I remember new kitchens and bathrooms going in, and new roofs going on the houses. A lot of work was done, so when the Secretary of State knocks the Labour Government, he should remember what they did to refurbish houses that were neglected in the previous 18 years of the Tory Government.
I want to talk about Northumberland. The county council has a waiting list of 10,000 people. It is not a big area, but it is rural and sparsity is an issue. A lot of houses are needed in the countryside and there is a big problem, as the Secretary of State said. There are not many brownfield sites in the countryside, and in extreme circumstances we may have to use green-belt areas, as has been said. There is always a problem in the countryside, because it does not want houses to be built, so there is a big demonstration about it. I do not know where the kids are going to live—sometimes we have to put houses in the countryside.
Northumberland county council has a plan to build 2,000 houses a year, which would constitute 300 jobs a year. That would put a lot of money into the economy—the council reckons £10 million, if it can get the programme going. The only problem is that, at this moment in time, it is completing 191 affordable houses. I do not have a problem with Help to Buy—if young people have a bit of money and want to buy their own home, that is their right—but we need houses for the poor and those people who cannot, even with Help to Buy, afford to buy. We need to build homes for them. There are 10,000 people on the waiting list in Northumberland, which has a population of only 300,000, and there is a problem with people trying to get houses.
Under the county’s core strategy, at least 30% of the 2,000 houses that it is trying to build will be affordable for poor people who cannot afford to buy a home on their own. There are three sites in my constituency where building is under way. I am going tomorrow to have my photograph taken at one where the last house is just being finished—I will be proud to see it, as it is an affordable house. Something is being done, but it is very, very little—it is not enough—and the engine needs to go faster and faster so that we can build more.
We have land in Amble, Berwick, Corbridge, Craster, Embleton, Shilbottle, Rothbury and Wooler. They are not in Blyth—I am in the big town—but in the countryside, where we have land to build. One or two sites might encroach on the green belt, but not by very much, and Northumberland county council really does not want to use that land, as it wants to build houses where they are needed. They are needed in those places in the countryside. I hear Members saying, “You can’t build in villages; you can’t build here,” but we have to build in villages, as they have to survive.
The green belt is a problem, and I hate to see it being built on—
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
It is entirely right that we should debate the serious issue of housing this afternoon, but I am afraid that the Opposition have picked the wrong time to table a motion with such wording, as it does not reflect the state of the market, which is decidedly upbeat. However, those words might have been appropriate in 2010, when under Labour house building fell to its lowest level for nearly 100 years and Labour was consistently breaking promises on what it would do regarding housing.
I took the trouble to read the 2007 conference speech made by the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown)—his first speech after becoming Prime Minister—in which he promised that Labour would provide 240,000 new homes a year. The following year, the figure for new homes was 115,000—the lowest since the 1920s. Labour said that it would build eco-homes, and it kicked off with five communities, which went up to 10. That was going to be the centrepiece of its housing policy, but none of the communities was ever built or developed. Labour presided over a period of regional spatial strategies, with a top-down “central Government know best” system, but that simply failed to push forward land for development.
The words in the motion are wrong, because things are starting to happen with housing. The Government’s policies have begun to bear fruit, and nationally nearly 400,000 new homes have been delivered since 2010, and starts are up by 23%. The improvement applies not only to owner occupation: 99,000 affordable homes have been delivered since 2011, which is halfway towards delivering the 170,000 homes that the Government seek to deliver by 2015.
The Government’s initiatives to encourage home ownership are working. The Help to Buy scheme, which was launched in April 2013, is allowing people to get started on the housing ladder. There were 5,000 sales in the first six months and 1,000 house builders are registered. The importance of small and medium-sized developers has already been mentioned, and some 90% of the developers registered under Help to Buy are small or medium-sized companies. There are now 11 lenders covering the scheme. We are also meeting the aspirations of those in the social housing sector who wish to buy their own home by invigorating the right to buy.
My constituency is in the middle of England, and it sits in the middle of many statistics. In 2010, the number of new builds in Rugby fell by 62%, which was inconsistent with the level across the country as a whole, but in 2012-13, housing starts in the constituency increased by 260% to their highest level since 2007-08. Included in those figures is the gateway development of Eden Park, which the Housing Minister visited last February, where three developers are building 1,400 new homes—and selling them as fast as they can build them. The positive attitude to development in my constituency is reflected by an application for 6,200 new homes that will come before the local authority’s planning committee tomorrow, so things are moving across the country, especially in my constituency.
What would have happened if Labour was in power? With regard to measures on land banking, we have heard about state confiscation. The Home Builders Federation, the industry’s trade body, has said that there is no incentive for land banking.
Mr Marcus Jones
Does my hon. Friend agree that the difference between his constituency and mine, where we have a Labour-run local authority, is that his local authority works with local people to deliver these things, rather than imposing things that people do not want?
Mark Pawsey
My local authority has a record of going out and consulting local people. It has brought together a local plan. We are living in a plan-led system, and those authorities that do not have a plan in place will experience difficulties, as I know is the case in my hon. Friend’s constituency.
Confiscating land is no way to solve the problem. House builders want to build houses and there are no incentives for sitting on land. The Opposition’s policy would result in fewer houses being built, because house building would become a risky business to invest in and fewer people would invest in house building companies. Developers supply what the market demands. There has not been demand in the market in recent years, but the steps that the Government have taken, such as Help to Buy, have reinvigorated demand.
Labour is also calling for new towns and garden cities, but its eco-towns did not work. A much better way of delivering houses is through sustainable urban extensions, such as those coming forward in constituencies like mine.
Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
I congratulate the Secretary of State, as he departs the Chamber, on a brilliant knockabout performance that bore as close a resemblance to housing policy as my garden shed does to One Hyde Park. He emphasised what the Government have achieved, but they have achieved very little; what he gave us was a rehash of old figures.
We are facing a housing crisis that has been preceded by 30 years of housing neglect due to 18 years of disinvestment under the Conservatives and 13 years of inadequate investment under Labour, simply because there were other priorities at the time, such as education and the health service. We have since had four years of cuts and low-level production. Members have talked about levels of house building not seen since Stanley Baldwin’s time, but when the Government came into office, why did they not seize the opportunity to boost the economy by building houses, as was done in the 1930s—in Stanley Baldwin’s time—as a means of recovering from recession?
Ian Mearns
My hon. Friend is right that the previous Government did not build enough houses, but I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth Valley (Mr Campbell) on the significant investment that went into the existing stock. My borough of Gateshead benefited from nearly £200 million as part of the decent homes programme to reinvigorate the existing stock.
Austin Mitchell
My hon. Friend is right. We did a good job on decent homes and a limited job on home building, but it was just not enough, given the scale of the problem.
Our present commitment is to build 200,000 houses, which I welcome. However, I argue that we also need a commitment to more public housing for rent. Let us talk not about affordable housing, because it never is affordable, but about public housing for rent, because that provides for the greatest need. Two fifths of the population—the figure is higher in some parts of the country, especially London—simply cannot afford to buy and cannot raise the money for a mortgage without long years of struggle or winning the national lottery. Those are the people who we need to help. We need a big build of public housing for rent to provide for their needs, and that is also needed to bring down the housing benefit bill, because the reason why it is now so high is that we have not built council and social housing, which is much cheaper to provide.
The Government’s proposals, inadequate and belated as they are, will make things worse because increasing the discounts on the sale of council houses means reducing the stock of available housing to meet people’s needs. That policy will certainly not generate enough revenue to pay for new building. We should have a rule that every council house sold must be replaced by a new one. If we had introduced such a sensible provision from the start, we would have maintained the housing stock.
The fact is that private sector build has not risen to 200,000 for many years. According to Shelter, its highest ever total was 175,000. We need a more public housing for rent, which we always had in the past. We could provide for that by removing the cap on local authority borrowing and channelling money into contracts to build. We could ease the situation—perhaps as with the Bank of England’s quantitative easing—by helping the housing associations, which currently face huge problems with arrears, largely because of the bedroom tax. They need help, so they must be allowed to revalue their stock so that they can raise money.
Contrary to what the Secretary of State said, all the evidence points to a need for a massive attempt to build public housing for rent, which would energise the economy and put people back to work. That is the only way out of a crisis resulting from 30 years of neglect and house building rates well below the target that we need, which is 240,000 a year.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
I will focus my remarks on my constituency and on Leeds. The housing stock obviously needs to be increased, but I have taken issue with the Leeds core strategy and the amount of housing it says needs to be built over the next 15 years. The university of Leeds—that august institution is in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn)—has stated that building 70,000 houses in Leeds would not be completed until 2060, which raises the question: why should they be built over the next 15 years? There is therefore an argument to be had about housing figures in different parts of the country.
I totally disagree with the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr Campbell), who is no longer in his place, about villages needing to expand to cope with the housing crisis. One of the major pieces of legislation that this Government have brought in introduces neighbourhood plans, which allow people in the villages in a local area to say, “If we want our village to survive—the little local shop to carry on, the pub to survive, continued use of the village hall, and so on—we need to invest in housing.” People in some of my villages may feel that we need more bungalows for elderly people, while those in other villages may feel that there is not enough affordable housing and that we need to build two-bedroom terraced homes that would help young people to stay in the village where they were brought up.
The problem that we have in Leeds and in my constituency is that as soon as these plans are proposed, the developer says, “Well, that’s very good, but actually I want to build not 20 houses there but 200 or 400 houses.” That would completely change the nature of the villages in my constituency. Leeds city council has deemed that the constituency overall has to take 1,200 houses. If we put that in the context of there being 41,000 houses to start with, we can see that it represents an enormous expansion. Under these plans, the villages of Micklefield and Kippax and the town of Garforth will all blend into one huge development. I believe that the figures are wrong, as I said when I gave evidence on the core strategy, and if I had more time I would expand on that. However, the local authority has the power to identify more sensibly where larger-scale developments could go.
I am unashamed to say on the record that I support the idea of freeing up land in the northern part of my constituency in an area called Headley Fields, which is out towards the parish of Bramham, the village that I reside in, although nowhere near it. That land could take the housing allocation for the next 15 years proposed by Leeds city council. Because it was there and could be planned from day one, proper infrastructure such as transport facilities, pubs, schools, and doctors surgeries could be put in place. At the moment we face the problem of 5,000 houses coming in through what I call death by a thousand cuts—putting 400 houses into a village here and 400 houses into a village there. That would mean that not enough would come out of the new homes bonus to provide the extra facilities, such as the local schools, that were needed.
I do not believe that we should build garden cities, but there is certainly an argument for building new villages in areas and not expanding the existing villages. Planning as a whole in order to have the necessary facilities built in those villages is a better way forward than adding developments on to each village. The neighbourhood plans that this Government have empowered local communities to use can then be put into full effect.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
Like me, many Members, particularly those on the Labour Benches but perhaps others as well, will have had the experience of knocking on doors in our constituencies, peeking behind the door and seeing people living in terrible squalor in poor private sector rental accommodation in the hands of their landlords. When we talk about housing, we are not just talking about building new family homes, important though that is; it is also incredibly important to realise that a lack of housing supply hits the most vulnerable the most.
I want to say a few words about the place where I live, was born, grew up, went to school, and now represent—Luton—and why I believe that it is time for radical action. In Luton, through to 2030, we will require some 23,500 to 33,500 new dwellings. That is an enormous number. It points to the fact that Luton is a town with a young population and large families and has a large population that has increased through the migration of successive generations. It has always had to look just beyond its boundaries in order to expand. That process has ground to a halt, and we are facing serious challenges.
There is limited capacity regarding developable land in Luton. We reckon we could squeeze in about 6,000 homes in the next 15 to 20 years, but we have to balance that against other competing needs. What is the point of a house without a job to go with it? How do we provide good-quality green space? We have a massive problem with primary school allocation that will become a massive problem with secondary school allocation. We need to build new schools, let alone new houses. This is where the challenge arises, and I can appreciate it because I hear about it in many of the places that I visit. I am a Labour activist, and I sometimes share the frustration about our record in government in delivering more homes. However, people forget that, from 1997 to 2010 across the six counties in the east of England, we built the equivalent of a seventh county in terms of housing, and that was still not enough to keep up with the demand that existed.
It is important that we have new towns, garden cities, and so on, but, particularly in the south-east of England, we need to grapple with the problem whereby towns feel that they are unable to expand when we know that there is a great social need for them to do so. That is why I welcome the proposals made by Labour Front Benchers on the right to grow, which would give local authorities powers that they otherwise would not have. It is very different from a top-down solution such as the former regional spatial strategies that set a specific target. We need a new arbitration body to enable discussions between local authorities to take place, but also, crucially, to reach a conclusion whereby we agree together what we need to build and how we are going to build it.
Alex Cunningham
My hon. Friend will have heard the Secretary of State’s rather tongue-in-cheek proposal to nationalise brownfield sites, which really do need development. At the same time, his Department is approving development on greenfield sites in the neighbouring constituency to mine. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should incentivise brownfield site development in order to get building done there instead?
Gavin Shuker
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The pendulum has swung away from brownfield development as a result of this Government’s changes. That is why we should bring in a right to grow in conjunction with the pendulum swinging back towards using brownfield first. These things are not rocket science, but there is political ideology behind them. That is why the Secretary of State’s dismissal of our proposals was so short-sighted. We all recognise that we need more housing and further housing growth. That requires a mechanism that balances the requirements of local authorities to deliver for the people in their borough boundaries with the need to be good neighbours as well. Ministers are scaremongering about greenfield sites being used, but that would take place within the context of the existing national planning framework.
If we are to find a workable solution to many of the problems we face in allowing towns to expand, we will need to have an overall mechanism, but this Government have put in place a series of different mechanisms. They try one, try the other, try the next, change the rules, issue a press release and make an announcement, but we have not seen the delivery, and that is because it is hard to do this stuff. Bold political leadership is required to bring it about.
Sir Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)
I start by making a declaration—not one that appears in my entry in the register but to say that I spent 13 years working in the architects department of a new town, putting up homes, factories and shops. It was very easy to do that because there was no local consultation, no involvement of local democracy, no hassle, and no localism. I want to hear a little from Labour Front Benchers about the strong tension between the words in their motion about creating new towns and their recent paper-thin conversion to a commitment to localism.
I also want to hear from Labour Front Benchers, as I heard from the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), a word of apology. In the 13 years that Labour were in Government, Stockport lost 2,683 social homes and none were built in their place, and 421,000 homes were lost from the social housing stock across the whole of England, which the hon. Gentleman, to his credit, pointed out.
At the height of the boom in 2003, 90,000 homes were lost. In 2004, 71,000 were lost and in 2005 the figure was 69,000. In those three years alone, 230,000 social homes for rent—a quarter of a million homes—were lost from the housing stock. That took the number of homes in the social rented sector below 4 million for the first time since 1955. At that time, the current shadow Chancellor was telling us that there should be less regulation of banks and the then Prime Minister was telling us, solemnly and repeatedly, that he had got rid of boom and bust. He turned out to be 50% right: he had got rid of the boom. It would be good to hear a word of apology for not just the housing situation we inherited, but the financial situation, too.
The coalition Government have started to put things right. Our £4.5 billion investment programme is delivering social homes for rent at only half the public subsidy required under Labour. Labour took us below the 4 million homes mark nine years ago. It took another six years of Labour Government to take us a further 72,000 homes below that, but I am very pleased indeed that it has taken three years for the coalition Government to bring them back.
Sheila Gilmore
Does the right hon. Gentleman not appreciate that one of the reasons he is able to stand up and say that the subsidy for building affordable homes will be lower is that they will not be truly affordable homes? That will result in yet another ratcheting up of the housing benefit bill. The cost, therefore, will be considerable.
Sir Andrew Stunell
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, but the fact of the matter is that we are replacing social and affordable homes that should never have been lost in the first place: 421,000 homes were lost from the stock. As every expert, academic and, indeed, politician recognises, if we want growth in housing overall, there has to be growth in social housing. Labour blew its chance to deliver that and it is the coalition that is creating the opportunity for it to happen.
Contrary to what the hon. Member for Great Grimsby said, this country now has a policy whereby, when a social home is sold, another will be built in its place. He would be right to say that it takes a little while to get the planning permission and other stuff in place, but the policy and the delivery of it are there. [Interruption.] I ask the groaners on the Opposition Benches: where was that policy during their 13 years? Some 400,000 homes were lost and no attempt whatever was made to replace them, leaving the waiting list at a record level. As the Secretary of State reported, it has now, thank goodness, dropped.
The Liberal Democrat influence on this coalition Government means that we are delivering more social homes and, at the end of this Parliament, we will have an increased stock, not a reduced stock, which is exactly what Labour left us with—a reduction of 421,000. We shall have an increase of 150,000. I am proud of that, and all Government Members should be proud of it, too.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
If people listened to Government Members, they would not think there was a housing crisis in this country—but there is, because there are people who come to my surgery who cannot get a home to live in or who cannot get a home that they need. They cannot afford the rising prices or the rising rents. That is this country’s housing crisis.
I challenge the Secretary of State with the comments made by his then Housing Minister to the Communities and Local Government Committee three years ago, when he said that the “gold standard” on which the Government would be judged was building more homes than were being built before the recession. The Government have been building about half the number of homes that were built before the recession. However they choose to dress up the figures, they have failed by their own standards.
As some of my colleagues have said, that is not a terribly hard standard to meet, because the Labour Government did not build enough homes. We built more homes than this Government are building, but we did not build enough. We had a brilliant record on the decent homes programme and on putting right the wrongs of the underinvestment of the previous Tory Government, who allowed the stock to deteriorate, but we did not build enough homes.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
The Labour Government spent £18 billion in 1997 to sort out 1.5 million homes.
Mr Betts
Absolutely, and that brought great delight to many tenants up and down the country.
The Government can pray in aid the fact that with the fallout from the banking crisis the private housing sector in this country suffered a decline in demand, but they compounded the problem by cutting the social housing budget by 60%. The right hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell) was at that time a Minister in the Government who allowed that to happen, and he should stand up and apologise for it. The reality is that the cut was 60%. Government expenditure as a whole was cut by 20%, but social housing capital expenditure was singled out for the biggest cut of all major Government programmes, which has compounded the problem.
I welcome the Labour leadership’s commitment to move towards building 200,000 homes in this country by 2020. That is a good commitment, but I want to see it go further in the longer term: we must get to 250,000 to get demand and supply back in sync. The reality is that the construction industry in this country is now in such a mess that it could not respond more quickly to a higher target: prices of bricks and labour are already going up in the industry, because it has got down to such a low level. It is therefore realistic to set that target.
The issue is that the private sector in this country, as has already been said, has never built consistently more than 150,000 homes. If we are to get up to a figure of 200,000, a large part of that must come from the social housing sector, from local authorities and housing associations. To enable that to happen, we will have to spend some public money. We must all recognise that: if this is a crisis that is a priority for us to deal with, some public expenditure will have to go in as well.
I hope that we can get to a general situation in which we recognise that to achieve the stabilisation of house prices and rents, as has happened in Germany, housing supply has to meet housing demand in the long term. To achieve that will require the sort of cross-party agreement that we had in the 1960s and 1970s, when successive Governments of different political persuasions built the homes that the country needed. I hope that we can get back to such a situation.
I want to refer to my Select Committee’s 2012 report on “Financing of new housing supply”, in which we considered and proposed the idea of a housing bank, with guarantees for institutional investment to go into the social housing and private housing sectors. I recognise that the Government have gone a little way towards that, but not sufficiently. That has been done in the Netherlands; why can we not do it here? Instead of giving guarantees for mortgages, let us put them into building homes.
We could take the cap off local authority borrowing, and 60,000 homes could be built immediately. I think that that has cross-party support in the House, so why do the Government not do that? It would not cost any more taxpayers’ money, and it could be done instantly.
We could look at the housing grant paid to housing associations, which lies on their books as a debt. If it was released tomorrow and that grant was written off—again, there would be no cost to the Treasury, because it has already been paid out—we could free up housing associations’ ability to borrow and build more homes as well.
We could look at self-build, which is the hidden element in a potential housing renewal. The Government could go to see what has been done in the Netherlands, where there is not so much self-building as self-constructing, which involves getting local authorities to lay out sites and getting planners involved on a simple basis. They could go to see how people in the Netherlands, often with the involvement of small builders, are building their own homes—the homes they want, because they have designed them—at about 80% of the cost of a house bought from a private developer. That could be another element.
There is no one silver bullet, but the report includes several measures which, if the Government implemented them straight away, would help to remove the immediate problems of the housing crisis and set us in the right direction.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
I will be very brief, but I want to pick up the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell) about the good initiatives taken by this Government. The fact is that there are more social homes than when we took office in 2010. Progress has been made, and one could rattle off the many good things that have been introduced. They include, for example, encouragement for empty homes to be brought back into use, which is a win-win situation. There is also the whole concept of neighbourhood planning—really involving communities in making important decisions that will increase the supply of housing.
Obviously, however, there is more to do. I appreciate that the limit on the housing revenue account has been raised, but I want the borrowing cap to be raised for all councils. I would like more initiatives to increase land supply. There was a pledge to pilot community land auctions, and I would be interested to know what progress has been made on them. There are therefore innovative things that we can do. The answer is not to knock the very good work that has been done, but to accept that there is consensus on tackling our real housing crisis, and on the fact that by tackling it we can contribute to economic growth and create important jobs and apprenticeships for young people. We can create a win-win situation.
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. We have had a wide-ranging discussion about housing, which is an issue that is close to the hearts of many of my constituents and important to people across the country.
It is patently clear that the Government are in complete denial about two things: the scale of the housing crisis that we face and the scale of their failure to tackle that crisis. I was astonished that the Secretary of State came here today to tell us that we should rejoice in the “sustained turnaround” in the housing market. His statements fly in the face of the facts. Last year, only 107,000 homes were completed. That is not even half the number of homes that is needed to keep up with demand according to the figures of his own Department.
It is regrettable that the Government are presiding over the lowest level of house building in peacetime since the 1920s. If the current trends were to continue, there would be a breathtaking housing shortage of some 2 million homes by 2020. The housing shortage is central to the cost of living crisis. Young people and families across England are struggling to get on the housing ladder and struggling with rents that are at a record high. The first thing that the Government did when they got into power was to cut the affordable homes budget by 60%—a huge cut. It is therefore no surprise that in the last year alone, there has been a 29% drop in the number of affordable homes that are being built.
There are fewer home owners since the election, despite the previous Housing Minister, who is now Chairman of the Conservative party, claiming that the Government would increase home ownership. Tragically, homelessness and rough sleeping have risen in every year under this Government. Both are up by about a third since 2010. The number of families who are in temporary bed and breakfast accommodation is tragically at a 10-year high.
What is the Government’s approach to the biggest housing crisis in a generation? It seems to be a flurry of announcements. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State said in his opening speech, there have been no fewer than 400 announcements in the past three and a half years. However, their many warm words have not been matched by action.
It seems that the Housing Minister recognises that that is a problem. He came to the House in November and told us that
“the new homes bonus is not about encouraging people to build homes.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2013; Vol. 571, c. 11.]
Rather confusingly, he said later in a written parliamentary answer to me that it was an incentive to build homes. Perhaps today—third time lucky—he will clarify what the new homes bonus is for. The National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee have both concluded that it has had little impact on housing supply.
On the demand side, the Government have introduced Help to Buy. We strongly support help for first-time buyers but, crucially, Help to Buy must be matched by help to build. The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, who sits around the Cabinet table with the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the cross-party Treasury Committee and the former Governor of the Bank of England have all said that the scheme carries risks for the economy. The Prime Minister’s new housing adviser, Alex Morton, has gone even further by saying that it risks detonating a bomb under the British economy. However, the Government continue to do next to nothing to boost supply, which is pushing home ownership further out of reach for young people and families.
While the Government are clearly complacent, the Labour party understands the scale of the challenge. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition announced in September that a Labour Government would build at least 200,000 homes a year by 2020. That is a realistic but ambitious agenda. We have asked Sir Michael Lyons to chair a commission that will draw up a detailed road map towards that aim, which is effectively to double the level of house building. There are specific areas that the commission will consider and specific problems that the Government are reluctant to recognise. I will refer to those briefly. The first concerns problems with the land market, the second is the restriction on communities’ right to grow, and the third is the lack of any action by the Government on new garden cities and new towns.
First, there are deep and structural problems with the land market. My hon. Friends the Members for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) and for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) have stressed that even in the good times the private sector did not deliver anywhere near the number of homes we need to keep up with demand. It is clear that developers are sitting on land and waiting for its value to increase. The Government seem to be in denial about land banking—although some of their Back Benchers seem to recognise it as a problem—but the International Monetary Fund and the Conservative Mayor of London clearly say it is a problem. We intend to give local authorities the power to escalate fees on developers who sit on land and, if that does not work, to use compulsory purchase orders if those developers still refuse to get on and build the houses that this country so desperately needs and for which communities are crying out.
We also have a problem with the dominance of big house builders. Small house builders face major problems accessing land as well as finance, and the market is dominated by a few big house builders. That was not always the case; in the late 1980s, small and medium-sized house builders delivered two-thirds of new homes, but now SME builders build only around one third of new homes. We must find ways to make the market more diverse and competitive—I hope we can agree on that.
Secondly, over the past three and a half years we have had warm words—in particular from the Deputy Prime Minister, but also earlier from the Prime Minister—about garden cities, yet not one measure has been taken to put in place conditions to deliver them. It was even reported last week at the start of the new year that the Prime Minister has forbidden Ministers from identifying any sites for potential new towns during this Parliament. Some would say that is pouring cold water on the proposal; others might say it is putting it into a deep freeze. Labour, on the other hand, is committed to new towns, which must form part of the solution to the housing crisis. The post-war Labour Government started 11 new towns because they had the determination and vision to act. That is exactly what we need now and what the Government are lacking. The Lyons commission is looking at ways to incentivise local authorities to come up with sites, and my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor recently committed a Labour Treasury to using guarantees—much like those provided for the Help to Buy scheme—to support the building of new towns.
Mr Mark Prisk (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)
I understand that the hon. Lady is on the record as saying that five new towns will be built in the first five years of a Labour Government. What funding does she have for that?
Emma Reynolds
I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman and his time as Housing Minister. I actually said—he did not read out a direct quote—that I would love to see a Labour Government starting four or five new towns. We are looking at current legislation on new towns, and also to learn lessons from the generation of new towns that were delivered in the post-war period. We have asked Sir Michael Lyons and a panel of experts, including the Town and Country Planning Association and the big home builder Barratt—[Interruption.] Well, we have done more than the Secretary of State is doing. He may chunter at me from a sedentary position, but he has done exactly nothing on this agenda and is incredibly complacent.
Emma Reynolds
I will not give way again to the same person.
Finally, the Government are in complete denial about the situation of towns and cities such as Stevenage, Oxford and Luton—which my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) spoke eloquently about—where local communities are crying out for new homes but neighbouring local authorities are blocking them every step of the way. The Government introduced the duty to co-operate, but they must accept that those fine words are not translated into action. Half a million pounds has been paid out to lawyers in Stevenage over the dispute with North Hertfordshire. I would rather that money was spent on bricks and mortar.
Emma Reynolds
I am running out of time and I think the hon. Gentleman had a chance to intervene on my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). In conclusion, in order to boost the number of homes being built, crucially we need leadership from both central Government and local government. Regrettably, this Government are failing to step up to the plate. Warm words are simply not good enough and our constituents deserve better. Other countries manage to get this right and it should not be beyond us to do so too. That is why I urge all right hon. and hon. Members to support tonight’s motion.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Kris Hopkins)
May I first offer my condolences to the family of Paul Goggins? When I was appointed to this position, he very kindly welcomed me. He was generous in the way that he approached many Members across the House, and he was passionate about housing too. I put on record my condolences to his family and friends.
This is a valuable and important debate. Like the Secretary of State, I congratulate the Opposition on securing their second debate on housing since 2010. The Leader of the Opposition says that housing is an important part of their agenda, but to have secured only two Opposition day debates in that time does not demonstrate the passion that his party claims it has for housing. The debate gives us an opportunity to remind the House and the country of the mess left by the previous Labour Government, and of the Opposition’s preference for old, top-down diktats by which they tell the country what to do, and tell councils and local people what they should be doing and where they should be living.
Stephen McPartland
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Does he agree that the right to grow policy, which Labour launched in my Stevenage constituency without telling me in advance, is already in tatters? Stevenage borough council’s published draft local plan makes no reference whatever to the need for additional housing in North Hertfordshire district council. There have been no representations made between the offices of the two different authorities, and North Hertfordshire is currently doing its local plan.
Kris Hopkins
If it is the case that those representations have not been made, my hon. Friend may want to write to the Prime Minister. If that was my local council and my neighbouring council was going to raid my green belt and green spaces to facilitate housing in a neighbouring council, I would imagine that, like my hon. Friend, I would be extremely unhappy.
Despite the Opposition’s claims, it was under the previous Administration that house building fell to its lowest peacetime rate since the 1920s, with only 107,000 homes completed in 2010. They imposed regional targets on local communities as part of their top-down regime. Their approach is that Whitehall and Labour know better. The complete failure to invest between 1997 and 2010 resulted, as has been said, in some 427,000 fewer social houses. Under this Government, come 2015 there will be more social housing—something that Members recognise—and we can be extremely proud of that. In contrast to Labour’s record, we have given people local control of neighbourhood planning, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) has just said. I encourage local authorities that have not completed their local plan to get on with it, to engage with their local communities and give power to local individuals to shape their community, and to remove red tape.
Alec Shelbrooke
Does my hon. Friend agree that all the Government’s progress in this Parliament in allowing local people to engage with local authorities on planning would be completely undermined by a Labour Government who would go back to the Stalinist tactic of land seizure and building wherever they want?
Kris Hopkins
It is clear, as an hon. Member said earlier, that localism is just paper thin for Labour. The number of first-time buyers is at a five-year high. Help to Buy has made a significant contribution, helping hard-working families to buy their own home; promoting quality and choice in the rented sector by bringing in private incentives and not just using expensive taxpayer subsidies; and helping small and medium-sized builders to get back on their feet—more than 1,000 registered builders are now supporting the Help to Buy equity scheme.
Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)
On public subsidies, is the Minister happy that for every £4 that goes in housing benefit, only £1 is spent building homes? Surely, it would be better to reverse that and build homes at affordable rents that people can live in.
Kris Hopkins
If we did not have a £180 billion deficit, we might be in a better position to offer more public subsidy, but we do not have that opportunity because the last Government nearly bankrupted the country.
Kris Hopkins
No, I will not take any more interventions.
One of the common themes of this debate was that, as the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr Campbell) recognised, Labour did not deliver enough housing while in power. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) is a huge supporter of housing growth, and I know from my conversations with him that he is committed to ensuring that local communities shape their own housing. I look forward to further debates about large-scale housing, which I know he greatly supports. On land banking, he said that confiscating land was not the way forward and that if Labour’s policy was implemented, it would result in fewer houses being built.
The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) said many things and recognised that Labour did not deliver enough houses, but he also referred to his garden shed. My hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) talked about local plans and a strong local voice, and I know that he is a powerful voice in his community. The right hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell) talked about localism and the increasing number of social houses. He also pointed out that Labour delivered 50% of its desire to get rid of boom and bust—it got rid of the boom bit. [Laughter.] I am sorry for stealing the line. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. The House should listen to the Minister.
Kris Hopkins
The Chairman of the Select Committee also recognised that Labour did not deliver enough houses when in government.
On this issue, as on many, Labour has a problem with credibility. It was the party that allowed access to mortgages six, seven, eight times individuals’ salaries. It was a totally unsustainable path that contributed to the banking crisis that led to the deepest recession since the 1920s. Even in the boom years, it failed to deliver the required housing. The total build dropped to the lowest number in 100 years. It promoted eco-towns—10 in total—but not one appeared. New Labour at its finest: all spin and absolutely no delivery.
Not only did Labour fail to deliver the houses promised, having nearly bankrupted the country, but it took the livelihoods of 250,000 construction workers and destroyed thousands of businesses by its actions. It talks about a cost-of-living crisis, but how many families did it break by its actions? How many meals did it take off the table by its actions? How many summer holidays were lost? How many more homeless people were created by its actions? Yet it never apologises. It always blames somebody else. It is the “Not me, guv!” party. In 2007, the number of housing completions reached 176,000. By 2010, that had dropped to 107,000—a drop of 70,000 houses in three years. That is what it achieved. That is what Labour did for housing in this country and that is why we are still putting things right.
As Housing Minister, I have had the privilege of meeting mothers from Peckham who have secured a shared ownership home; a right-to-buy couple from Swindon who have now got their own home; a young couple who have a house as a consequence of Help to Buy; builders in Sheffield building houses yet again; and businesses and brick factories in Stoke, working flat out. We know that houses are important to the economy, which is why we are determined to deliver more of them.
Question put.
Fixed Odds Betting Terminals
(10 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
18:59 - The House divided: - Ayes: 232 / Noes: 314 - Question accordingly negatived.
19:12 - The House divided: - Ayes: 311 / Noes: 225 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
I inform the House that Mr Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House is concerned that the clustering of betting shops in or close to deprived communities is being driven by increasing revenue from fixed odds betting terminals (FOBT) rather than traditional over the counter betting; believes that this has encouraged betting shop operators to open more than one premises in close proximity to one another; is aware of the growing concern in many communities about the detrimental effect this is having on the diversity and character of UK high streets; is alarmed that people can stake as much as £100 every 20 seconds on these machines; is further concerned that the practice of single staffing in betting shops leaves staff vulnerable and deters them from intervening if customers suffer heavy losses thereby undermining efforts by the betting industry to protect vulnerable customers; further believes that local authorities should be able to establish a separate planning class for betting shops and that they should be given additional licensing powers to determine the number of FOBT machines within existing and proposed shops and to require that the machines are modified to slow the rate of play and to interrupt when people play for long periods; and calls on the Government to put local people before the interests of the betting shop operators and give local authorities the powers they need to respond to concerns from their local communities and stop the proliferation of FOBT machines and betting shops.
Many people throughout the country are concerned about the impact of betting shops on their high streets. They are worried that the shops are clustered in close proximity to one another, and that they are too often close to communities with high levels of deprivation. We are not suggesting that there is a problem in every community, which is why we are not proposing that the Government should introduce a blanket ban. Instead, we are calling for local councillors to be given real powers so that they are able to respond to the concerns of their local communities and to act responsibly in the interests of the people who elect them. Too often, we hear of councillors being frustrated that they are unable to support local residents. Time after time, people turn up at local planning or licensing meetings and watch in disbelief as councillors who are known to oppose plans are forced to allow another betting shop to open because the legal process favours the lawyers representing the interests of the betting shops. That cannot go on. It causes people to lose faith in local democracy, and we will stop it. Councillors must be allowed some discretion; they should not be expected simply to rubber-stamp such applications.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
I chaired the local licensing authority in the city of Hull when the Gambling Act 2005 was brought in, and we were absolutely frustrated in the way that the hon. Gentleman describes. Will he take this opportunity to apologise to the House for that legislation, which gave local councillors such as me no discretion at all?
Clive Efford
The legislation that brought in fixed odds betting terminals actually predated the Gambling Act, but in that Act we limited the number of machines to four per shop. What is unprecedented is the fact that the amount of money that can be taken from the machines is now greater than what can be taken from over-the-counter betting, and that is what is driving the clustering of betting shops on our high streets. However, the Government are refusing to deal with the problem. They must accept that there are more betting shops close to areas of high deprivation. This is borne out by research—
Clive Efford
I will certainly give way when I have finished making this point.
A report on machine density by experts in gambling including Heather Wardle, who leads key studies such as the gambling prevalence survey, has stated:
“The distribution of gambling machines in Great Britain…displays a significant association with areas of socio-economic deprivation. The profile of the resident population living in HDMZs”—
high-density machine zones—
“mirrors the profile of those most at-risk of experiencing harm from gambling.”
We cannot stand back and allow this to continue.
Alex Cunningham
In my constituency there is one fixed odds betting terminal for every 700 people who are eligible to play them, and the vast majority are in areas of high deprivation. In Broadland, a southern constituency, there is one machine for every 18,300 people. Is that not a clear confirmation that the poor are being targeted by this empty promise of great wealth? Do we not need to do something about this?
Clive Efford
Sadly, that situation is repeated in too many places throughout the country, and it is time that the Government recognised that the problem can be dealt with only at a local level.
Clive Efford
I shall give way to the hon. Lady and then to the hon. Gentleman.
Caroline Lucas
The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful case about how betting shops and fixed odds betting terminals are proliferating in some of our most deprived areas. We have 70 FOBTs in Brighton, Pavilion alone. Does he share my concern that some betting shops are now cutting the hourly wages of their staff, but offering them the chance to make up the loss if they can increase the profit from the machines? Is not that completely unacceptable?
Clive Efford
It is, and it flies in the face of the betting industry’s claims about how it trains its staff to deal with problem gambling, because the industry is incentivising them to encourage people to gamble more.
Mr Burrowes
I thank the hon. Gentleman for keeping his promise. A briefing from the Salvation Army says that after the Gambling Act 2005 came into force, the number of gambling addicts increased by more than 50% between 2007 and 2010—a rise of 115,000 people. What—or, more pertinently, who—is responsible for that?
Clive Efford
We could have a debate about that question itself, because there are many forms of gambling that lead people to become addicts, especially given the rise in online gambling, which has grown into a £2 billion industry over the past few years. It is therefore difficult to extrapolate who is responsible. However, we should do the appropriate research into the impact of FOBTs on problem gambling.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
I understand why Government Back Benchers want to deviate from the subject, given that it is about deprivation and targeting poorer communities. There are 136 such machines in my constituency, which is double the number in its prosperous neighbouring constituencies. This is the betting industry targeting the poor.
Clive Efford
I certainly think that the machines are an example of Cameron’s Britain, where there is one rule for our constituents and another for the big businesses that run the betting shops.
Mr Sheerman
My constituency of Huddersfield has 28 bookies. In 2012, £102 million was bet and £3 million lost—that scourge just vacuums money out of our community. I actually do not agree with the motion; I think we should get rid of these iniquitous organisations.
Clive Efford
The motion addresses the concern expressed by my hon. Friend by calling for local councillors to make decisions about the economic activity that takes place in their town centres.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
I admire the shadow Minister’s guile in bringing the debate before the House, but do the facts not speak for themselves? In 2000, there were no FOBTs in the UK, but by the time his party left office, there were 30,000 of them. Would not the most dangerous gamble facing the British public be if they were ever to consider voting Labour at the next general election?
Clive Efford
I will let the Conservatives in on something—the world changes. Since 2000, a £2 billion online gambling industry has emerged. The gambling industry is evolving. When we passed the 2005 Act, we made it clear that these FOBTs in betting shops were on probation and that we would keep them under review. We are saying that the time has come to deal with the situation, but this Government are refusing to do so.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I agree with my hon. Friend that the Conservative party seems not to be taking any responsibility for things that are happening on its watch. Let me add some further evidence about deprivation—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. The hon. Lady will be brief, but she must be heard.
Lucy Powell
Forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I did think that the Conservatives were in government.
In my constituency, which is one of the most deprived in the country, £190 million was spent on these machines last year alone. That is more than the council spent on services in my constituency, and in one ward alone there are now 500 of these machines. What local councils need are more powers.
Clive Efford
All the examples we are hearing, including that one, show the problem of clustering.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
At the risk of paraphrasing Mrs Merton, what first attracted the multimillionaire Peter Coates, the chairman of bet365, to donate £400,000 to the Labour party, £100,000 of which was given in the 12 months after the passing of the Gambling Act 2005?
Clive Efford
Bet365 is an online gambling company and we are not dealing with that industry today. However, I will just say that Mr Coates’s company is one of the few that has stayed in the UK, that employs people in the UK and that pays taxes in the UK, which is more than can be said for Lord Ashcroft.
Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
When we introduced the legislation that resulted in these machines, we were not aware, and could not have been aware, of these unintended consequences. Now that we are aware, we call on the Government, who have the power to act, to do something about it.
Clive Efford
Let me make a little bit of progress before I give way again.
The Government have consistently said, “Problem, what problem?” They might not be aware of the problem, but the people in our communities are and they want action. There have been numerous complaints. People talk about the crime and antisocial behaviour associated with betting shops, and about clustering and the detrimental impact on the character and diversity of our high streets. In her report on our high streets, which was commissioned by the Government in 2011, Mary Portas says:
“The influx of betting shops, often in more deprived areas, is blighting our high streets.”
The Government are aware of the concerns, yet they have consistently refused to give local people powers to stop new shops opening in their communities. There is widespread support from local government for what we are calling for. In 2012, when the Local Government Association commissioned an opinion poll on people’s attitudes to planning and our high streets, it found that more than two thirds—68%—of local people were against existing rules allowing betting shops to take over banks and building societies without planning permission.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
My hon. Friend makes a powerful case. The Tote has its headquarters in my constituency. Is he aware that the people who feel most strongly about this are the staff who work in betting shops and see problem gambling? They are determined that there should be local powers to deal with the problem.
Clive Efford
Absolutely, and the people who represent staff in the betting industry have been vocal. There are concerns not just about the single staffing of premises and the safety of staff, but about training. To be fair, although the industry has come to the issue of training a bit late, it has started to introduce it for its staff, but it must create an environment in which it can be effective.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman help me by explaining something? How would stopping new shops prevent addictive gambling when we know that there are already so many shops out there and when in the last three years of the Labour Government, when it was known there was a problem, they did not think that anything could be done about it?
Clive Efford
I am sorry to disappoint the right hon. Gentleman, but I think that he has been lured by briefings from his own side. This motion is not about problem gambling, but about giving local authorities powers to deal with the proliferation of betting shops in our high streets—for planning and economic regeneration reasons, as well as because of concerns about the social impact of fixed odds betting terminals. We are not trying to suggest that passing the motion will solve problem gambling in relation to FOBTs, and the Prime Minister was mistaken today when he answered the Leader of the Opposition’s question on that matter.
Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
All the evidence that has been cited, especially by the shadow Minister and Labour Members, has put paid to the Prime Minister’s suggestion that we need evidence. We need action, and we need it now.
Clive Efford
I will come on to the evidence later in my speech, as what was said about that today really needs to be clarified.
There is widespread opposition to the Government’s position on this matter. Back in 2012, when the Local Government Association published the conclusions of its opinion poll, Sir Merrick Cockell, the chairman of the LGA and former Conservative leader of Kensington and Chelsea, said:
“This opinion poll shows local people want government to give councils the powers to tackle unsightly clusters of sex shops, bookies and takeaways that can blight so many of our high streets. People want action so the places they live, work and shop can be revitalised to reflect how they want them to look and feel.”
The Government talk about localism, but they do not grant the powers even when they are asked to do so by their own colleagues.
I assume that the Government have heard of a character called Boris Johnson. He is the Mayor of London and his office issued a statement on the issue of betting shops, saying:
“They have grown in number with an increased supply of premises such as vacant banks and pubs that do not require planning permission to be used as a betting shop. Betting firms are attracted to busy high streets and town centres with a ready supply of such premises. This has resulted in clustering in less prosperous areas like Hackney, which has 64 betting shops in the borough, 8 in Mare Street alone, and Deptford”—
in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock)—
“with seven betting shops on one street.”
The would-be leader of the Conservatives supports our view. His statement goes on to say:
“The Mayor proposes that betting shop operators wishing to open up a new outlet should be required to apply for planning permission for the chosen premises, which would allow proper consideration to be given to each proposal for a betting shop and its effect on individual centres.”
The Conservative chairman of the LGA and the Tory Mayor for London are both calling for the Government to act. In fact, it is hard to find anyone who supports the Government’s view. Local people want more powers, local government wants more powers and the two highest-ranking Tories in local government want the Government to act, too. Everyone seems to be in agreement except for the Government—well, except for certain parts of the Government.
We have had another Liberal Democrat pledge. The Liberal Democrats have been at it again. One might have thought that they would learn their lesson over university tuition fees, but once the flashbulbs start popping they cannot hold themselves back. They have been photographed saying “Ban the FOBTs” at the Liberal Democrat conference. The Deputy Prime Minister, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the Minister for Crime Prevention, the right hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Michael Moore), the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), the Minister for Schools, who is also a Minister of State in the Cabinet Office, and the hon. Member for Norwich South (Simon Wright) were all photographed backing anti-FOBT campaigners.
The Liberal Democrats also passed a motion at their conference in September. What did it call for? It said that local councillors should
“be empowered to decide whether or not to give approval to additional gambling venues in their community”
and called for
“Betting shops to be put in a separate planning use class”.
The motion was not from some fringe group but from the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
I am strongly opposed to FOBT machines in betting shops, but my opposition is governed by their impact on addiction and the complex interactions of addiction. The shadow Minister said that that was not part of his motion. Is he motivated at all by the addiction issue and, if he is, why did he not include it in his motion?
Clive Efford
I shall explain later my exact position on stakes and prizes, which has not changed for two years. I have consistently made my argument on stakes and prizes and I will give the hon. Gentleman a response when I come to that.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman talks about local government, but does he recognise that there are powers available through the use of article 4 directions, which both Barking and Southwark council have chosen to use? I appreciate that they might be a bit cumbersome, but powers are available now that councils can use.
Clive Efford
If the hon. Lady will be patient, I will deal with article 4 directions.
I say to the Liberal Democrats that it is time to stop posing for photos and posturing with fine words in the motions at their conference. Lib Dem MPs are clearly confused, so let me make it clear to them: today, they are deciding whether to empower local authorities to take control of their high streets, as they said they would at their conference, and to back their councillors, the members of their party and their Chief Whip, or to vote along with the gambling industry. They have made their claims, so they should stand up for them today.
I turn to the words of the Minister, who commented on our choice of topic for the Opposition day debate. She claimed that my position contradicted the need for research. She said:
“Just a few weeks ago Clive Efford”—
that is me, Madam Deputy Speaker, but it is in the quote—
“said that there was no evidence to support a change in the stake and prize levels for FOBTs, yet now he is trotting out a totally contradictory line, written for him by his political masters.”
I know that the Minister has not been in the job for long, but she really ought to get a better grip on her brief, because there is nothing in the motion about stakes and prizes. She should know that early last year, in response to the triennial review of stakes and prizes, I called for changes to be made to the software of these machines, and all those changes are in the motion: longer periods between play; pop-ups to break play and to remind people how long they have been playing; requiring people to load the machines over the counter to force interaction with staff, to give staff the opportunity to interact with customers who may be gambling too much; and an end to single staffing. We have been consistent on these issues, but we have had nothing from the Government except some Lib Dems posing for photographs.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
On the question of addictive gambling, my hon. Friend will know that I have raised the issue and with the help of the Daily Record exposed the fact that an active gambler in my constituency is banned from every betting shop within 10 miles, but can walk into any of those shops and play those fixed odds betting terminals. There is no one he talks to, no one vets him being there, and he gambles his wages away every week.
Clive Efford
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and technology should be used to protect people against problem gambling. That is something else that we have consistently raised.
Clive Efford
How can I not give way to the hon. Gentleman, who has so much knowledge of the gambling industry?
Philip Davies
I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. May I ask the shadow Minister about his position on this issue, because he has always supported research by the Responsible Gambling Trust, on which his hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) serves, so I am sure that he has every confidence in it? He has always said that we should wait for research, so why does he support the research but is not prepared to wait for it? Is that not a ridiculous state of affairs?
Clive Efford
I repeat: today’s motion is not about stakes and prizes. It is about empowering local authorities, which have called for powers to deal with a wide range of issues that go beyond gambling. It is about economic regeneration; it is about economic vitality and diversity in town centres; it is about the concern about the effect that the clustering of betting shops has on the character of town centres. I will deal with the research, and I will come on to it very soon if hon. Members are patient.
Mr Mike Hancock (Portsmouth South) (Ind)
Will the hon. Gentleman explain how the motion allows local authorities to deal with the current situation in which there are far too many of these shops? Why is the motion not about the odds and the stakes, because that is the important issue?
Clive Efford
I will come on to the issue of stakes and prizes, but it is complex and it will take a great deal of time to explain. The motion calls for extra licensing powers and a change in the law. I accept that it would be difficult to introduce retrospective legislation to go back and take licences for those machines away from betting shops, but that is what is included in the motion. If that is what the hon. Gentleman is calling for, he can vote with us.
Perhaps the most damning fact is the Government’s claim that councils have powers to stop the clustering of betting shops. Again in her comments on today’s debate, the shadow Minister—[Interruption.] I am sorry, the Minister—I am getting ahead of myself and am about 18 months too early—said:
“Councils already have planning powers to tackle the proliferation of betting shops, as well as licensing powers to tackle individual premises causing problems and we have already acted to ensure the industry puts in place the types of player protection measures that Labour are now, at long last, calling for.”
If that is the case, why do councils such as Newham have to go to court to try to stop more betting shops opening in their area? Why are so many local councils passing motions calling for more powers?
Sir Robin Wales, responding to the Minister’s comments yesterday, said:
“Current legislation leaves councils effectively powerless in their ability to tackle the clustering of betting outlets, which causes immeasurable harm to local communities and the high street. The only planning power available to councils (an Article 4 direction) is unwieldy and slow, and some betting shops don’t even require planning permission to open.”
In 2004, Sir Merrick Cockell described article 4 directions as “unwieldy and bureaucratic”. The Local Government Association’s view of article 4 powers in the same year was equally negative:
“Article 4 directions are costly and complex to use. Local authorities need to give notice of the restrictions coming into effect for a year to avoid being at risk of paying compensation. This is an obvious disincentive to the widespread use of Article 4 directions by local planning authorities, which undermines the effectiveness of this measure. Article 4 directions can also only be used across a whole use class—meaning they cannot even be used when a bank becomes a betting shop.”
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
Is my hon. Friend as surprised as I am that the Government seem to object to this simple proposal, which would give local authorities more powers to decide whether to allow fixed odds betting terminals, which is something that local authorities want? It is not a controversial proposal, so I am surprised that the Government object to it.
Clive Efford
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Conservatives claim to be the party of localism, but they do nothing to encourage it.
Clive Efford
If my hon. Friend does not mind, I will draw my remarks to a conclusion, because many Members wish to speak. [Interruption.] I know that what I have to say is upsetting for Government Members, but I am afraid that they will have to hear it all.
The Minister will no doubt say in her response that that is all Labour’s fault. In fact, she has already said just that:
“Any concerns about fixed odds betting machines should be laid firmly at Labour’s door. In 2000, these machines did not exist—by the time of the last general election there were over 30,000.”
FOBTs appeared in betting shops in 2001. In 2005 we limited them to four per shop. The Secretary of State at the time, my right hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell), set out on Second Reading of the Gambling Act 2005 that the impact of the machines would be reviewed, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) made it clear in 2009 that he would do just that. It is no good going back to 2005, because the world has moved on. Online gambling has grown from nothing into a £2 billion-a-year industry. The Government rejected our proposals to regulate that, so we will take no lessons from them.
Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)
I did call for FOBTs to be looked at again in 2009, but I also called for the industry to provide £5 million for the Responsible Gambling Trust, which looks at problem gambling. I hope that my hon. Friend admires the work being done by the trust, a charity that has five independent directors and five from the industry.
Clive Efford
Absolutely. There are eminent people in the Responsible Gambling Trust and I endorse what my hon. Friend says, but I do have something to say about the research.
The concerns about FOBTs and the impact that betting shops have on our communities are not just about gambling. We will wait for proper research, but the Minister needs to understand that saying that we will wait for the research and then doing nothing to gather the information that we need to make informed decisions is just not good enough. After all, this Government scrapped the gambling prevalence survey. Let me quote again from her press release:
“This Government is undertaking the biggest ever study into the effect of these machines and have made clear that we will not hesitate to take action if the evidence points in that direction. To act without evidence is inappropriate and extraordinarily cynical, even by Labour’s standards.”
The Government are deluding themselves if they think that all the answers will come from the current study. In December, NatCen published a scoping report that states:
“Across the category B estate in Great Britain, there is a great deal of inconsistency in the level and type of data collected.”
That will seriously undermine the ability of the Responsible Gambling Trust to give us the information we need to make informed decisions when the research is completed next autumn. As the Minister well knows, the report will come out six months away from a general election, yet it will be inconclusive because the data are not robust enough to allow us to make informed decisions on FOBTs.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
Labour’s motion says that local authorities should have the power to license the number of FOBTs in existing betting shops. Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that that would allow a local authority to increase the number per shop on the high street today?
Clive Efford
No, because we would not allow the cap to extend beyond four per shop.
Clive Efford
The motion says that local authorities would have to limit the number. We certainly would not lift the cap.
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
On the powers that the shadow Minister is seeking for local authorities, would he have those powers made retrospective so that local authorities can remove planning permission for existing betting shops?
Clive Efford
No. We are saying that we would place betting shops in their own category so that local councils would have to receive a planning application if someone wanted to open a new betting shop.
Today’s vote is not about stakes and prizes; it is about putting power back in the hands of local communities and the councillors who represent them. Taking decisions in the face of opposition from the betting industry will be tough for local councillors, particularly when it comes to removing existing machines. I happen to believe passionately in local democracy; I spent 12 years as a locally elected councillor. I believe that well-informed local councillors are capable of making important decisions that benefit their communities, and that, too often, we here in Westminster have tied the hands of locally elected representatives. It is time to put local people before the vested interests of the powerful betting industry. We should put our trust in local democracy.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
I have to inform the House that Mr Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister. Before I call the Minister to move the amendment, it might be helpful for the House to know that I am obliged to put a limit of four minutes on the length of speeches by Back Benchers because there is a very considerable demand for time to speak.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mrs Helen Grant)
I beg to move an amendment to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add:
“understands the public concerns around fixed odds betting terminals regulated by the Gambling Act 2005; notes that the Government has made clear that it considers the future of B2 regulation to be unresolved; welcomes the Government-backed research into the effect of fixed odds betting terminals on problem gambling; believes that any development in the Government’s policy on this matter should be evidence-led; calls upon the betting industry to provide the data required for a proper understanding of the impact of fixed odds betting terminals; and further notes that local authorities already have planning powers to tackle localised problems and target specific areas where the cumulative impact of betting shops or other specific types of premises might be problematic, as well as licensing powers to tackle individual premises causing problems.
I find it remarkable that we are all here having this debate today. I remind the House that fixed odds betting terminals did not exist 17 years ago, but then the Labour Government came to power, liberalisation began, and the Gambling Act 2005 came about. By the time of the last general election more than 30,000 fixed odds betting terminals were in existence. Yet we find ourselves debating what this Government should do about them—discussing, again, how we should clear up Labour’s mess. That shows rank hypocrisy, total cynicism, and great opportunism.
Yes, I do think these machines are concerning, but the silence of Labour Members on this topic before they ended up in opposition was quite deafening. They brought these machines into being, yet they have the audacity to sit here with a motion that seeks to blame this Government for any harm the machines might cause.
Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)
I am very clear that the mess was created by the previous Government and I do not accept excuses about not knowing the likely consequences. However, we seem to have the solution in our hands in the form of the Localism Act 2011. Would it not be possible to empower our local communities, through their local elected representatives, to use, for example, saturation as a reason for saying that they really cannot sustain any more?
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
The hon. Lady accuses Labour of cynicism and opportunism, but cynicism and opportunism are the besetting sins of politicians. What my constituents want to know is: what are we as a House going to do about the betting shop scourge? One of the main roads in Hackney—Mare street—has eight betting shops full of these machines. Something must be done.
Mrs Grant
I can see that the hon. Lady is concerned. If she bears with me, I will explain exactly what this Government are doing. This is the Government who have pushed for the research, who are doing the research and who are actually pushing the industry to provide the data we need to tackle problem gambling. Before I deal with the hon. Lady’s point, I want to tell the House what the Government are doing in a little more detail.
This Government conducted a review last year of gaming machine stake and prize limits and looked very closely at the available evidence on fixed odds betting terminals. In particular, our review looked at evidence to support claims that these machines present an elevated risk of gambling-related harm. The review found that there are real concerns about fixed odds betting terminals and that some players have experienced considerable harm in using them. This Government therefore concluded that the future of these machines is unresolved, and we are undertaking urgent work to establish how they can be made safer, especially to those individuals who may be at greatest risk.
Alex Cunningham
I agree with the Minister that we have learned a lot from the introduction of these terminals. BBC Tees today highlighted the fact that a 17-year-old boy is already addicted to them. His is just one of many lives that are being damaged, yet the betting industry seems to think it is okay to have single-person staffing without any support in its betting shops. Does that not illustrate that it is putting profit before the interests of the people it calls its customers?
Mrs Grant
No, I do not accept that. The Gambling Commission, as the hon. Gentleman is well aware, has a requirement that under-age individuals are not allowed to gamble in licensed betting shops. Obviously, if the rules and conditions are breached, the operator is at risk of losing their licence. I will develop that argument further and say a little more about staffing and security numbers as I progress.
The motion raises a wide range of issues, but fails completely to focus on the evidence and activity that is well under way. In order to make appropriate decisions about fixed odds betting terminals, we need better to understand how they are used and the real impact on players. That is why the UK is conducting the largest ever programmes of research into gaming machine usage.
The Opposition acknowledge—notwithstanding what the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), said in his opening speech—that there is insufficient evidence to support a reduction in stakes and prizes. That is why we have focused our attention on improving the evidence base, so that we can determine whether a reduction in speed of play or a reduction in maximum stake will make the machines safer.
Mr Spencer
I was taught at an early age that the only thing anyone needs to know about the bookies is that there are four windows to pay in and one window that pays out. Surely education is one of the solutions to this problem. Will the Minister assure the House that she will do all she can to make sure that the gaming industry does what it can to educate its customers?
Dame Joan Ruddock
I am extremely grateful to the Minister for giving way. I am carefully following what she is saying. Will she explain how—no matter how much care is exercised and what change might happen—areas of real multiple deprivation, such as my constituency, have so many betting shops with terminals, while wealthy areas do not? There is an absolute contrast, and our case is that the industry is targeting areas such as mine. Does she deny that, or not?
Mrs Grant
I hear what the right hon. Lady says, but the location of betting premises and shops is to do with footfall, not deprivation. It is simply a matter of supply and demand.
The Government are in no doubt that there is scope for the industry to improve its ability to identify people who might be at risk and to intervene early to minimise harm. That is why we have demanded that the industry introduce better player protection measures.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Does the Minister accept the point made so forcefully by Mary Portas that the prevalence of betting shops, particularly in deprived areas, has a very damaging effect on retail centres?
Mrs Grant
We have of course looked carefully at the Portas review. We fed into the review, and the Government response made the point that article 4 directions exist and can be used by local authorities, in addition to the local authority licensing conditions that were recently used very successfully by Newham.
Andrew Percy
May I go back to the question asked by the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock)? Is not the real reason that those betting premises are in her constituency the legislation for which she probably voted? Under the legislation, when a local councillor faces an application for a premises licence, the operator will already have received an operating licence from the Gambling Commission. With its three very strictly limited objectives, the legislation simply does not allow local councillors in her constituency to reject a premises licence application.
Mr Stewart Jackson
I have a great deal of sympathy with what the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) said, but I think that the Labour party’s motion is cynical and opportunistic, given recent history. Does the Minister not think that the Government’s case would be much more compelling if they were prepared to observe the precautionary principle of looking at the £100-a-spin game before the demonstrable empirical evidence is published in the autumn, particularly in respect of the impact on vulnerable people?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. The Minister has indicated that she is not giving way at this stage. Hon. Members must allow her to continue her speech and listen to her.
Mrs Grant
I think that I have been pretty generous so far. I want to make a little progress and then I will take more interventions.
On player protection, I have been consistently clear that the onus is on the betting industry immediately to develop and implement harm mitigation measures, and to make data available for independent research. I met the chief executives of the five largest UK bookmakers in December, and I challenged them to develop a plan by the end of January to link players with play in a way that allows us better to understand player behaviour and to assess the effectiveness of harm mitigation measures. That could include much more extensive use of card-based play on gaming machines to track player behaviour more systematically. I am not prepared, however, to delay taking action while we await research outcomes or industry plans to be developed. For that reason, I have challenged the industry to press ahead with its social responsibility code and to implement precautionary player protection measures at the earliest possible opportunity.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
Will the Minister confirm that the research will include player behaviour analysis, which has been opposed by the industry? Indeed, it did not allow the university of Cambridge to take that forward. Such analysis is crucial to an understanding of how the machine and the player interact.
Mrs Grant
I can confirm that.
The precautionary player protection measures include the implementation by March 2014 of suspensions in play when voluntary limits are reached, automatic alerts when customers have been playing for 30 minutes or when a certain amount of money has been spent, enhanced responsible gambling messaging, and a considerably improved and expanded system of voluntary self-exclusion, which will make it much easier for players to exclude themselves from multiple gambling premises.
I do not accept the accusation that those measures are unsatisfactory because the code is not mandatory. I have made it clear that if the industry does not make sufficient progress in implementing those measures or if it cannot demonstrate to me that they have been effective, the Government may act on a precautionary basis anyway. Additionally, the implementation of those measures does not preclude further action at any point, should it become necessary.
Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab)
A major bookmaker in my constituency has just retired, so he is more honest than most. He tells me that this kind of gambling is like cocaine—it is totally and absolutely addictive. There are examples of that. A man wins £13,000 in the morning, but he is allowed to play until 8 o’clock in the evening and he loses every penny that he has won. That is how addictive it is. This problem is polluting our high streets. Shops are disappearing and in their place, we are getting bookmakers. This is a ridiculous situation and a decision is needed sooner rather than later.
Mrs Grant
That is why there is no green light for fixed odds betting terminals. Their future is absolutely unresolved, pending the research that we have started.
The Responsible Gambling Trust is carrying out research to better understand how people behave when playing on gaming machines and what helps people to play responsibly. It is the largest piece of academic research that has ever been undertaken on the issue. It aims to understand patterns of gaming behaviour and to identify when there is robust evidence that consumers may be experiencing problems.
Philip Davies
Will the Minister confirm that the bookmakers have provided all the information that she has asked for? If that is not the case, will she set out what information she would like from the bookmakers that they have not provided her with?
Mrs Grant
My hon. Friend makes an important point. We need the information from the bookmakers. That is one reason why I met the big five bookmakers in December. They have indicated that they will provide the data we need. To make sure that they do provide the data, a further meeting has been set up with them for 30 January.
I met the Responsible Gambling Trust in December and pressed it to make progress with the research programme. I emphasised to it the importance of obtaining tangible research outcomes by the autumn of 2014. I am clear that the industry must rapidly share data to allow the research aims to be met within the required timetable.
Mr Sutcliffe
I am pleased that the Minister has acknowledged the work of the Responsible Gambling Trust, which is made up of five independent members and five members from the industry. Will she condemn the attacks that have been made on the Responsible Gambling Trust by the Campaign for Fairer Gambling, which is rubbishing any work that comes from the trust?
Dr Thérèse Coffey
In December, the public health survey looked at this issue for the first time. It stated:
“Among both men and women, there was no difference in gambling prevalence by area deprivation, once age was accounted for.”
That was true except among people in the most deprived quintile of the index of multiple deprivation, who were more likely to participate in bingo. There is further analysis relating to FOBTs and quintile four. However, the most recent data that we have show that, in essence, there is no difference by area.
Mrs Grant
That is an interesting and important point, and I believe that that piece of work also indicated that levels of problem gambling had fallen from just below 1% to just below 0.5%. Notwithstanding the drop in the number of problem gamblers, the Government are concerned about any level of problem gambling and will, of course, urge the industry—as we are doing—to make real and proper progress on that matter.
Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
The Minister is arguing that there is a serious problem, and she keeps wagging her finger at Labour Members and saying it is our fault. [Interruption.] Listen for a moment. She seems to acknowledge that there is a serious problem, so will her Government legislate to address the problem before the next general election?
Mrs Grant
We believe in doing things properly. We are waiting for the research and have put pressure on the industry to produce the data. Reports will be coming out imminently, and precautionary protections will be put in place by the industry at the end of March. We will do whatever is needed to ensure that people are protected. Although planning is a matter for the Department for Communities and Local Government, my officials are in regular discussion with colleagues from that Department about betting shop clustering.
Mrs Grant
No, I will not; I am going to make some progress and I think I have been generous.
Changes to the national planning system are not the answer to local problems. Local authorities already have a range of powers available regarding betting shops, and a local planning authority can consult and make an article 4 direction that removes permitted development rights, where it considers that necessary to protect local amenity or the well-being of an area. The London boroughs of Southwark and of Barking and Dagenham have brought forward article 4 directions, thus requiring a planning application for any new betting shops. That will enable them to consider the application against their local plan. The betting shop must also comply with its licensing conditions, and where those are breached, the local licensing authority has power to intervene, including removing the licence to operate.
As we have heard, the motion before us calls for local communities to ban gaming machines in their areas. The Government agree that responsibility for managing high streets should rest with local areas, but the truth is that local authorities already have powers to control gambling premises in their areas. Local authorities have power to reject an application for a gambling premises licence, or to grant one with additional conditions should that be necessary. They have power to review licences after they have been granted, and to impose licence conditions after review. Many local authorities have already used those powers to good effect. For example, in November 2013, the London borough of Newham—which has been mentioned this afternoon—imposed conditions on a betting shop because of its concerns about crime, disorder and under-age gambling. The conditions stipulate that a minimum of two members of staff must be on duty throughout the day. Additionally, the betting shop must carry out an undercover, under-age test purchase to ensure that minors are not gambling, and it must send the results to the council and the police.
The Government believe it is right for the industry, in conjunction with local authorities, to agree on the appropriate level of staffing in betting shops, depending on the circumstances of the local area. Local authorities already have powers to ensure a minimum level of staffing where appropriate. The Government urge local authorities to fully utilise powers at their disposal to limit the number of betting shops in line with local demand, and to apply appropriate licensing conditions where they have cause to tackle issues of problem gambling in local communities. Adopting the motion would lead to a patchwork of regulation right across the country where it is okay for gaming machines to be located in some areas but not in others. I do not believe that that is the right way forward. The industry must instead introduce better targeted and more effective player protection for users of gaming machines in all locations.
Player protection is at the heart of the Government’s approach to fixed odds betting terminals. I have made it clear to the industry that it must urgently develop targeted player protection measures for those players who are at greatest risk. I do not believe that the motion can achieve such an outcome. However, I do not rule out any action that may be necessary to make machines safer. I am clear that if the betting industry fails to deliver on its commitment to implement enhanced player protection measures by March 2014, and does not share data for independent research, and if the balance of the evidence suggests precautionary action on stakes and prizes or other measures are required, the Government will not hesitate to act.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
If one crosses Barking road from East Ham town hall to go into East Ham High street north, there is a Paddy Power on the corner at 387 Barking road, a Betfred just around the corner at No. 6, and two more Paddy Powers at 20 High street north and directly opposite at No. 11. At No. 56 is a Jenningsbet and, set back in Clements road directly opposite No. 45, there is a Coral. In the short walk along the high street to East Ham station, there are two more Betfreds, another Paddy Power, a Ladbrokes and a William Hill, which was the subject of the licensing committee meeting in November to which the Minister referred. On the other side of the station, there are two more Paddy Powers and a Ladbrokes.
I think that represents a concentration. It is certainly related to the economic character of the area and not simply a question of footfall. All those shops open at 7.30 or 8 in the morning. They stay open until 10 o’clock at night seven days a week, and one of them has just asked for permission to stay open till 11pm. I would be very grateful if the Minister would tell us whether the measures she is discussing with the industry will be taken up by organisations such as Paddy Power and Betfred, which account for such a large number of the recently opened shops in our area.
Andrew Gwynne
It seemed that the Minister was not aware that the Local Government Association said that article 4 directives were not sufficient to prevent the proliferation of betting shops on the high street. Is that not precisely why we need to reclassify betting shops out of the A2 classification so that situations such as the one on my right hon. Friend’s high street are not able to continue?
Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is clearly the view of Conservative local authorities and, as we have heard, of the Mayor of London. I think it would also be the view across the House, were it to be tested.
To gauge public opinion when there was an application for two more Paddy Power branches last year, I held a drop-in surgery at a local community centre in my constituency. One person who came in was a former Paddy Power manager. He said that he had seen a large number of families destroyed and businesses ruined, as well as students who gambled away their student loans. He told me that by spending a day in a Paddy Power shop, one would meet half a dozen people whose lives had been destroyed by their addiction.
Last year, when Newham council refused a licence for two new Paddy Power branches, the organisation appealed. Impressed by the phalanx of sharp lawyers—and, I have to say, sold-out former police officers—who appeared, the judge duly nodded the appeal through. The truth is that existing planning and licensing powers are hopelessly inadequate, as my hon. Friend said, and need to be strengthened in the way laid out in the motion. The claim in the Government’s amendment that local authorities already have enough powers is simply not the case.
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Bellshill’s small main street has seven of these premises. The local council, North Lanarkshire, supported by Bellshill community council, turned one application down, only for the Scottish Government to use their powers to overrule it, so how can it be said that local authorities have these powers?
Stephen Timms
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Government planning inspectors in England routinely overturn refusals, so the powers are inadequate. We have 87 of these shops in my borough. I think that there were nine new ones in 2011 and a similar number in 2012, which shows the scale of the problem. To underline the point, in the Paddy Power case in Newham, the judge awarded costs against the council to punish it and warn others against thinking of challenging this growth. The council was using the powers mentioned in the Government’s amendment, so those powers are clearly inadequate.
I was grateful to the Minister for acknowledging my point about Mary Portas’s review. I think she said that she agreed with Mary Portas, so why are the Government not going to act? One of the people who came to my constituency drop-in was the owner of commercial properties on East Ham high street. Frankly, he has a guilty conscience about letting his properties to betting shops, but he made the point that betting chains paid more than anyone else to occupy the units. They are very attractive tenants and, by extracting huge sums from people who cannot afford it, they are making money hand over fist. The law needs to change urgently to deal with the problem.
As the Minister said, there has recently been modest success in East Ham. The William Hill opposite East Ham station has been a magnet for drunken antisocial behaviour for a long time. After it allowed a 15-year-old to use its machines, an application was made to revoke its licence. There was the usual phalanx of lawyers and former police officers, but the upshot was that the council committee required the company to make some improvements. Among other things—I am pleased that this point has been picked up in the motion moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford)—the bookmaker was required to have at least two members of staff present whenever it was open, instead of the usual one. As far as I can tell, however, there is only ever one member of staff in the other betting shops on the high street. I understand that this is the first time such a condition has been applied and accepted by a bookmaker, and I hope that our motion suggests that that will be a precedent for elsewhere.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Is my right hon. Friend concerned, as I am, that many of these employees do not have much training in dealing with problem gamblers? Despite what the industry says, many staff are given a job and then start work straightaway.
Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend is right. In any case, these members of staff are one person on their own in one of these shops, many of which are quite big. They are sitting behind a glass screen, so what are they supposed to do if there is someone with a problem in the shop? There are often fights outside. Interestingly, Community, on behalf of its members working in betting shops, has supported our very good motion, and I hope that the House will agree to it.
Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
I welcome the debate as an opportunity to bring some light to the subject, rather than the large amount of smoke that has obscured it so far, but that might be a statement of hope rather than experience.
It is important to bring some perspective to the debate. Gambling is a legitimate activity that brings considerable pleasure to millions of people in this country, that generates a lot of economic activity and that provides employment and tax revenue for the Government. Betting shops are not a blight on the high street; they are regulated and controlled environments that provide employment and, in some cases, a social benefit.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman says that gambling raises revenue for the Government, but in actual fact the Government receive about £3 billion a year in revenue and the profit on fixed odds betting terminals is about £1.5 billion. It costs the state £3.6 billion to deal with problem gamblers, so does that not suggest that this is bad economics?
Mr Whittingdale
I shall come on to problem gambling, but it is a myth to suggest that that is entirely a result of FOBTs. There is a difficulty due to problem gambling, and a small number of people suffer from addiction—of course they need some protection. It has always been a principle that the harder forms of gambling are permitted in more controlled environments. To that extent, it was something of an anomaly that the previous Government allowed B2 machines on the high street while there were restrictions on those machines in adult gaming centres and casinos. It was ironic, too, that the previous Government wanted to introduce category A gaming machines, for which there were no limits on stakes or prizes, in super-casinos. Perhaps those anomalies should have been addressed. That was why, when the Culture, Media and Sport Committee looked at the problem, we recommended allowing up to 20 B2 machines in casinos and some B2 machines in adult gaming centres.
Philip Davies
Does my hon. Friend agree that while it is all very well restricting stakes and prizes in betting shops, there is nothing to stop the people involved going back home where they can play exactly the same games on the internet with unlimited stakes and unlimited prizes?
Mr Whittingdale
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; I was going to come on to that point.
The latest statistics in the English health survey show that something like 0.5% of the population might be suffering from problem gambling, which represents a drop from the previous figure in the gambling prevalence study.
Mr Whittingdale
I am sorry, but I have very little time, so I shall have to continue.
Although that figure might have fallen and although only a small number of people are involved, I accept of course that those people still need protection, which was why the Select Committee looked at various technologies that might help to address the problem. We looked at self-exclusion, taking periods of rest between playing machines and mandatory pre-commitment. We should consider such measures, but before taking any action, it is important that we act on the evidence. That was why we recommended that more research should be conducted so that we could establish whether B2 machines presented any greater risk of attracting problem gamblers than other types of machine. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) pointed out, the strongest growth in gambling is taking place online, but there are far fewer controls online for people who have a problem. It is much more difficult to verify someone’s age online and for someone to self-exclude.
Mr Whittingdale
I am sorry, but there are strict time limits on speeches, so I want to press on. I have explained why I believe that we need much more research.
The issue of clustering has been raised, too, and it was also recognised by the Select Committee. We recommended, although this was widely misinterpreted, that there should be some flexibility for local authorities so that if it could be shown that a large number of betting shops had opened to get around the limit of four machines in a shop, one solution might be to allow local authorities to permit more machines in individual betting shops precisely to stop more shops opening. We suggested that such flexibility should be applied in an upward rather than a downward direction.
I support localism, but the problem with the Opposition’s motion is that, as the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) confirmed, the proposal would not be retrospective. It would apply only to new shops, so he would not seek to close existing betting shops on the high street.
Mr Whittingdale
I am happy to give way if the hon. Gentleman wishes to clarify his position.
Clive Efford
The licensing powers relating to the machines could be retrospective. The number of machines per shop could be reduced.
Mr Whittingdale
But the hon. Gentleman is not proposing to revoke the existing permissions for shops that are currently on the high street, so what he suggests would not be likely to make any great difference. It would act as an anti-competitive measure that would benefit the people currently operating on the high street and prevent new entrants from coming into the market. Generally, that would be detrimental to consumers.
The Select Committee’s overall conclusion was that before we take action in this area, we need much more research. The hon. Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe), who is a member of the Responsible Gambling Trust, pointed out that a thorough study is under way, with a report due in the near future. The Opposition’s motion pre-empts the work that the trust is doing and draws conclusions before we have even seen the results of its research. That is completely the wrong way round, and it is for that reason, in line with what the Select Committee recommended, that I shall support the Government’s amendment and not the Opposition’s motion.
Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)
Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker, and a happy new year to you.
I was extremely heartened to hear the Prime Minister express concern about the prevalence of fixed odds betting terminals from the Dispatch Box for the second time earlier today, because the issue is of concern to Members on both sides of the House. This is a new technology linked to high-stake gambling. It seems to me that there is a clear remedy, namely to banish the machines from the high street, or else to reduce the stakes significantly from £100 to £2, which would in effect turn them into the old-style arcade fruit machines that we probably all remember from childhood. However, that approach has not yet found favour, and I think that the next best solution is offered by the Opposition’s motion.
I have time to focus on only one issue, namely how we commission, fund and respond to research in the context of public policy. I want to caution the Minister: I think it is a little foolhardy to set so much store by the findings of a report that is the outcome of a complex set of arrangements that make it hard for allegations of too much influence from vested interests to be overcome.
The problem for the Government and the House is this. We are awaiting the findings of a study that is intended to establish what harm is being caused to individual players. Those findings are due to be published later this year by the Responsible Gambling Trust, which is funded by a voluntary levy on the gambling industry and chaired by a former industry executive. The gambling industry should not be seen to have influence over a body that is, in effect, conducting research on itself.
In 2008, the Gambling Commission recommended a tripartite structure for research, education and treatment. The commission argued that if those programmes were to be funded voluntarily, it was essential for strategy, fundraising and commissioning to be run by separate bodies so that a conflict of interest could be avoided. Otherwise the industry, as the sole funder, might have influence over what research was commissioned.
Mr Sutcliffe
As my hon. Friend says, at that time it was difficult to bring together various bodies to fund research, education and treatment for problem gamblers. The NHS does not fund such programmes, and the Responsible Gambling Trust provided the best possible deal at the time. What I find regrettable is that the Campaign for Fairer Gambling should attack the integrity of that individual body of research on gambling, and I hope that my hon. Friend will not do the same now.
Mr Watson
I am going to attack the arrangements, although I am not decrying my hon. Friend. One can choose whether to work within the system to improve things or to try to influence them from outside, and we have taken a different path in that regard, but I am sure that our policy goals are the same.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Does he agree that much of the anecdotal and experiential evidence is very clear, and that it is really a question of whether the Government are prepared to take on vested interests? Time and again, when that question is put to them, their answer is no, they are not.
Mr Watson
I do think that there is a timidity when it comes to the big gambling lobby. In my view, it is hard not to conclude that the complex relationships that I have described constitute an attempt to hide the influence of the industry on public policy. Whatever the outcome of today’s debate and whatever action we take on FOBTs in the future, the current arrangements for the commissioning of research require decisive modernisation.
The Responsible Gambling Strategy Board was set up to recommend strategic objectives to the commissioning body, which at the time was the Responsible Gambling Fund. A body called the Gambling Research Education and Treatment Foundation, popularly known as GREaT, took over fundraising. It was headed by Neil Goulden, who was the chief executive officer of Coral and is now the chair of the Association of British Bookmakers. Subsequently, trustees from the Responsible Gambling Fund resigned as they felt the fundraising body had too much influence over what research was to be commissioned. So that is a concern, and I think it is one we should all address.
Mr Watson
I am sorry, but I cannot take another intervention as I am running out of time.
There is also a revolving-door policy with some of the regulators. There is a guy called Andrew Lyman who now works for William Hill and is a rather truculent tweeter. He used to work for the commission when it stressed the importance of separating fundraising from commissioning and research, and now he works for William Hill lobbying against that. So I think there is an inherent conflict of interest in the system that we have put in place and I hope that when the Minister responds to this discussion, she will be able to answer this question: how can the House have confidence in a report when we cannot be confident that it is truly independent?
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I once again refer people to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
In the limited time available I want to just dispel some myths, but I shall start by saying it is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), my former sparring partner on the Select Committee. However, I should point out that at the time the Committee carried out its report into gambling, the hon. Gentleman was a member of the Committee but I do not think he turned up to any of the sessions. Perhaps if he was so concerned about this issue he might have turned up and listened to some of the evidence because he might have learned something as a result.
Mr Watson
I apologise for not turning up. There was another vested interest that I had a personal interest in at the time, as the hon. Gentleman knows, but when that debate was going on I thought to myself that not even the hon. Gentleman would be dumb enough to ask for more FOBTs in bookies rather than fewer. I was wrong.
Philip Davies
If the hon. Gentleman had actually turned up, he would have known the report was unanimously supported by all members including members of the Labour party.
The first myth I want to dispel is that there has been an explosion in the number of betting offices and machines. The number of betting offices has actually declined from a peak of 14,750 in the mid-1970s to around 8,700 today and that figure has been virtually the same for the last 10 years. FOBTs—B2 machines—are also in decline: according to the Gambling Commission 4% of adults played them in 2010 and the figure dropped to 3.4% in 2011-12, and in 2013 all bookmakers reported a decline in the gross win from FOBTs.
Even in areas considered to have huge numbers of bookmakers—for example Hackney—they make up about 2.7% of all retail units. Let us take Greenwich as an example of what has happened. The number of bookmakers has gone up in Greenwich by 8% at the same time as the population in Greenwich has increased by 13%. Of course bookmakers are often in densely populated areas and some of them happen to be poorer areas, too, but the relevant fact is that they are in densely populated areas not poorer areas.
Stephen Timms
There are 12 bookmakers in the short stretch of East Ham high street between East Ham town hall and East Ham station. There has never been anything like such a large number in that small area before. Something dramatic has changed and it needs to be fixed.
Philip Davies
The right hon. Gentleman says that, but many of his constituents work in them, of course, and many of his constituents enjoy going into them. If they did not enjoy going into them, they would not be open.
It is true that more bookmakers have moved on to the high street in recent years, but their overall number has not gone up; instead they have moved from the side streets owing to lower rents because of the recession largely caused by the Labour party, and they will probably move back on to the side streets when the economy recovers and rents on the high street go back up.
Anyway, where are the legions of retailers wanting to open up on the high street in place of bookmakers? It is not a decision between having Next on the high street or William Hill or having M&S on the high street or Paddy Power. It is a choice between having Ladbrokes on the high street or a boarded-up shop.
Philip Davies
I cannot give way again as I have taken the two interventions allowed.
People ask for a demand test and there is a demand test: it is called a customer demand test, which is the ultimate demand test.
The second myth is that bookmakers target poorer areas. There are two bookmakers per square mile in the most deprived areas. That compares with nine pubs and 11 takeaways. If the Opposition are saying that bookmakers are targeting the poorest people in society, what do they have to say about pubs and takeaways targeting those people? Do we hear anything about that? We do not, because this is not about the poorest in society being targeted; it is about people who are anti-gambling and anti-bookmaker. Bookmakers are not targeting poorer areas. This is about middle-class people being patronising towards working-class people by telling them that they know best how they should spend their money.
The third myth is that the machines are used by the poorest people. Again, that is untrue. The health survey published in recent months shows that gambling prevalence was highest in the top quintiles of household income, with 6% of people in the highest income quintile playing FOBTs, compared with 4% in the lowest quintile. The hon. Member for West Bromwich East said that he did not want surveys to be linked to the gambling industry, but this is the health survey, which has nothing to do with the gambling industry. That survey makes it clear that richer people are much more likely than poorer people to play FOBTs.
Only two gambling activities in that health survey were engaged in more by poorer people than by richer people. They were scratch cards and bingo. Poorer people spend more on scratch cards and bingo than do the richest people. What are the Opposition saying about scratch cards and bingo? Nothing, because they do not think that it would be popular to say anything about them. This is just a case of crocodile tears.
Philip Davies
I would love to give way to the hon. Gentleman, who is a very good man on these issues, but I am afraid that time does not allow me to do so.
The fourth myth is that the amount of problem gambling is going up. The health survey shows that, according to the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders”, 0.8% of men and 0.2% of women were identified as problem gamblers in 2012. That is down from 0.9% in the previous prevalence study. So problem gambling is going down, not up. If B2s and FOBTs were the cause of such problem gambling, it would presumably have gone through the roof in recent years, but it has actually gone down.
We often hear FOBTs being described as the “crack cocaine of gambling”, but by whom? No one impartial describes them in that way. The first recorded instance is Donald Trump describing video keno games in New Jersey as the “crack cocaine of gambling”, because he feared that they would keep people out of his casinos. This is a ridiculous debate on a ridiculous premise, and I cannot possibly support the Opposition motion today.
Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
Many of us on both sides of the House who represent poor and working-class constituents can see the effect that these machines are having on lives and families, and their impact on our inner towns and cities, especially where a proliferation of betting shops provides an opportunity to play the machines, or where category B1 and B2 machines are to be found in clubs. Any Labour Members who attend trade union and labour clubs, and any Government Members who attend political and sports clubs, will regularly see people pouring hundreds of pounds into these machines, while often getting very little back.
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that, contrary to what the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) has just said, it cannot be a coincidence that bookies in the top 50 unemployment black spots profited from FOBTs to the tune of £173 million last year, while those in the 50 lowest unemployment areas made a profit of only £44 million? Does not that illustrate my hon. Friend’s point?
Mark Hendrick
It does, and I commend my hon. Friend for his comment. These machines disproportionately affect those who live in poorer, working-class areas.
The problem of the B1 and B2 machines is highly pervasive. If someone in a club is drinking too much and clearly has an addiction or a drinking problem, they are often asked to leave. If they become a problem customer, they are shown the door. However, problem gamblers pouring money into machines are not warned that their gambling is excessive. In fact, they are encouraged by the fact that the machines are placed next to the bar, so that any change put across the bar is put into the machine as quickly as possible. Additionally, a person may be drinking at the bar, and a machine next to the bar offers a comfortable place to park a drink while using the machine. The companies that provide gaming machines to clubs, pubs and bookmakers use all sorts of techniques to maximise profits from the machines.
The Gambling Commission does not license pubs, clubs, working men’s clubs or family entertainment centres operating under a local authority permit. The Government claim that the commission does not collect data for those businesses. That is their explanation for not having sufficient data to deal with an obvious problem. The fact that data on those businesses are not collected does not necessarily mean that the Government cannot publish a report or carry out an inquiry to get such information. If society has a problem with gambling, it is the Government’s job to get to the bottom of it, not just to pass enabling legislation to make limits even higher. FOBTs allow almost unlimited winnings, as well as huge losses. Given the technology that the multibillion-pound gambling industry is using in this day and age, it beggars belief that it cannot collate the information that will allow the Government to make informed decisions about what the limits should be, and about how machines should operate, where they should operate and at what times of the day. If anything, I believe that there is a deliberate attempt by the industry to cover up what is happening. The impact assessment does not give us a true overall picture of the situation.
Communities are becoming poorer. We have heard from the Government about an increase in employment, but there has been a large increase in part-time employment, and low pay is the problem it always was. Poor people are being drawn in initially to try to make money for essentials, rather than just coming along for amusement, and are then getting drawn into habitual gambling, which we are all seeing on our high streets. People know what is happening with high-stake, fixed-odds machines. The Government know what is happening, but they have deliberately chosen not to take action and to kick this into the long grass. They are in fact helping the industry by increasing the limits in the way they have. We know what is happening with Wonga and payday loans. We know what austerity is doing to poor and unemployed people, and people on low incomes. People are trying to get money from any source, and gambling seems like a quick fix, and it is much more prevalent than it used to be. I have seen in my own town of Preston a huge increase in the number of betting shops and bookies. Payday loan businesses are taking over premises that were once shops, and reputable companies and businesses as well.
Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)
My hon. Friend has talked about the accumulation of data, and the Government say that they wish to look at the data before they make any judgment. He identified the fact that the data we are seeing every day with our own eyes are telling us the truth, which is that these things are increasing day upon day on our high streets.
Mark Hendrick
My hon. Friend is right, and it does not take a genius to see what is going on; we are all seeing it every day on our own streets with our own eyes. Poor and unemployed people, who have been hit by austerity measures, are being drawn to the clubs and bookies to use these machines on a scale that has never been seen before. The current limit of four FOBTs should remain the limit, and local authorities should be given the powers outlined in our motion, which I ask hon. Members to support.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to contribute to this debate. I served on the Select Committee when it investigated this issue between 2011 and 2012. It was a useful inquiry to undertake several years after the Gambling Act 2005, because although, as has been said, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence, one role of Select Committees and of legislators is to step back and ensure that we are looking at the real data, as opposed to other people’s interpretations of them.
Let us have a bit of a history lesson. FOBTs appeared in high street bookmakers’ shops in the early 2000s, and, after a code of conduct was agreed with the industry, restrictions were put in place: the game type was restricted to only roulette; a cap was put in place on the stakes and prices; a minimum time interval between bets was introduced; and a limit was put in place on the number of machines per shop. That was a useful compromise, but the whole point of reviewing legislation is to see whether there have been any unintended consequences. One of the most obvious unintended consequences has been mentioned by many hon. Members: as the machines are popular and there is a demand for them, what we have been seeing in high streets in different parts of the country is that more and more betting shops are appearing. That may be partly due to the fact that premises are readily available. There have been mergers of various banks and building societies, which are in the same planning class as betting shops. Ultimately, those shops would not open if people did not want to use them.
Graham Jones
Is the hon. Lady as disappointed as I am that the Government have not mentioned the survey that 2CV did in Newham, which is a reputable data gathering company? She talked about how folk go into these premises and are addicted to these machines. The survey, which questioned 500 customers as they left betting premises, revealed that 62% admitted to spending every last penny in their pockets and leaving the shop only when all their money had been spent.
Dr Coffey
I think I have seen that survey. It was commissioned by the Campaign for Fairer Gambling. I do not deny that that was the outcome. Professor Orford, who is known to be anti-gambling, gave evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee that we are the most studied country in the world, with three public prevalence surveys since 2000 and even more public health research. Despite that, our Committee was not able to substantiate the fact that gambling addiction is driven by fixed odds betting terminals.
Philip Davies
Is my hon. Friend aware that about 160 illegal machines were confiscated in the south-east last year? Does she agree that if FOBTs were banned, as the Opposition want, it would drive the gambling underground and even more of these machines would be played illegally?
Dr Coffey
I agree with my hon. Friend. I recognise that if we displace an activity in a controlled environment there is the risk of creating an uncontrolled environment. We should also consider some of the briefing we have been given. The Gambling Commission says we cannot use the gambling prevalence survey results specifically to identify the causation of problem gambling. Some of the research, which alluded to secondary data research, said:
“Virtual gaming machines had the strongest association with gambling-related problems, but few people endorsed that they had played these games during the past 12 months. These findings suggest that popular perceptions of risk associated with specific types of gambling for the development of gambling-related problems might misrepresent actual risk…The range of gambling involvement frequently is a better predictor of disordered gambling status than type of gambling. This finding is important because it represents a deviation from the tendency to focus on specific games, such as fruit/slot machines as central to gambling-related problems.”
We should be looking instead at global behaviour characteristics. That is the research that was referred to by the Campaign for Fairer Gambling, but it does not support its own particular view.
There are different surveys on whether poor people are being targeted, including from Public Health England. Table 3.9 of the British Gambling Prevalence Survey 2010 specifically sets out the participation in gambling activities in the past year in relation to FOBTs by the index of multiple deprivation and shows that there is no particular difference between the classes. Scotland has the highest prevalence of FOBT use in the country as a whole.
I do not deny that there are individual cases. We know that there are problem gamblers—the latest estimate suggests between 300,000 and 400,000, and those individual cases will be absolute tragedies. We may have heard them on the radio or met them in our surgeries. They may have bet the family silver. Families are torn apart by the problem, but this is no different from what happens when people are driven to similar distraction by other addictions, such as to alcohol or drugs.
I respect the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), but he says that all he is talking about is a few more powers. The basis of our English law is that we can do what we want unless the Government and the law intervene to restrict us, and we see that with crime, planning and so on. We must be careful when we stop legitimate gambling on the basis of anecdotal research. It is a bit like the many campaigns that we receive. We tend to hear from less than 1% of our constituents, and we cannot assume that everybody thinks the same.
Dr Coffey
I am sorry but I only have 45 seconds left.
We need to think carefully about any changes that we propose. I supported the Select Committee’s report and we need to take a measured approach. We need to continue to work to try to tackle the problems of problem gamblers, but that does not mean that we should throw away the freedoms people rightly enjoy to gamble, whether that is on our high streets or elsewhere.
I cannot support the Opposition motion. The Government’s amendment provides a reasoned approach to ensuring that we continue to tackle the problem and I will therefore support the Government.
Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
The key issue at the heart of the debate is localism—the ability of local authorities to act in the interests of the people they represent. I was most surprised when the Minister referred to localism as an unacceptable patchwork, as that is an unacceptable approach to take when considering local authorities and their responsibilities.
The debate is not about gambling in general but about specific and growing concerns about fixed odd betting terminals in betting shops. Every 20 seconds, £100 can be gambled, often with disastrous results for individuals. Research has shown that the people using those facilities particularly include young unemployed men.
Mr Whittingdale
Has the hon. Lady ever played a fixed odds betting terminal? They have one of the highest rates of return of any gambling machine and it is virtually impossible to lose hundreds of pounds as the majority of the money one puts in comes back out again.
Mrs Ellman
I am concerned about the negative aspects of the activity, and I refer the hon. Gentleman to some of the information contained in the report of Landman Economics, which I have quoted.
There is certainly a link between the growth of such facilities and areas of deprivation. In Liverpool, Riverside, which I represent, there are now 189 such terminals—one of the highest levels in the country—and it is a very deprived area. That deprivation has been recognised by and has caused deep concern to the local authority, Liverpool city council, which is why it raised the issue last November and called for increased powers to enable it to deal with this specific concern.
It is often local authorities that recognise the cumulative effects of such facilities, and the impact on local communities and individuals. The city council has cited in its debates many cases of people who have turned to loan sharks in desperation, having got into debt because of these facilities, and the problems that they have experienced. Indeed, the Landman Economics report provides evidence of the economic impact on local communities. In fact, there is information that suggests that an increase in spending of £1 billion on such terminals rather than other services can lose the equivalent of 13,000 UK jobs. There is concern about the development of such facilities, about the fact that they are uncontrolled in areas of deprivation, and about the impact on individuals and local communities, and it is important that local authorities are given the necessary powers to deal with the issue.
Government Members seem to have said a number of different things about local authority powers. Some have suggested that local government has sufficient powers, others have said that such powers are perhaps difficult to find and others have cited examples of where such powers have been found to be failing or simply do not exist. The key point is that local authorities should be able to deal with the issues they consider to be important to their areas. That does not mean that they should be forced to take a particular course of action, but they should be enabled to do so when they feel that it is necessary.
The proposal is not about gambling in general and certainly would not deal with the significant growth of online gambling. This is about another very specific issue, as it is extremely important that local government is given the powers it requests to react to problems.
Graham Jones
My hon. Friend is making powerful points about the contradictions in the points made by Government Members about localism and nationalism and about addiction. In the 2CV survey of 500 punters in Newham, 87% said that these machines were very addictive and, as I said earlier, 62% said that they would put every last penny into the machines before they left the shops. Is that not shocking?
Mrs Ellman
My hon. Friend makes some important points, and I urge Government Members to recognise that the heart of the motion is about empowering local authorities to take the action they consider necessary in the interests of the people they represent. It does not preclude other decisions being made when further research has been carried out, and I urge the Government to support the motion.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
Just before Christmas, I was one of only four Government Members to vote against the Government in a deferred Division on this issue. Unfortunately, although I have great sympathy with many of the points made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), I cannot support the Labour motion. I will not rehearse the reasons for that, but the motion is cynical, opportunistic and, not least, confused. The Leader of the Opposition launched a campaign in the summer about stakes and problem gambling. It was about the generic issue—it was not just about use class orders and planning, which is what the hon. Member for Eltham is telling the House today. I have been partly reassured by the Minister’s approach.
Mr Burrowes
I have been similarly reassured by the Minister’s response. My hon. Friend shares my concern—I am sure he will discuss clustering in Peterborough, which is similar to the clustering of betting shops in Green Lanes in my constituency—that there should be greater local powers. My local area wants to set up a neighbourhood plan that involves the high street. Does he think that in the review and the response the promise to leave no stone unturned should include greater powers in relation to planning and licensing?
Mr Jackson
Absolutely. That is an integral part of any remedial powers that the Government take to deal with the serious and legitimate concerns of many of my constituents. There are 22 betting shops in central Peterborough, with 81 FOBTs generating about £3.2 million. I am disappointed, because this could have been a genuine cross-party debate on information and research provided by bodies such as the Methodist Church, which has not always supported my party, and the Salvation Army. I declare an interest as a member of the good neighbours board of the Peterborough citadel of the Salvation Army.
Unfortunately, from the Labour party’s point of view, the debate has been rather confused. Undoubtedly, there is a problem. The precautionary principle is not that there should be unambiguous, completely definable evidence of a causal link between critical problem gambling and FOBTs. It is about the risk of problem gambling. One of my worries, which has been partly ameliorated today, is about the precautionary principle on the maximum stake. I was concerned that the research on the impact of those £100- spin games on the most vulnerable people in our constituencies should be undertaken by independent individuals. The hon. Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) has defended the Responsible Gambling Trust, and he is right to do so. I do not distrust the RGT, but there are serious concerns.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend talks about the precautionary principle in gambling and problem gambling. That is an argument for banning gambling altogether, because in any form of gambling there are people who become addicted. On that logic, his argument is to ban gambling altogether. Is he aware that someone can place a bet on a 5-furlong sprint at Epsom that takes 50 seconds with an unlimited amount of money? There is no limit whatsoever.
Mr Jackson
It is interesting that my hon. Friend, for whom I have enormous respect—I think that he is wrong on this issue—should touch on the cumulative displacement impact on horse racing¸ football and greyhound betting.
Mr Jackson
I cannot give way. The hon. Gentleman is very engaging, but I must resist his blandishments on this occasion.
I am not a devil take the hindmost, freemarket libertarian. I am a Conservative—I am a social conservative. I believe that there is a compact or bond of trust with the most vulnerable people in our society. There is a problem with problem gambling. As a Christian, I have compassion for those people who are stuck with the mindset of feeling that they have to gamble, but my concern is mostly for the children and families affected by problem gambling. We have a responsibility and a duty. We have regulatory regimes for many things in our society. I think that it would be wrong, when so much money is being made, and from some of the poorest people in society, to walk on by and say that we do not need to look at this again. Labour was catastrophically wrong on this issue. I think that this is the worst motion the Opposition have ever chosen, because they are on very weak ground.
I believe that the Minister is right to look at the precautionary principle and to demand all the up-to-date information on the B2 machines, which are very sophisticated, from the gambling companies. A code of practice is not good enough, because we are not talking about Mother Teresa; we are talking about some pretty ruthless business organisations that are protecting their interests, and some of them are preying on the most vulnerable in society. We need the information. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) that we need to base our decisions on data that can be proven and tested, not on anecdote.
Having said that, I believe that the Salvation Army has produced a great deal of data. We heard earlier about the increase in the number of problem gamblers in recent years. Some 23% of the money spent on FOBTs was spent by people with gambling problems. According to Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones, the lead consultant at the NHS national problem gambling clinic, 50% of the clinic’s patients reported FOBTs to be particularly problematic.
In short, we are a Government committed to localism, so let us give local authorities more powers to look at use class orders, to crack down on clustering and to look at the absolute number of FOBTs, all of which I agree with. But let us have a consensus across the House, rather than vindictive, party political point scoring, because this is too important an issue for our families and communities for that.
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
Mr Deputy Speaker, if you were to step off the train at Sunderland station, you would see a betting shop straight away, and you would not need to walk far to see several more. According to the Campaign for Fairer Gambling, in 2012 there were 30 betting shops in Sunderland Central, with 109 fixed odds betting terminals, with gross gambled amounts of nearly £120 million, the second highest in the north-east. The machines have been referred to as the crack cocaine of gambling so often that it is easy to become blasé about their effects, but the reason they are referred to in such terms is that their relentless speed and high stakes can be devastating.
Problem gambling is associated with a number of mental and physical health issues, including depression and insomnia, in addition to comorbid disorders such as alcohol abuse. Problem gambling is a significant health issue, both from a public and a private perspective. Although treatment is needed and sought by many, prevention of extreme gambling behaviours should be boosted by giving local authorities the power to restrict the number of betting shops opening in their areas and revoke or reduce the number of FOBTs in each branch.
FOBTs are purposefully and cynically targeted at the most vulnerable in society. They target areas of deprivation and take money away from those who can least afford to lose it. In an article published this morning, Dirk Vennix, chief executive of the Association of British Bookmakers, claimed that misinformation was being spread on the issue, citing the 2012 health survey for England, yet the same study shows that nearly twice as many people in the most deprived quintile use FOBTs than in the least deprived. It drags vulnerable people into cycles of debt, exacerbates our cost of living crisis and turns other shoppers away from our already struggling high streets.
GamCare, which provides support and advice to anyone suffering from a gambling problem, has shown that 40% of all calls to its helpline named FOBTs as the main problem. There is a clear link between problem gambling and debt problems. Research from GamCare and the Money Advice Trust has revealed that debts of up to £60,000 might be common among problem gamblers. It also stated that there is an urgent need to improve education about gambling for young people in schools. Education is crucial, but often it is all too late. Problem gambling encouraged by FOBTs affects not just adults but an estimated 60,000 young people aged between 12 and 15. Furthermore, young people are far less likely to seek help for their gambling problems.
The industry is stoking fears that any changes to FOBTs will inevitably lead to job losses, yet there is an inversely proportional relationship between the net takings of FOBTs and the number of employees in betting shops. As many branches are single-staffed, it can be difficult to monitor users and detect problem gamblers, and it will be even harder if the industry has its way and has the number of machines in each shop increased.
Betting shop clusters do far more harm than just to gamblers. The Portas review said that
“the influx of betting shops, often in more deprived areas, is blighting our high streets”.
Indeed, it puts many people off going shopping on our high streets. FOBTs are bad for problem gamblers, bad for our high streets, and bad for public health. I very much hope that the Government’s promise of localism and greater local decision making in planning will count for something today, and that they will join us to put local communities before the profits of betting shops.
Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
I rise to speak in support of the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister, which sets out a sensible and measured approach to any future changes to policy on fixed odds betting terminals or local authority powers in licensing and planning that is based on research into the effect of these terminals on the 1% of gamblers identified as problem gamblers.
When I visited a local betting shop on a high street in my constituency, it was, unexpectedly, a rather quiet, low-key activity. I certainly did not recognise the picture painted by the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), who said that betting shops attracted drunkenness and bad behaviour. Gambling is as legitimate a leisure activity as going to football matches, pubs or the cinema.
Stephen Timms
Is the hon. Lady aware that it is well established that the staff of betting shops are instructed not to report violent incidents inside the shops in order to keep them out of the crime statistics?
Dame Angela Watkinson
I can only say how strongly that contrasts with my experience of visiting a local betting shop in Hornchurch.
Gambling is enjoyed by 8 million people nationally, and betting shops provide local jobs and help to stimulate the economy. People have the right to choose how they spend their disposable income. I have no gambling instinct personally. I choose not to gamble, but that choice is open to everyone, and I defend the right of others to gamble responsibly if that is their choice.
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a very good speech. One of the key points is that in fixed premises on the high streets people cannot drink alcohol. If we were to push more people into online gambling, who knows what would happen, as people can sit and drink and gamble at very quick speeds?
Dame Angela Watkinson
My hon. Friend makes a good point. The betting shop I visited was more like a coffee shop, because tea and coffee were being served.
I question the claim that betting shops are too numerous or not wanted. Clearly some local people do want them, otherwise they would not remain viable. Passers-by were not being dragged into the shop off the street—in fact, most people passed by—and nobody inside was being coerced into betting against their will or spending more money than they had planned. The well-trained staff knew most of their regular customers and were trained to notice any addictive behaviour should it occur. Help and advice was available to any individual who needed or wanted it.
There is a consensus in Parliament and within the gambling industry that help should be available to the 1% who are unable to gamble responsibly and become addicted. We are right to be concerned about problem gambling but should seek ways to deal with it without spoiling the legitimate enjoyment of the 99% of responsible gamblers. The Association of British Bookmakers is bringing forward new measures as part of its code for responsible gambling and player protection. They include allowing players to limit their spending and the time they spend playing. Mandatory alerts will tell customers when they have played for 30 minutes or spent £250. Staff will also be alerted. The industry also raises nearly £6 million each year voluntarily for research, education and treatment for problem gamblers.
The Opposition’s motion claims that they are
“alarmed that people can stake as much as £100 every 20 seconds on these machines”.
That really over-eggs the pudding and makes the motion cynical and gimmicky. The Association of British Bookmakers states that it is impossible to credit a machine that quickly. There is more chance of winning the national lottery for three consecutive times than of losing £18,000 in one hour on a gaming machine. Data show that most people play for an average of 15 to 20 minutes and spend about £11 an hour.
It is very important that accurate evidence is gathered on the effect of fixed odds betting terminals on the 1% of problem gamblers; on the range of measures being undertaken by the gambling industry to prevent, identify and treat problem gamblers; and on whether the powers of local authorities as planning and licensing authorities are appropriate and effective. Any changes must also have regard to the 90% of responsible gamblers and the important contribution made by betting shops to local jobs and to the local and national economy, including 45,000 jobs and £1 billion in tax revenue. For those reasons, I support the amendment.
Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)
I refer the House to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am also a non-paid, independent trustee of the Responsible Gambling Trust.
The trust was set up under the previous Labour Government, who wanted the gambling industry to contribute to a voluntary levy towards research, education and treatment. As the hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson) said, nearly £6 million has been raised towards that end. There are five independent and five industry trustees under the chairmanship of Neil Goulden. I wanted to intervene earlier on my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), who is no longer in his place—perhaps that is not unusual—to point out that Neil Goulden is not the chairman of the Association of British Bookmakers. The trust commissions work to look at the core issues affecting problem gambling and, indeed, the treatment of problem gamblers. It has an excellent chief executive in Marc Etches, who has considerable experience across the piece.
I raise the trust’s work because the argument that this industry is unaware of its responsibilities on problem gambling is unjustified. The trust has commissioned detailed, independent research into fixed odds betting terminals and related matters. The important sub-committee that deals with the research and findings is chaired by a senior independent trustee, Liz Barclay, who is a respected broadcast journalist and producer. It has been made clear to the industry that whatever recommendations the research throws up, the trust will stand by them. An interim report is expected in March, with a full report to follow.
Today’s debate is important because there are continuing concerns about FOBTs, especially among the Local Government Association and its members, as well as parliamentary colleagues. Those concerns are usually connected with the perceived proliferation of betting shops. The betting industry employs 40,000 people directly and there are 8,773 betting shops in Britain, which is far fewer than the 16,500 betting shops that existed in the 1970s.
Philip Davies
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech, as usual. Will he confirm that about a third of those betting shops make about £15,000 or less in profit each year, and that half of them are independent, family-run businesses—I was brought up in a family-run betting shop—and not big corporate companies, as the Labour party likes to portray them?
Mr Sutcliffe
I accept that there are many independent betting shops, but the problem, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out in his speech, is the perceived proliferation of the main bookmakers on the high street. As he said, the reason is that they used to be on side streets, but they have now moved to the high streets. The problem for the gambling companies is that they are associated with payday loan companies and others on the high street that are causing great concern, especially among our local government colleagues.
That is why I have no problem with the motion with regard to local government and its powers. Powers already exist alongside the licensing objectives in the Gambling Act, and many local authorities may use those powers if they think betting shops are acting outside those objectives. It is understandable that local authorities want more powers. As we have heard, FOBTs have always been on probation, and we should reflect on the fact that the deal done on the Gambling Act restricted betting premises to four machines.
We must have evidence, however, and I think that it will be forthcoming through the Responsible Gambling Trust, which has asked bookmakers to provide it with a whole range of information. To counter the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East, the independent directors will look at the report and recommendations, and will report to the full trustees. As was said by the Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), that Committee looked at the issue and determined that the number of machines and betting shops should be decided locally by local authorities.
My problem is with the antics of the Campaign for Fairer Gambling. It is right and proper for the campaign to set out its view, but it is not right for it to try to vilify those who oppose its views. It sets out to rubbish any analysis that is not its own and, in particular, to try to rubbish the work of the Responsible Gambling Trust, which was set up to look at issues of problem gambling. If it is a real campaign for fairer gambling, why is its only focus on FOBTs? There are many other areas of problem gambling, as the gambling prevalence survey has shown. For instance, there are issues due to the price of national lottery tickets being increased from £1 to £2 and because people are able to buy them at 16, although they cannot go into betting shops until they are 18. There are many other issues to consider, including online gambling, which has already been talked about.
I believe that the debate did not need to be emotive and that we could have got to the core of the issues. The point about local authorities having more powers was well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman). I believe that we need to look at the subject sensibly and wait for the research to come out, and then make decisions based on that evidence.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this debate, but I first want to add my tribute to my parliamentary neighbour, Paul Goggins. This cannot be said about many politicians, but I have never heard a bad word said about Paul by anyone on either side of the House. He was a very courteous Minister, and in opposition he treated Ministers with respect. He will be sorely missed on both sides of the House, and my thoughts are with his family and close friends at this difficult time.
It is more interesting to see what is not in the motion than what is. Votes on Opposition day motions make no difference to Government policy, and we have come to expect from the Labour party motions on aspects of disagreement between the two coalition parties. I therefore fully expected to see yet another Opposition motion that matched Liberal Democrat policy—in other words, a commitment to reduce stakes and prizes, and plans for a separate use class for betting shops so that local authorities are given more powers to restrict the number of licensed betting shops on our high streets and in our local centres. Back in September, the Liberal Democrats called for betting shops to be put in a new separate planning use class, which would allow local authority planning committees to control their numbers. Just three months later, Labour announced that it would legislate to put betting shops in a separate use class so that councils could use planning powers to control the number opening in their area, so it is good to see Labour following our lead.
Some, including the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), have claimed that the Government have missed an opportunity to proceed with a reduction in stakes and prizes on fixed odds betting terminals. I am therefore rather surprised that the motion fails to address the fundamental problem of people being able to stake £100 a spin. Instead, it simply focuses on slowing down the rate of spin. Even if the rate was slowed to the pace of a normal roulette table, with 50 spins an hour, someone could still lose up to £5,000, rather than the current £18,000.
Liberal Democrat Members will not be lectured by Labour on fixed odds betting machines. After 13 years in government, its cultural legacy to our high streets and town centres was 24-hour drinking, lap dancing and fixed odds betting terminals. In the face of Liberal Democrat warnings, Labour allowed the introduction of these highly damaging and addictive gaming machines that have wreaked so much damage to people’s lives, although obviously we are delighted that Labour has finally woken up to the damage that its policies have caused to deprived high streets throughout the country.
Philip Davies
The hon. Gentleman says that he will not be lectured by the Labour party, but will he be lectured by Derek Webb, who is the Unite of the Liberal Democrats—I believe that he has given £150,000 in donations to the Lib Dems over the past year? He heads the Campaign for Fairer Gambling. Will the hon. Gentleman set out what Derek Webb’s background is and where he got all his money from?
Mr Leech
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful intervention. However, I will take no lectures from anyone on either side of the House about political donations.
To be fair to the Labour party, some of its Members have accepted that they made a mistake on FOBTs. Indeed, the shadow Secretary of State has admitted that Labour made a mistake. However, Labour’s motion fails to address the problem of the £100-a-spin stakes that are still allowed on our high streets. I am happy to reject the motion not only on the basis that it would not solve the problems that are created by FOBTs, but because the timing of the debate is ill judged, given that the coalition Government are undertaking research into the impact of FOBTs.
The Government have challenged the betting industry to implement enhanced player protection measures by March this year or face precautionary measures. If the industry fails to deliver on its commitments, or if at any time the balance of evidence suggests that action is required, the Government must not hesitate in imposing a precautionary reduction in stakes and prizes.
It is no secret that there is disagreement between the coalition parties. Liberal Democrats believe that there is clear evidence that harm is caused by FOBTs. I am confident that the research will prove that there is a need for action. GamCare’s figures for last year show that 39% of the calls to its helpline came from people who specifically cited B2 machines. The Salvation Army estimates that the number of people with a problem increased by 30,000 between 2007 and 2010. Research conducted by Professor Gerda Reith at the university of Glasgow suggests that B2 machines pose a particular risk to problem gamblers because of their rapid rate of play that offers addicts the quick fix that they are looking for. A 2010 study in the European Journal of Public Health found:
“Virtual gaming machines had the strongest association with gambling-related problems”
of all the activities it studied, which included horse race betting, football betting, the lottery, online gambling, casino—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I have to drop the time limit to three minutes to get in as many Members as possible. If we could have fewer interventions, it would be helpful.
Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
In debates of this nature, we are in danger of dividing the sector into good and bad gambling companies. Betting shops are seen as bad, while the national lottery, which has not even been mentioned in this debate, is seen as good. There can be no doubt that FOBTs have a high potential to cause gambling addiction, but there is a tendency to blame betting shops for everything.
There has been no talk today of the presence of FOBTs in pubs and motorway service stations. When I drive down the M4 on a Monday and back up it on a Thursday, I can walk into a service station and think that I am in the middle of a mini-casino. Who is policing those places? Equally, there has been no mention of the dominant position of the national lottery. Newsagents up and down the land have lottery terminals, and scratchcards can be bought anywhere. They are far more accessible and far more addictive than FOBTs.
We have to look seriously at FOBTs and other gaming machines. However, we must work not only with the betting industry, but with the pub industry, the owners of motorway service stations and amusement arcades, and Camelot. If we are to legislate properly in this area, we need a strong academic survey of the impact of prolonged use and of the clientele who use these machines. It is easy to bash these machines and the industry. Anecdotal evidence is all very well, but we need facts and figures before we intervene.
Since such gaming machines were introduced in 2002, there has been no significant change in the level of problem gambling. It is not me who says that, but a study that was commissioned by the Gambling Commission in 2010. The same study indicated that problem gamblers played up to nine different products. They do not stand at FOBTs feeding in note after note; they look for other outlets for their addiction. As well as using the machines, a problem gambler bets on the horses and the dogs, and buys scratchcards. I have not heard anybody talking about how many people are addicted to scratchcards, yet people can just walk into a newsagents and buy one. No hon. Member would disagree that our aim should be to protect the customer, but my concern is that by not debating the issue properly, we are not dealing with problem gamblers.
In the short time I have left—only 30 seconds—I must also mention single staffing, on which a briefing has been provided today. That was a problem when I worked in a betting shop, and was the cashier and the manager. It is all very well saying that that was due to footfall, because only 20 people walked through the door, but those 20 people might want to put on bets at the same time. That situation put me under stress. I did not have to deal with FOBTs, but such a situation can stop members of staff policing them. There is also a social issue. I was being paid only to be the manager that day, not to be the cashier, so I was earning below the minimum wage. If the situation is still going on, it needs to be dealt with.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) and his thoughtful, careful speech on this sensitive subject. The Government’s approach is that we need firm evidence before any change is made to our gambling laws. That is absolutely right, and when I sat on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, our gambling inquiry showed that it is an incredibly complex area with a lot of contradictory evidence.
Several Members have asserted that there has been an uncontrollable, unsustainable boom in gambling, but a study of the facts simply does not support that. There was an increase in the use of FOBTs after the Gambling Act 2005 was introduced, but the number of them on the high street has declined in the past three years. Betting shops are changing location, but there has been no explosion in their total number. Some Members have cited the gambling prevalence survey, which they say shows a 50% increase in problem gambling, but that increase is from 0.6% to 0.9% in problem gambling, according to surveys taken between 2007 and 2010. The change in numbers in those two studies are within the margin of error, so not necessarily statistically significant, and other studies since 2010 have demonstrated that instances of problem gambling are declining. That is why we must have a sensible evidence-based approach.
The scenario that the Labour party paints about gambling on the high street, the prevalence of FOBTs, and the clustering of betting shops was created entirely by the 2005 Act. Was the decision of the then Labour Government based on robust evidence and science? No. The Act perhaps had good intentions, but it has had massive unintended consequences. When Richard Caborn gave evidence to the Select Committee, he was asked why the previous Government settled on having four FOBTs in betting shops—what was the reason for that number? He responded:
“There was no magic, scientific arrangement for four, I can honestly assure you. It was an agreement saying what was reasonable and what we believed—with the evidence that we had—was proportionate at the time. That is exactly how it happened.”
It was their best guess, and it has led to the clustering of FOBTs on the high streets. Because there is demand for FOBTs and not enough premises to play them in, bookmakers have opened new betting shops so they can have new terminals.
I was interested in the shadow Minister’s response to my earlier intervention when I said that, on face value, the wording of the Labour motion suggested that local authorities could retrospectively change the number of terminals in a shop, but only downwards. I think that refutes the idea that the motion is localist or about giving powers to local communities in any way. If it was, it might do what the Select Committee recommended and give local authorities the power to say, “Perhaps we will have more terminals in fewer shops, and fewer shops on the high street” and have the power to make that decision. This is not a localist motion but one in which the Labour party is asking councils to do what it wants—close betting shops and get rid of FOBTs altogether.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
In the little time available I will restrict my remarks to the impact of FOBTs on increased criminality and money laundering on our high streets. We might criticise the Gambling Act 2005, but it clearly states that gambling machines must prevent
“gambling from being the being a source of crime and disorder, being associated with crime and disorder, or being used to support crime”,
yet that is exactly what is happening on our streets. These machines are being used to launder millions of pounds of money from criminality, drug dealing, loan sharking, people trafficking and so on.
There is a particularly nasty crime family in my constituency, and the Home Secretary has spoken on numerous occasions about the good work that County Durham has done to tackle organised crime. That crime family in my constituency has been moved on from “cash for crash”, drug dealing and so on, but where are they now? They are all over these FOBT machines. The Remote Gambling Association admitted in September that FOBTs represent a
“high inherent money laundering risk”.
The European Union is likely to include the machines in directive 4 on money laundering, and I would be interested to hear what the Minister thinks about that. Even the United Nations office on drugs and crime has warned that these games are used by organised crime to launder cash. The EU, the UN and even the Government recognise how dangerous this is. Despite the assertion from the gambling industry and the Association of British Bookmakers that they fully comply with the law, it is clear that, however inadvertently, these machines are now an integral and increasing part of the machinery of organised crime and money laundering. In the little time I have left, I plead with the Government to take seriously, in their review, the impact of FOBTs on money laundering and their increasing use, and to limit the stake.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
This is a serious issue, one that I have campaigned on locally and spoken on in this House. I hope the shadow Minister will look at my previous contributions before we go on local radio tomorrow morning and he will see what I have said on this issue in the past.
I will not be supporting the Labour motion this evening. I will be supporting the Government’s amendment, because a lot of progress is being made. The tone of the debate—that the proliferation in our high streets is the Government’s fault—is a bit rich when Labour’s 2005 Act, which liberalised much of the regulation and legislation, has caused the problem we are all now concerned about.
I share the concerns of many Members on both sides of the House about the impact that FOBTs are having on our constituents, but it is wrong and misguided for Opposition Members to say that the issue is applicable only to those in deprived areas. I represent a constituency with areas of multiple deprivation. The figures for the amount being gambled in FOBTs in those areas are the same as those for the amount being gambled in the much more affluent areas of Kent, such as Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells, so it is difficult to say that this issue is confined to more deprived areas.
It is important to consider the evidence, collect all the necessary data and ensure that we respond accordingly. My only concern, if I were to have one criticism of the Government’s policy, is that that should be done more quickly. Having an interim report early next year and a report later in the autumn will not be quick enough to deal with the issue, because it is an increasing problem. I am not opposed to giving councils more flexibility to deal with clustering, but the problem is not exclusive to bookmakers. As a consequence of previous legislation, it is also the case with payday loan companies, pawnbrokers and licensed premises.
We do not necessarily need legislation to deal with this problem. Conservative-led Medway council has been working with other organisations and has implemented a voluntary code of conduct with the ABB to try to ensure that we deal with problem gambling directly. That is a much more sensible way forward and I look forward to seeing the outcomes of that partnership.
Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch). She took part in an Adjournment debate I secured in April on this subject, and she agreed that we should give local authorities the opportunity to provide part of the solution. I understand that she will not be voting for the motion, but the Government should listen to the spirit of what she has said, particularly on the rapidity of the research—that was a point well made.
You can get odds of 66:1 on Fulham winning the FA cup this season, Mr Speaker. I had my usual annual bet before the third round. Both Fulham and Norwich tried to lose, but we are still in the cup. I mention that to make the point to the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) that not everybody who has concerns about FOBTs is anti-gambling or views it as anathema.
The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) has indicated from a sedentary position several times during the course of the debate that the number of FOBT machines has gone down, but that is not the case in my constituency. The point of the motion and the debate is about those areas where the number of machines and betting shops is increasing. I invite him to come with me to Cambuslang main street, in my constituency, a small main street that now has five betting shops, each with four machines, within 200 yards of each other. Before my Adjournment debate last April, I visited several betting shops in my constituency, and in Glasgow close to my constituency and in London, and each time I saw people on the machines for long periods putting in significant amounts—I could see that just by standing there. The Government must take cognisance of that, instead of just saying that the number of machines has fallen. This is a problem about proliferation, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) said at the start of the debate.
My interest in this subject arose in late 2011 when a constituent came to me having lost £25,000 in a single month on a machine in a betting shop in my constituency. It was no surprise to me that the betting shop was in one of the most deprived parts of my constituency. He came to me not because he thought he had a problem, but because he thought the machines were fixed. That underlines the point. I spent some time with Hamilton gamblers’ anonymous. Strikingly, several younger people in that group had accepted they had a problem, had gone for help and were trying to resolve their issues, but they had a problem relating to these machines. The situation was very different with the older people in that group. The Government ought to take that seriously.
We have heard a lot about the staff in the shops. My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop) knows from his experience that people in those betting shops often feel under pressure not to report things. They have said very clearly that they want to be bookmakers, not bouncers, and that they find themselves intimidated into not reporting incidents. All these are important issues, but the proliferation and concentration of shops in particular areas is the big issue that the Government should address first.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
Some 400,000 people in this country are problem gamblers and 3.5 million are at risk of developing a gambling problem. These are not small numbers. Furthermore, 50% of problem gamblers reporting to the National Problem Gambling Clinic say that fixed odds betting terminals are a disproportionate cause of problem gambling. We can understand why that is when we hear that these high-stakes machines can take bets of £100 per game and that up to £1,800 can be lost in an hour. Every year in the UK, people lose more than £1 billion on FOBTs, of which problem gamblers lose £300,000.
Users do not need to be addicted for catastrophic problems to be caused to them and their families. It is not just an individual problem, but a grave social and public health issue that we need to recognise and deal with. Phill Holdsworth, head of external affairs at Christians Against Poverty, says:
“Where we work with families…where one member…has a problem with gambling it is very difficult and often impossible to provide any form of debt solution. It is not possible to put forward a solution without them receiving help or support for their addiction. This means the other family members”
continue to suffer. He continued:
“A debt solution is very difficult to apply when gambling problems are present.”
Problem gambling costs society £3.24 billion a year, and the addition of each problem gambler severely affects the lives of about eight individuals around them. As such, about 3 million people are now affected by problem gambling—every one an individual, every one a blighted life, many of them children. We urgently need a concerted Government approach and—I believe—a cross-party approach to address the economic, social and health costs associated with problem gambling. The Salvation Army, whose work I pay tribute to in this respect, says:
“Problem gambling particularly affects the young… Problem gambling amongst young people is an emerging public health issue. In the UK, over 10% of children who gamble are problem gamblers, whilst 18% of them are at risk gamblers.”
I agree with the phrase used by the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex), when he said that many people viewed gambling as anathema. I do. We need to review our whole approach towards gambling. The average treatment for a problem gambler costs £675, meaning that £274 million would be required to treat all problem gamblers in the UK, yet the gambling industry’s contribution is just £5 million.
Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)
I understand that the terminals generate about £300 million of tax revenue. Given my hon. Friend’s comments, has she considered the impact that Labour’s proposals might have on the Exchequer?
Fiona Bruce
They might generate that amount of revenue, but the gross gambling yield for the industry is £5.6 billion a year. I consider inadequate a contribution of £5 million to research, education and treatment activities related to gambling, which equates to less than 2% of their income. As I say, we need a wholesale review.
I oppose the Opposition motion, which is wholly inadequate, not least because the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), who introduced it, said that the motion was not about problem gambling. Well, it should be. I support the Government amendment, but I exhort the Minister to expedite the research and extend the Government’s work on the devastating causes and consequences of all problem gambling, not least for the sake of our next generation.
Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
Let us start on a note of cross-party unity: I agree with much of what the hon. Lady has just said. I have limited time, so I will cut directly to the chase. I see five Ministers on the Treasury Bench, all of them well educated and intelligent people, so I ask them to think about the contradiction in the case they are making. They tell us that the Gambling Act 2005 was a mistake, which has intentionally or unintentionally given rise to the current problems, although those of us present in 2005 will remember that we did not talk about fixed odds betting terminals at any length, but about super-casinos and other matters. Ministers tell us that that 2005 Act, introduced by a Labour Government, has created a major problem. They blame us for bringing it in and then for doing nothing to correct the situation over the subsequent five years.
I say to those Ministers that if there is a problem—they accept that there is one, as we heard from the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant)—they have a five-year window in which to do something about it. Let me challenge the Minister: will the Government legislate during this Parliament to correct what they have told us today about the grave errors in the 2005 Act? I lay down the same challenge to the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), who is going to reply. If Ministers seriously believe that the accusations made against Labour Members are correct—that there is a serious problem, which I believe there is, and that it needs solving—let me say, “The ball is in your court, chum”. Are Ministers going to bring forward legislation before the general election?
Secondly, Members of all parties have rightly pointed out that the top 10% of constituencies with the highest use of, and with the highest profits taken from, FOBTs are largely in deprived areas, although they are not all in those areas. I would like to mention a group of places in the top 10% that I would call tourist destinations. They include my constituency of York Central, Blackpool South, Brighton Pavilion, Bournemouth West, Cambridge, Great Yarmouth, Kensington, Norwich North, Oxford East, Torbay and the two Westminster constituencies.
I do not believe that the proliferation of high-street gambling in these tourist destinations is good for tourism. If someone comes to York and has a flutter on York races, that is part of a day out, and if £20 is lost on a race, so be it; it can probably be put down as part of the cost of a good day. If someone comes to York and loses £1,000 on one of these terminals, they will not think that they have had a good day out, and they will not forget it. For tourist towns as well as the deprived areas, this is a serious problem that needs to be addressed.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
We have had an extremely lively debate this afternoon on an issue that many Members across the Chamber clearly feel strongly about. Unfortunately, what we heard from the Minister was breathtaking complacency and the usual “blame Labour” mantra, but it will not wash. It is this Government who are failing to take action on the issue and who have facilitated a proliferation of FOBTs and betting shops on our high streets. Despite the Minister’s speech, a number of Government Members seemed to agree with us that additional powers should be given to local government. It will be interesting to see whether they rediscover their commitment to localism and vote with us in the Lobby.
A number of Members have made excellent speeches this afternoon. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) spoke of the inadequacy of local government powers to control betting shops, and pointed out that action under those powers can be overturned on appeal. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), who has done a great deal of work on this topic, helpfully drew attention to the inadequacy of the Government’s research strategy. My hon. Friends the Members for Preston (Mark Hendrick), for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott), for North West Durham (Pat Glass), for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) and for York Central (Hugh Bayley) noted the prevalence of gambling outlets in low-income areas, the problems of debt that that causes, and the negative impact of too many betting shops on the high street. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham also noted the rise in criminality that is associated with betting shops in some areas.
My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) injected a much-needed degree of sense into the debate by returning us to the central issue of localism. My hon. Friends the Members for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) and for Islwyn (Chris Evans) spoke of the importance of getting regulation right, not least because of the large number of people who work in the industry.
Neither I nor my colleagues object to a betting shop or two on the high street, and I appreciate that the industry has a code to encourage responsible gambling, but, as a number of Members have said, that does not go far enough. It is vital for the Government to take action to recognise the wishes and needs of local communities. As many of my hon. Friends have pointed out, there are more than 33,000 FOBTs making £1.5 billion each year for the big bookmakers—that constitutes about half their annual profits—and traditional bookies throughout the country are being turned into mini-casinos where people can gamble up to £300 a minute. Liverpool alone contains 559 terminals, which took £607 million last year. Newham in east London contains 87 betting shops with 348 terminals, and figures released recently by the Greater London Authority showed a 13% increase in the number of betting shops in London’s town centres between January 2010 and December 2012. We have heard how some players have become addicted to FOBTs, and how the machines, and the proliferation of betting shops that promote them, are causing debt and misery, as well as acting as a magnet for crime and antisocial behaviour.
We always made it clear that FOBTs were on probation, and it was said during the Second Reading of the Gambling Act 2005 that we would keep them under review. In 2009, when we were in government, we said that we would conduct a review because we were concerned about these machines. The current Government, however, have decided to do nothing: five years on, there has been no review. Government Members claim that local authorities have the powers that they need to regulate betting shops, but we have heard time and again from councillors of all parties that that is simply not the case. The next Labour Government will change planning and licensing laws to give councils the right to control the number of betting shops in their areas. If betting shops are not a problem, as the industry is keen to emphasise, they have nothing to fear from such a change.
There is considerable cross-party agreement on this issue. As the Leader of the Opposition pointed out during Prime Minister’s Question Time today, the Mayor of London and the Conservative head of the Local Government Association have said that local authorities do not have the power to limit the number of FOBTs. Indeed, the Prime Minister acknowledged during Question Time that there was a problem in the gaming and betting industry, and stated that we need to “sort it out.” If he recognises the problem, why is he not supporting our motion this evening?
As for the Liberal Democrats, during their annual conference in September they agreed to a motion that would give councils the power to limit the number of betting shops in their area, agreeing specifically to put betting shops in a new separate use class, although they had previously voted against such a motion in the House of Commons. That, of course, is typical Liberal Democrat behaviour. The wording of their motion was very similar to the wording of our motion today. I urge Government Members to recognise that, and to support our motion in order to implement their own policy commitments.
The country is experiencing a cost of living crisis. The average person has become £1,600 worse off since the current Government came to power. People are facing extreme difficulties in affording child care, rail fares and heating their homes. While the Members on the Government Benches are handing tax cuts out to millionaires, millions of people are struggling, and it is at a time such as this that the most vulnerable in our society need protecting. That is exactly what my colleagues and I are proposing in this motion. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) highlighted when he launched Labour’s policy last month, in the poorest areas these betting shops are spreading like an epidemic along high streets with the pawn shops and payday lenders that are becoming symbols of Britain’s cost of living crisis. Our local high streets must meet the needs of local communities, not simply the wishes of betting companies and other similar groups.
We know that the most urgent case needs to be made for changing again the system of use class orders. Use classes play a central role in the planning system by defining the potential uses of buildings. They not only protect certain uses, but also streamline the system by allowing for some changes without the need to apply for planning permission. However, over the course of last year the Government have decided to do away with the protections offered by the use class system and in doing so have stripped communities of a say in the shape of their high streets. In May 2013 the Government introduced changes to use class orders to allow retail use to change to financial institutions without planning permission for a period of two years, allowing the possibility of more betting shops on our high streets and they also now have the audacity to say they may make this change permanent. We are arguing that the Government should do what they say they want to do and give powers to local communities to have a say over what is happening in their high streets, so that if a problem is identified with an over-proliferation of gambling and betting shops local communities are able to pull the plug on these gaming machines, which are unwanted in many of our areas.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Nick Boles)
I understand that traditionally Opposition debates were designed to allow Her Majesty’s Opposition to attack Government policy but since 2010, when I was elected to this House, there has been a constitutional innovation, as I am sure you will have noticed, Mr Speaker. The Labour party uses these debates to attack Labour Government policy and to condemn those like the hon. Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) who implemented those policies and to repudiate anything inherited from the period which many Labour Members like to think of as the Blairite apostasy. So this debate is nothing more than an elaborate exercise in exorcising the ghosts of new Labour’s past.
Let us examine those ghosts. In 2003 the Labour Government doubled the number of gaming machines allowed in licensed premises from two to four and increased the maximum prize from £25 to £250, but that was not enough. In 2006 the Labour Government saw the gambling industry as the handmaiden of the regeneration of cities like Glasgow, Manchester and Newcastle and they were not just proposing a row of little betting shops: they wanted super-casinos with unlimited jackpots.
There are very few people on the Opposition Benches whom I admire more than the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell)—I believe the Olympics would never have happened without her contribution—so in researching this debate I wanted to read her words as Secretary of State when she was promoting gambling as the best regeneration policy for Britain’s inner cities. Imagine my shock, Mr Speaker, when I discovered that all of her speeches have been erased from the Labour party website, and not just her speeches, Mr Speaker, but every speech, every policy document and every press release predating the speech by the Leader of the Opposition in September 2010.
We have all heard of communist regimes rewriting history and airbrushing photographs of the politburo, but Soviet measures pale by comparison. The history of new Labour is not just being rewritten; it is being deleted. The noble Lord Mandelson had better watch his step, or, before we know it, he will have gone the way of Kim Jong-Un’s uncle and been thrown to the ravenous dogs.
We have established that the true purpose of this debate has been to heal the Opposition’s psychological traumas. I think we can agree that we are on familiar ground. Labour has decided that another of its policies in government was a mistake. My hon. Friends in the Liberal Democrat party and my hon. Friends the Members for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) and for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) have consistently and honourably raised their concerns about that policy. In Prime Minister’s questions today, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister reaffirmed his desire to address those concerns sensibly, steadily and with evidence, and to achieve a proper balance.
The Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) has set out in a measured way the work she is doing with the gambling industry, with the Responsible Gambling Trust and with other bodies to do what the Labour Government did not do before introducing the Gambling Act 2005—namely, to conduct research into the impact of those measures. That is the research that my hon. Friend is leading, and it will produce a result.
My opposite number, the hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods), raised the issue of planning controls and article 4. She asked for more powers for councils to introduce restrictions on the proliferation of betting shops on their high streets. I think I had better introduce her to one of her colleagues, a Labour councillor, Fiona Colley. She is a councillor for Southwark council, which only three months ago introduced immediate article 4 directions to prevent the conversion—
Nick Boles
I am sorry, I will not give way; I have only two minutes.
That Labour councillor introduced an article 4 measure with immediate effect to prevent the conversion of more premises from other use classes to that of a betting shop. Let me quote that Labour councillor’s words on the Southwark council website—[Interruption.] She is a Labour councillor, and Labour Members might want to listen to her. She knows a lot more about this than they do. Councillor Fiona Colley, who is soon to become my favourite councillor, said:
“This innovative, proactive approach to addressing planning legislation will make a tangible change to the lives of people living in areas where so-called ‘financial services’ businesses are so prolific.”
Those article 4 measures, which this Government have made it easier to use because they no longer require the approval of the Secretary of State, are good enough for Southwark. They are also good enough for Barking and Dagenham. In fact, 122 local authorities have made 270 article 4 declarations to restrict permitted development rights in the past three years. If one Labour authority in London thinks they are a good thing, and if 121 other local authorities think they are a good thing, it seems pretty clear to me that we need no more planning changes to enable councils to do what they want to do to protect their local communities. This debate has no doubt been helpful for the psychological catharsis of the Labour party, and I wish Labour Members well as they come to terms with their abiding grief about the record of the previous Government. This Government will continue, with the help of my Liberal Democrat colleagues—
Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)
claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).
Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
Question agreed to.
Question put accordingly (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.
Business without Debate
(10 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
UKTI (West Midlands)
(10 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
My debate is on the performance of UK Trade & Investment in the west midlands, and especially Shropshire. I have spent the past year producing a report on UKTI, on which we had a debate last year to which the Minister kindly responded. Hundreds of small and medium-sized enterprises from around the United Kingdom were interviewed about their perception of UKTI and what assistance they were receiving from this important Government body on exporting overseas.
Once the report was finished, it was important for me to expand and extrapolate from the work to focus on Shropshire, particularly Shrewsbury, to try to find out how UKTI is performing to help Shrewsbury companies not only to export but—this is the second part of the body’s responsibilities—to secure direct foreign inward investment into our county. I therefore invited the head of UKTI in the west midlands, Mr Paul Noon, to visit Shrewsbury to meet representatives of Shropshire council and the local enterprise partnership, including the officer responsible for business development at Shropshire, Mr Mark Pembleton. I said to Mr Noon, “Can you list the top 10 inward investment opportunities in Shropshire?” Unfortunately, he had no idea, which was of great concern to me. I could not understand how, given all the resources that UKTI has, it had not carried out work in the west midlands to identify and agree on the top inward investment opportunities in Shropshire. I therefore tasked Mr Noon to work with the local council and the LEP to identify them.
I am pleased to state that, as a result of that work, the top inward investment opportunities in Shropshire have now been identified. They include an innovation park, a new shopping centre for Shrewsbury, opportunities in transport, leisure and tourism, and agriculture—of course, Shropshire is an important agricultural community. I have sent the Minister an electronic copy of “Invest in Shropshire”, and I am pleased to be able to show him a printed version today. All the opportunities in the brochure are now agreed between UKTI and the local council. I hope that he will talk about those opportunities when he responds.
This work was carried out very well towards the end of last year. I pay tribute to Mr Paul Noon and his team for working so assiduously with the council and the LEP to identify the projects, to agree on them, and then to start to move them forward. However, I worry that such work has not been carried out in the past and that it took such a concerted effort by me to get all the parties together. Interestingly, I have spoken to many fellow MPs in other shire counties—I will not name them all—who are quite surprised by the work that has been carried out in Shropshire. They do not see similar activities in their own counties, and they are starting to get interested in what we are doing. If the project is successful and the newly formed LEPs, the councils and UKTI agree to co-operate, I very much hope that the best practice of the work we have done in Shropshire can be disseminated to other shire counties.
The work was implemented very well because I invited Mr Nick Baird, the former chief executive of UKTI, to visit Shropshire on 5 November. There was a real sense of impetus among UKTI and everyone concerned that, in advance of his visit, opportunities ought to be identified and agreed by all relevant parties. I am extremely disappointed that Mr Baird has now left the organisation, although I am not sure why he has done so. We had a wonderful day with him in Shropshire and he seemed extremely enthusiastic about identifying opportunities. He promised that he would take a leading role in ensuring that they were sold overseas. I wish him every success in whatever he has chosen to do, but it is nevertheless disappointing that he has left the organisation.
On 5 November, we took Mr Baird to see various projects mentioned in the “Invest in Shropshire” manifesto, which is now in the public domain. We took him to see the flax mill, which according to a report in The Daily Telegraph this week is one of the top 10 most important buildings in the United Kingdom. The flax mill built in Shrewsbury was Britain’s first skyscraper. It is in need of a huge amount of investment, and significant work is being done to transform it into a new facility.
We also took Mr Baird to the Harper Adams agricultural college in Shropshire, which is one of England’s leading agricultural institutes, so that he could see some of its extraordinary and pioneering agricultural work and research, which is another extremely important field in which Britain can excel for exports. We all know that farming techniques in England are among the best, and the most efficient and productive, in the world. I am keen to ensure that UKTI does everything possible to sell that agricultural expertise, especially to countries in the middle east that are looking for innovative and pioneering ways of farming.
We took Mr Baird into the town centre of Shrewsbury so that he could look at the immense opportunity to construct a brand new shopping centre. We also took him to the shire hall to meet councillors, local business representatives and the LEP so that he could identify key areas with which Shropshire needs assistance to sell itself to overseas markets.
We ended the day by taking Mr Baird to one of my favourite pubs in the village of Atcham, the Mytton and Mermaid, where he met more than 50 small and medium-sized business leaders from throughout Shropshire, many of whom are already exporting. He had the opportunity to find out about some of the extraordinary success that SMEs in Shrewsbury and Shropshire have had in exporting, in certain cases with the assistance of UKTI.
I was due to meet Mr Jon Harding of UKTI to continue discussions this week, but unfortunately, owing to a family bereavement, he was not able to come to the House of Commons. I hope to see him in due course, however. We also have meetings planned with Michael Boyd, and I have met Lord Livingston, the new Minister in the other House, whom the Prime Minister has appointed to take the lead on running UKTI. For the record, I have asked the chairman of the 1922 committee to invite him to address all Conservative Members of Parliament. He felt that he was not yet ready to address us, but I very much hope that when he is more settled in the job, he will do so formally. I want Lord Livingston, the successor to Lord Green, to have far more interaction with us in the House of Commons.
I berate, decry and am genuinely concerned about the fact that this debate is only the fourth or fifth on British exports in this Parliament, four of which I initiated. I find that staggering, given that we all think that exports are so important to the balance of payments and the prosperity of this country, and for attracting inward investment to our country and getting hard currency for our communities and the country as a whole. I am amazed at the general lack of interest in UKTI and the lack of scrutiny generally in the House. I very much hope that Lord Livingston, when he has settled in properly to his role, will try to change that and that he will engage with the House of Commons so that we are more involved in scrutinising UKTI.
All the opportunities identified are now listed on www.investinshropshire.com. I very much hope to hear from the Minister what UKTI will do in the west midlands and nationally to promote and sell the opportunities overseas.
It is brilliant that the United Kingdom is the top destination for foreign inward investment in the European Union. The Minister may correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is that the United Kingdom has the No. 1 ranking in the EU for attracting such direct investment. That is an extraordinary achievement, and I certainly pay tribute to the work of UKTI, the Minister and others for ensuring that the United Kingdom is in such an extraordinary position.
There is, however, an over-dependency on London and the south-east. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that the whole structure of UKTI is more focused on selling opportunities in shire counties and areas outside London? Our capital city is of course very important and will inexorably attract the lion’s share of direct foreign inward investment. Many of the foreign business men I know gravitate inextricably to London, barely venture outside it and always look at opportunities there. UKTI therefore has a responsibility to try to present equivalent like-for-like investment opportunities, or tangibly similar opportunities, outside London to calibrate foreign direct investment more across the whole of England and the United Kingdom, rather than just in London. London accounts for 13% of the United Kingdom’s population yet, according to Ernst and Young, it receives 45% of all projects involving foreign direct investment.
I am now involved in only one all-party group. I have been the chairman of the all-party group on Saudi Arabia for the past eight years. I feel passionately about that country, and we ought to engage far more with it to secure foreign investment from it. I will play my part in trying to sell the opportunities in Shropshire, but I look forward to hearing what steps the Minister will take to support us.
According to a UKTI report, 1,559 projects across the United Kingdom were financed by foreign direct investment last year. Those projects created more than 59,000 jobs in this country, which is a staggering amount of additional employment. That FDI not only secured those jobs, but protected an existing 110,000 jobs in the United Kingdom. We cannot overestimate the importance of securing foreign direct investment into the United Kingdom.
I understand why the Government are focused on a localism agenda. Shropshire borders Wales, and it has lost business to Wales because of the incentives and grants that the Welsh Assembly can offer to certain companies. When there are different Assemblies and Parliaments, there will be differences across national boundaries as different parts of the United Kingdom try to attract investment. Being a border town, Shrewsbury is very conscious of that. There are discussions about giving Wales separate tax-raising powers and there is, of course, a big debate going on in Scotland. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s long-term plans on empowering local councils, such as Shropshire council, eventually to have the ability to differentiate themselves so that they can attract foreign direct investment, whether that is through taxation or by charging different rates.
We are still borrowing more than £100 billion a year to balance the books. There is nothing more important than securing foreign direct investment. We are the fifth largest economy in the world, but only the 12th largest exporter. I, for one, will not rest until we are the fifth largest exporter in the world and until shire counties such as Shropshire start to receive greater assistance compared with London and the south-east so that we can attract our fair share of foreign direct investment.
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) on securing this debate and thank him for his comments on the work of UKTI in the west midlands. I know that he is a great supporter of local businesses and that he encourages them to trade internationally.
Last year saw a significant rise in the export of goods from the west midlands. The region exported goods worth more than £22.5 billion in 2012-13. In the first three quarters of this financial year, goods worth more than £19 billion have already been exported, with a total of 6,222 companies exporting goods from the region. That success is being led by companies such as Jaguar Land Rover and JCB, but I am sure that some of it can be attributed to UKTI’s team in the west midlands.
There are 39 UKTI international trade advisers in the west midlands, including four who cover my hon. Friend’s constituency. They are employed by the chambers of commerce under a contract with UKTI. More than 2,200 small and medium-sized enterprises were supported across the region in 2012-13 and nearly 2,700 have been supported so far in this financial year. That is a 20% increase. That is partly due to six additional advisers being appointed this year. UKTI has two specialist mid-sized business advisers in the west midlands, who support companies with a turnover of between £25 million and £500 million. Those businesses include Bournville college, with its links to India and Malaysia, and Morgan Advanced Materials, a defence company based in Coventry that is looking to south America and the middle east.
In the first nine months of this financial year, businesses supported by UKTI in the west midlands declared that they had secured business wins of more than £281 million. Those businesses include Serious Games International, a Coventry-based company that uses video games technology to solve business problems. With UKTI’s help, the company has secured business in Singapore worth £250,000 this year.
A range of support is provided for companies in the west midlands, including Passport to Export for novice exporters, and Gateway to Global Growth for more experienced exporters. Help and advice are also provided to carry out research, visit and exhibit overseas, and to find the right contact in more than 100 international markets. For example, as my hon. Friend may know, the Shrewsbury-based diamond chainsaw and blade supplier Toolguy Ltd has been supported by the UKTI west midlands Shropshire team through the Gateway to Global Growth programme. That company now exports to France, New Zealand, Brazil and the United States, with exports accounting for almost a third of its total sales.
UKTI also introduced the Whisky Trading Company based in Shrewsbury to one of Japan’s leading travel agencies, Japan Travel Bureau. That deal has seen the company exhibited in catalogues on planes and trains all over Japan. Working with UKTI’s international trade advisers is a UK export finance adviser based in the region, soon to be increased to two UKEF advisers. The current adviser has been invaluable in supporting companies to take up UKEF’s range of short-term export finance products. For example, working with HSBC, support was provided through the bond support scheme to Vee Bee Filtration UK based in Stourbridge. UKEF helped the company obtain two letters of credit in lieu of a performance bond and a warranty bond worth £175,000 in total. That helped the company to start work on a £1.67 million contract with a large US construction and engineering business.
Many events are arranged and held in the region by UKTI and its partners throughout the year. For example, last November, 1,250 west midlands firms attended more than 20 events as part of export week—the biggest turnout of any region in the country. Explore Export, which took place at Edgbaston that week, saw 350 firms meet commercial officers from 65 countries.
The first major event of 2014 will be on 22 January at JCB’s “Meet the Mittelstand”. That will introduce medium-sized businesses to what makes German companies of that size so successful in the global market place. Lord Livingston will be speaking at the event in his first regional visit as the new trade Minister. UKTI in the west midlands will again be organising events in the two export weeks in April and November this year. It will also take part in the international business festival in Liverpool starting in June, including arranging an event on India.
UKTI west midlands also works closely with BIS growth accelerator and the manufacturing advisory service to provide ongoing appropriate support to companies. Meetings are held on a monthly basis, sharing data and developing case studies to aid mutual referral. UKTI works closely with local enterprise partnerships. For example, UKTI in the west midlands has developed an international trade plan with The Marches LEP. That is pending formal sign off, which is expected at the next LEP board meeting this month. UKTI is represented on two of The Marches LEP’s three business boards, where input is provided into the business support agenda covering both trade and investment.
UKTI also supports joint events and activities within the LEP, running five Export for Growth events across Shropshire in 2013. The next event is this month and will involve my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. UKTI is working with the LEP on the opt-in for the new European regional development fund programme, which has the potential to bring in an additional £426,000 a year for export support.
UKTI Investment Services also works with partners across the west midlands. It is focused on delivering new investments and creating jobs within existing foreign direct investment companies. In 2012-13 it was involved in 88 projects leading to the creation of 4,600 jobs and the safeguarding of a further 4,583 jobs—a total of some 9,189 jobs across the west midlands. UKTI Investment Services has also developed closer working relationships with The Marches LEP in the past 12 months, leading to safeguarding jobs and securing new jobs within existing local investors. UKTI Investment Services, as my hon. Friend said, is supporting Shropshire council to develop a number of sectoral propositions, which include: agri-tech, food and drink, environmental technologies and creative industries. They will be incorporated into The Marches LEP offer this year.
My hon. Friend has worked with UKTI Investment Services and Shropshire council over the past four months to prioritise and develop opportunities to attract inward investors to the area. I understand, as he said, that templates have now been developed for six key opportunities aimed at securing future overseas investment into Shropshire. Indeed, I understand that representatives from the Regeneration Investment Organisation will be visiting the west midlands on 17 January, and that they have arranged to meet Shropshire council to develop an action plan to promote those opportunities.
My hon. Friend asked me one specific and fair question. How much of UKTI activity, he asked, takes place outside the capital, where there are more obvious opportunities to encourage overseas inward investment? I can tell my hon. Friend that 70% of UKTI activity takes place outside London.
I thank my hon. Friend once again for securing this debate. I hope he agrees that UKTI in the west midlands is having an effective impact on trade and investment not only within his constituency but across the region as a whole.
Question put and agreed to.
Petitions
Development of a Public Open Space near Astro Grove (Longton, Stoke-on-Trent)
Redevelopment of the Old Royal Ordnance Factory Site (Puriton, Somerset)
Heaton Chapel Train Station (Stockport)
Westminster Hall
(10 years, 4 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
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Planning Reform
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray.
I am delighted to have secured the debate today. I ought to start with two disclaimers. First, although I served for 12 years on a county council, a strategic planning authority, I have never served on a district council and am ignorant of some of the niceties of local planning procedure. Secondly, despite some small differences in government with the Minister—I have rather an affection for productive agricultural land, which he affects not to share—I believe in principle in the reforms introduced by the Government. It is absolutely right that we turn around the principles of planning to make it more responsive to local people and base it on local priorities rather than on a Whitehall-knows-best approach.
The reason for calling today’s debate, however, is simply that the reality in many local authorities at the moment—certainly for those in my constituency in Somerset—is the precise reverse of that. In the absence of agreed local plans and agreed five-year supply, far from empowering local communities, we are disfranchising them from decisions that will have the most profound impact on their local areas. That is what I want to impress on the Minister today.
I could give a number of examples from my constituency, such as the villages of Evercreech, Rode or Beckington, all in Mendip, or Huish Episcopi, where a recent planning inspector’s decision has gone in completely the opposite direction to that wished by the district council, and by local people, as evidenced through the parish council. As an illustration, however, I will use the village of Norton St Philip, which I have raised with the Minister before in the Chamber. It is an example of what is actually happening on the ground.
Norton St Philip is a beautiful village: it is an historic settlement and a conservation area; it has, arguably, one of the oldest pubs in the country; and it was the scene of a battle during Monmouth’s rebellion. It has everything going for it, including one of the most spectacular views from the said pub’s car park across the village cricket pitch to the church—a view that one might wish to see anywhere in the country. The village also has the fortune, or misfortune, of being only a few miles away from Bath, with its inflated Georgian infrastructure. Those few miles are green belt, and Norton St Philip is therefore in reasonably high demand as a dormitory village for the cities of Bath and, to a lesser extent, Bristol.
The problem that Norton St Philip faces at the moment is that it is under siege from developers, with five applications already before planners and a further two in the pipeline. That could have a disastrous effect on the fabric and nature of the village.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I am enjoying the reverie across the car park, the pub and the village green. Does he agree that, although we all want development on brownfield land first, the most important idea to take to the Minister is that housing projections by local authorities must be realistic and ascertainable rather than unrealistic?
Mr Heath
I will be touching on five-year supply in a moment, because it is critical to what is happening.
Let me say a little more about Norton St Philip. Under the new Mendip plan, it has been classified as a “primary village”, and along with that goes a requirement for 70 new homes. That is predicated on the newly reopened shop and post office. Without that shop and post office, Norton St Philip would revert to being a secondary village, with a requirement for 40 new houses. Setting that aside, what has happened already is 73 new houses. The applications before the planning authority provide for a further 223 houses in that small village. In other words, were those applications to be approved, the size of the village would be doubled, without any improvement to the infrastructure, and, needless to say, the character of the village would be hugely changed in the process.
I am particularly exercised by one of the applications, although I know that Members of Parliament should always be cautious about getting involved with local planning decisions. Nevertheless, to build on what is called Great Orchard, which is the site of the battle of Philip’s Norton, the skirmish during the rebellion, seems to me to be an extraordinary proposition. It is deep within the heart of the conservation area of the village and would put at risk some 200 metres of the finest dry stone wall to be seen in Britain. I apologise to hon. Members if I am exercising my Baedeker view of my constituency, but it is vital to understand that the village is an important and historic settlement. I cannot see the circumstances in which such a proposition would be approved, and of course it was not—it was not approved in the local plan and was not part of what was reserved for development.
People in the village are perfectly happy to ensure that the building that is already taking place and that which is projected in sensible places go ahead. They are not averse to development in the village. However, they do not want their village destroyed. That is a perfectly proper proposition.
David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on obtaining this important debate. Does he agree that one of the major problems with planning—it has been for many years—is inconsistency? One council area will approve one thing; the neighbouring council area will not approve it. There needs to be flexibility, especially with town centre developments. If we are to regenerate our town centres, we need that flexibility, but inconsistency in planning has been a problem for many years.
Mr Heath
I agree that we need flexibility, and that is better determined by local people understanding local needs, rather than by an inspector in a planning department—in Bristol in our case—determining a case on the basis of rules derived from Whitehall. Local people should determine what is best for their area.
Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)
Perhaps my hon. Friend’s constituents are like mine. It is not nimbyism and they are not against development per se. Does he agree that it is all about a sense of proportion? Things seem to be out of all proportion, which is what is causing concern.
Mr Heath
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Let me come on to where I think things are going wrong. We have a free-for-all at the moment, an avalanche of applications that are opportunistic in nature, because the local plans have not been agreed.
The Minister has said on a number of occasions, “Well, it is up to local authorities to have their plans approved.” He is right—of course it is up to them, and everyone understands that, but he underestimates the difficulties and the extent of the changes in the process. The early adopters of local plans had an easy time. Some of the local plans, which the Minister can look at in his office, are paper thin and would never get through the process now, but because they were done right at the start, they went through. The smaller rural district planning authorities in particular are now struggling with an extraordinarily cumbersome and complex process.
Let me deal with some of the issues that are bedevilling that process. The key is the five-year supply, which I have mentioned. There is a lack of definitive guidance on how it is to be calculated. There was a clear promise from the Department for Communities and Local Government that definitive guidance would be produced in August last year, but it has not appeared. Two things are happening as a result. First, planning authorities are struggling to understand exactly what is required. Secondly, plans are being picked apart at planning inquiries by clever QCs, who are going back to the first principles in the planning framework and using those to override any sensible local decision making.
There are tensions within the system. Historically, census figures have been used, but it now seems as though economic aspiration is a key factor. Economic aspiration is fine, except that if it does not come to fruition, an area is left with the houses but not the jobs, which does not make sense.
There is also the fundamental problem that housing supply is effectively determined by the house builders themselves and what they say they will be bringing forward in a particular year. Let us not kid ourselves: there are a limited number of national house builders that effectively have an oligopoly of supply. They are coming forward with figures that might look all right on paper, but the house builders will build only when the margin meets their requirements, and the profit margin on those developments is relatively high. The Government might wish to see more houses built—I certainly do, as we desperately need them across the country—but developers are interested in banking development land rather than building when their marginal profit is not at its greatest.
As a result, we have perverse incentives for developers to acquire permissions but not develop the projects. We have what are called technical starts, where developers will put in a road and say, “We have started that project, but we are not actually going to build any houses yet—we will leave that for the moment. Meanwhile, let’s get on with our next application for the next bit of land that we see.” That can distort the entire local plan and what emerges from it.
The second key factor is the weight that the emerging local plan has in planning inspectorate decisions, as it is developed, consulted upon and submitted to the Department. The Minister said to me in the House a few months ago that the plan has weight, but that is not evidenced by the decisions taken by planning inspectors, who are not working on the basis of ministerial aspiration but of regulations—quite rightly, as that is the only basis they can work on—which require them to look at different criteria. We are therefore seeing inspectorate decisions that do not match the desires of local communities for local planning.
I have to say to the Minister that, when we are talking about large conurbations, sometimes it really does not matter which bit of land is developed—there is capacity for spread, so if one development comes on, it is possible to deselect another bit of land to bring everything back into kilter—but when we are talking about small market towns and rural areas, the topography does not allow for that. If the wrong bit of that sort of community is developed, it does not help to deselect what would have been the right bit for development. Deselection does not work.
There is another aspect concerning the inspectorate that I shall mention in passing: the perverse decision, which has been evidenced more than once now, that because a particular design of building is right in one place, it will necessarily be right anywhere. As a result of that, we have lost the sense of the vernacular, which is key to good planning. We should be able to ensure that the buildings in a particular area suit how buildings in that area have been built historically and fit with the urban or rural community landscape. Instead, the same model of house is relabelled in different parts of the country: in Somerset, they would probably call it a thatched cottage, despite the fact that it is an executive four-bed home, whereas in the north it would be called the Ullswater model or something like that. It is nonsense. Such decisions show whatever the visual equivalent is of having cloth ears.
I have a number of modest requests for the Minister. First, I want emerging local plans that are on the point of publication to have real weight in the planning process—to have what is called materiality. That is simply not the case at the moment. If he wants that to happen, he has to make it happen by regulation—to instruct planning inspectors that they have to give the plans real weight and back local councils in doing the right thing. That is the whole principle of localism.
Secondly, the Minister needs to provide definitive guidance on the five-year supply, to show exactly what is to be taken into account and how it is to be calculated. He must not leave it to clever QCs representing house builders to determine what is right for a particular local area. That is not localism, but an absolute divorce from it. Until we have that clear guidance, I do not believe the situation will improve.
Thirdly, we need to give real weight to the views of parish councils. That is a gap in the new legislation. At the moment, they are virtually non-people, and do not have the locus they should have in planning decisions. I recently read a speech by the Minister about the importance of neighbourhood plans. We went down that road with the previous Government and their village plans.
I have 135-odd villages in my constituency, and many of them spent months and years of really hard work on developing their village plans, thinking that what they were doing would affect future planning decisions and ensure that what was built matched needs and locality. The reality was, of course, that those plans were completely ignored. I am worried that neighbourhood planning will go down exactly the same road. Indeed, people are now so cynical that they might not engage with neighbourhood planning in the first place, because they do not believe it will have an effect. Unless we can show that it will bring a real improvement to local planning decisions, people will not engage.
Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)
My hon. Friend has mentioned backing local councils and parish councils as well; that is an important part of this discussion. There is a problem, however, when those two organisations come into conflict. On my website there is a petition, with nearly 2,000 signatures, objecting to our current plan. How does he think district councils and parish councils could work together better to create greater consensus among local residents?
Mr Heath
That is important, and I believe there is a duty of co-operation within the local planning process that involves that sort of consideration. As I said, I have never sat on a district council in my life, but I know from my experience as leader of a county council, where we were dealing with matters such as mineral planning, that getting consensus is a long and iterative process. I do not believe that it is impossible for local people to achieve that consensus when they work together with shared objectives, but it is difficult when a plan is overridden by an inspector at appeal, or, worse still, when a district council feels so powerless to resist planning appeals that it rolls over in advance of them. We have seen that time and time again with local councils.
Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
My hon. Friend has made a powerful case outlining the mess that we are in. Just to be clear, is he content that the system should, ultimately, leave decision-making powers with the unelected planning inspector, or does he agree that those powers ought to be much closer to the property owner, the householder and the community?
Mr Heath
Ultimately, I would like the planning inspectorate to be redundant and local plans to be sufficiently robust to provide for the planning environment and, if necessary, local planning courts to determine whether there is a clear breach, but we are a little way away from that. In fact, the situation is quite the reverse: Her Majesty’s planning inspectors—I am not criticising them because they are only doing their job within the rules they have been given—are the planning authority for many of our rural areas. That cannot be right.
Jim Shannon
The hon. Gentleman has talked a good deal about the impact of housing development on rural communities and so on. Does he have the same concern about the drive for green energy, wind turbines and the targets set by Europe? Does he believe that the same consideration should be given to the impact on householders, as the hon. Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) mentioned in his intervention, so that they may object and a balance can be struck in the countryside between the drive for green energy and the impact on people and the quality of their lives?
Mr Heath
With the greatest respect to the hon. Gentleman, I do not want to divert this debate to energy, which is a completely different issue. I have always suggested that energy generation should be subject to the same sort of planning considerations as other industrial development. Although I am strongly supportive of renewable energy, I do not believe that it overrides all other considerations and I believe that such matters are best decided at local level. However, I do not want to derail this debate, which is about more routine planning policy.
Jason McCartney
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate, the importance of which is evident from the turnout this morning. It is interesting to hear that he has 135 villages in his constituency. I will name just five communities in mine: Lindley, Linthwaite, Upperthong, Netherthong and Golcar. They are facing the prospect of open land being pounced on by developers because my Labour-run Kirklees council’s local development framework is up in the air and it is refusing to use the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics. The nub of the matter is that when local councillors on the planning sub-committee listen to local concerns and are minded to refuse an application, its planning officers run roughshod over them, so there is no local democracy and no local accountability.
Mr Heath
The nomenclature of the villages in my hon. Friend’s constituency is as euphonious as those in mine. I could trade some wonderful village names with him. I am grateful for his intervention.
I have said that I want four things to be considered: the materiality of emerging local plans, a definition of “five-year supply”, the position of parish councils, and the vernacular, which is really important. I urge the Minister to look at that. It may seem to be a minor matter, but simply allowing uniformity of design throughout the country is contrary to the organic way in which architecture has developed in this country and is a hugely retrograde step.
I want to make one more suggestion. Central Government often put huge pressure on local councils to do things within time scales and castigate them if they do not. Could the same discipline be applied to the Government in terms of non-determination? It seems to me that local authorities are desperate to get local plans certified. Why do we not have a period following completion of the local plan process—perhaps six weeks from the plan being lodged with the Department—when it will be certified or will be deemed to have been certified irrespective of the planning Minister’s decision? It is no good the Government saying that they do not have the resources to deal with the issue—they do not accept that argument from planning authorities. The suggestion is a modest but good one, and I am sure that the Minister, being a radical Minister, will want to adopt it.
Something is seriously wrong not with the principle but with the operation of planning reform. It is causing great concern throughout the country. There is concern that communities will be distorted by opportunistic developments that our local authorities are apparently powerless to stop in the present circumstances. We must look closely at that. I do not want suburban sprawl across my rural constituency, but I see a risk of that. Of course I want houses to be built—we have a desperate need for them—but I want the right houses in the right places for the right reasons determined by local people. Those are exactly the principles that the Minister has espoused in his planning reforms. What I do not want, to almost quote the immortal words of Peter Seeger, is little boxes made of ticky tacky.
Mr James Gray (in the Chair)
Order. A glance round the Chamber demonstrates that quite a lot of hon. Members are trying to catch my eye. I want to make two points. First, the drill is that hon. Members write to Mr Speaker indicating their intention to speak in debates. Those who have not done so will be at the bottom of the list rather than the top. Secondly, I have the authority to impose a time limit, but I do not believe in time limits. I believe that we should have self-regulation and good manners rather than rules, so if hon. Members restrict themselves to about five minutes that would be extremely helpful.
Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I take on board your comments and will be as succinct as possible. I thank the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) and congratulate him on securing this important debate. The Government’s planning reforms are of great importance on Teesside and in East Cleveland, and I intend to discuss their effect in those areas and raise the concerns of my constituents and local government leaders.
Planning policy makers have the difficult job of reconciling conflicting interests, but the Government’s approach to planning policy, particularly their Localism Act 2011, is distinctly centralist. The national planning policy framework ties the hands of local planning committees and removes much of their discretion in making decisions about planning applications based on local conditions. On Teesside, Stockton-on-Tees borough councillors, both Labour and Opposition, have been particularly vocal about that. Stockton council is not in my constituency, but its members have made several very valid and interesting points.
In November 2013, Stockton council passed a motion calling for an urgent review of the NPPF. It resolved that the framework effectively removed planning control from the local community and placed it in the hands of developers. It also made the interesting and valid point that that is coupled with massive reductions in available funding for the remediation of brownfield sites and that local authorities are effectively forced into permitting development on greenfield sites. A Thornaby Independent Association councillor questioned the reason for the very existence of a planning committee under the NPPF regime. Despite that, Stockton council has been under continual attack by the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) for its planning decisions. He branded the council’s leader “Bob the Builder”, despite the fact that since May 2010 the hon. Gentleman has not once objected to a planning application, and his Government are coercing the council into making the decisions. When Yarm councillor Mark Chatburn defected from the Tories to UKIP, he cited as one of his main reasons the hon. Gentleman’s silence prior to planning decisions and his refusal to utter a word of criticism of the NPPF.
It is not just Stockton council that finds itself under attack. Redcar and Cleveland borough council has been subjected to criticism about its draft local plan from local Liberal Democrats. I have submitted a response to the consultation on this document, as has my colleague Anna Turley, Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Redcar, who urged the inclusion of a commitment to a traditional pier and stressed her opposition to proposed developments in Marske.
Confusingly, however, despite criticism by the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) and Redcar and Cleveland Liberal Democrats of the council’s draft plan in the press and their focus leaflets, they have not responded to the consultation. Will the Minister explain why the Redcar Liberal Democrats have failed to respond to this consultation when Ministers repeatedly tell the House about the importance of having a strong local plan? Does he believe that their silence is indicative of a belief that local plans are unimportant, not locally controlled and subservient to diktats originating in Whitehall?
Jason McCartney
On a point of order, Mr Gray. Surely the general atmosphere of Westminster Hall debates is about raising issues on behalf of constituents. We are listening to a blatant political speech, which names particular people. What is your judgment on that?
Mr James Gray (in the Chair)
That is not a point of order. I have listened very carefully to all the speeches made in the Chamber this morning, and if they were out of order, I would have made the hon. Member concerned know that they were. So far, the hon. Gentleman who is speaking is making political points, and he is perfectly entitled to do so in a Chamber such as this.
Tom Blenkinsop
Thank you, Mr Gray. On a final note, the Government have abolished most of England’s regional government and governance structures, but has the Minister considered reintroducing a regional element into planning? Currently, one of the few parts of joined-up thinking in the formation of local plans is neighbouring authorities responding to each other’s consultations, with the Tory Hambleton district council, for example, responding to Redcar and Cleveland’s plan, supporting the construction of housing in my constituency so as to avoid its having to be built in the constituency of the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the right hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Mr Hague). That seems like a very unco-ordinated way to co-ordinate development. If requirements were determined on a regional basis, it would be more efficient and would allow for more strategic planning. Again, I thank you for allowing me to speak on this important matter, Mr Gray, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Mr James Gray (in the Chair)
Before we move on, I remind the hon. Gentleman that when he mentions another Member in a speech, it is a convention of the House that he lets that Member know. He may therefore find it appropriate to apologise to the Members he mentioned, if he had not given them due notice, and let them know what he said about them.
Tom Blenkinsop
Thank you for your time, Mr Gray. I informed the two hon. Members and I am fully aware of the rule.
Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
Here we are again. I will try to be as brief as possible, and I will put the full text of what I had intended to say on my website—tonybaldry.co.uk. I am sure that constituents and right hon. and hon. colleagues will read the text in full, because I want to make three succinct—I hope—points in supporting and endorsing what my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) said.
The first is on the five-year housing supply, which will be a requirement—not only when there are approved local plans, but until 2031. At any point between now and 2031, developers will be able to come forward and say to a local authority, “At this moment, you haven’t got a sustainable five-year housing supply, so we are entitled to build wherever we want within your district”.
At present, there is no agreement on the methodology used by planning inspectors to determine the five-year housing supply. Two distinct methodologies seem to be used by planning inspectors. Different methodologies are used in different cases. One is now referred to in planning shorthand as the “Liverpool” method of calculation, and the other as “Sedgefield”.
In a recent decision in a planning appeal in my constituency at Deddington, the planning inspector calculated housing supply locally on what could even be described as a third method and a variation of “Sedgefield”; it might be described as “Sedgefield-lite”. It is simply not good public policy for local councillors, chief planning officers and others not to know what methodology a planning inspector will adopt in calculating whether a local planning authority has met its five-year housing supply. Ministers have to make clear and unambiguous the methodology that they expect planning Ministers and everyone else to use in calculating the five-year housing supply.
My second point is about brownfield sites. It has been an article of faith in the planning system, quite rightly, that one should bring forward brownfield sites first, but if local authorities are so keen and need to have their five-year housing supply, they will bring forward sites that are easiest to develop in the five-year supply. Invariably, those are greenfield sites, so brownfield sites will get put to the back.
I give as an example the Banbury canalside site in my constituency. The intention is to have that built in the centre of the town on an area that was in the flood plain, but now no longer is, because we built adequate flood defences. The plan is for 950 houses, but my district is so determined that it has to meet its five-year housing supply that that brownfield site is being put back rather than being brought to the front of the queue. That is daft.
I can see the situation changing only if planning inspectors, in calculating the five-year housing supply, give credit in housing numbers for brownfield sites when local authorities can demonstrate that they are undertaking sustained and credible work to make a brownfield site available in the market. Otherwise, given how the five-year housing supply is working at present, brownfield will be put to the end of the queue rather than being brought to the beginning of the queue. As I said, that is daft.
My third point relates to neighbourhood plans. All of us understood that, with the new national planning policy framework, neighbourhood plans and localism were going to be really important, but neighbourhood plans have to clear two hurdles. First, they have to be consistent with the local plan, and secondly, at present the community has to complete its neighbourhood plan until such a point as is agreed by a local referendum. Many of the communities that have started neighbourhood plans carry them out diligently and earnestly, but they are unlikely to complete them within a year or 18 months, by which time I suspect that a large number of them will be redundant.
A classic example involves the community in Deddington, a village in my constituency. People there are busily undertaking a neighbourhood plan, entirely consistent with the provisions set out by the Government. A landowner and developer come along and put in a planning application to build up to 85 houses on the edge of the community, which is refused by the local authority but allowed on appeal. Under the agreed local plan, because of what is happening with most of Cherwell’s new housing—we have planned for nearly 17,000 houses in our agreed local plan between now and 2031, so we are hardly not stepping up to the plate to meet housing requirements—Deddington is due to take something like 80 new houses to the end of the survey period in 2031. However, the location of up to 85 has already been decided—not by the local community, but on the basis of whoever happened to get their planning application in first. With respect, that is not neighbourhood planning. It is not a plan-led system; it is a system of first come, first served.
If a local planning authority has submitted an agreed local plan and if neighbourhoods are carrying out a neighbourhood plan consistent with the rules set out by the Government, in a timely and proportionate manner, I suggest that any planning application that will effectively pre-empt the neighbourhood plan should be dismissed on grounds of prematurity, in that it would effectively rob local communities of the opportunity to determine their future. Thank you, Mr Gray. If any colleagues would like the full text of what I was going to say, they should please refer to my website.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) on securing today’s debate. I would like—in a timely fashion, obviously—to reinforce some points that he made.
We have a dilemma. We all believe in local decision making. Nobody could have been more pleased than me when the regional spatial strategy was abolished and we lost our proposed new town, which had not been supported by any democratically elected person. That was good. Like the Minister, I want a planning system that will play its role in contributing to providing our much-needed homes. At the moment, things are clearly not working together and at the right pace.
Neighbourhood plans sound so good; we hear about the examples that have gone to referendum—the great success of Thame and others. The number of neighbourhood plans sounds good, but I suspect that it represents a tiny proportion of what is needed. I believe that there needs to be more support, although I accept that the Government are supporting the process, because it is such an important way forward. I do not think that we should lose sight of that on the Government side, because it was a great innovation.
I agree with my hon. Friend that the emerging local plan has to have more material weight in the inspectors’ considerations. I do not know how that can be achieved, but in the past an emerging plan certainly had weight. Perhaps developers are finding new ways of getting around things. The Government must concede the point, given the number of places that do not have fully adopted plans as such, and support those areas that do not have fully adopted plans.
I have mentioned housing projections to the Minister. I feel that our local residents have to be able to understand where the local projections have come from and why they are there, at the scale they are at. It would then be easier to get a community buy-in.
I want to touch on the need for authorities to co-operate, because I am not convinced that they are doing so very well at the moment. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) likes to make the point that Cheltenham is very constrained, in terms of where new development would be suitable. My constituency is very constrained because of protected heathland. We have these dilemmas. There is a duty to co-operate, but I think we need to look more at how local authorities can form natural partnerships and work together to meet housing and other infrastructure needs.
I shall briefly touch on rural exception sites, which I have raised with the Minister. I was a big fan of rural exception sites until last week, I think it was. In my constituency, one has come in for 35 homes. There is a recently adopted plan in that part of the constituency. The parish is working up its neighbourhood plan, but that site has not been consulted on at all. It seems totally wrong that that could come in without a proper round of community interaction. It may well result in houses at the end of the day, but I am finding it difficult to see how it fits with our new planning framework.
I also want to touch on good design. There are instances in which we should accept that higher density can be good design and meet some of our objectives. I have to use those words carefully, because that is not always the most popular thing to say, but I just ask generally what encouragement the Minister is giving for good design.
I believe that the Minister has commented on how we could approach the problem of planning permissions being given but not implemented. I would like him to comment on what more he should be doing, because the public need confidence that what land is coming forward is not just the easiest picking when there are outstanding planning permissions that could be implemented.
Mr James Gray (in the Chair)
It gives me great pleasure to call someone who has so often called me to speak— Mr Nigel Evans.
Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Ind)
Thank you, Mr Gray. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.
I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that if he is under any illusion or delusion that the planning system is working well, all he needs to do is listen to the hon. Members who are speaking here today. This is rather a large turnout for Westminster Hall. Hon. Members are talking about their anxieties and frustrations and the fact that their constituencies are under siege. I certainly feel that myself, because the Ribble Valley is under siege.
I was first elected in 1992. I said to my executive that I hoped that after my days in the House, when I handed the Ribble Valley over to my lucky successor, it would be in better shape, or at least in no worse shape, than when I became its Member of Parliament. I was doing rather well until 2010, when the planning system started to change. We in the Ribble Valley are under siege.
There are not as many villages in my area as in that of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), but there are many wonderful, lovely villages and towns, including Clitheroe, the main market town. The whole area is under siege. We do not have our core strategy in place, and it seems as if that is a green light to every speculative developer to put in a planning application, with no protection for the local authority or for the people themselves.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that a development in a small village area can turn communities into strangers? One developer can come in for a vast site in a small village area that will more than double the number of properties. That is not good for communities.
Mr Evans
I agree with every word that my hon. Friend has just said. Barrow in my constituency is a perfect example of a village where planning applications have gone in that would more than double its size. The people are up in arms against that. I hope that the public will get protection against that application, which I think is barmy.
There are a number of other areas. Clitheroe is the largest town; applications have gone in all over the place there, and many have been granted on appeal. Somebody did suggest getting rid of the inspector, or the inspectorate. That would make me smile more than anything else, frankly.
The frustration for many of my local councillors is that they go out and tell the people what they will do when they are elected; the people tell their councillors what they want when planning applications go in; and the councillor stands up for them and says, “No, we don’t want to see 1,000 houses in Clitheroe”. However, the decision is then overturned or, as in this case, the local authority gets the feeling that if it did turn the application down, it would go to appeal, cost it a lot of money to defend its position and the application would then be allowed. In many cases, local authorities are allowing certain applications when their hearts tell them that they should not.
Andrew Bingham
Does my hon. Friend agree that the scenario that he eloquently lays out and which I have seen in my High Peak constituency is damaging people’s faith in democracy across the board? They see their elected representative making one decision and an unelected representative overturning it.
Mr Evans
I totally agree. It means frustration on the part of not only the people, but the councillors. They shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, what is the worth of being a local authority councillor if we are making these decisions on behalf of the public and then they are overturned?” Or, even worse, the local authority is told, “Listen, you’d better accept this planning application. Otherwise, it’s going to cost you a lot of money and you will lose.”
Steve Baker
My hon. Friend has made the point with great clarity and passion, but I cannot forbear from saying that those of us who stood for election on the Conservative manifesto stood on a platform of a radical decentralisation of power—an invitation to the people to join the Government of Britain. I think that he will agree with me that those of us who stood on that platform with enthusiasm are rather disappointed that it has come to this.
Mr Evans
More than disappointed. I used to use a counter-argument against those in my constituency who said, “This is a disaster. This is what is going to happen if the Localism Bill goes through.” I said, “No, localism will give power back to the local authorities.” Now, when we look at what has happened, it seems as if there has been some Orwellian double-speak. Localism sounds as if it is giving power back to the local people when in essence it has not done that at all—quite the contrary. If people want to build houses, localism is fine. If people want to go against the building of the houses, localism does not help them one jot.
I was elected as a Conservative. I am a Conservative; just as the name on the tin suggests, I want to conserve—I want to conserve what is best in our area. The position is as my hon. Friend the Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea) said. If people in the Ribble Valley want to live in Manchester, that is fine—they can go and live there. What we do not want is Manchester coming to us. We do not want to see these towns growing at such a rate that we do not even recognise them.
The Ribble Valley is one of the nicest places to live in the whole country; it is one of the jewels. I say that it is like the Lake district without the lakes—even with the rain we have been having, we still do not have the lakes, thank goodness. People want to live there for a certain reason. I know what the Minister is talking about when he says that people deserve the right to have a roof over their heads. Everyone deserves a home; I agree with him on that, but we need to look at areas that neighbour places such as the Ribble Valley—such as Burnley, Preston, Pendle and Hyndburn—and see what we can do to regenerate some of the run-down areas there. We need to ensure that homes that are run-down are made available to people in those areas and that they do not have to flee those areas and live somewhere else.
I will finish shortly because I know that many other hon. Members want to speak, but I just want to say this. I believe that we ought to have a planning system that is based on consent—the consent of the local people. I finish by referring not just to housing but to wind turbines. When fairly well everybody in a local area is saying no to three wind turbines in a suburban area and the council turns the application down because it has listened to what the local people say, but it then goes to the inspectorate and the inspectorate passes it, there must be something wrong in the system because we are not listening to the people. Minister, listen to the people.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) on securing this very important debate. Its importance is demonstrated by the number of hon. Members who have turned up. I know that there are many who could not attend who would have attended otherwise.
The primary issue being debated is housing projections in our areas. Many of the issues that have been described apply to my own area in Cornwall. The Isles of Scilly are rather different: it is a very protected environment and one where the projections and pressures are not the same.
I fear that the debate is being characterised, or rather could be characterised from the Whitehall and ministerial perspective, in a certain way. I fear that what people are hearing is the rather complacent and self-satisfied voice of the contentedly housed seeking to deny opportunities for the unhoused or the inadequately housed—in other words, the nimby argument.
The view is that the role of Government, through their policies and the inspectorate, is to ensure that there is balance in the system and that that group of people are seeking to resist simply from the perspective of wanting to protect their own property values, scenery and lifestyle—the drawbridge mentality, which often applies to people living in a rural setting. The view is that the role of this system is to stand up against those kinds of pressures. That is a rather simplistic view of how the system operates in an area such as mine. Cornwall is not a nimby place. The housing stock has more than doubled in the past 40 years, but local people’s housing problems have significantly worsened over that period.
We cannot be accused of being nimbys, but successive Governments’ policies have been counter-productive for the region. They have ensured that projections are maintained, but those projections have been utterly unsophisticated. Many of the Office for National Statistics projections over the past 10 years have been significantly undershot, and I believe that the ONS model for setting projections is rather flawed. When there is a high projected figure, what happens—not only in the five-year supply, as my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome has said, but in the system as a whole—is that even in areas that have not been designated for housing development, the hope value on all surrounding land becomes extremely high, because of the expectation that planning permission will be relatively easily obtained. As a result, it becomes impossible to implement schemes to deliver affordable homes, which require low land values.
Such policies have a counter-productive impact. That sits against the aims of the exceptions policy and “Planning Policy Guidance 3”, which was established in the early 1990s under the then Environment Secretary, Nicholas Ridley. The principle behind that policy was absolutely correct. If a strict and controlling system that protects the local community is established and a genuine exception, which follows the policy, is granted, it is possible to achieve low land values and deliver affordable homes in rural areas. The setting of high projections will never achieve that.
The exception described by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) is clearly not a proper exception. An exception would have to be brought through with the support of parish council housing associations and others, and the necessity for it would have to be clearly demonstrated by a community needs assessment. My hon. Friend’s example is a rather curious one. Over the past few years in Cornwall, we have seen a lot more housing—we are the second or third-fastest growing place in the United Kingdom—but housing problems have soared. In the Penzance area, rough sleeping and homelessness is second, proportionately, to London, so the policy has clearly failed.
The Government must stop imposing projected figures on Cornwall. Cornwall council will have a debate next week in which it will say that if it does not accept the ONS projected figure, that figure will be imposed on the council. That is not a basis on which Cornwall can establish a plan to meet local housing need. Meeting the desperate need for affordable homes, not accepting projections that divert us from achieving that aim, is ultimately what matters. Otherwise, we end up with more second homes, more unoccupied property, more investment property and more retirement homes. Those sectors have certainly grown in Cornwall, while opportunities for the local population to find adequate housing have significantly decreased.
I hope that the Government will recognise that the issue is sophisticated and difficult, and that they will give local authorities the power to meet local housing need rather than forcing on them thousands of houses that will not help to meet that need.
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) on securing this timely debate. It is a great pleasure to follow a fellow Cornish MP, my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George), who has in a nutshell articulated our dilemma in Cornwall. We have welcomed a lot of people into Cornwall; there has been a lot of inward migration and a lot of house building, but we still have a chronic housing situation. People who are born and bred in Cornwall, who work in our local economy and contribute a great deal to it, cannot afford to live there. Because so many colleagues want to contribute to this debate, I shall take the lead from my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) and say that my speech will be on my website in its entirety. I associate myself very much with the comments that he has made.
With brevity in mind, I seek some simple assurances from the Minister. As my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives has said, Cornwall council will meet next week to attempt to agree its plan, and some specific assurances from the Minister today would help the councillors in that process. Our councillors are being told by the planners that unless they accept a projected housing target based on what Cornwall has delivered over the past 10 years, the planning inspector simply will not agree the plan. To help the plan-making process, I urged Cornwall council to undertake a local needs assessment, which it has done. That assessment looked at the number of homes that are needed in Cornwall for those who currently do not have the right type of genuinely affordable housing, and the number needed to support the growing businesses in Cornwall. The local needs assessment demonstrated that Cornwall has been over-delivering properties at a rate of up to 1,000 a year, and that we need a much smaller number in order to meet our obligations and our desire to provide the right sorts of homes and achieve sustainable growth.
Cornwall councillors are being told that the good evidence base that has been gathered in that local needs assessment cannot be used, or the planning inspectors will throw out the resulting plan. I seek an absolute assurance that if Cornwall councillors, when they meet next week, can provide an adequate evidence base that supports the building of a certain number of homes based on realistic population growth and observed household composition rates, the planning inspector will accept that number. Any reassuring words that the Minister can give about the methodology that councillors can use in making their decision next week would be most welcome, because we desperately need to agree the plan. There has been a huge amount of consultation and very good work is going on in neighbourhood planning, but that plan has to be agreed.
As so many other hon. Members have described today, a developers’ free-for-all is going on in Cornwall and a huge number of speculative planning applications are being made. We need to use the tools that the Government have laid out in a new plan-making process to ensure that we have development in Cornwall, but that it is sustainable and fits in with our unique environment. Our key industries are tourism, farming, fishing and food production. Only yesterday the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs quite rightly pointed out how much more food we need to produce in our own country, and how food security will become an increasing issue. Those are key industries for Cornwall, and we can make a key contribution to the nation if councillors are given the tools to balance the need for housing with the need for a sustainable environment.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
I would like to add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) on securing the debate so early in the year. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I declare an interest as a home owner in the Malvern Hills district, which has recently been found to be the second best place to live in the midlands, but I think it was severely underrated in that survey. It is a wonderful place to live.
I have had the pleasure of attending two debates on the south Worcestershire development plan in this Chamber in the past few months—one on 24 October and one on 20 November—so I do not want to talk too much about my local area, but about national planning issues. I have some questions for the Minister. I agree with the many colleagues who said that we are in a much better place, as far as planning is concerned, than we were when we had the top-down regional spatial strategies so favoured by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop).
I completely agree with other colleagues who said how important home building is in our areas and how important it is for the economy, which is beginning to show signs of recovering from the dreadful recession we had under the Labour Government. I know how keen the Minister is to see the promising increase in the rate of home building continue, and I have some suggestions as to how we could speed up housing development by clarifying the guidance to the planning inspector. It is my view that the Planning Inspectorate is holding up growth in many areas, and we have heard many examples of that today.
In my area, we are a bit further on than the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome: our local plan was agreed by the councils over a year ago—as far in the past as December 2012. It was then submitted to the planning inspector in May 2013 and it took him until 28 October to give his interim thoughts on stage 1 of the inspection. That is a total of five months. He found that the duty to co-operate was being met and he had many good things to say about the plan, but he still wants further information and has rejected all seven methodologies presented to him for housing projections. We are playing a game of “pin the tail on the donkey” in the dark with the planning inspector and guessing what sort of housing numbers he wants to see. He has told us that the next stage of part 1 will start on 10 March 2014—a delay, with five months between that date and the continuation of stage 1. He has also written to me to say that he cannot give a time scale at this point for stage 2.
I wanted to see how long our process took compared with what hon. Members had seen around the country. There is a good spreadsheet on the Department for Communities and Local Government website of the 350-odd local plans currently in different stages of development. It categorises them by whether a council has published its local plan, submitted its plan, whether the plan has been found to be sound and whether the plan has been adopted. I thought it would be helpful to see how long the process takes. In about half the cases, the plan has been fully adopted. It is interesting to note that the time between a plan being submitted and being found to be sound has increased substantially in the past year. Since the national planning policy framework became live at the end of last March, the number of days between a plan being submitted and being found to be sound has increased from nine months on average— a normal human pregnancy—to 14 months. There is a material difference: the time period is not as long as an elephant’s pregnancy yet, but it is certainly increasing—the size of the mammal is going up.
My first question to the Minister is whether the delay—the increase in the time between the plan being submitted and having it found to be sound—is due to a national shortage of planning inspectors. My neighbour and newly knighted colleague, the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Sir Peter Luff), tabled some parliamentary questions at the end of last year. He was told that 80 plans are in the process of inspection across the country, which, in the Department’s view, will take 25 full-time equivalent planning inspectors, and it is currently recruiting additional inspectors. I would like an update from the Minister on the recruitment of those additional inspectors.
Secondly, is the delay since the NPPF became active a deliberate strategy? Does the Minister believe that it is encouraging more home building? I submit that that is a mistaken view. It would be helpful if we heard whether he had noticed any difference between the number of new homes bonuses paid out in local council areas that have an adopted plan and the number paid out in those areas that do not. Is there a statistical difference in the rate of housing delivery? Housing delivery will speed up and the arguments about planning will slow down if a plan is given significant weight in the planning process.
I conclude by saying that my thesis is the same as that of many hon. Members here today. The goal of the Minister, the Chancellor, the Prime Minister and indeed the country of delivering more homes and building local democracy into the heart of that process will be better achieved if the Minister told his inspectors to move immediately to give almost full weight in the planning process to plans that have been submitted and democratically agreed.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I give my hearty congratulations to our hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) on securing a worthwhile opportunity to set out our thoughts on planning.
The essence of the debate is that increasingly relying on an inspection regime to sort out problems is not localism, but quite the reverse. That is the cornerstone of most Members’ contributions today. Stroud district council is busily preparing its local plan, but it is of course a Labour-led administration, which is bound to hamper progress, and it has a committee system, which is not ideal.
Delays have left many communities spinning in the wind, as gusts of developers come along and make proposals here, there and everywhere. I have been the recipient of many messages from communities saying, “What are you going to do to protect the integrity of our area while we don’t have a local plan?” I reiterate the point made by my hon. Friend and others: while emerging local plans are still being formulated, we must give them more prominence in inspection considerations. That matters because if we are talking about localism and giving local people a voice, we must be bold enough to do it. We must give emerging local plans some consideration.
The same logic, incidentally, applies to neighbourhood planning. When we go around our patches, as I do, encouraging neighbourhood plans, the response heard is, “Well, that won’t be sufficient to stop what’s being proposed.” That is absolutely true unless or until such plans are given recognition in the planning process, too. If a community is concerned about what will happen to it, a neighbourhood plan is a good way to do something, but we must give that plan some traction. We should not only think about the local plan as a whole, but consider emerging neighbourhood plans. They are a clear illustration of what communities are thinking, if they are bold enough and sensible enough to have one.
Many hon. Members have talked about housing numbers. It is important to bring together two issues. The first is co-operation among councils. They must talk to each other and understand the scope and content of their plans and their relationship to each other’s plans. That is essential. Secondly, this is not just about housing numbers, but about the economic conditions that prevail in an area. We need planning authorities to take much more account of the economic factors, which should have a bearing on housing numbers. The Minister needs to express that clearly, so that councils have to consider the economic issues, as well as the obvious question of housing numbers.
Time is obviously short, so I shall finish by saying that we want to see local communities planning and we want to see more houses. We need to understand the value that more houses can bring to local communities which need to feel involved and have ownership of the developments. That is another essential point that needs to be transmitted to local authorities. In short, we do not want an inspection-led regime, because that is not localism; it is effectively the nationalisation of planning. We want the reverse, and we want to be able to say to local authorities, “Those of you that are doing something, do it well and be respected.”
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) on securing this debate. He has very eloquently raised important constituency issues this morning, and I shall return to the specifics of his speech in a minute or two.
I hope that Government Members and others will forgive me for not mentioning them individually; there are rather a lot of them. Everyone spoke earnestly and lucidly on behalf of their constituencies. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop) for helping me to feel a little less lonely on the Opposition side and for raising important issues that affect his area. He highlighted inconsistencies in the Government’s approach to planning at the moment.
This debate follows one on a broadly similar topic. Lots of Government Members attended that debate a few months ago in October. It was about what happens with local planning decisions when there is not a local plan in place. There was some dispute among Members about whether there was a need for additional housing in rural areas, and that has been reflected to a degree in some of the contributions today.
I want to put on the record that I agree with some of the issues raised by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, particularly those about technical starts; land banking; land supply; the need to get better quality into our house building system; the need to strengthen brownfield policy further; and how we take more notice of neighbourhood planning. I concur with all those points and will talk about them in more detail in a minute or two.
We know that we need more housing, including in rural areas. I shall not rehearse again all the figures that I gave last time. Suffice it to say that, to secure a typical mortgage, a rural resident needs to earn £66,000. With the average rural income standing at just over £20,000, there clearly is a problem with affordability, partly as a result of insufficient supply.
The situation in rural areas is part of a wider problem. For decades, under successive Governments, house building has stayed low relative to demand. Private house building completions in England have been relatively static for more than 30 years, averaging about 130,000 per annum. That is below the peak average of 180,000 per annum in the 1960s. There is an ever-growing gap between supply and demand, which means that millions of hard-working people are increasingly priced out of buying their own home.
Recent data from Glenigan show that although approvals for new housing are improving, they are not yet at the levels recorded for 2007, and are not high enough to deliver the output of about 200,000 houses per year that most sensible commentators suggest we need to meet demand, so we must address the housing shortage.
The Government are right—I want to emphasise this—to allow housing need to be objectively measured locally as outlined in the NPPF, but as the National Housing Federation has stated in its briefing for today’s debate, more could be done to clarify the methodology used. Indeed, it appeared to back Labour’s call that we need a common methodology to be applied across all local authorities to ensure a consistency of approach. That might help to address some of the concerns raised by Members this morning.
I also agree with other Members who have contributed today that development sites need to be identified by local communities, with a stronger emphasis on neighbourhood planning and with consent at the heart of the planning system. I think that that can be helped in a number of ways. I have paid tribute to the Minister before for his support for neighbourhood planning; he has the Opposition’s support. We want him to think about how neighbourhood planning can be strengthened and how we can better integrate neighbourhood planning into the local plan-making system.
I also applaud the precedence that the Government have given to local plans in the determination of planning applications, but, as many hon. Members have said this morning, the process of getting them adopted is still too slow, with only 55% of authorities having an adopted local plan. I know that 76% of councils have published a plan, but there are still not enough of them in place. In the meantime, we have a situation in which, as many hon. Members have mentioned today, the Planning Inspectorate, and in some instances local authorities, are approving inappropriate schemes in the absence of a local plan, or they are not taking enough note of a local plan.
A few months ago when we debated the issue, the Minister had nothing much to say about how he would remedy the situation. I hope he has stronger words of comfort for us today. It is clearly an issue that relates to many areas and it is causing anxiety locally. Worryingly, the Local Government Association has said that local decisions taken in line with emerging local plans are being overturned by the Planning Inspectorate. I agree with it and others who have said that this will undermine trust in the planning system and result in development that does not reflect the needs of local communities. That is the opposite of what we all want.
The LGA also points out, helpfully, that it is not planning that is the barrier to growth. Councils are approving 89% of all planning applications, and planning permissions are up 31% on 2012. Indeed, planning approvals are at a 10-year high, so it should be possible to have the housing we need and to reject inappropriate development as defined locally at the same time. Otherwise, the current system risks breeding further resentment towards development. Instead, we should be supporting a planning system that more readily favours development based on consent.
The issue is important for the Minister, because the NPPF states clearly that weight should be given to emerging local plans, but, in practice, this appears to be being ignored by PINS. Members have this morning called for greater guidance to be given to the Planning Inspectorate.
Roberta Blackman-Woods
Forgive me, but I am terribly short of time.
The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome made an excellent point: the issue is not simply about housing numbers. It is about employment, proper infrastructure and leisure. We need to talk not only about housing numbers, but about building communities. This is an issue that is often not considered strongly enough by the Planning Inspectorate. Again, I want to emphasise the need to do something about quality and about protecting our ancient woodlands. Perhaps the Minister will say something about that. It is an added concern for us all after the past week. What is the Minister going to do to speed up the system for getting local plans approved? That is clearly the key to getting the development that we want.
Before I sit down, I should say that while we have been having this debate we have all learned about the very sad death of our colleague, Paul Goggins. I am sure that all Members will join me in sending our deepest condolences to his family and friends.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Nick Boles)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray.
First, I absolutely echo the condolences that the hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) has just extended to the family of Paul Goggins. I had not understood that he had died, and it is a very sad day. He was a gentleman who commanded respect and affection across the House.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) on securing this debate, which has become something of a “Groundhog Day” experience for me. I am absolutely sure that this is not the last time that I will have this experience, although whether I will end up with Andie MacDowell at the end of the movie is open to question.
I welcomed many of the questions that my hon. Friend asked, but I must object very strongly to how he opened his speech. He seemed to imply that I was not a supporter of maintaining agricultural land for farming. I heard some bellows from up above, where my recently departed father, a sheep farmer in Devon, and my rather-longer-ago departed grandfathers, farmers in the Mendips and in Devon respectively, were outraged at the implication that I am anything other than a passionate supporter of farming.
Nick Boles
My hon. Friend is such an experienced Member that I am surprised he believes what he reads in the newspapers.
In the very short time available to me, I will try to cover some of the main issues raised this morning, chiefly by my hon. Friend but also by other hon. Members. I will not be able to answer every question. In particular, I would like to write to my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) about the questions that she put about the Planning Inspectorate. I will copy in everybody in Westminster Hall today with the answers, because they were very good questions but technical ones, and I would like to come back to her specifically on them.
The first issue is housing projections. What is the role of figures from the Office for National Statistics in supporting housing projections? The fundamental situation is that, just as we expect local authorities to make plans to meet their needs for schools and for social care, we expect in the national planning policy framework that local authorities will make plans to meet their housing needs. Those plans have to be evidence-based. Of course, we cannot entirely reject ONS population projections, because the ONS is our national statistics body and those projections are the best that we have, although I entirely understand why they are often wrong and flawed, as all projections necessarily are.
What I have said, however, does not mean that those ONS projections are the last word. It is absolutely open to any authority—Cornwall council will certainly have this opportunity—to look at the actual figures achieved in the past, relate them back to the projections that were in place then and then say why it thinks that projections are not the last word and that different numbers have an evidence base. It is absolutely open to authorities to do that, but their numbers must be based on evidence; they cannot be based on assertion alone. Authorities must use evidence and that evidence will be challenged in an examination by developers and others, so it needs to be pretty robust.
I will now address the subject of the five-year land supply and particularly the question put by my hon. Friend about this rather vexed question—I cannot believe that we are all getting into this business whereby we are all experts on Sedgefield and Liverpool, not as places, football teams or constituencies, but as methods of calculating land supply.
What “Sedgefield” and “Liverpool” simply refer to is a particular question. If an area has had an under-delivery of housing in the past, how quickly—in the area’s new plan—should it catch up on that under-delivery? Rather than getting into the whole question of, “Is it Liverpool and is it Sedgefield?”, which will mean precisely nothing to our constituents, I will just read out what the draft guidance, which we hope to finalise in a very few weeks, says about this issue:
“Local planning authorities should aim to deal with the under-supply within the first five years of the plan period where possible.”
Now, some things are not possible; some things will conflict with other sustainability policies that are very important in the NPPF. However, it is not unreasonable to expect that, where past performance has undershot need, if it is possible, we should try to catch it up at the beginning of the plan and not during the full 15-year life of the plan.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
I thank the Minister for giving way on that specific point. Of course, by catching up quickly in the plan, my local authority—Test Valley borough council—faces a situation where in years six to 15 it is unable to include sites such as windfall sites, which we know will inevitably come forward. Does the Minister have any plans to allow my local authority to include windfall sites again, or are such sites off the agenda for ever?
Nick Boles
I cannot comment on any particular plan, but windfall sites absolutely can form part of a plan. Where an authority can evidence that it has had a consistent delivery of housing through windfall sites in the past, and it is reasonable to expect that there will continue to be such a delivery of housing through windfall sites, it is absolutely reasonable to say that part of its planned projections assumes a level of windfall site delivery. There is nothing in the policy to prevent that.
I will move, very briefly, to the question of the weight of emerging plans. The hon. Member for City of Durham was absolutely right to say that it was a vexed issue in the last debate that we had on this subject. We are trying to make this issue clearer in the draft guidance and although the consultation has closed on that draft guidance, as far as I am concerned consultation never closes.
If hon. Members would like to look at that draft guidance, they should refer to the Department’s website. I would be very happy to take any comments or concerns from them. We have also invited my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) and the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, who both had very serious concerns about this process, to meet the chief planner to discuss in detail how it will work.
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
I did not get the opportunity to speak; I will put my speech on the website. The Minister can go further than issuing draft guidance and actually amend the NPPF, because all is not lost. He does not have to come back to Westminster Hall and have “Groundhog Day”. He can also take into account the cumulative effects of development within the NPPF, at paragraphs 186 and 187, to close a loophole that he has been hearing about today; he has also heard about the pain that that loophole has caused. I also have other suggestions that I will write to him about.
Nick Boles
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. We are not looking to change the NPPF, because after such a dramatic change in the planning system, stability has an enormous value.
However, what we are looking to do in the draft guidance, which we hope to confirm shortly, is to make it clear that it is sometimes reasonable—in exceptional circumstances, but exceptions happen all the time—to refuse a planning application. That is the case if, one, the application is so substantial that it runs the risk of undermining the plan to which it is being referred, and, two, where a local plan has been submitted for examination—it has not yet passed examination, but has been submitted. A refusal can also happen in the case of a neighbourhood plan, when it has entered into what is called the local authority publicity period; it has completed consultation but it has not yet gone to referendum or, indeed, to examination. Before the plans have been examined, they will have material weight and they can, in exceptional circumstances, be used just on the basis of prematurity to refuse an application, if the application is so substantial that it could completely knock the legs out from that emerging plan.
I hope that I have reassured hon. Members. We have listened very carefully to the concerns that have been expressed. As I say, we have met other Members who have had concerns about this issue and we have done our utmost to listen to them, and to try to reflect those concerns.
I simply point out that that is not entirely within our gift, because, much as I understand how my colleagues from all parts of the House would dearly love to abolish the Planning Inspectorate, I can tell them where these things would end up if we abolished it—they would end up in court. It would cost their local authorities a lot more money to fight these things in court than it does to fight them either through an examination or in an appeal with the Planning Inspectorate. Planning inspectors are a better solution for local councils and local communities than the available alternative in a system where the rule of law enables people to challenge Government decisions whenever they like.
In the minute or so I have left to me, I will address the very important point that my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome made about design. To reassure him, hopefully, I will read the draft guidance about the very point that he made:
“Development should seek to promote character in townscape and landscape by responding to and reinforcing locally distinctive patterns of development and culture, while not preventing or discouraging appropriate innovation.”
Local vernacular is critical to making people feel that development is a friend, and is actually helping and supporting communities, rather than undermining, challenging or alienating them. It is something that matters a great deal to me. I believe that if we built more beautiful houses in more beautiful places, we would build more houses, and ultimately that is what we all want to achieve.
Mr James Gray (in the Chair)
I thank the 11 hon. Members who spoke and the eight who intervened. Will they please now leave the Chamber swiftly and quietly? I congratulate the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), who nobly acted as Parliamentary Private Secretary in the previous debate and will now introduce his own debate.
Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)
It is a pleasure to be here today under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I am grateful to Mr Speaker for granting this debate on the work of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. I requested this debate following the JCVI’s decision on the 2 October 2013 to undertake further work on key issues surrounding the human papillomavirus, or HPV, vaccination programme. I understand that some colleagues may wish to comment on other aspects of the JCVI’s work. I want to focus particularly on the Committee’s decision to consider—I use its word—“urgently” vaccinating men who have sex with men, on attendance at sexual health services, and adolescent males. I intend to focus my remarks on that work now being undertaken with regard to the HPV vaccination programme, specifically in terms of exposure to HPV-related cancers, which are increasing in boys who have sex with females and the MSM community.
The decision of the JCVI to prioritise consideration of vaccinating MSM is noteworthy, not least because the minutes of its October meeting accept that a full economic model might not be necessary where sexual health clinicians can develop independent guidelines. Historically, the JCVI has often rejected vaccination of adolescent boys and MSM on economic grounds, so it is a major step forward for it to say that heath clinicians with expertise—particularly at sexual health clinics—can take such a decision on clinical grounds. That is welcome.
It is important—I have no doubt that my hon. Friend the Minister will need to ensure it—that any decision on extending vaccinations is clinically and financially sound. I do not seek to undermine that decision. I wish to stress the economic benefits of extending the vaccination swiftly, rather than stress other issues of equality, which I raised in an Adjournment debate last year.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this important health matter to Westminster Hall for consideration. There have been significant positive results from vaccinating women and girls for HPV, so clearly there is an advantage shown in doing that. That consolidates the hon. Gentleman’s request for the same vaccination to take place in men and boys as well. Does he agree that the same should happen with regard to men as has happened for women and girls?
Mike Freer
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point that repeats some of the discussion we had in last year’s Adjournment debate. The success of the vaccination programme among girls has had a dramatic impact on HPV-related cancers among women. However, the flaw was that it assumed herd immunity for boys who were having sex either with girls or within the herd. But of course, not all boys have sex with girls: some—shock, horror!—have sex with other boys, and not all boys have sex within the herd. Increasingly, in a global economy, and particularly in Europe where the vaccination programme is not the same, adolescent boys in this country are exposed to women who have not been vaccinated. It is important to close the loophole for adolescent boys having sex with unvaccinated girls and those having sex with unvaccinated boys, who, obviously, grow to be unvaccinated men.
If the JCVI has agreed to urgently review the economic case for extending the vaccination programme, why is this debate needed? Before I discuss that, it is worth reminding ourselves what health problems we are trying to prevent. I recall, during the Adjournment debate, seeing the duty Whip sink ever further on the Bench as we discussed certain topics and cancers. This is not a pleasant subject, but I would rather discuss an unpleasant subject than have to deal with it in our hospitals.
Nine out of 10 cases of genital warts are HPV-related; oral-related HPV infections—men are six times more likely than women to have oral infections—increase the risk of cancers of the mouth, throat, neck and head cancers; and there are HPV-related penile and anal cancers: HPV is associated with 80% to 85% of anal cancer in men. In 2009, just after the HPV vaccination programme started, there were more than 6,500 cases of these cancers, with 47% of penile cancer and 16% of head and neck cancers thought to be HPV-related. The latest incidence data show that in 2010 there were 437 incidences of anal cancer and 5,637 of oropharyngeal cancer, 515 instances of penile cancer and 180,000 instances of genital warts. Rates of HPV-related cancers are on the rise in the UK. Throat cancer has overtaken cervical cancer as the leading HPV-related cancer. I am pleased that the JCVI has accepted that there is an urgent need to review the clinical and economic case for extending the programme to adolescent boys and MSM.
I should like to put on record my thanks to the Minister’s predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry),for her support in this matter and for facilitating a teleconference, which she and I and representatives of the Terrence Higgins Trust had with the Chairman of the JCVI, which I believe gave some impetus to this change of heart and the speeding up of the work by the JCVI. That was a significant breakthrough.
The key point in this debate is that although the JCVI’s urgent report is due at some unspecified point later this year, the procurement of the next round of HPV vaccinations will commence in October or November this year. I am concerned that if the JCVI does not report in time and this procurement round is missed, we may have to wait four more years—I believe it is a four-year procurement round—before the HPV vaccination programme is extended to adolescent boys and MSM, if that is the recommendation.
Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing this subject to the House. I share his concerns. Is he also concerned that although the JCVI undoubtedly does some excellent work, it does not share the flexibilities of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, in terms of its medical and health assessment processes? Would he welcome some movement there, which might in turn help bring this vaccine forward more quickly?
Mike Freer
The hon. Lady makes a good point and speaks, probably, with more knowledge than I have. If NICE is able to react more swiftly than the JCVI, I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will take that point away and consider whether the two organisations could share best practice. Clearly, as new drugs come on the market and new issues arise, we must ensure that the health advisers are able to respond quickly to changes.
The key point I was making is that if we miss the procurement window, and if we have to wait four more years, boys and the MSM community would be unnecessarily exposed to HPV-related cancers. There is not just a personal cost to those who become exposed to HPV-related cancers: the NHS would be exposed to treatment costs that might be mitigated or avoided if we get the JCVI to report in time for the procurement round later this year.
If we look at the costs, we can start to see the scale of the savings. To put that into perspective, the three-dose HPV vaccination programme currently costs some £260. I understand that the JCVI is also considering whether that may be reduced to a two-dose vaccination, which would reduce the outlay. Let us compare that with the £13,000 cost per patient of treating anal cancer, the £11,500 cost per patient of treating penile cancer, the £15,000 cost per patient of treating oropharyngeal cancer, or the £13,600 cost per patient of treating vulvar and vaginal cancer transmitted by an infected male. In 2010, the total cost to the NHS of treating genital warts was £52.4 million. If we multiply those figures by four, we can see the clear economic benefits of bringing forward the decision to coincide with the next procurement round.
The clinical reasons and the economic benefits are evident, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will confirm today that, at best, the JCVI will be able to report in time for the procurement round later this year or, at worst, that any contract procured later this year will have flexibility built in to allow the Minister and the Department of Health to extend the vaccination programme to adolescent boys and MSM at some point after the report.
Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)
It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) on securing this important debate.
I wish to change the subject and address meningitis B. A vaccine is available, and the Minister and the Department have decided that it is not cost-effective. I wonder what costs they have taken into account. Was it the lifelong costs of looking after a child such as my constituent Isabelle, who contracted meningitis B when she was seven years old? Isabelle was given a 0.7% chance of survival. She survived, but she had to have both her arms and both her legs amputated. She is the most amazing little girl. She is so bubbly, so bright and so cheerful given what she has to deal with, but there is the cost to the NHS, the cost of education and the cost of continuing care for the rest of her life—she is now 10 years old. She has to have four sets of legs and two sets of arms, which change regularly and cost thousands of pounds each. She has to have two wheelchairs, one portable and one mechanical, because she cannot walk far.
Isabelle has to have continuing care in school. Someone has to sit with her in classes because, clearly, there are things that she cannot do. She cannot easily carry her books from class to class, for instance, and she will need such care not just for the rest of her school and university life but for the rest of her working life, because she will be limited in what she is able to do.
Isabelle is the most amazing child that I have ever come across. She has come through such terrible circumstances. Her family had to make the awful decision that both her legs and both her arms had to be amputated. No parent should have to make that decision, and no child should have to live with that consequence for the rest of their life. She is not the only such child in this country; there are a lot of children in that situation with varying degrees of disability.
When the Minister reconsiders universal vaccination, will she bear it in mind that, although it is expensive, the emotional costs of what Isabelle’s family went through outweigh that expense? The Minister should consider the matter in the round, not just the cost to the NHS of vaccinating every child. We should consider what vaccination is doing for the whole country in saving money and preventing parents from having to make such a terrible decision. It must have been agony for the parents, the child and the family to survive in that situation. Will the Minister reconsider what can be done to ensure universal vaccination against meningitis B?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) on securing this debate and on again bringing this important subject before the House. He has been a great champion. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) on raising another vital aspect of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation’s work, to which I will also respond, albeit briefly.
It may help the House if I provide some background. The JCVI is an independent departmental expert committee, and it is a statutory body constituted to advise the Secretary of State for Health on the provision of vaccination and immunisation services. The committee and its invited experts represent some of the finest clinicians and academics in the UK and Europe, and all members are selected for their expert knowledge of matters concerning vaccination, immunisation and associated disciplines, including immunology, virology, bacteriology, paediatrics, general practice, public health and health economics.
We all recognise that the NHS budget is a finite resource. New vaccination programmes and extensions to existing programmes represent a significant cost to the health service in terms of both vaccine procurement and administration. Obviously, it is essential that any recommendations from the JCVI on changes to the national vaccination programme are supported by evidence of cost-effectiveness.
The JCVI has adopted a methodology for assessing cost-effectiveness that is in line with that used by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. Using those processes, the committee basically ensures that increased spending on immunisation does not result in an overall decrease in the health of the population because resources are diverted from more cost-effective health care interventions. We all recognise that those decisions are not easy.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire makes a powerful case for the meningitis B vaccine, which the JCVI is currently reconsidering. The updated statement published on 25 October 2013 reflects the JCVI’s recognition of the burden and severity of meningococcal meningitis and septicaemia in the UK and the need to explore the potential for their prevention through immunisation. The situation is difficult when we have a new vaccine, in this case against meningitis B, but lack important evidence on its effectiveness. We need to know how well the vaccine will protect, how long it will protect for and whether it will stop the bacteria spreading from person to person. At the committee’s next meeting in February, if it feels it is in a position to make such a decision because it is in possession of all the relevant facts, the JCVI will make a final recommendation on whether meningitis B immunisation should be introduced. Obviously at that point we will carefully consider and respond to the recommendation. I hope that my hon. Friend is reassured that the recommendation will get proper and careful attention.
On the issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green, the primary aim of the UK’s national HPV vaccination programme, which began in 2008, is to prevent cervical cancer related to HPV infection. The HPV vaccine protects against two strains of HPV—16 and 18—that currently cause some 70% of cervical cancer.
As HPV is responsible for virtually all cases of cervical cancer, preventing the disease is the major aim, but as my hon. Friend rightly says, HPV infection has been associated with other cancers, including cancer of the penis and anus, and some cancers of the head and neck. The precise proportion of those diseases that can be attributed to HPV infection is less well defined, but evidence is emerging all the time, so HPV infection should be taken seriously.
Evidence from clinical trials demonstrates that the HPV vaccine has a very high efficacy against the precursors of cervical cancer. Evidence of efficacy against cancers at other sites is emerging, and it is recognised that the current programme may therefore provide protection against a wider range of HPV-related cancers in females and, indirectly, in males than originally envisaged.
It is also worth saying that the UK’s HPV vaccination programme has been a considerable success, with this country having some of the highest coverage in the world—something we can be very proud of. A recently published study by Public Health England provided new evidence that the programme is successfully preventing HPV infections in young women in England, and that adds to our confidence that the programme can achieve its aim of reducing cervical cancer.
With a high uptake of HPV vaccination among girls, transmission of HPV between girls and boys should, as my hon. Friend said, be substantially lowered. Many boys will be protected against HPV infection and will, therefore, be at reduced risk of developing the related cancers we have spoken about, such as anal, head and neck cancers. However, I appreciate that he is particularly concerned that the current programme does not extend to men who have sex with men. He argued strongly that that is an apparent health inequality, and he raised the issue with my predecessor in last July’s debate, for which I was present.
As my hon. Friend will know, the JCVI has recognised that, under the current programme, the protection that accrues from reduced HPV transmission from vaccinated girls may not extend to men who have sex with men. He made the additional point about men who might have sex with girls and women from elsewhere who have not been subject to the broad coverage provided by our programme.
That is why, in October 2013, the JCVI agreed to set up a sub-committee on HPV vaccination to assess, among other issues, the question of extending the programme to MSM, adolescent boys or both. The JCVI therefore recognises the issue as a priority, and I congratulate my hon. Friend on championing it, because the attention it received in Parliament was obviously part of the reason that it was given a fresh look and is regarded as a priority. I know the JCVI took events in Parliament into account, and, indeed, my hon. Friend made his case directly.
The sub-committee will aim to identify and evaluate the full range of options for extending protection from HPV infection to men who have sex with men, and that will cover a range of settings, including genito-urinary medicine clinics. However, as my hon. Friend will be aware, GUM clinics may not be the best setting for offering vaccination, as those presenting may already have been exposed to infection, so their ability to benefit from vaccination will inevitably be limited.
The sub-committee is scheduled to meet for the first time on 20 January, when it will assess currently available scientific evidence and consider what further evidence is required to advise the JCVI on the suitability of possible changes to the HPV programme. For the reasons I outlined earlier, any proposals for the vaccination of additional groups will require supporting evidence to show that it would be a cost-effective use of NHS resources.
Public Health England has begun preliminary modelling to assess the impact and cost-effectiveness of vaccinating MSM, in anticipation of further guidance on the issue when the HPV sub-committee meets. Further work to assess the impact and cost-effectiveness of vaccinating adolescent boys against HPV infection is also planned, but it will take some time to do that important modelling, and I am conscious that that is one of the predominant concerns on my hon. Friend’s mind. These are complex issues, and the development of the evidence base and the mathematical models by PHE, as well as the deliberations of the JCVI itself, take time. However, that process and the time that it takes ensure that we get important decisions right and that decisions are taken on the basis of the best evidence. We cannot, therefore, undertake to take decisions hurriedly, because they are big decisions with, potentially, big implications.
Should the JCVI recommend the targeted vaccination of MSM, flexibility around contracted volumes in the current vaccine contract may allow a programme to be undertaken without the need for a new round of vaccine procurement—the numbers involved are relatively small in the context of the existing programme—if additional vaccine was available from the manufacturer in the required quantities. We are therefore cautiously optimistic that we can accommodate targeted vaccination of MSM in the existing programme, were it to be recommended by the JCVI. I hope that is a little encouraging for my hon. Friend.
Vaccine supply contracts are let for as long a period as is considered appropriate, taking into account the timing of potential changes to JCVI advice, policy and market forces, as well as Government procurement guidance. Obviously, longer contracts can secure firm prices for a longer period and allow for more accurate budget planning. However, we are exploring the flexibility that we have in existing contracts to align the window for the new contractual discussions with any potential recommendations by the JCVI, especially on the wider vaccination programme, were that what it recommended. We have not completed that work yet, but what I have seen so far leads me to conclude that we might be able to do something around the existing contract. We are looking at that to ensure that we do not miss the window of opportunity, which my hon. Friend identified as a chief cause of concern.
In conclusion, this important work has yet to be completed. We have to get some clarity on the time lines. We cannot achieve one of the things my hon. Friend mentioned—bringing the work on the assessment forward—because we have to review the available evidence and fill in any gaps if further evidence is needed. A decision on the vaccination of adolescent boys will probably require the development of quite a complex model to determine whether vaccination would be cost-effective, because the numbers involved are large. Such a model may identify a need to generate additional evidence, so a decision on that wider programme is not likely before 2015. However, as I said, the evidence to support a decision on a selective programme to target men who have sex with men may become available during 2014.
I can certainly give my hon. Friend the commitment that I will keep under careful review the timetable for key decisions when the committee makes its assessment and look at how they align with what we know about the flexibility that we have under the procurement contract. We will keep that under careful consideration. I conclude by congratulating him again on bringing this important issue before us and on continuing to keep it on the Government’s agenda.
Health Care (London)
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on the subject of the NHS in London and delighted that so many colleagues from the four corners of London want to say something about the health service in their areas. I want to sketch out, with some specific reference to local issues, the momentous changes that are happening within London’s health care and the extent to which the Government have made necessary changes far more difficult to achieve than should have been the case. I fear the results.
When I applied for this debate before Christmas, I did not know that I would spend a large part of the next two weeks experiencing the health care system with a close relative, who was admitted to hospital on Christmas day. We went through the whole process of ringing 111, of paramedics, of the ambulance, of A and E and of spending two weeks in St Mary’s hospital. I can confidently say two things on the basis of that experience.
First, I have seen, and my relative has experienced, nothing but kind and efficient health care at St Mary’s and within the health care system in general. It is true that, over the years, there have been instances of the health care system falling far short of the standards that we expect, but it is also true that most health care professionals and auxiliaries are doing a stunningly good job for the people of London and the rest of England.
There is kindness and the effective delivery of health care everywhere we look in our health service. We must be careful not to succumb to the tendency—I see this too often from Government Members—to talk down the health service’s achievements. It is completely right that Sir Mike Richards of the Care Quality Commission said in his comments on the first wave of inspections that
“there are some very good hospitals in this country, and it is possible, within the NHS, to receive good, excellent, even outstanding care.”
Secondly, from my observations this past fortnight, I can say that the health service is under extraordinary pressure. One would expect not to have the level of staffing for the two-week period of Christmas and new year that one might have outside the holiday period, but it has been alarming to note instances of health care auxiliaries being two thirds below planned staffing levels and nursing being down by one third. Incidentally, I was also shocked to discover when talking to health care assistants that they sometimes work an 11-hour day for a £90 day rate, which is not the London living wage—it is the minimum wage. How can we expect people to provide the intensity and quality of care that we want when we do not pay them even the living wage? That causes me great concern.
Pulling back to the wider picture, as our experiences have demonstrated, the health service is under extraordinary pressure, particularly in the emergency service. Some of that is unsurprising in London, because the capital has the fastest-growing population and has had the fastest rise in the over-65 population of any region in the country. It also has the highest demands on mental health care services and an overwhelming concentration of rarer and more difficult conditions, including tuberculosis, which places particular pressures on London.
Unsurprisingly, those facts are showing themselves in A and E attendance and waiting times. Just before Christmas, the London assembly found that more than half of London’s A and E departments failed to meet their waiting time targets for more than half of last year. Across the capital, Londoners had to wait for more than four hours on 202,000 separate occasions. A and E attendance has soared in London since 2010 and is up by 47% at St George’s hospital in Tooting, 46% at St Bartholomew’s hospital, 33% at West Middlesex university hospital and 35% at Hillingdon hospital. For my own Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, even a relatively modest increase of 19% equates to an extra 44,812 people seen last year compared with 2010. Cancelled operations were running at a 12-year high even before the winter, owing to pressure on hospital beds. One London hospital, Barts, topped the national list with 649 elective operations cancelled in the first half of last year.
Vacancy rates are a particular concern in London. Regionally, 11% of nursing posts are vacant, compared with a national average of 6%. At some London trusts, the rate is more than 20%. The regional total represents more than 6,000 vacant nursing posts in London. The Royal College of Nursing, which kindly briefed me for this debate, says:
“Our worry is that the hard work of some trusts in protecting posts is being undermined by a lack of available, suitably qualified nurses to take vacant positions, raising obvious questions about whether training is being commissioned at the level needed.”
Given that pressure, it is beyond dispute that there is a need to carry on changing how health care is delivered, which we all accept and have accepted for many years. The broad principles mapped out by Lord Darzi in 2007, which were not new, proposed a greater concentration of high-level surgical services to save lives and better community and primary services to reduce unnecessary admissions and enable speedy hospital discharge. Both the demand side of the equation, which is driven by an ageing population and the challenge of chronic conditions, and the delivery side, which utilises the opportunities of new drugs and surgical techniques, push us to the same conclusion. There is clear agreement in principle that we need to carry on with the changes.
The central thrust of my argument, which will be echoed by colleagues, is that managing change of that scale requires that essential preconditions are met. Those preconditions are, however, not being met at the moment, and in some cases the means of delivering them are going into reverse. First—all are important, but this is the first—there must be public confidence in the process, and that confidence is so catastrophically lacking.
Labour colleagues who are facing the closure or downgrading of their A and Es will know what their own communities are telling them, which is that closing A and E units in the midst of an A and E crisis is utterly perverse and should not happen until and unless trusted alternatives are in place. In that context, clause 118 of the Care Bill confirms everyone’s worst fears, because, having failed to win public confidence in London and other parts of the country, Ministers want to give powers to special administrators to override local opposition.
Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, and I congratulate her on her brilliant speech, which hon. Members understand from our experiences.
If clause 118 of the Care Bill goes through, every hospital and potential patient in the country will be faced with a situation in which no regard is given to clinical standards or clinical needs. The service will be based entirely upon accountancy. That is what the challenge was in Lewisham hospital. That was what was overturned. The people who knew about it—the consultants, the patients and the commissioning groups—all utterly opposed the trust special administrator proposals. We were right and we won the case. With the new powers, however, all that would be set aside and no one would be heard.
Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
Order. Before I call Ms Buck, I ask that interventions be brief. There will be time to make contributions later. This is a well attended debate and many Members have asked to speak.
Ms Buck
My right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) is completely correct. Lewisham hospital brilliantly exemplifies the argument.
Secondly, there must be effective partnership working between hospitals, primary care providers and local authorities in the delivery of services. It was the failure even to inform partners that elective surgery had already moved from St Mary’s hospital to Charing Cross hospital that prompted my debate some weeks ago, to which the Minister replied, and which subsequently prompted an apology for the breakdown in communication. That was not only a matter of leaving someone off an e-mail circulation list, but a complete unwillingness to collaborate even within the national health service, let alone with outside bodies such as the local council, which is responsible for social care delivery.
Furthermore, those three boroughs—Kensington, Westminster and Hammersmith—are part of a pilot scheme to demonstrate integration, yet what happened in the relationship between the Imperial College trust and those local authorities could not have been further from integration—it was like something written for a comedy sketch.
Even worse, fundamental confusion remains about how north-west London hospitals are to be configured with Hammersmith—my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) is in his place and I am sure will comment—which has a different spin on its hospital provision from Westminster, even though they are joined in a tri-borough arrangement. Even after the Secretary of State has blessed the restructuring of west London hospitals, just weeks before Imperial concludes its outline business case, we cannot even have a clear agreement on the status of Charing Cross hospital or, by extension, of St Mary’s. That goes to the very heart of whether we can have confidence in the new structure of the national health service.
Thirdly, everyone needs to keep focused on the key issues, and that takes me to the devastating impact of the Government’s ill-considered reforms on the strategic management of London’s health service. The service should be focused like a laser on delivering the vision set out by Lord Darzi, but instead it has been fragmented, diverted and injected with rules on competition when integration should be the key objective.
The King’s Fund report of only some months ago, “Leading health care in London”, stated that the recent NHS reorganisation and the abolition of strategic health authorities and primary care trusts have resulted in an “absence” of health care system leadership in London. The report states:
“The NHS reforms have created a much larger number of organisations in London and their purposes are not always well aligned; the risks of incoherence and inconsistency are high…Reorganising the NHS in London in such a fundamental way has made a challenging situation much more difficult”.
That is so significant that the country’s top emergency doctor has said that the current A and E crisis could have been averted two years ago had the Government heeded warnings of a looming collapse in casualty ward staffing.
The president of the College of Emergency Medicine has said that Ministers and health chiefs were “tied in knots” by the challenges of implementing the coalition’s health reforms from 2011 onwards, leading them to ignore the first warnings from the college of imminent crisis—that the NHS was failing to recruit enough A and E doctors. Therefore, London, which possibly has the most complex challenges and the greatest need for integrated strategic leadership, actually has the least such leadership. Had leading health care managers and professionals been able to concentrate on dealing with such tasks, we might have had some opportunity to build public confidence, carry people with us and make the changes. In fact, the exact reverse has happened.
Finally, we need community and social care and other support services that minimise unnecessary admissions, especially for chronic conditions, and facilitate early discharge. Again, we can all agree on the principle. There are some excellent specific examples of integrated practice and of people working hard to deliver it, but there are also some harsh truths of individual experiences and the funding of social care.
The reality is illustrated in letters from my constituents in response to the moving of elective surgery from St Mary’s. One letter states:
“When I had my mastectomy I was sent to Charing Cross Hosp. After the operation I went home by bus and underground holding my drainage…bottle…from my operated breast. In the same way I travelled after my cardiac arrest on my second lumpectomy due to anaphylactic shock!”
That is only one hazard of putting patients with no family far from where they live. A second letter states:
“They took my City of Westminster Taxi card from me and so I have to pay for taxis to take me to St Marys Hospital and…Charing Cross. I pay £6.50 there and the same coming home (£26 one way to Charing Cross). I cannot walk far”—
—she is unable to use public transport—
“as I get out of breath. I am 84 this year”,
diabetic and
“have had one breast removed with cancer.”
Another constituent told me:
“I have lost my…home help”—
due to the cuts in social care—
“If I’m ill, I wait for it to go away.”
London as a whole faces a £1.14 billion shortfall in social care funding as a consequence of the pressures on adult social care and of the extra costs likely to arise because of the cap—in principle, that is a good thing, but obviously revenue is necessary to fund social care costs. That situation is London-wide and has been set out clearly in a London Councils report. My local authority also set the situation out clearly in a report to the health and wellbeing board, which states:
“As a result of reductions in local government funding Adult Social Care…has to deliver substantial savings in 2013/14”—
£4.4 million in Hammersmith and Fulham, £2.1 million in Kensington and Chelsea, and £2.9 million in Westminster. The report continues:
“These are very large savings; the cumulative effects are much bigger than any other savings programme delivered in the local authorities in the past.”
That is on top of £8 million in cuts to the adult social care budget already coming into effect since 2011. The report states:
“Amongst big reductions to back office and support functions, the savings programmes also include reductions in the use of packages and placements, the greatest area of spend for ASC.”
Rather sweetly, it adds:
“Some of the savings projects may be difficult to deliver or may take longer than anticipated.”
It continues:
“Funding growth for packages and placements arises mainly in the Learning Disabilities, Mental Health and the Young Disabled care groups where client numbers are growing, but also in Older People, as people live longer and are supported in the community.”
There is an important point. There is an integration care fund, which is shifting money from the NHS into social care, but, as Westminster council’s report on the pressures on social care funding states, that funding will mainly be used for purposes that include:
“To sustain services, otherwise at risk from savings plans”.
We are in an extraordinary position. There is a transformation fund designed to put in place the services that would allow us to make changes in hospital care, with which in principle we agree—we would argue in some specific cases—but that funding is simply going to fill the gaps caused by the cuts in social care, which are the result of cuts to local authority budgets. In London, as we know, there has been a 25% cut in local authority funding, with a further 10% cut as a result of the Chancellor’s autumn statement. Much of that new money is simply sustaining services that would otherwise be at risk from savings.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
Is my hon. Friend aware of the estimate made by London Councils for the future? Between 2016 and 2020, we might see adult social care departments facing budget pressures of £1.1 billion, owing to rising demand and some of the changes proposed by the Government. Does she agree that the future looks extremely bleak?
Ms Buck
I agree totally. A thoughtful and planned process throughout London that would allow us to build up community and primary services, reduce unnecessary A and E admissions, speed up unnecessary discharges and concentrate some of our specialist services in fewer sites is sensible, but the means to realise it have been pulled out because of the pressures on social care funding. Furthermore, the strategic leadership that would allow us to make changes has been undermined by a completely unnecessary, £3-billion, top-down reorganisation that we were promised would not happen.
Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)
I entirely associate myself with the earlier comments about the quality of my hon. Friend’s address so far. She talks about trying to have a logical and sensible planning process. Is she aware that London boroughs such as Ealing, ably led by Councillor Julian Bell, have had to divert intense amounts of resources to oppose something that is the antithesis of good planning? That is an additional double whammy against responsible local authorities, which have to divert scarce resources and face up to a desperately uncertain future.
Ms Buck
I totally agree. Local authorities are on the front line of delivering the social care made necessary by some of the planned hospital changes and they are under pressure. The councils have expertise and knowledge and they are, as my hon. Friend says, sensibly involved in planning services, so they are making thoughtful objections when they see that services cannot be delivered as we want. Indeed, they have to divert resources to make the case on behalf of their populations.
In conclusion, London’s NHS continues to save lives and to provide the same quality of care it currently provides. That is a tribute to tens of thousands of men and women on the front line, whether in the NHS or employed directly by local authorities, but it owes absolutely nothing to a Government who have let us down with a change process that we should have been able to work through. They have done that by the way they have treated local authorities and by the way that, through this unnecessary reorganisation, they have diverted attention and resources from the leadership that could ensure that London’s health care is delivered in line with the wishes of Londoners. The Government have let down London’s patients and the men and women who deliver health care to them.
Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I congratulate the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on securing this valuable debate. Although her conclusion was perhaps a little more hyperbolic than mine would have been in the circumstances, we work closely together, along with her hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), to do our best for all our constituents. Over the past year or so, as we have tried to put our constituents first, we have had concerns about elements of the negotiations on this matter.
For all the lively debate about health care provision here in the capital, there is one thing on which we can all agree, as the hon. Lady made clear in her contribution: the pressures on the national health service here in London are huge and getting bigger. They are set to increase substantially, not only because the population is ageing but because of the hypermobility and hyperdiversity of that population. In the past, that was perhaps typical of inner London alone, but it now applies to the entirety of the capital.
At times, the national health service can seem a little like a national religion, whose traditions must not be questioned under any circumstance. In my view, if one good thing has come from the terrible events in Mid Staffordshire, it is that we can perhaps start to have a more honest and less ideological debate about where the NHS is performing well, where it is letting people down and how it can better tackle the future challenges to which the hon. Member for Westminster North referred.
I have enormous respect for the Secretary of State for unashamedly refocusing the NHS around patients rather than protecting the sanctity of the system. Thankfully, the patient experience at some of our central London hospitals is, as the hon. Lady rightly pointed out, a world away from what happened in Mid Staffordshire. The diversity of population and the presence of top-flight medical schools and universities, particularly in central London, inevitably draw global talent to our local hospitals.
I am often staggered by the quality of facilities here, whether the state-of-the-art birthing unit in St Mary’s or the Royal London, the beautiful Maggie’s cancer centre at Charing Cross or the brand new oncology unit at Barts in my constituency. Only yesterday, a constituent wrote to me about his young nephew’s recent stint in hospital. He said:
“Given it seems it is ‘in vogue’ to be ‘anti-NHS’ I wanted to let you know that my recent experiences with the high dependency unit at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital”—
that hospital is outside my constituency, but obviously caters for a lot of my constituents in the south of Westminster—
“were nothing short of exemplary. I am sure that my nephew’s speedy recovery was probably all down to the standard of care he received.”
More often in my constituency, non-emergency services fail to be so patient-focused. Londoners are spoilt for choice in so many aspects of their lives, and as a result they have the idea that they should expect to get a full choice in everything. Why should they not expect a similar consumer-driven, flexible and responsive system when it comes to primary care—one that allows them swift access to a GP or provides small surgical procedures outside hospital?
We have read a lot in recent days about the number of non-emergency cases being presented at A and E departments. I think that that is in part due to the hassle factor associated with the existing GP system. With the hypermobility of population in London, many people never bother to register with a GP, and those who do all too often find that they cannot get an appointment for days or at a time that is convenient for someone with a busy working life. It is therefore often a perfectly logical decision for those people to spend a few hours in A and E, where they are at least guaranteed to be seen.
Thankfully the story is rapidly improving for my constituents. The Central London clinical commissioning group has just extended its seven-day GP opening service from three practices to five. People are able to walk in and book a same-day appointment at those practices. They do not have to be a member of the practice to use the service, and registration with their own GP will not be affected. I also know that plans are afoot to locate more GPs within hospitals in London. That type of modern and practical response really needs to be rolled out more widely.
There are problems with the health service in central London, which my colleague the hon. Member for Westminster North has so carefully outlined. My own constituency will hopefully be affected for the better by the huge changes to be brought in by the “Shaping a healthier future” programme. That programme began some five years ago to respond to the challenges of a rapidly increasing population and the variation we were seeing in the quality of acute care. It has caused most controversy in its proposals to close a number of A and E departments.
My constituents are grateful, as are the hon. Lady’s, that St Mary’s hospital in Paddington has been confirmed as one of five north-west London hospitals to provide advanced comprehensive acute care. I am assured that there is a strong business case for even greater investment on that site and exciting plans are afoot in that regard.
The Minister needs to be aware, however, that there have been issues of communication over the relocation of elective surgery, as was raised earlier. I accept much of the wisdom in the reconfiguration of services in north-west London to allow for specialist centres, rather than having hospitals that are jacks of all trades.
I accept that that is easy for me to say, given that two local hospitals in my constituency, Chelsea and Westminster and St Mary’s Paddington, are not affected, and I know that the issue is a great concern for many Members, who are hearing such concerns from many constituents. But I suspect that the perceived success or failure of any reorganisation of this sort will come down to smaller things: how well plans are communicated; how quickly alternative, out-of-hospital services are in place; and how transportation is organised for patients, many of whom are impoverished or will have to travel further and rely on public transport.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
On the acceptability of reconfiguration, we should never forget that many communities in London have a strong emotional attachment to a hospital that could have been in existence in some shape or form since the middle ages. That is why reconfiguration must go forward carefully and on a purely medical basis if it is to succeed in London.
Mark Field
That is right to an extent. I know that the hon. Lady spoke in a debate that I led in the House almost a decade ago on Barts, which is located in my constituency and has a special place in the hearts of many millions of Londoners—and, indeed, of people throughout the United Kingdom. The truth is that at that juncture, the private finance initiative was the only funding game in town and we all went along with it, but that £1 billion PFI has now caused major financial issues that, I am afraid, affect not just Barts but hospitals throughout the north-east of London, as the hon. Lady is well aware. We all feel a bit depressed about that knock-on effect.
We have to accept that in London, broadly speaking, we do pretty well as far as hospital care is concerned. Being absolutely candid with everyone, because I know what it is like, in central London we have a very good service, and it is partly outer London that suffers as a result. That is because of the strength of the links to which the hon. Lady rightly referred—the passion that we have for our historic hospitals—and the amount of resource that is pushed into central London because the hospitals there are teaching hospitals with consultants, former consultants and alumni who are willing to make a strong case for the existence of those hospitals. Dare I say it, that makes it easier to make the case for Barts than for a hospital out in Romford or Whipps Cross, or one in the hon. Lady’s constituency.
We all have to face those issues. They have not arisen as a result of the reorganisation of the past three and a half years; this has been the situation in the capital for probably 40 or 50 years. I am aware that even in the latest reconfiguration there has been a sense that central London has got off slightly better than the middle portion of outer western London.
I turn to finance. There was a good outcome before Christmas for north-west London on commissioning allocations, as all of our CCGs received an uplift to offset inflation. However, I want to raise concerns about the funding formula used to determine allocation. The formula fails to take into account the needs of the large homeless population in Westminster, which places massive pressure on acute services. Rough sleepers are far more likely to attend accident and emergency; they attend six times more often than any normal member of the population. They are admitted to hospital four times more often and stay in hospital three times as long.
The formula also ignores the fact that CCGs are responsible for all attendances at urgent care centres or walk-in centres and for the costs of patients covered by reciprocal funding arrangements with other countries. Westminster welcomes more than 1 million commuters and visitors each and every day, many of whom will need health advice and care while they are here. It is important that a future funding formula recognises the impact of that on local health care services.
The proposed formula will exclude spending on community care. That cannot be correct considering the important move to provide more high-quality care at home and in the community rather than simply in hospitals. I welcome the Government’s assurances that the Advisory Council of Resource Allocation formula will not be accepted in its current state and that changes to the funding of CCGs will be fully consulted on in future.
I turn to public health spending. A draft formula for local authorities was set out in the “Healthy Lives, Healthy People” consultation, which was published on 14 June 2012 and recognised that further work was needed on adjustments for age, fixed costs and non-resident populations. However, initial modelling by London councils suggests that Westminster would have a drop of 57% in public health funding. Central London and Westminster have unique population characteristics that make it more difficult to make public health improvements. They include the age structure, with a greater focus on working age and children, and levels of mental health problems and homelessness. Those are not properly reflected in the current formula.
The formula also fails to take account of substance misuse services, many of which fall outside the pooled treatment budget, which focuses on opiates and crack treatment. It also ignores the wider health and local authority investment needed to manage the individual family and community impact of drugs and alcohol on health and well-being.
Westminster experiences a high level of population churn—I accept that many other London boroughs are in that boat—and that leads to additional demands for services, including NHS checks and other screening programmes.
Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mark Field
Other hon. Members want to speak so, if the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will finish with a request to the Minister. I would welcome an indication from the Government of when we can expect more clarity on how future public health allocations will be determined. I would also appreciate confirmation that the formula consulted on in June 2012 will not be used to determine public health funding allocation in future.
Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
I will call the Minister and shadow Opposition spokesman at 20 minutes to the hour. About five hon. Members want to speak. That means, bearing in mind time for interventions, about seven minutes for speeches. That is just a suggestion.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I will take the suggestion with the severity with which it was meant, Mrs Main. I congratulate my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on securing this debate.
I want to reflect on some of what my hon. Friend said at the beginning of her speech and on the sentiments of a letter to The Guardian before Christmas from GPs, emergency doctors and nurses, midwives, physiotherapists, psychotherapists and NHS trusts. Their plea was for a page to be turned in the way we talk about the NHS. We need to talk about the failures in patient care, but we must also recognise that we have some extraordinary abilities in the NHS to reach and look after our communities as well as they do. Sadly, I have been close to the NHS in the past three years, and I have seen excellence and the pits. However, in general, the people who work in our hospitals do a fantastic job.
I wholeheartedly endorse the sentiments of that letter because I fear that the driver for the relentless daily trashing that the NHS receives comes from base political motivation—the softening up of public opinion so that marketisation and privatisation become acceptable. It will not be acceptable. It is not acceptable now and I do not believe it will ever be acceptable, so let us just stop it.
I am not the only one to mistrust the motivation and outcome of the coalition’s top-down, unwanted and wasteful reorganisation of the NHS. I did a survey of my constituents—I like to find out whether my impressions are the same as theirs—and 97% of those who responded said that the NHS would undoubtedly get worse under the new system. When they were asked about their main concern, 60% thought that the money intended for NHS staff and services would end up as profit for private companies. My constituents are very astute.
I want to turn to local circumstances before I am coughed at. In 2006-08, life expectancy for men in Newham was 75.8 years, lower than the London average of 78.2 years. In the same period, life expectancy for women was 2.3 years below the London average at 80.4 years. Even within my borough, there are variations that make the local situation much more complex and challenging. Life expectancy in some wards is 8.1 years shorter than in others. That is massive.
In primary care, the recommended ratio of GP provision is 1.8 GPs per 1,000 of population. In Newham, the ratio is appalling and equates to not much more than half that, at 0.56 of a GP per 1,000 of population. It is small wonder that in my survey, 35% of respondents reported that it is never easy to get a GP appointment, and just 10% said that it is always easy. Many practices—too many—are operated by single GPs, so it is no surprise that the patient experience in Newham is the worst in north-east London.
The primary care trust, before its abolition, had a clear plan for tackling that challenging situation and I enthusiastically endorsed and participated in it. Now, there are no mechanisms in place to root out poor practice and promote the best. I would like to hear from the Minister how she will ensure that Newham has the number of GPs to which we are entitled and that we have performance and outcomes that are the same as other areas of London.
Incidentally, I would be interested to hear whether other hon. Members here are experiencing the new phenomenon that we have in Newham: dial a diagnosis. When people contact their GP to arrange an appointment, they are initially offered a telephone conversation with the GP. Is that because GPs must bolster the failing 111 non-clinical service, which is now contributing to the difficulties of our A and E departments? Is it to save money, to sift out or deter patients or to ration GP time? Has there been a risk assessment of what that might entail, and does it contribute to the problems that my community is facing? Again, I would like to hear from the Minister about that.
Another statistic from Newham that should be good news is that the incidence rate for breast cancer is 104.6 per 100,000 of population, significantly lower than the UK average of 123.6. However, disturbingly and distressingly, the percentage of women alive five years after diagnosis—the five-year survival estimate—is, at 75%, also significantly lower than the UK average of 83.4%. The reason in part is the take-up rate of breast screening services, but there is anecdotal evidence of women who were part of Barts hospital’s preventative health services being encouraged to go away and become part of the general population, and to present sometime in the future. That encouragement not to continue to attend for breast screening gave a rosy picture of health needs.
The London Health Commission, under the chairmanship of Lord Darzi, has a remit that includes healthy lives and reducing health inequalities. I will be interested to hear what the Minister says in anticipation of the commission’s report, and what assurance she can give that the Government will act on health inequalities.
Let me refer to the Barts health care trust, which is the largest in the country and incorporates Barts, the Royal London, Whipps Cross and Newham general hospitals. Our patch is the growing part of London, with growth in population, complexity, the number of homes and, of course, opportunity. I was therefore grateful to hear the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field), who made a well balanced speech, talk about resources being sucked into the large university hospitals in the centre. Even though those of us on the far-flung borders of the east belong to the same trust as one of those hospitals, we experience the difficulties he talked about in relation to Romford.
Rumours abound at the moment that Newham general, as part of the Barts trust, is under threat of reconfiguration—a fascinating new word—to secure the viability of the trust as a whole. When I talked to the trust’s chief executive, he told me that the PFI represented only 10% of the trust’s entire budget and that, given that the budget was large, he did not see the PFI as having major consequences for the delivery of services.
However, there is an accusation that the trust is being a little disingenuous in its public statements that the A and E at Newham general will not be closed. Assurances have been sought that there will be no downgrading without full consultation, but those look weak in the face of a shortage of anaesthetists, for example, who are essential to support a viable emergency service.
Almost half of London trusts are struggling to achieve the 95% standard for patients waiting in A and E. Barts trust is just about achieving that target, but that is because Newham general performs well and helps the trust’s overall performance—a good example of how a local acute hospital catering for a place such as Newham can perform well, while larger hospitals struggle. Given that the future of Newham general’s A and E is under threat, the irony of the situation is not lost on me, and nor will it be lost on my constituents.
In that scenario, it is essential that we maintain Newham general as a fully functioning major acute hospital with a full range of services, including A and E and maternity. Given that we are seeing growth out to the east, it would be irresponsible and downright dangerous for us not to do that. It would also be a complete distraction from the absolute priority of putting in place improved, integrated care services in the community and in primary care.
Finally, I seek assurances from the Minister about the funding formula for CCGs being rolled out across England. In the London context, it is shifting resources from inner-London boroughs, with their younger populations, to boroughs further out, which have older populations.
Newham just happens to have the youngest population in the whole of Europe, apart from some tiny canton somewhere that is almost irrelevant. We will therefore lose substantial amounts, while London as a whole is losing 2.3% of its funding to other areas. I would like reassurance from the Minister that the funding formula will fully take account of deprivation, as the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster said, as well as of our population’s high mobility, with the health problems that brings with it, and diversity, with the specific demands that that puts on health care.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on securing this important debate. I will keep my comments brief because I want to be fair to other Members who want to speak, not because I do not care deeply about this subject. Previous speakers have talked ably about a lot of the statistics, so I do not need to go over them.
I was actually born in a London hospital, across the river in St Thomas’. I was pleased to go there again recently to visit my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood)—I hasten to add that I was visiting the maternity ward because his wife had given birth to their new son, Oscar. It was lovely to be back at St Thomas’, albeit after so many decades.
Some important issues have been raised in the debate. Health care is critical to all of us—it touches each and every one of us, our loved ones and our constituents. It is crucially important and we must get it right. In London, there are specific problems, as has been said.
I was pleased that in 2010 the Government made £2.7 billion extra available in real terms in the NHS budget across the UK. That has allowed us to have 440,000 more clinical staff, and we also have 23,000 fewer administrative staff, including 7,700 fewer managers. That was absolutely the right approach and what the NHS needed.
The average stay in hospital is shorter than in 2010, although that puts pressure on community care, so we must make sure that that is dealt with. The cancer drugs fund is also critical to the debate, and we have helped more than 38,000 patients through it.
The debate is about London and the issues specific to this great city. In my constituency, in west London, the key health care issues tend to be focused on tuberculosis, obesity—including in children—diabetes and alcohol-related harm. As Members might expect, we have above average problems with healthy eating, given the issues with obesity. Other issues include smoking during pregnancy, smoking deaths and skin cancer. There are therefore specific issues in west London, and I will focus on them.
In my constituency, we have one main hospital—the West Middlesex university hospital, where two thirds of my constituents go when they need to. My Chiswick residents—about a third of my constituents—tend to go to Charing Cross hospital. I want to reiterate what previous speakers have said: we have some excellent patient care and services across our London hospitals, but there are, absolutely, also areas we should focus on.
The West Middlesex has outstanding maternity and midwifery services. One of the best parts of our job as Members of Parliament is rewarding people who have done incredible work in the health service, whether they are clinicians or support staff, and I recently handed out awards at the West Middlesex, which is ably led by Dame Jacqueline Docherty.
I also want to pay tribute to London’s air ambulance service. During the Christmas period, there was a fire and a massive explosion in Chiswick, and the air ambulance was called. The service deserves as much support as possible, because it serves 10 million residents in London, and it has only one helicopter. It is world class, providing high-trauma, acute care. Everywhere else around the country has one helicopter for 1.5 million people, but the figure in London is 10 million, so there is an absolute need for another helicopter. I would push everyone to support the London air ambulance service, which has its 25th anniversary tomorrow.
Stephen Pound
I entirely agree, and I think most of us would associate ourselves with the hon. Lady’s comments on the London air ambulance, but does she not agree that it might be better if it were run by the state, instead of relying so much on charity?
Mary Macleod
The London air ambulance service is an amazing organisation, so I would not change its structure. It rightly gets some funding from the NHS, but it also derives funding from many other sources, and it is important that we support that. The service does an incredible job, so if the hon. Gentleman knows anyone who can give it a spare helicopter, it would really appreciate that.
My local CCG is chaired by Dr Nicola Burbidge. It started early, it has been absolutely focused on patients and it has been very responsive to any issues I have raised with it.
On reconfiguration, I was recently thankful when, after a lot of campaigning by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands) and others, the Secretary of State announced that the A and E at Charing Cross hospital would not be closed, thus helping residents in my part of London. Saving lives and improving patient care is paramount.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I apologise for not being here for the opening speech. Does my hon. Friend agree that one challenge now facing London is the increasing complexity of diseases and the treatments that are required, which means that additional money and expertise are needed? Such diseases often cannot be dealt with at a local level; they must be dealt with nationally. Although we have supported those suffering from cancer and other diseases, much more complex diseases remain to be resolved.
Mary Macleod
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I hope the Minister will respond to the issue of how we take up such challenges in London and get the necessary funding.
I shall list some issues on which I would like more improvement. We heard how difficult it is to get appointments at general practices—we call up and know that the answer is going to be no before we say anything. There are also issues with getting to see a specialist as quickly as possible. We want an effective complaints process in hospitals, changing the culture to allow people, whether staff or patients, to complain. There is an issue with how patients are moved around London, and the hon. Member for Westminster North made an important point about having to use public transport to get home. Mental health and community public health are other important issues.
My final comment is about dementia, which is a growing concern in London, as it is across the country. About 30% of patients who go into the West Middlesex hospital have dementia. They do not go there because of dementia, but they have it. There is a lot to be done, and the West Middlesex hospital has just opened a new dementia ward. There needs to be a greater focus on dementia, given our ageing population nationally, and the size of the population in London. We must ensure that we work together to support those who really need and deserve care and support in London. That will improve the NHS for us all.
Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
Order. Four speakers have risen to speak, all from the Opposition, so hopefully they will be mindful of their colleagues.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Given the time constraints, I shall limit myself to one issue, which is the current threat to the emergency hospitals in my constituency, but I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on securing this timely debate. She made her arguments very well.
This morning, I received an e-mail from the Secretary of State that is pertinent to the debate. There was an agreement for him to meet the three Ealing MPs, two of whom—my hon. Friends the Members for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) and for Ealing North (Stephen Pound)—are here, and me next Monday evening. The Secretary of State has withdrawn from that meeting, pleading other engagements, and asked us to meet officials instead. I hope that he will reconsider. The meeting is specifically about the threat to two of London’s major hospitals, Charing Cross and Ealing, and I hope that the comments I am about to make will lead the Minister to intervene and ask that the meeting go ahead. We understand that the Secretary of State has pressures on his time, but it is entirely unacceptable for him not to meet Members on an issue of such crucial and central importance.
It is sad news, but we know—
Mr Slaughter
I would rather not because of the time. I am sorry.
We know what is happening with Hammersmith hospital because it has been announced that the A and E department there is going to close after the winter crisis—as if the crisis is not a continuing one. I have been told informally that it will close two weeks after the local elections to avoid any embarrassment to the Government. We were also told that there might not even be an urgent care centre there; it may be moving. That would mean no emergency access to Hammersmith hospital, unless it is still to receive emergency blue-light coronary cases. At least Hammersmith hospital will continue as a major specialist hospital, and a very fine hospital it is indeed.
The situation regarding Charing Cross hospital is far less clear. I will précis where we are and explain the matters that we wish the Secretary of State to deal with. In February last year, the decision, which is still extant, was made to close completely and sell off the Charing Cross hospital site, leaving an urgent care centre on 3% of the site. At the same time, there was to be an outline business case, to report in October last year, that might preserve 13% of the facilities and 40% of the site. That business case is now due in March, but we understand—through the Imperial College Healthcare foundation trust process, not any other process—that there will also be elective surgery on the site. That might mean there will be elective surgery as well as primary care and treatment facilities, and some form of emergency centre on the site, with perhaps 50% of the land preserved. That gain, in so far as it is a gain, is St Mary’s loss, because we understand that 50% of its site will be sold in any event. Of course, any amelioration in the position is to be welcomed.
I praise the cross-party Save Our Hospitals group for campaigning tirelessly in both my borough and Ealing on the issues I have mentioned. However, the point it would want me to make very clearly is that what I have described is not what we want. Of course we want good elective care, primary care and treatment services, but the issue of capacity must be addressed.
It is not feasible to close two of the largest emergency hospitals. I use the word “close” advisedly. As emergency hospitals, they are closing: there will be no emergency surgery, no blue-light A and E, no stroke unit and no intensive treatment on those sites. I am afraid that the Secretary of State’s intervention so far has been genuinely unhelpful and done for political reasons. We have invented a second-tier A and E, as it is called. A second-tier A and E is an urgent care centre. The only differences that clinicians could identify for me were that at a second-tier A and E there would be GP cover and X-ray services, and for elderly and vulnerable people there might be some beds for recuperation after minor treatment. Otherwise, it is an urgent care centre or a minor injuries unit.
Let us not play political games. I am not saying that we can keep politics out of the NHS—of course we cannot—but this is dangerous because it will mislead people. If people think that there is an A and E at Charing Cross or at Ealing when there is not, they will go there when they should have gone elsewhere. We will continue to campaign to save emergency services. It is not feasible for the Imperial family to go from three major emergency departments to one. All three are currently under pressure and overcrowded. The decision has to be taken by Ministers, so I implore the Minister to go back to the Secretary of State and ask that he meet us.
The level of politics is not acceptable. Politics comes into these matters all the time. Before the last election, when there was no threat to the hospitals, the Conservatives kept saying that there was—I have their election literature here. We now have taxpayers’ money being spent on campaigns saying that hospitals are staying open when, in fact, departments in them are not. Let us at least tell our constituents the truth. There may be unpalatable decisions to be taken, but as far as Charing Cross is concerned, the health service is clear that it will be a local hospital. It will not be an emergency hospital. That is not acceptable in any way to my constituents. It is not feasible to run a health service in west London on that basis.
I have made my points to the Minister clearly, and I look forward to her response. I also look forward to the meeting with the Secretary of State where I can put my points in more detail and more forcefully.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. We have already heard that the NHS in London is most definitely straining under the weight of demand for services. The problem is related to the constrained financial environment, but fundamentally it is about the increasing needs of our population. The population of London has grown by 12% in the past decade and is likely to grow by another million in the coming decade. That is why the plans to downgrade and close desperately needed and often very successful emergency and maternity departments in London are met with such incredulity and anger.
I would like to make a few points to the Minister today. First, I ask her to consider the overall shape of maternity services in London. Much of the debate focuses on big arguments about the reconfiguration of emergency departments, but maternity services are often a victim of those reorganisations, because as soon as an intensive care unit is taken away from a hospital, it is unable to provide full maternity services. Does the Minister really want to ask women in the capital to travel even greater distances to give birth to their children, when they want to be close to home and family? Will she look at some of the sacred cows that have built up in the wisdom on maternity services?
I know there is an aspiration to provide 168 hours of consultant cover every week in maternity departments, but I understand that that currently happens at only one trust in the whole country. I ask the Minister whether it is achievable, affordable, or necessarily in the best interests of women to continue to aspire to reach that standard in all our hospitals in London.
Another point I want to make to the Minister—it has already been made—is on the crucial importance of the public being involved and having a genuine say when hospital services are being reconfigured. In Lewisham, we saw the exact opposite of that, with the unsustainable providers regime. The Government are trying to augment that process and apply it more widely, which has very serious implications for trust in politics and in our health service.
I am very conscious of time and that two other Members wish to speak. I ask the Minister to look very hard at the existing evidence on centralising all hospital services in London. I know there is a lot of evidence for creating centres of excellence for stroke, trauma, and vascular disease in big hospitals. However, I wonder whether the same evidence exists for other acute medical emergencies and whether there is evidence, for example, for centralising mental health services or maternity services.
I have one final point—I will sit down very shortly. There are currently plans at many hospitals in London to flog off hospital sites. That land should not be used to create playgrounds for the rich and the international jet set. Public land is a very precious asset in London, and if we are going to use it for anything, could we please explore the possibility of using it for housing for elderly people, providing communities of care? Provision of suitable accommodation is one of the crucial things we need to get right if we are to tackle some of the underlying problems in the NHS.
Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
Order. I shall call Mr Gwynne at 20 minutes to four. I now call Mr Sharma.
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)
Thank you, Mrs Main. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on securing this very important debate. I share the concerns expressed by my colleagues earlier, including those about the Secretary of State cancelling the meeting that I and the leader of Ealing council requested. We were looking forward to expressing the views of the residents of our constituencies.
Multiple A and E departments in the capital have been under threat of closure or set for closure, from Lewisham, where a hard-fought campaign has saved the hospital from closure, to south-west London, Ilford, and the four A and Es in west London, two of which have been marked for closure and two of which are still effectively closed—they are being called A and Es when they are not. One of them is in my constituency in Ealing hospital. In a city of more than 8 million inhabitants, where the population growth is twice the national average, those closures and downgrades will have a huge impact on the lives and safety of local residents, leaving many residents miles from their local A and E.
Accident and emergency services are already under tremendous pressure and will be subject to increased strain with local closures. We know that the number of blue-light ambulance diverts increased drastically in London, by almost a quarter, proving that A and Es in London are over capacity. One of the hospitals that has regularly turned away ambulances is Northwick Park. With the closure of A and Es at Central Middlesex and Hammersmith hospitals, and with Ealing and Charing Cross hospitals seemingly unable to receive blue-light ambulances in north-west London, Northwick Park will be under even more strain as patients are sent there for emergency treatment.
Northwick Park is already overburdened and is one of the worst-performing A and Es in the country. It will simply not be able to cope with the four other local A and Es closing and will be unable to accept blue-light ambulances. Journey times for patients will be longer and they face the risk of travelling elsewhere if the ambulance is turned away. That will be the difference between life and death for emergency patients—an unacceptable situation.
Back at the end of October, the Secretary of State confirmed the closure of A and Es at Central Middlesex and Hammersmith hospitals, and announced that A and Es would remain at Charing Cross hospital and Ealing hospital, in my constituency, the shape and size of which would be subject to a review. His statement, which was supposed to remove uncertainty about the future of our local hospitals, only further increased confusion.
It has, however, been made clear, through the Keogh review and Dr Mark Spencer’s subsequent comments, that the review would in fact reduce the size of Ealing’s A and E, and that Ealing would be unable to receive blue-light ambulances. The Secretary of State, who pledged to keep the A and E services, has in fact downgraded Ealing hospital, while keeping the A and E in name only. The Secretary of State promised an A and E for Ealing, but delivered only more disappointment to local residents. There are many other concerns, not least of which is the fact that many of my constituents in Southall are the poorest and most vulnerable members of society, with specific health needs that are met by nearby Ealing hospital. They will have to travel considerable distances, putting their lives at risk.
With the population of west London growing, those decisions seem, at best, unsafe and, at worst, dangerous. The concerns that we have in my constituency and in west London will obviously be replicated across London with the threat of more closures in the midst of an A and E crisis. There needs to be more of a concerted effort from the Secretary of State and the Department of Health to help Londoners receive the best health care, rather than making this existing crisis worse.
Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
Order. I call Ms Glenda Jackson—you have one and a half minutes.
Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
Thank you very much, Mrs Main. I had intended to talk for slightly longer than two minutes, but the central thing I wish to say is about mental health. Other contributors to this very important debate have touched on that, but it seems to me that for us, as a nation, it is essentially a Cinderella service, and certainly has been all the time that I have been in the House.
The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) referred to the pressures on central London. That is not only to do with the churn of people moving into London and moving out, but, as he rightly said, it is most markedly about people who are dependent, or over-dependent, on drugs and alcohol, and people with mental health issues. A peripatetic patient cohort—I hate that word, but I cannot think of anything else at the moment—is virtually not being regarded, let alone something on which the multifarious bodies and boards that are now responsible for delivering health care in London are working together.
I hope the Minister will take that away and put it at the top of her list, because the enormous damage that is done to individuals when they are allowed to go over the cliff of their crisis is reflected in the damage inflicted on their families and their wider community. I am firmly of the opinion that the right provision, as we have had in my own constituency, is a house that is open 24/7, 365 days a year. People who felt that they were going to go over the edge of their mental health crisis could walk in through the door. There were people there all the time to care for them. Yes, such facilities are expensive to set up, but I am firmly of the opinion that the money we save by having them could be put towards the sharp end of delivering a high-quality health service to people who are not suffering from mental health problems.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on securing this very important debate about health care in London. I hope that hon. Members will forgive this Mancunian for gatecrashing the debate to respond for the Opposition.
The future of health services and especially accident and emergency services across London is an important issue of genuine concern to a great many of the constituents of hon. Members present. It is definitely an issue of real significance right across our capital city. I pay tribute to all the hon. Members who today have made contributions, long and brief, on a wide variety of matters.
Let me take this opportunity to pay tribute to the staff working in the national health service for their commitment in providing a first-class service to patients in what has been a very trying period for the NHS. As we know, there have been important changes in the provision of hospital care in London. We have had “Health for North East London”, “Shaping a healthier future”, the Barnet, Enfield and Haringey clinical strategy, the trust special administrator’s review of South London Healthcare NHS Trust and the NHS in south-east London and “Better Services, Better Value” in south London, to name a few of the reconfigurations that have taken place in the capital.
My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North is right to point to extreme financial pressures on hospital services. North-west London hospital services must accommodate a £125 million reduction in service between 2011 and 2015. The people who use hospitals in London are rightly concerned about the changes to the services on which they rely. We have heard about the proposals that will lead to the loss of accident and emergency departments at Charing Cross, Ealing, Hammersmith and Central Middlesex hospitals.
However, it is not only my hon. Friends who are concerned about the future of A and E departments in London; local authorities are, too. Local authorities such as Ealing have voiced their concerns about the downgrading of their A and E services. As we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), A and E facilities that both the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State had promised to save across north-west London and elsewhere in the capital will be closing. I hope very much that the meeting between the Secretary of State and the hon. Members who represent Ealing and Hammersmith can be reconvened as requested.
Of course, all this is in direct contradiction to what the Prime Minister said during the general election, when he promised to halt the closures of hospitals, accident and emergency departments and maternity units. Why does the Minister think that there is such widespread concern about the lack of leadership in the health service in London at a time when the NHS is dealing with unnecessary upheaval?
Frankly, it was a disastrous decision on the part of the Government to spend billions of pounds on an unnecessary top-down reorganisation, which has led to a loss of financial grip in the NHS. Now, more than 6,000 nursing posts have been lost, waiting lists are getting longer and we are seeing the return of patients on trolleys in corridors. Indeed, we are now seeing A and Es not just in London but across the country facing a winter crisis after an unprecedented summer A and E crisis. At the same time, local authorities are having a huge cut to their social care budgets. More and more elderly people are therefore ending up in A and E, because there is no one at home to care for them, adding even more pressure to a pressured system.
Labour Members warned Ministers repeatedly during the passage of the Bill that became the Health and Social Care Act 2012 that the legislation would lead to the break-up of the NHS. The public rightly expect to have easy access to health services, and Ministers have a heavy responsibility to show leadership and to act to prevent people’s lives being put at risk. Ministers must also tell the House today what action they propose to take to ensure that London’s growing population will continue to have good access to hospital and other health service provision in their local areas. Those points were made eloquently by a number of hon. Members, but I have to mention my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) in relation to Newham.
Of course, Labour Members do not oppose all the changes to local health services. Surely, it is right that hospitals and services evolve and change. However, it must be change based on good clinical reasons and not just financial necessity.
Ms Abbott
Does my hon. Friend agree that the issue in London is not just provision for its size of population, but the extreme diversity and complexity of the population? It is a very mobile population. There are large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers, and London has the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in the country. That is what people have to pay attention to if they are reconfiguring services.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is right. London is a global city. It has people coming in from all over the world, not just from elsewhere in the United Kingdom. It is a diverse city. It is an exciting, vibrant city—I am probably over-egging it for a Mancunian, but it is a great place. Those complexities are what makes London fantastic, but they are also what makes delivering health services a real challenge.
To make the change work, there must be clarity and partnership. Everyone must understand what is being proposed and how the decisions are to be taken. That brings me on to the issue of Lewisham and clause 118 of the Care Bill. We saw in Lewisham the power of an effective campaign in the face of unpopular change to health services and what that can achieve.
I pay tribute to the Lewisham MPs and to the campaigners, who fought tirelessly for their local hospital. The proposal to close their A and E department was rightly met by a strong local campaign, which included protest marches and a successful legal challenge to the closure. Indeed, the Court of Appeal ruled that the Health Secretary did not have the power to implement the cuts at Lewisham hospital. If only he had listened to my hon. Friends in Lewisham—they had been arguing that beforehand.
Clause 118 should give very real concern to all hon. Members in the debate, because in future it will give carte blanche to the Secretary of State and the Department of Health to reconfigure services right across the country as they sought to in Lewisham, disfranchising the communities that have spoken out very loudly across London against some of the changes. Labour Members are rightly concerned about that measure and we will be opposing it during the next stages of proceedings on the Care Bill.
In conclusion, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North and to all my right hon. and hon. Friends who have taken part in the debate. Hospital services are very important to the capital. We must make sure that there is proper strategic planning across London, not the piecemeal approach to reconfigurations of services that we have seen, so that the complexities in health needs—including mental health, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) mentioned—are taken on board fully for the betterment of people living in London.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)
What an amazing debate! I congratulate the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on securing it; a lot of issues have been covered. Many London colleagues have contributed, made interventions or simply been present to listen to it. As a London MP, I am particularly conscious of the unique challenges facing health care in London, and many of the issues raised apply as much to my constituents as they do to those of colleagues across the House. As hon. Members have said, London is an amazing city with world-leading expertise and services, but it has unique challenges. Whichever party was in government, it would have to respond to those challenges.
I will do my best to respond to some of the points that have been made, but there were such a range of points, and some of them were so specific, that I may need to write to colleagues after the debate. I hope that hon. Members understand that. I will ensure that I follow up those points personally or ask NHS London to do so. Forgive me for having to make that health warning.
I start by echoing the praise from the hon. Member for Westminster North for our NHS staff in London. They work under many interesting and unique pressures, and they respond, for the most part, magnificently. We all realise that no service is above criticism, but our starting point is that we have some amazing people working very hard under difficult circumstances. I am particularly glad that the hon. Lady and her family experienced good care at a crucial time.
The hon. Lady is right to caution that debates about health need to acknowledge, but not to exaggerate, risk. We always teeter on the brink of exaggerating points for political effect, and it is really important that we keep some sense of perspective. Several hon. Members have referred repeatedly to an A and E crisis. I want to put on the record that for the week ending 29 December 2013 last year, the figures for A and E waiting times in London demonstrate that 96% of patients were seen in under four hours in all A and E types, against a standard of 95%. For the third quarter of last year, 95.3% of patients were seen in under four hours in all A and E types.
I am not saying that we do not have problems and challenges, but let us be clear that in many places, the NHS is responding well to those challenges and meeting targets. Work force statistics show that the number of community health service doctors increased by 8.5% from 2010 to 2013. Let us make sure that we keep a sense of perspective on where we are.
Some of the comments during the debate referred to reconfigurations across London. We are quite clear that reconfiguration of front-line health services is a matter for the local NHS, precisely for the reasons that some hon. Members have given. We are trying to make sure that they are led by clinical decisions. That was acknowledged in the opening speech, as was the need for change. The hon. Member for Westminster North made that point.
Jane Ellison
Forgive me, but I really will not have a chance to respond to any of the points made if I give way. I will catch up with the hon. Lady afterwards if there are points that she specifically wants to discuss.
All the reconfigurations must focus on delivering modern health care, better patient outcomes and services as close to home as possible, but, most importantly, they must focus on saving lives and improving quality of life. Those service changes are best led by clinicians, with all of us getting involved and engaging with the process, as we must do. That is what we all want for our constituents, and there are different ways to achieve that.
Change is inevitable, as most, but not all, hon. Members have acknowledged. We have debated questions such as the changes to stroke services in London, which many campaigners predicted would have dire and dreadful outcomes. In fact, the opposite has been true, and London clinicians believe that hundreds of our constituents’ lives have been saved by the concentration of excellence in certain centres. We must be realistic about the fact that reconfiguration can bring great health benefits, as long as it meets the important tests set out by the Secretary of State, and is clinically led.
The health service has to respond to growing demand. Much of the debate has focused on the long-term challenges to the health service in London and across the country. The Government are trying to respond to those huge long-term pressures. We are looking at GP opening hours and at access. That could not be a bigger issue in London, which has a highly diverse and highly mobile population in a 24-hour city. People need to be able to access health care at a time that suits their work patterns and lifestyle, and we are pushing for changes to contracts in that area. There will be named GPs for over-75s. We are looking at the integration of social care and public health. We know that there are big challenges around that, but a big project is under way to try to tackle it.
Ring-fenced public health budgets will empower local authorities to do the very thing that many hon. Members have drawn our attention to, which is to look at the needs of local communities and respond to them at the most local level. We do not want to take a “Whitehall knows best” approach; we want to tell local authorities, “We have ring-fenced your local public health budget so that you can look at the needs of your local population and work with health and wellbeing boards and clinical commissioning groups to devise services that help people to live longer and healthier lives without the need to resort to acute services.”
There has not been much recognition of the need for the changes made to public health budgets, but of all the measures raised in the debate, those changes have some of the most exciting potential to tackle the challenges that we face.
I have touched on health and wellbeing boards. The challenge around Newham GPs would be ideal for discussion at a health and wellbeing board, where all the key people are present. It is a big challenge, and one of the first questions I asked as a Health Minister is why we struggled so badly to get GPs in our most deprived areas. There are varying answers to that, but it is a problem across the country.
The health and wellbeing board is exactly the right forum for discussion because the right people are around the table. Tackling health inequality is now built into statute through the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which must be given due attention in all parts of the health service. The Darzi-led London Health Commission will be interesting. I spoke to Lord Darzi about it just before Christmas to improve my understanding of its objectives. As a Minister with responsibility for public health and as a London MP, I will be looking closely at the commission’s outcomes and I will be keen to work with people on that. It is a big opportunity.
To touch on the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field), the formula does not currently reflect non-resident population or the homeless, but that is something that the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation and NHS England continue to consider. I will ensure that I draw my hon. Friend’s concerns to their attention and that those are fed into the ongoing process of looking at formulas.
For the first time, the formulas for CCG patients and public health allocations take into account health inequalities, and they look at GP populations rather than census-based populations. The formulas are also designed to be more locally sensitive. As the hon. Member for Westminster North and I know particularly well, in a city such as London areas that appear to be quite affluent can contain pockets of tremendous deprivation. The new formula allows for that by enabling consideration of sub-areas and the real health inequalities that they suffer. I hope that hon. Members feel some reassurance about that. We keep the matter under close watch.
Several detailed concerns were raised by the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) about Lewisham, the south London reconfiguration, maternity services and accommodation. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) referred to clause 118. I will ensure that I draw his concerns to the attention of the Minister who is leading on that Bill. No doubt that point will be responded to when the Bill is brought before the House. The Court of Appeal overturned the decision to make service change in Lewisham, and we respect that. The Secretary of State has put that on the record.
Several points were raised about the north-west London reconfiguration. That was debated in this Chamber on 15 October, after which a letter was sent by the local NHS to the hon. Member for Westminster North. If other hon. Members have not seen that letter and would find it helpful to, I am happy to put it in the Library. I note the ongoing concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) about the reconfiguration, and I will relay to the Secretary of State the detailed points that he has made and his desire for a meeting.
Other hon. Members have made comments about the same reconfiguration. For all the criticism of the plans and the analysis, I note that the shadow Minister did not commit his party to changing any of the reconfigurations or to changing NHS funding levels. If I may say so, his speech was long on analysis and short on commitment.
I conclude by saying that the issues raised today are important to all of us as London MPs. There are some big long-term challenges and the Government are trying to respond to them in the best interests of all our constituents.
Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
Before we commence the debate on Scotch whisky excise duty, I should say that we are expecting a vote—hence my glances at the Annunciator screen. Should that happen, I will call for the sitting to be suspended until the vote has taken place.
Scotch Whisky Excise Duty
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab)
I am grateful to you, Mrs Main. I am aware that we are to vote at 4 o’clock, so we will find ourselves in a short adjournment. As I speak, I am waiting for the vote to come. [Interruption.] There we go.
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.
Mr Donohoe
It is a pleasure to see you back in the Chair this afternoon, Mrs Main. It is just a pity that you do not have a glass of whisky in your hand, with which, at this time of the year, we would share a toast. Water will have to do, I am afraid.
It is quite incredible that we should have to have this debate, particularly in this very important year for the Scots, who are voting on whether to remain in the United Kingdom or to have a separate Government in Scotland. I shall pose a question: can anybody tell me how much taxation there is on a bottle of whisky that costs about £12.70?
Mr Donohoe
On a bottle of whisky that costs £12.70, more than £10 is tax, including VAT. That is the level of taxation placed on our best industry in Scotland.
Mr Donohoe
I will take interventions towards the end of my speech, if I may. I will give everybody who has made a representation to me an opportunity to speak. I also have an eye for the chair of the all-party group on Scotch whisky and spirits.
As I said, this is the year of separation, so it is important to have this debate as we move towards the Budget on 19 March. I fully support the “UK okay” campaign. One of the areas of vulnerability is the current disproportionate tax on Scottish whisky compared with English beer or cider. Whisky is taxed at 48% more than the same amount of alcohol served as beer. That is the difference in terms of the taxation on whisky and spirits. The beer duty escalator was abolished last year, but the spirits escalator continues at 2% above inflation. That should be addressed and I will come to the reasons why.
Excise duty on Scottish whisky is now 44% higher than in 2008. The escalator in 2014 will mean an increase in duty of 4.8%, or, in terms that I understand, 38p per bottle. That is what the escalator will bring. As I said, taxation as it stands now is more than £10 a bottle. Scotch whisky exports are growing, but the home market remains important, and the UK is the third largest market for Scotch whisky by volume.
However, volumes in the UK have declined by some 12% in the UK since the escalator was introduced—as a result of it, I would argue, and I am sure some of my colleagues would, too. The UK tax on spirits, which of course includes Scotch whisky, is the fourth highest in Europe. When we compare that with Sweden, Finland and Ireland, which have particular reasons for having high taxation, we can see the unfairness of the tax for the spirits industry.
The Scotch Whisky Association, which helped the all-party group, has called on the Chancellor to freeze duty on Scotch whisky in the 2014 Budget and to scrap the escalator. It should be scrapped because UK consumption has declined since it was introduced, and we want to see the UK market expand. Ernst and Young research shows that scrapping the escalator in 2014 would boost the drinks industry contribution to public finance by some £230 million in 2014 alone.
Consumers should be treated fairly across the range of alcohol products, but Scotch whisky drinkers are being heavily penalised. The sales of Scotch whisky form a significant part of the pub trade. Scrapping the escalator would boost UK sales, and therefore UK jobs in the industry. The industry is good not only for Scotland, but for the whole of the United Kingdom, because it accounts for more than 25% of all UK food exports. That is a significant figure that should not and must not be lost on the Treasury. It is good to see the Minister in her position this afternoon.
In 2012, the industry generated £4.27 billion for the UK balance of trade and 35,000 jobs. I can see there are Members present from the remote areas of Scotland; the industry has been the main employer in many small towns and villages in their constituencies. It has always been a major contributor to the support of the infrastructure within such communities, and I do not think that that has been taken into account by the Government.
Some 10,000 of those jobs are directly within the industry. Most of them, if not all of them, are in areas of most need, and they have supported the towns and communities for many years. The jobs are in rural and urban areas, and the industry is the sole employer in some of the smaller areas in Scotland.
The Scotch Whisky Association has called on the Chancellor to freeze duty on Scotch whisky in 2014—I am sure the Minister has seen that request—and also to scrap the escalator. The Chancellor took the decision last year on the basis that he would cancel the escalator for beer and cider, but not for spirits. I think that that is unfair and it does not really stack up when one considers that the reasoning was to safeguard the jobs in the pub industry. In fact, 40% of the pub industry is down to the sale of spirits, so the matter of unfairness between the pint and the wee dram needs to be looked at.
Taking action on Scotch whisky would show that the Government support that major industry both at home and abroad—that they support the jobs it creates and do not disproportionately penalise Scotland’s national drink.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent point about the benefits of the Scotch whisky industry to the Treasury and to Scotland in terms of jobs. Does he recognise the broader benefits that accrue from jobs in transportation and shipping? South of the border, in my region in the north-east, jobs are derived from transporting Scotch whisky to Teesport and there are jobs in shipping as the product is exported all over the world.
Mr Donohoe
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that important point. The issue affects not only Scotland; it equally affects his English constituency.
Ian Paisley
I am not the representative of Irish whiskey, but I do have the Bushmills distillery in my constituency. It employs 102 people, but it also supports a vital tourist industry; there are more than 140,000 visitors each year to the distillery. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the tax impacts on jobs not only in Scotland, but in my part of the United Kingdom? Indeed, 90% of what is manufactured in my constituency’s distillery is exported globally, but if the Government continue with the escalator, we are going to have high taxation on products that are exported. That is a bad signal to send to an industry.
Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
Order. Please make interventions brief. There are a lot of Members in this room. If everyone has interventions of that length, Mr Donohoe will run out of time.
Mr Donohoe
I am grateful, Mrs Main. I hope that Members will note what you have said. What the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) said is important. He is from another part of the United Kingdom and correcting this wrong tax at the Budget is as important to him and his constituents.
Mr Donohoe
I give way to my hon. Friend, who is the treasurer of the all-party group.
Gemma Doyle
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. He will be aware that the whisky industry is very important for jobs in West Dunbartonshire, too. Does he share my concern that the concessions previously given to beer and cider are mainly based on the fact that those industries ran a good campaign? I would not take that away from them, but we need a more coherent look at excise duty across alcohol products.
Mr Donohoe
Again, I am grateful for that intervention. I am sure that we have learned a lesson in that respect and that we will make damn sure that our campaign this time is as good as, if not better than, the beer campaign.
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and also for what he said earlier about the importance of the whisky industry for jobs in remote communities, such as the Isle of Jura and other places in my constituency. It is very unfair that whisky is taxed far more highly than beers and wines. We must be about the only country in the world that taxes our own product more highly than imported products such as wines.
Mr Donohoe
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention; he makes a really good point. It is really ridiculous that people can go into a supermarket in Spain, Italy, Germany or France and buy a bottle of whisky far more cheaply than people in this country can.
Mr Donohoe
I give way to my hon. Friend, who is the chairman of the all-party group.
Jim Sheridan
I want to take my hon. Friend back to the important issue of jobs. One of the significant factors of the Scotch whisky industry is that the jobs that it creates are excellent, well-paid, quality jobs. It is possible to tell that by the turnover of staff, which is very low.
Mr Donohoe
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the point he makes, and it is clear that the issue of jobs is part of the equation.
Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)
One of the crucial points that the hon. Gentleman highlighted about the export industry is that the way we treat our own whisky at home sends a signal to foreign importing markets. It is important to send the right signal to those markets, so the Treasury needs to consider the impact that the issue has on the importing countries.
Mr Donohoe
That is a very important point. If we go to the European Commission and argue with it, there is that divide between the north and south of Europe; until a few years ago, the Commissioner was very pro-wine and anti-spirits. It is an indicator of the seriousness of the situation that we are discriminated against—the Commission throws at us the level of taxation in our own country. That is an element that must be addressed by the Chancellor at the Budget.
Sir Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
The Government are arguing that the duty on whisky has gone up by 37% compared with a rise of 42% on beer. The trouble with that argument, of course, is that, because the Government have eliminated the beer escalator, that division will be eliminated very quickly. The point that we have to maintain in export terms is that this is a home-based industry. If something is good enough for beer, it is good enough for whisky; the escalator should go and we should ensure that our most successful industry is supported competitively at home and abroad.
Mr Donohoe
I could not agree more with the right hon. Gentleman.
I have taken all the interventions that I will take. I will finish by putting four questions to the Minister. First, can the Treasury explain why it was that, when it stopped the escalator on beer last year to save struggling pubs, it failed to look at the situation as far as spirits and wines were concerned? As I said, they account for some 40% of the sales in those very pubs and the rest of the hospitality sector. Given that the Chancellor wanted to help that sector, it seems strange that the rise in duty on whisky was set against that.
Secondly, what assessment—if any—has the Treasury made of the impact on pubs of last year’s announcement on beer? I hope I can get a response to that question. Thirdly, can the Treasury provide reassurances to the Scotch whisky industry that the annual attack on Scotch whisky will come to an end in the Budget in 2014? Finally, does the Treasury acknowledge that the home market for Scotch whisky, which remains the industry’s third largest market, is diminishing due to excessive tax rises each year?
Sales of Scotch whisky in the UK have dropped by 12% since the duty escalator came into being. Is it possible to hear today what is likely to be in the mind of the Chancellor? I am sure that the Minister is aware that we, as an all-party group, have made a representation to him for a meeting. I hope that what she says today will include an agreement to that meeting.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Nicky Morgan)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr Donohoe) on securing this debate and I note the wide interest in it, as shown by the number of Members here in Westminster Hall.
In the time available to me, I will be hard pressed to answer all the questions, however nicely Members indicate to me from a sedentary position that they would like to intervene. However, I shall do my best and if I do not address all the points that have been made today, I will write to the hon. Gentleman to do so, and he can perhaps share that information with other members of the all-party group and others who are interested.
I start by highlighting the Government’s continued commitment to the Scotch whisky industry. First, Scotch whisky is a protected spirit drink, which helps to maintain its high reputation both at home and abroad. Secondly, and related to that, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs will shortly be launching its spirit drinks verification scheme. Within the first two years of that scheme, every single business involved in the production of Scotch whisky will be verified to ensure that they are creating a genuine product. This will help to protect the industry’s deservedly high reputation. In fact, the Scotch Whisky Association has praised HMRC’s commitment to deliver a scheme that fits its needs.
Thirdly, I am proud to report that Scotch whisky of course featured as one of the first products in the food and drink element of the GREAT campaign. This helps to give Scotch whisky high visibility internationally in key export markets, the importance of which we have already heard about. The Scotch whisky industry is to be congratulated on its export success. The Scotch Whisky Association reports that the value of exports increased by 11% to almost £2 billion in the first six months of 2013. That is something that I think everybody in Westminster Hall today will support. I think that people will agree that those measures leave no doubt about the Government’s commitment to the Scotch whisky industry, and I want that message to be heard and understood by Members from all parts of the House.
I turn now to duty, because that is the issue that the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members, in their interventions, focused on.
Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)
The Minister may or may not be aware that I have the onerous responsibility and the pleasure of representing the heartland area of single malt production, with more than half of all Scotland’s distilleries based in Speyside. I just wanted to ask her about a basic democratic point. We have heard interventions from Labour Members, the Liberal Democrats and now from the Scottish National party, and Members from those parties make up 58 of the 59 MPs from Scotland who are at Westminster, with all of us saying that we want tax fairness and duty fairness. Is the Minister prepared to confirm that the Government will actually listen to the views of the overwhelming majority of democratically elected representatives in Westminster Hall today and deliver on tax fairness, or not?
Nicky Morgan
I hope that the message is going out that this Minister is always willing to listen and that she is willing to engage. I am also very willing to have the meeting that was suggested by the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire. However, I would be a foolish new Minister if I were to commit to announcing Budget moves now. Nevertheless, I shall certainly listen; I have listened; and I shall continue to listen to the debate that we are having and to the wider representations that have been made to me. I thank the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) for his intervention. As he said, he has a very onerous task in representing his constituency; I am sure that his constituency Fridays are filled with much fun and spirits.
I return to the duty escalator, including that on Scotch whisky. I am aware of the industry’s views on the pre-announced alcohol duty rises for 2014. It may be helpful if I explain the background to these increases before addressing the specific issues that were raised by the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire. Of course, the previous Government were responsible for introducing the spirits duty escalator and are therefore responsible for this year’s increase in spirit duty. The inflation plus 2% rises were first announced at Budget 2008 and they were extended for a further two years, until 2014-15, at the March 2010 Budget. These rises were for all alcohol duties and, as I say, were legislated for by the previous Government.
This Government made changes to beer duty at Budget 2013 to support pubs, which, as we all know from our constituencies, play an important role in local communities. The hon. Gentleman asked about the impact of last year’s Budget on pubs and I shall address that issue in a moment. However, he also talked about 68% of the alcohol that is sold in pubs being beer, so the changes to beer duty were, overall, a measure to help pubs. I can also tell him that although spirits and wine account for 41% of sales by value in the off-licence trade, they account for only 23% of sales in pubs by alcohol volume.
Mr Donohoe
I do not know where the Minister got that last figure from. I ran licensed premises, and although it is perhaps different down here in the south-east, I can tell her that in Scotland whisky accounts for at least 40% of sales in the pub, and in the pub that I ran the figure was 60%. [Laughter.]
Nicky Morgan
The hon. Gentleman’s pub sounds as though it was a very interesting place, and I am very happy to listen to representations on the figures.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the impact of Budget 2013 on pubs. The British Beer and Pub Association survey showed that, following a reduction in beer duty, 76% of the pubs would increase investment and 61% would employ more staff. That is why this reduction was targeted particularly at pubs. That is not to say that I have not listened to the hon. Gentleman’s arguments.
Given the Government’s commitment to ensuring sustainable public finances, it was not possible to end the escalator on all alcoholic products, so they made a targeted reduction in beer duty. The hon. Gentleman asked whether the Government had failed to consider other alcohol duties. I was not in the Treasury at that point, but I do not think that that was so. However, the decision to reduce the duty on beer was taken in 2013.
I have heard the views of hon. Members and I assure them that I will consider these as part of the Budget process.
Graeme Morrice
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr Donohoe) on securing this debate. The Minister may not be aware that there is a considerable number of whisky producers in my constituency, including the North British Distillery in West Calder, Glenmorangie and Glen Turner in Livingston, and Ian MacLeod Distillers in Broxburn. This last wrote to me recently to express concern about the fact that, in the past five years, while we have seen a 44% increase in taxation on whisky, there has been a 12% reduction in UK sales.
Graeme Morrice
Given the current 80% taxation on whisky, will the Minister seriously consider approaching the Chancellor before the March Budget—
Graeme Morrice
To look at freezing alcohol duty and at the abolition of the duty escalator?
Nicky Morgan
Mrs Main, I take the hint that you want me back on my feet and moving towards the conclusion of my speech.
I assure the hon. Gentleman that I will give this matter serious consideration in the run-up to the Budget. I shall certainly discuss it with my colleagues in the Treasury, including my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Nicky Morgan
I want to make progress and I am keen to get some further points in before the end of the debate, but I will try to take the hon. Gentleman’s intervention if I can.
The hon. Member for Central Ayrshire mentioned that spirit duty had risen by 44% between 2003 and 2013. I should point out that beer duty in that period rose by 56%, while still wine duty rose by 68%. We can trade as many numbers as we want, but I take the overall thrust of the arguments made today.
The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) asked about the spirits duty rate having risen by 37%. Duty on Scotch whisky has risen at a slower rate than beer duty over the medium term. The spirits duty rate was frozen between 1998 and 2008, and during that time duty rates on other alcoholic beverages increased. However, between the introduction of the escalator and 2013, the spirits duty rate rose by 37%, while other alcohol duty rates rose by 42%. I just wanted to put that on the record for the benefit of the House.
Mr Reid
I want to put it on the record that Islay, not Moray, is the heartland of the Scotch whisky industry.
We can all trade figures, but the point is that under the current duty escalator policy, the duty on spirits will rise in the next few years at a much greater rate than that on beers and will make the already unfair situation even more unfair.
Jim Sheridan
One of the best adverts for Scotch whisky was the long tradition whereby the Chancellor used to take a glass of whisky on Budget day. Is there any reason why that no longer happens?
Nicky Morgan
The hon. Gentleman is tempting me down the path of speculating on the Chancellor’s alcohol intake, which I really do not want to go down. Of course, I notice that my glass is not in front of me this afternoon.
I thank hon. Members for this debate and thank the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire for securing it. I will be happy to study the written report of it. I hope that this debate shows the Government’s continuing commitment to the Scotch whisky industry and that we will help it where we can.
Rural Broadband (North Yorkshire)
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
I am informed by the Clerk that because the last debate ended early, an extra nine minutes of this sitting is allowed, should people wish to have it.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
It is a proud pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mrs Main. I am delighted to have been given this opportunity to debate rural broadband in north Yorkshire.
Before speaking specifically about York and north Yorkshire—the most beautiful area within God’s own county—may I touch briefly on the wider broadband roll-out? I am pleased that, as part of their long-term economic plan, the Government have recognised that the future of our economy rests on the ability of our infrastructure not only to cope with the demands placed on it, but to exceed those demands and facilitate new opportunities for growth. This is no less true of superfast broadband than it is of our rail, road and air infrastructure.
The Government’s investment in superfast broadband is, to my mind, one of their greatest and most important achievements in this Parliament, yet sometimes it does not get the plaudits that it deserves. It has by no means been an easy task. It has required huge investment from the Government, totalling roughly £1.6 billion, and some hard work from all those involved in organising the roll-out, including the people physically on the ground, upgrading the telephone cabinets with the fibre.
However, all the hard work and commitment has been worth it. The recent findings from the UK broadband impact study reveal that for every £1 the Government invest in broadband, the UK economy will benefit by £20. That represents fantastic value for money in the short term. In the short term, the network construction will add around £1.5 billion to the economy, creating 11,000 jobs this year alone. In the longer term, it will increase annual gross value added by £6.3 billion. Its benefits will be spread across the country, with approximately 89% of that in areas outside London and the south-east, such as York and north Yorkshire. That vindicates the Government’s commitment to investing so much in this programme and shows that all the hard work that is being put in on a local level is delivering real results.
The roll-out has not been without its problems and it has faced some public criticism for the degree to which one company has achieved a monopoly over the roll-out contracts. There is also some concern about the apparent shortcomings in the contracts, with BT being obliged only to upgrade telephone cabinets with their fibre-to-the-cabinet approach. Some of my constituents have expressed concern that, because they receive their telephone lines from an upgraded cabinet, they are being counted by BT as though they were part of the 90%, despite being too far away from the cabinet to receive the upgraded superfast internet speeds.
However, I have received assurances from the chief executive of BT Openreach that that is not the case, and that only those who receive superfast speeds are counted. Superfast North Yorkshire has subsequently clarified that, although there may be issues about how coverage is measured in other parts of the country, the north Yorkshire contract only counts those who are capable of receiving superfast speeds.
Locally, the roll-out so far has been a roaring success. The project, which has been overseen by Superfast North Yorkshire, has been run well. When it first set out on its mission, it had a total of 670 cabinets to be upgraded—I think the technical term is “deployed”—but, to date, 350 cabinets have been upgraded, which marks 52% of the total. However, it is expected that this figure will rise to 370 next week, ensuring that the project is well over halfway to completion.
In north Yorkshire, roughly one cabinet is updated per working day. As a result, phase 1 of the roll-out is expected to be completed by October 2014, well ahead of the national target, which originally intended to provide only 90% of all households with speeds of up to 25 megabits per second by the end of 2015. That target now appears to have been pushed back, and phase 1 might not be achieved nationally until the end of 2016. Will the Minister clarify that? What might that do to the expected release of phase 2 funding?
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. He paints a positive picture, with which I agree, of how north Yorkshire is delivering superfast broadband because of the Conservative-led Government’s money. Does he agree that the National Audit Office report, which was very critical of the Government and BT, surprisingly did not even consult on the north Yorkshire example and that in future the NAO should look more closely at what we are doing in north Yorkshire?
Julian Sturdy
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. North Yorkshire’s achievements are a glowing example of what can be done at local level. I am surprised that north Yorkshire was not part of the investigation.
Take-up of superfast broadband in north Yorkshire is outpacing the national average by a considerable margin. After 12 months, take-up in the north Yorkshire intervention area is 13.4%, which proves that Superfast North Yorkshire’s demand-stimulation activity is working extremely well. It also demonstrates that there is latent demand for superfast broadband in the rural areas around north Yorkshire and York. I am sure that north Yorkshire colleagues here today can testify to that and have many examples from their constituencies.
The achievements of Superfast North Yorkshire are remarkable given that it is dealing with one of the country’s most rural counties. The county’s rurality, however, also has its drawbacks. Although I have no doubt that Superfast North Yorkshire will meet its 90% coverage target well before the rest of the country, I remain concerned that there is a deepening digital divide between the 90% and the 10%, who appear to be being left behind by phase 1 of the roll-out.
I see the divide first hand in my constituency. Communities such as Haxby, Wigginton, Dunnington and Elvington are already enjoying the benefits of superfast speeds, which are coming soon to areas such as Wheldrake. Even small, quiet villages in my constituency, such as Rufforth and Stockton-on-the-Forest, have recently had their cabinets upgraded, yet there remain a number of small communities in my constituency that are sadly too far from the local cabinet to benefit. Those communities include Askham Bryan, Askham Richard, Hessay, Acaster Malbis, parts of Naburn and Holtby to name a few.
A constituent of mine from Askham Bryan informs me that the maximum download speed he can obtain is 1.2 megabits per second, which is typical of the rest of the village. He says:
“1.2 mbps permits basic web usage such as email and relatively slow browsing. However, any attempt to stream data-hungry applications such as live TV are not possible. Multiple users online at the same time in the same household also seriously compromises the performance of even basic applications.”
My constituent relocated to Askham Bryan from London without moving jobs, under the presumption that the investment in broadband in the region would enable him to access facilities such as web-based video conferencing, which have become the norm for many and would suit the flexible working arrangements that he has put in place for himself.
True to form, Superfast North Yorkshire has been excellent at engaging with our local rural communities, and the chief executive officer has met Askham Bryan parish council to discuss the problems it faces and the potential solutions. In the specific case of Askham Bryan, it is increasingly likely that other technologies, such as fixed wireless, 4G or satellite broadband, will need to be deployed to provide the village with the speeds it needs and deserves. The parish council has contacted independent wireless broadband providers, which have explained that the technology is available to the village and is relatively simple to implement. The lack of certainty on the future direction of the roll-out, however, has prevented the parish council from going any further.
That point is important because the wireless broadband providers appear to be willing to invest their time and money if there is a chance that BT will subsequently upgrade the village’s cabinet. As such, much greater clarity is needed on the future of the roll-out, so that communities on the wrong side of the digital divide are able to plan their next steps based on certainties rather than possibilities.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and I strongly support his argument on the success of the roll-out of superfast broadband across our county. He makes a powerful point on extending the roll-out beyond the 90% target. Does he agree that we now face the question of how we achieve that next stage? Superfast broadband makes an enormous difference, and he has articulated the challenges that face the broadband have-nots, including some of the villages in his constituency. The same applies to villages such as Lower Dunsforth and others in my Harrogate and Knaresborough constituency, and it is important that such communities are able to access broadband as quickly as possible.
Julian Sturdy
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. All Members representing north Yorkshire and York will have examples in their constituency of communities that are suffering from the digital divide and that are among the 10% rather than the 90%. It is important that we have clarity on where we are going, and I am sure the Minister will set that out, as he has in the past. We need that clarity for the future so that we may build on the success of what has already been achieved in north Yorkshire.
We must not forget the role of local authorities. In my constituency, I have been encouraged by the levels of communication between Superfast North Yorkshire and City of York council. Superfast North Yorkshire is encouraging the council to contribute to an intermediary project that will enable Superfast North Yorkshire to continue extending coverage to some of the most rural areas.
Superfast North Yorkshire has successfully pulled together a further £8 million for the project to extend phase 1 of the roll-out, which will potentially increase coverage to between 92% and 93% of the county. That sum is made up of £3 million contributed by North Yorkshire county council, £3 million from the European regional development fund and £2 million from Broadband Delivery UK’s contingency fund, for which my north Yorkshire colleagues and I, ably led by my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith), assisted in lobbying.
Given the pace of the roll-out in north Yorkshire and the European regulations that are in place, the additional pot of money will not get Superfast North Yorkshire past the summer of 2015 before its hugely successful programme comes to a grinding halt. All that will be left is a wait for the next tranche of Government funding for phase 2. Given the complexities of procurement, planning and the roll-out, it would be a tremendous shame for Superfast North Yorkshire to have to kick-start the roll-out again in 2016. During a 12-month shutdown Superfast North Yorkshire would, due to its own success, lose many of the skills it has built up.
Whether City of York council’s executive chooses to contribute to the £8 million project is entirely at its own discretion. I am led to believe, however, that of the £530 million granted to local authorities from central Government, City of York council was allocated some £1.4 million. I therefore call on the council’s executive to honour its responsibility to the communities in my constituency that I have mentioned and to ensure that that important Government funding is well spent.
I finally come to the central purpose of the debate. From the Minister’s recent response to my question, I am aware that the finer details of the phase 2 roll-out are still being worked out. Given the fantastic work of Superfast North Yorkshire and its partners, however, I ask the Government to look seriously at granting the region an early release of the next phase of funding.
I have already touched on the several strong reasons for doing so. Take-up in north Yorkshire is well ahead of the national average, which proves that there is latent demand for rural broadband in the region. Superfast North Yorkshire has achieved great things across the region and the hard work that has been put in deserves to be rewarded. It has not let the absence of further funding hold it back, but even after taking the initiative and securing extra money for the interim period, it is unlikely to get beyond the summer of 2015. Finally, considering the fantastic pace that the roll-out has gathered in north Yorkshire, it would be an awful shame for those who have worked so hard to have to kick-start the roll-out again in 2016 after an indefinite pause.
To those points, I would like to add a further call on the Government to provide greater clarity over the future of the roll-out—I hope the Minister can do that in his remarks—so that those communities left behind by the digital divide can plan ahead for how they will try to bridge it. While I welcome the additional £10 million for broadband as part of the national infrastructure plan announced in the recent autumn statement, I appeal to the Government to continue to support that hugely important programme with the necessary resources and to ensure that we make the most of the new technologies available to us.
I am again thankful for the opportunity to speak. The Government pride themselves on rewarding those who work hard and want to get on. Superfast North Yorkshire has worked tremendously hard, and I hope that the Government will give it what it needs to finish the job.
Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
Order. The debate will finish at 5.9 pm. Does the hon. Gentleman have the permission of the Minister and of the Member who secured the debate to make a brief speech?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
indicated assent.
Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)
Thank you, Mrs Main. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy)—my constituency neighbour —on securing the debate. I also refer the Chair and hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
I start by congratulating Superfast North Yorkshire, BT and the Government—for the cash—as we have made good progress in a relatively short space of time. With the project now halfway through and the target of 90% of homes having access to superfast broadband well down the track, the problem is that some villages will achieve only 2 megabits. They can see that that is the case and feel that they are being left in the slow lane. A constituency such as Selby and Ainsty faces real challenges. There are well over 100 villages. Many of them are on the border with other local authorities, where the exchange is across that border. Residents in villages such as Ryther, which currently has a 365 kilobit download speed, Newton Kyme, Catterton, Bickerton, Kirkby Overblow, Ulleskelf, Fairburn and many more have all expressed frustration at the pace of roll-out.
The problem appears to be the lack of a transparent plan to deliver the committed 2 megabits to the remaining 10%. The fact that the people who currently get the worst speeds have no visibility on when or whether they will be upgraded gives rise to considerable concern. I understand that Superfast North Yorkshire is about to leaflet every home in north Yorkshire to ensure that people are aware of the need to order the upgrade, because if they do not order it, they will not get it. Doing so might make the last 5% highly visible. It is now clear which areas are at risk of not being upgraded. They are the areas with the strongest support for the roll-out programme, because speeds are currently the lowest. They are also the areas that would have been the most supportive of the spending of the additional funds to upgrade the service. They might now be realising that they could see no improvement from that investment.
Julian Smith
Does my hon. Friend agree that, in addition to clarity on the 2 megabit issue that he so eloquently articulates, BT’s feet must be held to the fire with regard to the cabinets across north Yorkshire that it originally said were commercially viable? It now says that they are not, leaving communities such as Cononley in my constituency stuck between what they thought was going to be commercially viable and being outside the intervention area.
Nigel Adams
As usual, my hon. Friend is spot on. His remark leads quite nicely on to my next point. One of the features of the contract is that if take-up is high, money can be clawed back and then used to extend the project to further cabinets. For that reason, encouraging people to sign up for faster speeds is extremely important.
I take issue with something that my hon. Friend mentioned. Take-up has actually been relatively modest. Good areas typically have 25% to 30%. I am quite happy to be put right on that, but I am sure that take-up has been significantly less in other areas. That may be partly due to the lack of clarity about needing to place an order, which will hopefully be put right, or it might be that people who already have 10 megabits or more simply think that there is no need to upgrade to get 40 megabits.
Finally, the vision for this excellent project was to provide superfast broadband for 90% and at least 2 megabits to 10% and to revitalise rural economies. That vision generated support and enthusiasm for the project. Just because it is hard does not mean that we should be walking away from delivering something that was initially so enthusiastically received. In the next of my regular communications with Superfast North Yorkshire and BT, I hope to be given some comfort as to how the remaining 10% will be addressed.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) on securing the debate, and I am pleased to see him joined by my hon. Friends the Members for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith), for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones) and for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams). As one can see as the camera pans around, God’s own county is represented by four of the finest elected representatives to be found in any legislature in the world. It is a testament to their power and influence that not a single member of the Opposition has dared to turn up to challenge anything that my hon. Friends have to say.
Now that I have taken my tongue out of my cheek, I must say in all seriousness, for the edification of their constituents and any local journalists watching the debate, that my hon. Friends have been assiduous in lobbying for their constituencies and to secure the best settlement to deliver the best broadband deal for their constituents, because they understand its importance. They have been aided and abetted by John Moore, the chief executive of NYnet, which is the company set up to deliver broadband to North Yorkshire, as well as the excellently led, Conservative North Yorkshire council. It is important to explain to those who might be new to the broadband debate that North Yorkshire was one of the first councils to participate in the Government’s rural broadband programme, because it was oven-ready, as it were, when the programme was announced. That is why, while I will go on to talk about the general success of the rural broadband programme, North Yorkshire stands out as one of the most successful areas.
Julian Smith
Just to extend the mutual congratulations slightly, I want to put on the record our thanks to the Minister for being so responsive over the past few years to relentless e-mails and letters from all of us. His responsiveness has made a massive difference.
Mr Vaizey
I am grateful, but perhaps we had better stop there, Mrs Main, and get to the substance of the debate, or people will start to turn against us.
North Yorkshire is one of the largest rural broadband projects in the country. It was the first to get under way under our rural broadband programme. We have put almost £18 million into the project, together with more than £8 million of European funding—if I am allowed to say that in public—and £9 million from BT, making a total investment of more than £35 million. The project is now on track to be completed by October this year, which is ahead of schedule. We also recognise the need to do more, and partly in response to the relentless e-mails, letters and conversations, we allocated a further £3 million to North Yorkshire, because that leveraged an additional £5 million of funding from the local council and in European money, allowing coverage to be extended further.
As for what we have achieved so far, the current contract will get 670 cabinets enabled for superfast broadband, which will deliver 168,000 premises as passed. Mindful of the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer about distinguishing between access to fibre and getting superfast speeds, I can say that that means 150,000 premises achieving speeds greater than 25 megabits. It is important to stress that we distinguish between those who have access to cabinets that have been enabled for superfast broadband and those who actually receive the speeds, because we recognise that some premises are too far from the cabinets to get the designated speeds.
More than half the cabinets have been deployed so far, which is 350, or 52% of the total; 95,000 premises have been passed, or 57% of the total; and 86,000 of those premises receive speeds of 25 megabits or more. By the end of next week, we expect 370 cabinets to have been enabled, so the project is going well. It is important to stress that this has been helped not only by the assiduous nature of the MPs’ holding the Government to account, but by NYnet on the ground and a proactive council, which have been vital. Some people have criticised the way in which we have gone about working with local councils, rather than having a national tender, for example, but having councils that are partners with BT has made a huge difference, because it joins up with things such as planning to ensure that broadband is rolled out all the more speedily.
Despite criticism of the programme, the results are now beginning to speak for themselves. For example, in Rutland more than 9,000 premises have been passed, and we expect that project to conclude by the summer; 95 more communities in Norfolk are now accessing fibre broadband, thanks to the programme; and in Suffolk, 90 miles of fibre cable have been laid, and 10,000 homes and businesses are getting broadband three months ahead of schedule, with a further 2,500 premises in 16 communities getting it in the autumn.
Many authorities are going further than our original target of 90%: Cambridgeshire is going for 98%; Lancashire 97%; Rutland 94%; and Wales, which has passed 100,000 premises and is now six months ahead of schedule, 96%. By the end of 2013, with 43 out of 44 projects signed, half of them already had live coverage. Superfast Cornwall has seen more than 194,000 premises passed by fibre and is aiming for 95% of fibre coverage. Northern Ireland has more than 90% of fibre coverage.
I take this opportunity to pay tribute to BT and its engineers. Over the Christmas period, all of us have seen, or experienced, the horrendous weather that led to trouble with power lines and so on. The flooding still afflicts a great many areas of the country. Throughout that entire period, however, BT engineers were working to meet their milestones. I have been told stories of engineers working with water up to their shoulders as they were preparing to lay fibre, or working in holes where the pumps had to be kept on permanently to keep the water from flooding them, so that the milestones could be met. BT gets a lot of criticism for the programme, but most of it is unwarranted. It is worth our pausing to pay tribute to the work of the BT engineers, in particular over this Christmas period.
On the core points made by my hon. Friends, I would characterise the tone of their remarks as, “It’s going well, but could do better.” We could do better in two or three areas, the first of which might be the allocation of the next £250 million. It is worth making the point that, having allocated a little more than £500 million to reach 90% superfast broadband, the Chancellor has allocated a further £250 million to reach 95%. We want to get that money allocated as soon as possible.
I was not in a hole up to my shoulders in water, but I can assure my hon. Friends that my officials and I and BT were all looking at the issue over the Christmas and new year period. We hope to make an announcement shortly, but I know that they appreciate that we have to get it right and ensure that the money is allocated properly and fairly. I can be certain, however, that good partners like North Yorkshire will, I hope, receive appropriate funding to carry on their good work.
Furthermore, it is important to acknowledge, as I have already done, that there is a difference between a fibre-enabled cabinet and people getting superfast access. I reassure my hon. Friends that we make the distinction. They also mentioned the concern about BT first saying that a cabinet is commercially viable, but then saying that it is not and that it should be part of the rural roll-out. Detailed planning is undertaken, but circumstances on the ground can change, so there needs to be a degree of flexibility and give and take. I can, however, again assure my hon. Friends that when BT finds that a cabinet is not commercially viable and seeks to put it into the rural programme, we do have detailed discussions. Likewise, sometimes there are parts of the rural programme that become commercially viable.
As for clawing money back from BT when take-up is higher, I assure my hon. Friends that where the take-up of broadband exceeds the target set under the contract, we do claw money back. That money is put back into the programme to extend coverage further.
Finally, I assure my hon. Friends that we are also looking at the £10 million that the Chancellor has allocated to us to take superfast broadband from 95% to 100%. That is money for test-bed experiments. It is important to stress that, in particular in rural areas, prices rise exponentially for that very last 5%.
Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
I call Julian Sturdy. I am sorry, I mean Nigel Adams.
Nigel Adams
I aspire to be like my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy).
Nigel Adams
Does the Minister have any experience of hard-to-reach areas in other parts of the country implementing wi-fi solutions? Does he have any knowledge of the take-up, or experience of how well such solutions work? In one of my villages, Ulleskelf, I helped to launch a wi-fi service more than a year ago. My understanding is that the take-up has been low—
Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
Order. The Minister needs the remaining 40 seconds to respond.
Mr Vaizey
There are individual solutions and it is important that we remain open to them. I receive e-mails from individual providers which claim that they can provide commercial solutions for the last 5%. It is important that we hear from all potential providers, which is why we have set aside that money to stress-test solutions before making that final allocation to get us to 100% superfast broadband.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Statement
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Air Navigation Guidance
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)
Today I am pleased to announce the publication of a revised version of the air navigation guidance. I am grateful for the technical assistance of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the input of those who responded to the consultation—carried out in summer 2013. A summary of the responses to the consultation and the Government’s reply to these responses is being published alongside the new guidance.
Under the Transport Act 2000, the CAA is required to take account of environmental guidance given to it by the Secretary of State when exercising its air navigation functions. The new guidance has two key objectives. The first is to provide the CAA with additional clarity on the Government’s environmental objectives relating to air navigation in the UK, including the need to improve the efficiency of our UK airspace network. The second is a reaffirmation of the need to consult local communities near airports when airspace changes are being considered in the vicinity of these airports. The guidance now reflects significant developments such as the creation of the future airspace strategy and single European sky, and the aviation policy framework.
Although this guidance has been prepared, consulted on and revised by the Government separately from the Airports Commission’s work, it is notable that the clarity it brings around the introduction of performance-based navigation routes at our major airports and the need for greater delegation of decision-making powers over airspace changes to the CAA are in line with the findings of the commission’s recently published interim report. The Government’s full response to the report will follow in the spring. In the meantime, this publication demonstrates the Government’s desire to act quickly to make the best use of existing capacity.
A copy of the guidance can be found on my Department’s website at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/air- navigation-guidance and I will place copies in the Libraries of both Houses.
Grand Committee
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Pensions Bill
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Colwyn) (Con)
My Lords, I have the usual announcement. If there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, the Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes or at such a time as we are all back in our seats.
Clause 5: Transitional rate of state pension
Amendment 22
Baroness Turner of Camden
Baroness Turner of Camden (Lab)
My Lords, this is a rather complicated matter. We are on to the area of people who are contracted in and those who are contracted out. Under the Government’s proposal, an employee who by April 2016 has already built up a state pension entitlement equal to or in excess of the single state pension cannot add further to it. This means that a large number of long-term contracted-in employees will face the prospect of a reduced state pension. These employees, by definition, have not had access to quality company DB pensions during their career, and SERPS and the second-tier pension were originally designed to assist them. By contrast, an employee who has been long-term contracted-out will have an established right to the basic state pension only. Under the transitional terms, they would have the ability to add to their single pension benefit and could increase it from the prospective £107 of the basic state pension level to £144 in approximately nine years.
The amendment is designed to be helpful. We realise, of course, that the transition may be difficult. Some people may feel that they are losing out as a result, and we want to ensure that as few as possible feel that way. The idea of the amendment is to limit the loss of future rights to accrue for the contracted-in employees and to put them on an equal footing with contracted-out employees. Under the new scheme, both groups will in future be paying the same amount of national insurance contribution. The idea of the amendment was therefore to ensure that the transition that is taking place will be as smooth as possible, and that people who think that they have been left out or that their conditions are undermined will feel that every effort is being made by the Government—if they accept our amendment or something rather similar—to make the transition as painless as possible. I beg to move.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, I apologise on behalf of my noble friend Lady Sherlock for her absence from today’s Committee. I should explain that she became quite ill over the Christmas holidays and spent part of them in hospital. She is now on the mend but, wisely but reluctantly, as I am sure those noble Lords who know her can imagine, she has accepted the advice of her medical adviser that it is not yet appropriate for her to come back to work. However, she is hopeful that she will be fit to recommence her duties in your Lordships’ House some time next week and hopes to be with us for the next scheduled Committee day. I know that noble Lords will want to extend their best wishes to her for a quick recovery.
I also pray the Committee’s indulgence to express my sadness at the news of the shocking and untimely death of my very good friend Paul Goggins. He was the best of the best. No words can express the sorrow that I feel. I shall miss him a lot, and I just want his family to know that my thoughts and prayers are with them at this very difficult time.
We are now on Clause 5, which, as my noble friend Lady Turner of Camden, explained, deals with the transitional rate of state pension. Once again, my noble friend has allowed the Committee an opportunity for some further clarification and explanation from the Minister. In the House of Commons, the Minister for Pensions, Steve Webb, dealt with this clause in two paragraphs. To be fair to him, it took slightly longer to explain Schedule 1 but most of that was probably, rightly, a paean of praise for the drafting and for parliamentary counsel. It appears that Schedule 1 is a unique piece of drafting and reads logically, simply and straightforwardly. If all legislation were as clear, it would be very helpful.
I hope the Minister will forgive us if we tarry a little in this important provision, given that we do not have a lot to go on from the debate this Bill has been subject to thus far. Clause 5 and Schedule 1 explain how the transitional rate is calculated. My understanding—and if it is not right I am sure the Minister will correct me—is that this rate applies to everyone who, under Clause 4(1)(c), has at least one pre-commencement qualifying year. A pre-commencement qualifying year is one year of national insurance contributions before 6 April 2016 and, for completeness, after 6 April 1978—although I suspect that is not of great relevance. Everyone who has such a pre-commencement qualifying year and who meets the minimum qualifying period will have the foundation amount, which is the higher of either the pre-commencement and post-commencement years added together or the amount already accrued under the old system, whichever is the larger. In short, such a person will get what they would get under the old rules or what they would get under the new rules, whichever is the greater. Thereafter we are working on a maximum of £144 and one thirty-fifth of £144 for each year until they reach the maximum. Over and above that, as my noble friend has pointed out, there comes a point, no matter what age you are, when you cannot accrue any more pension entitlement. It is capped. Indeed, there was some debate in the House of Commons as to whether the pursuit of the word “cap” was appropriate. Interestingly, “cap” is in the schedule itself. You cannot accrue any further pension under the current system. As with the present system, after 30 years you still have an obligation to pay national insurance but you will be contributing not to your pension but to the whole pot.
Beyond that, we knew—I think until the Prime Minister’s recent announcement on “The Andrew Marr Show” on 6 January—that none of this was guaranteed to be triple locked. I digress a little because I am not entirely sure exactly where we stand with the fact that the Prime Minister took the opportunity to make an announcement on “The Andrew Marr Show” on retaining the triple lock for the duration of the next Parliament. This will provide existing pensioners, I think, and those retiring soon after the implementation of this Bill, with some degree of comfort in the rather unstable financial world we are now living in and I venture to suggest that it was calculated to do so. It was calculated by the Prime Minister to generate that degree of relationship between him and those people.
The Opposition have supported the triple lock since it was proposed by the Government. Maybe the Minister can take this opportunity to tell us if this announcement constitutes a Conservative Party manifesto policy pledge or is it—as I think we could probably, in an inspired fashion, guess that the junior partner in this coalition is unlikely to take a different view—now government policy, issued on behalf of both coalition partners? I apologise if I have offended any noble Lords by my reference to “junior”. Perhaps I will just refer to them as “the other party in the coalition”.
Are pensions within the welfare cap now? People are asking whether the winter fuel allowance and other pensioner benefits will be protected. Is the Prime Minister planning to take from one part of a person’s pension pot and put it in another with no gain? Will the triple lock apply to existing pensions? Will it apply to pension savings credit? Is this within the welfare cap itself? Will the triple lock apply to S2P or are we retaining the uplift? There are lots of questions. I suspect the Minister, who carefully prepares for these things, anticipated a significant number of them.
I will resist the temptation to go back over all the ground of the debate on the triple lock which we could not have because there was apparently no guarantee for it. We now appear to have the best we can expect in terms of a guarantee, bearing in mind what the Prime Minister had to say. Maybe the Minister would be willing to engage with that. Perhaps he could also explain a little more than was in the two paragraphs of the Written Ministerial Statement yesterday about the money that has been captured from the reserve in order to build the IT for the accelerated implementation of these provisions. He may have something further to say that could be relevant to our discussions on this Bill, although this may not be the right time to do it.
To a limited degree, we know about the transitional rate of the state pension. This is an opportunity for the Minister to explain it with a degree of clarity that is always welcome in the official record of debates on Bills. I hope that the Minister will engage with the questions posed by my noble friend Lady Turner in relation to this, and I am sure we shall all be much the wiser if he does so.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Browne, for stepping into the place of the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, with his customary skill. I join him in paying tribute to Paul Goggins. I knew him much less well than the noble Lord, Lord Browne, did, but I worked with him on the Mesothelioma Bill—which is now an Act—and I found him knowledgeable, supportive and an extraordinarily likeable man. He is a real loss to many of us.
Lord Freud
On the series of questions that the noble Lord, Lord Browne, raised about the triple lock, I would direct him to the next Conservative manifesto if he wants more information. I will not go into any more detail, but I will promise to deal with the amendment in more than two paragraphs and to treat it with the dignity that it deserves.
The amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, concerns the single-tier position of people entitled to a protected payment—so, in other words, those with foundation amounts higher than the full single-tier pension. People in this position are likely to have built substantial additional state pension entitlement in the existing system and would typically have been contracted into the additional state pension for most of their working life.
Let me first say that the decision to close the additional state pension in 2016 was by design, rather than by accident, as it allows us to provide a simpler, fairer state pension. Most of the complexity inherent in the current system is associated with the additional state pension and contracting out. This in turn makes it more difficult for a person to know how much pension they are likely to get from the state and how much more they would need to save to realise their desired income in retirement. However, we are recognising pre-commencement qualifying years in the transition design and will allow people to gain amounts above the full single-tier pension. We also uprate the whole single-tier amount by earnings, as opposed to just the basic state pension in the current system, and any excess is price-protected. I think we have had sufficient reference to the triple lock around that.
The noble Baroness’s amendment would allow those with protected payments to add up to nine extra qualifying years to their foundation amount. This would provide for a maximum of an extra £37 a week in single-tier pension—or, in other words, nine times the £4.11 a week illustrative figure. If we were to do this, we simply would not have a single-tier system. We would, in fact, enhance disparities in state pension outcomes counter to the aims of the reform which seeks to provide a flat-rate amount on which people can save. For example, a person whose pre-commencement qualifying years result in a pension that is £1 above the illustrative amount of £144 a week could add up to nine more qualifying years. However, this generosity would not be extended to a person whose pre-commencement qualifying years resulted in a pension just below, or at, the full single-tier amount: this person’s pension would be capped at £144 of the illustrative amount. This seems arbitrary and unfair.
We are also talking about potentially enhancing the entitlements of up to around 1.5 million single-tier pensioners who will be receiving a protected payment in the 2030s. This would come at a significant cost—each extra year added to each individual’s entitlement would add £200 a year to the costs of the single-tier pension. As I have already said, the costs of this amendment would be considerable and it would benefit a group which is already receiving £11 a week more than the full single tier on average.
To sum up, the single-tier pension is designed to give people a clear foundation for saving. The transition arrangements recognise the contributions people will have made up to 2016. Further enhancements for people with amounts higher than the full single-tier pension would undermine the principles of the reform and come at considerable cost. I therefore ask the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Turner of Camden
I thank the Minister for his detailed response to the amendment. It was of course designed to cover the situation where a number of people may feel that they are being badly done by in the transitional process. That is why it was suggested that an amendment be put down and the Government’s views on it sought. I am grateful for what he has said. I acknowledge, of course, that there will be some cost involved—I realise that we mostly put down amendments that involve some cost. None the less, we were anxious to try to ensure that people should not feel hard done by if they feel that they are losing out in any respect. However, I note what he has said. We shall have a good look at this issue before Report and I shall let the people who originally raised it with me know what the response was. In the mean time I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Turner of Camden
“( ) The amount to be revalued in accordance with the full rate of the state pension.”
Baroness Turner of Camden
This, again, concerns a somewhat difficult point. Currently, paragraph 6(2) of Schedule 1 provides that amounts of pre-commencement pension up to the level of the full single pension will increase in line with “the full rate” of the single state pension, while any amount in excess of that will rise only in line with CPI inflation. In other words, the rate of revaluation is on the basis of prices rather than, as in the past, in relation to earnings. This takes us into the whole area of revaluation. We have already heard that, apparently, government policy is in future going to support the triple lock, which I personally have always supported. If the triple lock were accepted, and if our amendment were accepted, that would certainly bring the whole thing into line with the triple lock, because it would increase this section of the pension in line with earnings.
I am rather surprised that the Government continue to imagine that it is possible, in this particular section of the Bill, to have revaluation in line not with earnings, or indeed with the triple lock at all, but in line with prices. That is completely out of kilter with what will, hopefully, be in the rest of the Bill and with support for the triple lock. I therefore suggest that the Minister look again at the amendment and perhaps agree with what we are suggesting: that the amount to be revalued should be in accordance with the full rate of the state pension, which would of course bring you directly into the earnings section rather than looking at prices again. I do not think that we want to look at prices again in relation to any section of the Bill. If we are going to have the triple lock, which I hope we shall, that would of course not arise because the best of three would be payable in respect of all the pension payments referred to in the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, I fully support what my noble friend has just said and have some amendments in this group which point in the same direction. The issue is fairness in relation to expectations. Under this part of the schedule, if your entitlement under the prior system is greater than the reference point, it is index-linked on a different basis from that on which it would be if it falls below the reference point.
The Minister may regard that as part of the overall approach, but in terms of the expectations of the people concerned there is in essence the same point as was in my noble friend’s previous amendment: somebody who is retiring in 15 years’ time may be able to provide other means of savings to make up for the loss of expectation. However, if they are retiring fairly close to the due date of the single tier, then their expectations cannot be made up in that time. A significant degree of unfairness applies there. The same applies in relation to the subject matter of these amendments if you happen to be one side or another, under the old system, of the proposed reference figure of £144 or whatever it turns out to be. There is no particular reason why one group of workers—who have, by and large, not had the most favourable pension schemes but have saved into the state second pension—should be treated differentially in this way, compared with their expectation.
It is an issue of fairness. The triple lock seems to have all-round support except in these clauses. It seems that the Government, at a relatively small cost, could make the adjustment here and save quite a lot of aggro and, I suspect, a significant postbag for most Members of Parliament.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
My Lords, I have no idea how many persons Clause 6 is expected to relate to, but it seems to be a discrete and relatively small group of pensioners. As I understand it, it deals with those who, after the start date, leave a contracted-out pension scheme where, under the rules of the scheme, they are not entitled to a pension and their transitional rate will be calculated as if they have never been contracted out before, and thereafter by reference to Schedule 1 which will set out the rules whereby that transitional rate will be calculated.
Amendments 25 to 29, as my noble friends have explained, all have similar intentions behind them. They refer particularly to the revaluation of the foundation amount and the protected accrued state pension amount above the single-tier amount for people with pre-commencement qualifying years of practicable pensionable age. As my noble friends have explained, the amendments are designed to ensure that for the revaluation of the foundation amount and the amount in excess of the full single-tier state pension, the protected payment would be in line with average annual increases in earnings as opposed to annual increases in general price levels. I hope that I have understood the effect of these complicated amendments. Currently, the Bill specifies that the valuation of the foundation amount up to the full rate of the state pension is to be revalued by earnings and any excess over that rate is to be revalued in line with the annual increase in the general level of prices.
For all those reasons articulated by my noble friends, which it would be otiose to repeat, I look forward to the Minister’s assessment of my noble friend’s amendment. I ask him to address these additional questions when he responds to the amendment. How will the public be informed of these changes to their pension entitlement in order to ensure that they are able to make adequate preparation for a secure retirement? In the words of my noble friends Lady Turner and Lord Whitty, will they be able to calibrate their expectations? Do the Government plan to review these arrangements at some time in the future? My noble friend Lord Whitty asked a very pertinent question: what are the cost implications of these amendments? In my estimation, they appear to relate to a comparatively small number of people. If the Minister is not able to tell us, will he come back to my noble friend before Report so that that information can inform the debate, if it takes place then?
Lord Freud
My Lords, it might be helpful if I explain the principle behind having protected payments. We recognise that some people who will reach pensionable age under the single tier will already have amounts of additional pension which take them over the full single-tier rate. A key consideration in the design of the transition was that this extra would not be taken away. Revaluing the protected payment, at least by increases in prices, will maintain its purchasing power over time.
Let me deal directly with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, about fairness in relation to expectations. Under the current system, the additional state pension is revalued up to state pension age in line with average earnings, but is then indexed only by prices once in payment. A man retiring in the first 10 years of single tier could expect to spend, on average, 20 years in retirement. In single tier, we have shifted this balance between adjustments before and after pensionable age, and the majority of people receiving protected payments will be better off overall as a result of this shift.
In the current system, only basic state pension is uprated by a minimum of earnings. In the future, the full amount of the single-tier pension would be uprated in this way. So using the 2012-13 White Paper figures, this means that people will see the illustrative £144 of their state pension being uprated each year by earnings, or more—potentially the triple lock—not just £107. People with a protected payment will be relatively close to pension age, so the revaluation will typically be applied only for a few years. So, for example, even someone with an above average protected payment of £20 with 10 years left until they reach retirement would find that revaluation leaves them £4 per week worse off upon reaching pensionable age, but £4 better off 10 years later.
The amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, and the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, would effectively incorporate earnings revaluation of the protected payment into single tier. As this is a cost-neutral package of reforms, we would need to make offsetting changes elsewhere. Given that we expect most people to be better off from the combined revaluation and uprating changes, this would be difficult to justify. To give noble Lords a response to their question about the costs we are talking about, I can tell them that using earnings to revalue the protected payment would have annual costs, which would peak at around £150 in about 2040.
Lord Freud
It would be £150 million per annum—I am not doing too well with my millions and billions. Let me be specific: £150 million per annum at the peak in about 2040.
As regards the question from the noble Lord, Lord Browne, on the review, we will look at how we do that as part of our overall communication strategy, part of which will be about providing people with individualised information. I hope that I have covered all the questions and therefore ask the noble—
Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)
Before the Minister sits down, I hope that he will help me. I think that he made reference to the proposals being cost neutral and that his previous formulation went something along the lines that the new arrangements would not be more costly than the current ones. Should we be worried about this nuance?
Lord Freud
My Lords, it was not my intention that the noble Lord should be worried about it. I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Turner of Camden
I thank the Minister for that response but he will not be surprised to learn that I am not terribly happy with it because I cannot envisage a situation in which any element of pension provision could be linked to prices rather than anything else, and rather than the triple lock which we have all talked about. Therefore, although I thank the Minister for his detailed response, we will have to look at it very carefully because I am not happy about any element of pension provision where there is revaluation based on prices. It is out of kilter with the rest of the thinking in relation to pensions generally and we will certainly have to think about this and come back to it on Report. However, in the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) Regulations may provide that those entitled to or subject to a pension credit or a pension debit shall be advised annually of their entitlement.”
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, we move on to a different subject, which is pension sharing on divorce. This is a very simple, short amendment that raises the issues of divorce that were touched on in previous amendments. When we delivered pension sharing on divorce—many of my noble friends were absolutely vital in that activity in the 1990s—it primarily affected private pensions. We thought that the portion that could be set aside as part of the divorce settlement would be the basis of a useful pension for the divorced spouse—usually the woman. We were also anxious that he and she would build on—or, in his case, perhaps rebuild—their pension shares back up again so that both would face retirement with an adequate pension. However, most divorcing spouses do not seek pension sharing. In some cases, obviously, there may not be much pension to share, particularly if the divorce takes place at a relatively young age—often, sadly, younger women do not always properly value their husbands’ pension, and solicitors, I am afraid, are still pretty sleepy about what is quite a technical issue. Many of those who share pensions do not realise the need for or the possibility of rebuilding their separate pensions. However, out of 120,000 or 125,000 divorces a year, an average of 10,000 divorces involve pension sharing, which means that 8% or 9% of total divorces involve pension sharing of private occupational pensions.
This amendment asks what the implications are for the new state pension. Currently, under existing laws—we clarified this again in a previous discussion on divorcees—upon divorce the woman can substitute the man’s NI record for BSP in lieu of her own at the point of divorce, if his is the higher, and she may also be entitled to half of his additional pension—SERPS or S2P—if the court so decrees as part of the sharing of matrimonial assets.
Under the new regime, she will not be able to substitute his NI contributions for her own, a point that we argued a few amendments back. The only element that can be split or shared, if the court decrees it, is the protected pension; for example, the frozen, additional amount from SERPS and S2P, to which my noble friend referred on a previous amendment. What is more, if he has a shortfall in his NI contributions towards the new state pension—possibly because he has a track record in the public sector, I imagine, with contracting out—some of his additional pension will be brought over to make good his NI record and that transferred slice of protected pension will not then be available for sharing. I am assuming a genderised position here, I am afraid. So she takes the double whammy: not only does she not get an ability to substitute his NI contributions for her own for the basic state pension element, but, equally, if he has an inadequate NI contribution—that may well be the case if he has had a lifetime of contracting out, has never had head space and wishes to make good his shortfall in the new state pension—as I understand it, she will then not be able to access that chunk of his protected and S2P or SERPS pension, which will go across to make good the shortfall.
I would be grateful if the Minister would confirm that I have understood this correctly. If so, the woman has a pretty nasty deal and I think some explanation of the implications is required, particularly for women who have childcare responsibilities and so on and who may not be able to rebuild the additional income, particularly once their youngest child hits 12.
Advising people annually of their pension debit—for example, telling him, as it is usually, but not invariably the man, by how much the pension has reduced following divorce, or with regard to pension credit, the fraction that usually has gone to her of the protected additional pension, if the court has so decreed—would allow each of them to know where they stand to make better decisions about their pension futures and, in particular, that might encourage them into NEST to build or rebuild their total pension prospects.
With this amendment, I am seeking to ask the Minister to ensure that women who may not be aware of, but who could well take advantage of, a share of the additional protected pension have the knowledge that they can do so. They may wish to set that against other matrimonial assets that may otherwise go their way on divorce. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will agree with me that as this is techie and this has now been changed substantively in the Pensions Bill, those women who have been married to someone in the public sector—the reverse could equally well be true in terms of gender—will be a loser a second time because he may well dip into this to make good his NI shortfall. I hope that the Minister will agree with me that we need to encourage people to be aware of the situation and I think that the department needs to take some responsibility for ensuring annual information. I beg to move.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I put my name to this amendment because I spent a happy half hour with my noble friend trying to fathom out what the legislation was about, on this occasion, without a bottle of gin. The conclusion that my noble friend has just outlined, which I believe to be correct, is that any protected payment could be shared—I think that was confirmed at one of our briefing meetings and indeed in some of the documentation that we have and this parallels the current situation with the additional state pension—but the protected payment cannot, I think, for some of the reasons outlined by my noble friend, be greater than the second state pension accrued at 6 April 2016; it can, however, be smaller. For individuals who grow up entirely within the single-tier system, with just S2P, as we understand it, there would be no basis for sharing the state pension. The noble Lord’s confirmation would be helpful. The particular thrust of the amendment—to make sure that people are routinely informed—seems entirely reasonable.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
My Lords, I intend to make a very short contribution to this debate. As my noble friend Lady Hollis made clear in her introductory remarks, this is a simple amendment. If it can be simple and complex in its implications at the same time, then that is what it is. I have no intention of trying to replicate or supplement my noble friend’s understanding of the complexity of this issue, and the implications of the decisions that face people in these very difficult circumstances. My understanding of the element of the pension that can be split by the courts on divorce is as my noble friend Lord McKenzie explained it. We benefited from a briefing from the Minister’s supporting civil servants which, as always, we were grateful to receive; it was very clear and helpful.
We have heard from my noble friend Lady Hollis about some of the challenges and problems that face divorced women in particular, or women in the context of divorce, about the choices that they have to make. They may well spend some significant time thereafter before receiving pension payments, not knowing or losing track of the details of their pension-splitting arrangements. As a supplementary to the questions asked by my noble friend, and because I do not know the answer, can the Minister tell the Committee if there are arrangements in place by which the courts or the legal profession—the justice system—in some fashion notify the DWP of such arrangements? If they do, what are they? If people are not to be sent regular statements of pension credits or debits, how else would the Minister suggest that this information gap be addressed?
Before I sit down, I want to take the opportunity to provide the Minister with the chance to put on the official record information about a very discrete point relating to the devolution settlement, and the implications of these provisions about pension sharing on an area of devolved responsibility. In this Bill, necessarily, there are consequential amendments to the Family Law (Scotland) Act 1985. As most of us have come to know, the devolution settlement requires certain rules to be applied to circumstances where we in this Parliament legislate in areas which are otherwise devolved—and family law is devolved to the Scottish Parliament. I am satisfied—because I raised this matter with the Minister’s civil servants and received an e-mail explanation on 13 December—that this issue has been discussed with both the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government. I was told that the Scottish Government were content, within the scope of the devolution settlement; that the provisions in the Pensions Bill fall under a particular category in the devolved guidance that allows legislative provisions to be enacted here without the necessity for the normal processes. I think this is called a Sewel Motion in the Scottish Parliament. I am speaking long enough for the Minister to find some words that he can put into the official record. I am sure he will understand why it would help if there was some recognition of these discussions and the agreement of the Scottish Government to this Parliament legislating in these potentially contentious areas which would otherwise be devolved. I hope I have made myself clear that it would be helpful if that could be addressed in the response to this amendment.
Lord Freud
My Lords, by way of background, the additional state pension can be considered as an asset in a divorce settlement and the department is responsible for administering pension-sharing orders ordered by the courts. Basic state pension is not included as an asset to be shared, nor will the new single-tier pension be shareable. However, share orders in respect of additional state pension which are made before the single-tier pension is introduced will still stand and, from 2016, only the protected payment—the excess above the full single-tier pension—will be considered in any share order.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
The Minister also gave those figures last time, when we debated the amendment on divorcees and the substitution issue. The 100,000 requests and the 150 orders are happening in terms of the protected or state second pension, or SERPS, now. Of course, it is only a tiny fraction of the occupational pensions which are usually the more valuable asset and make up the other 9,900 or so requests.
Perhaps I should have asked this before, and I do not mean to catch the Minister on the hop, but what is the financial distribution of the 150 within the 10,000? Are those 150 simply the largest, or are they associated with people who are tenants in rented accommodation, where there is therefore no unoccupied house to be set off in lieu, or what? What does the Minister know about them?
Lord Freud
Rather than going into the sub-detail of what is already a very detailed point, I ought to commit to getting whatever information we can find and supplying that by letter to the noble Baroness.
When pension sharing disappears, most men and women will be able to build up entitlement to a simple contributory pension above the basic level of means-tested support. This is the most effective way of ensuring that savers have a decent underpin which stays with them however their family circumstances change. More than 80% of those reaching state pension age by the mid-2030s will get the full single tier, a figure with which I know the Committee is familiar. The courts will still be able to take account of private pension provision in the divorce settlement. The expectation is that the vast majority of people will be able to build a single-tier pension in their own right.
If someone is the beneficiary of a pension share order they receive a pension credit. The person the order is made against is subject to a corresponding debit. State pension credits are normally awarded and debits applied from state pension age. If the order is made after state pension age, the payment is increased or decreased at that point. As under the current system, single-tier pensioners who have a state pension debit or credit will be informed of the weekly addition or deduction when the court order is implemented. Individuals will be able to ask for statements of their state pension, but the pension credits or debits would be consolidated within the individual’s single-tier payment or protected payment and so not identified as credits or debits. As now, these elements could be identified on request but I am informed by the department’s pension sharing administrators that no one can recall ever receiving such a request.
On communications, the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Browne, our statements will give individuals an up-to-date picture of their single-tier state pension position, which includes their foundation amount, and explain how this may change with further national insurance qualifying years through work or credits. The foundation amount included in statements will take into account any pension share debits or credits, as I have said.
Let me make it clear that state pension sharing on divorce affects relatively few people. As I said, in 2012-13 the department implemented only around 150 sharing orders. The changes to the computer system necessary to generate such automatic annual statements would therefore be disproportionately costly to provide this group with information it can in any case request.
Finally, on the devolution issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Browne, I can confirm that this does not require a legislative consent Motion from the Scottish Government.
I hope that I have been able to go some way in reassuring the noble Baroness that, while there is low demand for this information, it is available if requested. I hope that on that basis, she will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friends Lord McKenzie and Lord Browne for their contributions and also to the Minister for a helpful reply. However, I am still not secure on a couple of points he raised, if he would be so kind as to elaborate on them. He said that the recipients—I presume they would be almost all women; the Minister has not challenged me on this so I assume that it is correct—get information when the court order is implemented. Does that mean at the point of divorce or at the point of payment? What does “implementation” mean here? It could be the legal point of when the court has finished with it or the practical effect of when it is actually paid. I am not quite clear.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
So it is at the point of divorce. Thereafter, from what the Minister has said, if they wish to see what has happened to that payment they can make an inquiry but the Minister says they never have so far.
Lord Freud
That is exactly right. We have the information and people who want to double check it can ask, although they seem to be satisfied with the level of information they had at the outset.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
If it is 150 people, how much does an inquiry cost to handle?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
If we are talking about 150 people, how much does it cost to respond to each inquiry?
Lord Freud
My Lords, as I said, in practice we have not had an inquiry. We have to manage 150 sharing orders. Again, I am not sure of the cost of that and how easy it is to extract it. If I can do it, I will include it in a letter that I have committed to send.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I am grateful for the Minister’s promise of further information and, on that basis, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
Lord Browne of Ladyton
My Lords, I speak to the amendment and to Amendment 31B which are in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Sherlock. These are simple probing amendments which need not detain the Committee for long. Clause 16(4) says:
“A person may not opt to suspend his or her entitlement to a state pension under this Part on more than one occasion”.
Clause 16(5) says:
“Regulations may specify other circumstances in which a person may not opt to suspend his or her entitlement to a state pension under this Part”.
My question is simple. Can the Minister please explain the need for these subsections and what circumstances they are intended to cover? I beg to move.
Lord Freud
My Lords, the simple answer is one word: simplicity. However, I will embellish a little. Clauses 16, 17 and 18 allow people to defer their single-tier pension at state pension age in order to build up an increase to their pension. These provisions broadly mirror the deferral arrangements in the current scheme.
Clause 16 specifically provides for the individual to suspend their single-tier pension only once after they have started to receive it, as is the case in the current state pension scheme. This will be particularly important for those who are not certain of their likely retirement income until they have reached state pension age but who could benefit from the ability to suspend their pension and build up weekly increments. At the moment, pensioners can only do this once under the current scheme. This enables people who want to return to work or increase their hours to manage their tax position more effectively. For example if they have the opportunity to work and no longer require their state pension to support themselves, they will be able to suspend their pension and therefore lower their taxable income for that period. They will then build up an increase to their single-tier pension which will be payable when they reclaim it.
The amendments would remove any restriction on the number of times a person may opt to give up their entitlement to a single-tier pension. It introduces new complexity for individuals planning for their retirement and administrative complexity for the department. Allowing people to de-retire later in life increases the risk that they will not live long enough to break even. It would only really make sense for people who would see a significant tax benefit from not claiming their state pension for certain periods of time. Having the option to suspend their state pension once strikes a balance between giving people the flexibility to return to work and manage their tax position after claiming their state pension and ensuring the system remains as simple as possible. I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his response, to the extent to which he responded. I had hoped, however, that he would have gone further and, in particular, engaged with Clause 16(5), giving noble Lords some indication as to under what circumstances the Government expect that they would want to further curtail the option to suspend. Maybe the Minister has something of an answer to that coming to him at the moment.
I had hoped that the Minister would say that there is a very narrow set of circumstances to which the regulations that could be promulgated under Clause 16(5) would relate, and give some assurance that it was not the Government’s intention to use these powers extensively but in a narrow way, with reference to at least one set of circumstances for which they were planned.
Lord Freud
My Lords, the power provides the flexibility to respond quickly should the need arise to amend the scheme—for example, if there is a group of people to whom it would be inappropriate to offer the opportunity to improve their pension once it was been claimed. Under the current scheme, if the individual is not ordinarily resident in Great Britain or another EEA member state and has claimed their pension, they will not normally be able to suspend it in order to build up an increase. The inclusion of this power means that we can use secondary legislation to mirror the current position for the suspension of a single-tier pension. The amendment would mean that any modification of the option to elect to suspend a single-tier pension would require a degree of parliamentary scrutiny via the primary procedure that would be disproportionate to that change.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
I am grateful to the Minister for engaging with the challenge that I encouraged him to engage with. I am not entirely sure that it satisfies my curiosity over the need for this power, but this is an issue to which we can return later, perhaps in correspondence. In the mean time—
Lord Freud
My Lords, so that we do not waste a lot of extra time on this matter, this replicates the power that we have in the current scheme and does no more than that. There is no substantial change going on or any intentionality towards using it in a different way.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
I reassure the Minister that I do not see any malevolent intention masked by this power. It occurs to me that if there is no purpose in this element of the existing structure, there is no purpose in replicating the existing structure, but I do not intend to expand this debate into such philosophical discussions. At the moment, I am content that the issue has been raised and will consider the Minister’s response to it. If I am satisfied when I see it in writing, we will not return to this. If I am not, we may return to this issue. In the mean time, though, I am content to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) If a person’s entitlement under this Part to a state pension has been deferred for a period, that person may receive it as a lump sum, as specified in regulations.”
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I would just point out that the clock seems to have frozen on the display.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
It does not matter. I am grateful for the additional statistics on this issue provided by the Bill team. That has been very helpful. In 2004, the previous Administration sought to encourage people to stay in work longer by offering attractive arrangements if they deferred taking the state pension for several years, or at least for more than one year. About 9% of pensioners did so—1.2 million people—three-quarters of them women, usually because they were younger than their husbands and worked longer hours, particularly given that their retirement age was earlier than the husbands’ and this way they could retire together. These arrangements had several advantages: they kept people in work for longer; they allowed husband and wife to synchronise their retirement if they wished; and they offered them a higher pension income once retired, with interest rates—until this Bill comes into effect—of 10.4% per annum, or to roll it up into a lump sum, where instead they received the basic rate plus 2%.
The vast majority of the 1.2 million pensioners who deferred their state pension for more than a year chose income. Some 60,000 preferred to take a lump sum. I do not know how many of those are women, but my hunch would be, again, a very high proportion. If by any chance the Minister had that figure, that would be helpful. Some 60,000 preferred to take the lump sum, which on average was £13,700 for GB residents—a considerable sum.
The Bill proposes to remove the option of a lump sum so that in future, if you defer taking your state pension, all that you can do is add to your income. Why? I have to say that the arguments offered by the Minister in the other place did not persuade me. He said that, first, it was a less financially attractive proposition to take the lump sum than to take the money as increased pension, even at the proposed new rate for income deferral of 5.2%. Secondly, drawing their pension rather than deferring it and then putting it into a building society account would give much the same return. And, thirdly, by removing choice, you are giving people something more valuable—that magic word “simplicity”, as though a lump sum payment is really hard to understand.
I think this approach is incomplete at best and, in policy terms, wrong in terms of what we know about pensions income and capital. Why would one want a lump sum when the alternative of income is, in terms of return, more financially attractive, which I accept that it is? The answer, it seems to me, is simple. It may be the only opportunity a couple or an individual—but more likely a couple—get of acquiring any capital before they go into full-time retirement. If they have an occupational pension, they are likely to get perhaps the capital of a 25% tax free lump sum. If they are reliant only on the state pension, they have no such access to capital at all. The problem for pensioners now, and future pensioners, as they face their retirement, is not so much lack of income, thanks not only to what the previous Administration did but what the current Administration are doing, on which I congratulate them—it is above all lack of capital. I do not think that the Government or the Minister in the other place gave the impression of understanding that that is the problem coming up in the lift.
Let us remind ourselves that in 1997 the percentage of pensioners below 60% of median income was 41%. As of now, it is about 14%. Pensioners, as we know, have rightly done relatively well in terms of income. As my noble friend teased earlier on, we now know that the current Administration propose to continue this until 2020, should they return to office. As a result, pensions have already risen three times faster than wages and pensioners will continue to do well. The big problem for pensioners is not income but the lack of savings or capital. That has, if anything, worsened over the past decade: 21% of all pensioners have no savings at all; 37% have less than £3,000—not enough to pay for one funeral, let alone two—and 50% of all pensioners have less than £8,000, which would just about cover two funerals with a bit left over for the high tea. For those able to defer, bringing in an extra £13,000 to £14,000 of capital is magic. It transforms their situation. I repeat that the struggle for pensioners is not so much lack of income, which was how it was treated down the other end, as lack of capital, and the Government are going to close down one of the easiest and simplest routes to acquiring it.
A couple, for example, could make the entirely sensible judgment that one of them—possibly him—adds their deferred pension to their pension income and, as a result, his state pension increases. The other—it may well be her—brings in the lump sum to build some savings for a rainy day or replace the car, build the conservatory, help their grandson with tuition fees at university, and, above all, in time, to help pay for social care and eventually, perhaps, to fund funerals. Yes, they could save that sum out of income instead, as Steve Webb suggested. However, as with auto-enrolment, where we are structuring choice, ring-fencing it into a deferred lump sum may be the most helpful way to build those savings. To assume that people will voluntarily put their income aside into a building society is the exact opposite of what we are doing with auto-enrolment, where we know that we need the nudge theory of inertia to get people to save, not to leave it to a voluntary choice. They can, of course, do as the Minister suggests, but if that is the case, and if we can rely on them to do that, frankly, we do not need auto-enrolment at all because people will look after themselves with private occupational provision. But, of course, we know that they do not and that is why we are introducing auto-enrolment. The same cast of mind applies to deferred state pensions, I suggest.
In my experience, pensioners seldom spend their full income. They cope. Whatever the level of pension—whether it is £60, £80 or £100—pensioners spend £1 or so underneath their ceiling. Indeed, as a result of past and current government policies, including the triple lock, the income from the new state pension for future pensioners will be increasingly adequate. However, what pensioners are badly short of is capital, and that capital, as a proportion of their future, is reducing. They have little or no reserve cushion and the Government are taking away the easiest way in which pensioners can choose to build that up.
Why are we taking this choice away? No one has to opt for a lump sum but, as long as it is an informed choice, it may be absolutely the right choice for them. Government should not second-guess them and deny them a choice. It is very silly. Contrary to what the Government believe, we do not know what is best for all pensioners in all situations and we should allow them to make the decisions they want and which work best for them. In moving this amendment, I hope very much that the Government reconsider their position on this as they are failing to see the issues that are going to affect pensioners in the future, particularly as we move into the field of social care and the need for individual pensioners to pay for it. I beg to move.
The Lord Bishop of Chester
My Lords, I support this amendment. The background seems to be one of a general lack of provision for pensions for older people in the future. There is a major shortage of pension savings, and my impression is that that is getting worse rather than better, for all sorts of reasons. My experience of young people—I use the word “young” to include people in their 30s—is that they do not think about pensions as much as they should. Anything we can do to encourage people to take a long-term view and think for the future must be a good thing. The principle, therefore, of deferring taking the state pension until you really need it seems a healthy principle to encourage in our circumstances. My anxiety is that, in the future, a lot of people are going to be very short of money when they are older. It seems fundamentally right to do anything we can to encourage that culture of not taking the pension until you need to.
If you are going to encourage people to do that, maintaining the flexibility so that they can either take additional income when they do take their pension, or a lump sum in lieu of the money they save, seems to be a sensible inducement. If you just look on it as an issue of encouraging savings, one of the lessons of the last decade or so is that we need to encourage the thought of saving in our culture. It may be just as easy to take the pension and put it into a building society account or whatever but why not offer the option of the Government allowing the lump sum to be taken? Another reason for supporting the amendment is the principle that if it ain’t broke, why do you need to change it? What is wrong with the current arrangements that means that we want to change them?
My third reason for supporting this is that, in principle, I think there should be parity with how we relate the state provision of pensions to private provision, which normally allows the option of taking part of the pension as a lump sum. That is an important principle of flexibility and, indeed, defined benefit schemes now typically make that option more available than they used to. There seems to be a simplicity—to use the Minister’s point—in treating state pension and private pension arrangements in broadly similar ways.
Lord Hutton of Furness (Lab)
My Lords, I do not want to detain the Committee for any length of time here but my noble friend has raised a very important issue of principle that the Committee should consider very carefully. I hope that at some later point the whole House might as well.
In relation to the Amendment 31A moved by my noble friend Lord Browne, the Minister, quite sensibly, prayed in aid the existing rules and said that the provisions simply reflected that. In essence, that was his argument for continuity. Here, he is proposing something quite different—he is proposing to take away a freedom and a choice that have existed for some considerable time from people who want to defer claiming their state pension. We should not do that unless there is a compelling reason for so doing. The principle of choice for people retiring should be preserved. They might want to, for whatever reason—and maybe the Minister would not agree with the reason—take their deferred pension as a lump sum. I cannot think of any good reason why we should not allow them to continue to do that. It cannot have any overall implications for public spending so there cannot be any cost to the Treasury.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment and I wholeheartedly support the points my noble friends Lady Hollis and Lord Hutton and the right reverend Prelate have raised. The Government are reserving the right to defer but, of course, making it more expensive. I think the savings the Government ultimately get from this are in the order of £300 million, because it is going to be dealt with on an actuarial basis rather than the current way. I do not know if it is possible to split the saving between that resulting from the denial of the lump sum and that which is otherwise simply a result of the different actuarial calculation. It would be helpful to have that split, if it could be done. We await the final rates, which are going to be dealt with in regulations.
The issue about lump sums is very important. We need to think about people who might have a health impairment. There is no impaired annuity equivalent under state provision, so far as I am aware. Surviving spouses cannot inherit increments arising from deferral, as I understand it, but they can, of course, inherit a cash sum that has been saved.
The point has been made about the equivalence between the private sector and the state sector. Many people to date have not accessed private savings. Thank goodness auto-enrolment is in place now, courtesy of my noble friend Lord Hutton, who was Secretary of State when big advances were made on that. Over time, people will get better private sector provision and that will provide them with an opportunity many of them do not currently have to access a lump sum.
Can the Minister say what this all means for the public finances? I presume a lump sum paid on day one in a sense scores against public finances in that year while a deferred amount does not score until it is received, and is then received at a higher rate going forward. I do not know whether this is part of the Government’s considerations, but I hope not because I think it would be modest at best.
There are also differences in relation to pension credit. A modest capital sum is ignored for pension credit but, of course, a supplement and income increase arising from deferral would not be. That would be a further denial and scraping away of benefits from these provisions. I very much support the point that no great rationale has been advanced why the lump sum and other deferments should be denied and I hope we can agree across the Room that it should be reinstated in the Bill.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, will not detain the Committee very long. When we go through a Bill, there is always something that comes up quite unexpectedly. My noble friend Lady Hollis has alighted on one here, which I do not think is going to go away. If we are not able to progress it at this level, perhaps we shall need to return to it later in the debate on the Bill.
I do not know where the Government have the mandate for this, but it is there now. They are understandably trying to look at pensions as a whole, and saving for retirement, hopefully through a personal pension scheme and through the state scheme. We would support that. However, it is taking a very different principle to the one that applies in private schemes. It will only apply, of course, where the individual says, “I am going to defer my pension”. It is not a case of saying, “I want to take some of my pension in a lump sum”. It is also taking choice away from people. You cannot say, on the one hand, that we want people to have choice, to save and to be in charge of their own income when they retire, and do everything you can to encourage them, but then, in this particular aspect, say, “No, we the state know better than you do”. Even if the Minister cannot do so today, I hope he will be able to reflect on this and give due consideration to making some movement in the Bill on it.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
My Lords, in speaking to these amendments, I seek to achieve a better and more precise understanding of the nature of the Government’s objections to the taking of lump sums. My noble friend Lady Hollis has done your Lordships’ Committee two favours. One is in raising this issue, which has captured the mood of the Committee quite clearly. The second is in rehearsing accurately the explanation by Steve Webb, the Pensions Minister, in the House of Commons, as to why there is opposition to the taking of lump sums. In my recollection, the arguments were as thin as my noble friend made clear.
My noble friends, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester, have explained very clearly the case for allowing lump sums. Undoubtedly there is a savings crisis. Too many people do not have the safety net of a rainy day fund or, in some cases, of any fund at all. British households do not have enough money in savings, and the amount they do have has been falling in recent years. This is, perhaps, unsurprising given the cost of living crisis that we have been experiencing. The data on this are very persuasive. ONS data show that 6% of pensioners—over half a million people—live in households where the total financial wealth is less than £10,000. Half—more than 4.8 million—live in a household where it is less than £20,000. However, that is not the whole story. Given the distribution within those bands, there must be a significant number of retirees with little or no cash available in savings. Interestingly, the ninth annual Scottish Widows pensions report stated that, of those already retired, one-third are still paying off debts, including mortgages. The average amount owed is in excess of £5,500—£5,682 to be precise. It is not as if those people are in a position to add to their savings in retirement. In a survey in June 2013, the insurance giants LV reported that nearly 2 million pensioners have an average £8 per week of disposable income. By way of comparison, that is less than the average eight year-old has as pocket money, according to another survey.
The case made by my noble friends and the right reverend Prelate about why people might need access to a lump sum deserves an answer. The lump-sum payment option was introduced in April 2005. I think my noble friend Lady Hollis was the Minister who oversaw its introduction. The reasoning then was the same as the case she has made today. Even if pensioners go into retirement with a just adequate income, they may well not have enough savings to deal with the rainy day problems we all face. Never mind the challenge of the eventual cost of their own burial, what happens if the boiler fails in a bitterly cold winter? Or the car that they require in a rural environment breaks down and they are otherwise trapped in their home? We can all think of circumstances in which a bit of capital would be of help.
We know who chooses to defer their pensions. Drawing on the DWP’s own statistics, in March 2013, 1.2 million pensioners, or 9%, were receiving an income arising from a deferred pension, of whom 75% were women and 77% were living in the UK. We know that few of those who choose to defer take the lump-sum option; 63,000 payments were made in 2011-12, and the DWP forecasts that that will fall to 35,000 by 2017-18. In 2011-12, the average lump sum was £11,500, with the UK average being £13,700 and the overseas average £4,100. These are not significant sums, and the calculation could be done as to what this is likely to cost based on these statistics.
However, there are things that we do not know. First, we do not know why people choose to defer. Of those deferring, 75% are women, but the question is whether they are waiting until their partner retires to draw their pensions or there is some other motivation we do not know about. Are those who defer still working, deferring their retirement perhaps because they have saved too little and it is too early for them to retire? What do we know about the wealth of those who defer? Very little. The statistics already deployed show that 25% are overseas residents. Do we know why they make the choices that they do? We do not.
These Benches would like to understand the costs better. The DWP tells us that spending on lump sums currently costs about £800 million per annum and is due to fall to £700 million in real terms, although I am not sure by when. Obviously, these people have not been drawing their pensions for the period during which they deferred, so I presume that that is not a net cost—but maybe my presumption is wrong and it is. If it is not, what is the cost of the lump sum minus the pension forgone? What is the net cost of these deferrals in real terms? If there is a net cost, what rate would have to be offered to make the lump sum a cost-neutral choice?
Finally, I would like to understand why the Government want to end this. Is it the cost? Is it the administration? Is it the desire for simplicity? Are the Government sure that they know enough about the impact of this policy and the relatively small numbers who choose to defer? If not, has the Minister or his department considered further research on who is deferring? If it turns out primarily to be people with no or too little savings, what other option would he suggest for those who are retired and have no nest egg now, on what are likely to be low incomes with no means or opportunity to build up such a nest egg or capital?
Lord Freud
My Lords, as several noble Lords have said, the Bill does not provide an option for those deferring a single-tier pension to receive a lump-sum payment. Instead, the deferral arrangements will be simplified. Those who defer will receive a weekly increase in their state pension, enabling them to improve their pension income for retirement. Looking at some of the relevant figures, I can confirm the figure given by the noble Lord, Lord Browne, of 1.2 million people receiving an increment in March 2013, which was around 9% of the state pension case load. We had 63,000 lump sums taken in the latest year for which we have figures, 2011-12. In response to the query of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, two-thirds of those are women and one-third are men. However, under the new system, we expect that that is likely to change, and I will go into that in a little while. A primary objective for the reforms is to simplify the state pension and to provide a simpler foundation for private saving.
At this point, I was going to give the cost figures, which the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked about. The savings from removing the lump sum in isolation from the change in the increment rate are around 85% of the overall deferral savings for 2030, which are outlined in the impact assessment. That figure will be between £250 million and £300 million in 2030.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Why did the Minister in another place, Steve Webb, argue that one of the reasons for doing this was because the deferred pension, even at the proposed rate of 5.4%, was financially much more attractive to people and a much better buy, and therefore he was helping to protect would-be savers from themselves? If it is a better buy for the individuals receiving it, why does it therefore cost the Government money to keep the less expensive option going?
Lord Freud
It is a timing issue, of course, because you take the money in earlier. That is where the costs to the Government come from.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
If the Government were making that monetary saving, they would have to show us that that would be a one-off saving and not a continuous saving. If those people then took instead the increased income, the cost of that would soar by comparison because the £62,000 or £63,000 would presumably move across. In order to save some upfront costs of the lump sum, the Minister is committing himself to an increased continued income on the deferred income option.
Lord Freud
I do not have the crossover point figure. I could look into that. Clearly, it would be different depending on the system. I can offer to discuss this with some graphics, which I suspect are essential, in a briefing session before Report.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
Will the Minister help me on another point about simplicity? We will come on to discuss 3A voluntary contributions in a moment. As I understand it, additional pension achieved via that route could be deferred and a lump sum could be taken. Is that right?
Lord Freud
Yes. The reason is that that is the equivalent of the private pension provision, which is a purchase. We are drawing a distinction here between public provision and private provision. With the pulling into a single tier, that is where the line is drawn between the two. As private pensions offer lump sums, that is where we would expect people to be taking them.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
That cannot be reasonable, can it? After all, the new state pension combines the element, including the state second pension, which was bought up by people in lieu of and as an alternative to or an equivalent of an occupational pension and contracting out into it.
Lord Freud
Deferrals of lumps sums are both complex to understand and cumbersome to administer.
Lord Freud
That complexity is illustrated in the DWP information booklet which provides guidance on deferrals. It runs to 60 pages and then recommends after all that that people get independent advice before making their decision. Even so, given the factors and variables, there is no guarantee that such advice would be forthcoming.
Reverting back to the class 3A distinction, that is clearly being directed at existing pensioners who currently get existing increments as a lump sum, so they are within the old system. It is being directed at people who are in the existing system rather than those in the single-tier system.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
But that means, does it not, that the Minister is giving the option of a deferred lump sum within the state system, even though, a couple of minutes ago, he said that was exactly what he was not going to do because he wished to maintain the boundaries between state and private provision?
Lord Freud
Yes, that is the distinction between the existing system, where there is a lump sum, and the post-2016 single-tier system, where it is proposed that there should not be a lump sum. That is where the consistency lies.
The simplified arrangements under Clause 17 will mean that people will be able to work out both the level of increase they will build up as a result of deferring their state pension and the potential effect this will have on their future taxable income. People will be able to make their own arrangements to save their single-tier pension if they wish and build up savings in that way. This will give them a choice over what and when to save, in a form that meets their needs. We do not think that the state should continue to provide the lump-sum option as an alternative to savings in the long term.
However, there is a way of building up some capital, if people take 12 months of arrears of pension straightaway if they claim after state pension age. That is worth around £7,500 for someone with a full single-tier pension in 2013-14 terms. Our intention is to bring forward regulations for the single tier that will replicate the existing arrangements.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Could the Minister help us further? Is he saying that at the end of the first year post the conventional state retirement age you can choose to take your deferred pension as a lump sum for one year only but not for a second year? Is that what the Minister is now telling us?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Well, why? Why is it okay to do it for one year and not for two?
Lord Freud
That is the standard position whereby, if you are in arrears for a year, you can take the provision at the end of that year and that is treated as arrears of pension rather than a lump sum. Some noble Lords are very concerned about the issue of the nest egg. If we drop the distinction between arrears and lump sum, there is a nest egg opportunity in that £7,500, which may go a long way to satisfy the concerns that have been expressed with some vigour this afternoon.
The Lord Bishop of Chester
My Lords, I invite the Minister to comment on the more general point as we are getting into specifics, which I recognise are complicated. Do the Government agree that it would basically be a good thing if deferral was encouraged? Is it the Government’s position that in the great scheme of things and income in old age it would be a good thing if the principle of people being encouraged to defer was affirmed?
Lord Freud
I am not sure that parliamentary privilege covers me for giving financial advice. Perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, could advise me on what I should say on that matter.
Baroness Drake (Lab)
I think that the Minister is right not to give advice as to whether or not it suits an individual to defer. It depends on their personal circumstances.
Lord Freud
I must thank the noble Baroness for keeping me out of jail. Many a seminar that I have been to would have told me that. It is a matter for people to judge.
The Lord Bishop of Chester
If I may have another little bite of the cherry, I do not wish the Minister or the Government to give any specific advice to any specific person. I am inviting a general comment upon the desirability of people looking to the longer term, given the parameters around old age and pensions in our society. If in some general terms that is a desirable object, without making any comment about specific cases, surely the more flexibility we build in, the better.
Lord Freud
I actually have very strong views on this matter but I think they are personal. I am going to utterly resist putting them on the record in this Committee but I would enjoy having tea with the right reverend Prelate and giving vent to my personal views at full force.
The Lord Bishop of Chester
My Lords, very few people on the Committee will know that the last time that I had tea with the Minister was in his rooms in Merton College when we were both first years in 1969, so it would be good to have another cup. Given the nature of this discussion, I wonder whether the Minister could at least agree to take the issue away and think about it. There are issues here that may need a bit of teasing out other than in the circumstances of this Committee.
Lord Freud
I have to accept that the right reverend Prelate is on a very important and interesting point, on which one could write many a financial essay. I will go back and think about whether there is any generalised approach that we as a Government should take on this. I will resist any indulgence in doing so off the top of my head, though, because this is a huge and difficult issue.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased and not surprised that a cup of tea with the Minister can last one a very long time. May I tempt him to look at the challenge that he has been posed from a slightly different perspective? It strikes me that a number of things may be possible. First, I tempt him to express a view on whether he thinks that it would be a good thing to encourage people in their retirement to have some capital, rather than encouraging individual people to defer a pension or whatever. As a point of principle, would it not be better for us if our retired population had access to some capital that would cover these rainy-day situations?
Secondly, is it possible to take advantage of the Bill, in the way in which the Minister has suggested pensioners can do, by deferring taking pensions for a year and then taking that as a lump sum or by some other simple method to create an opportunity for people to take a deferred pension lump sum to provide that capital? I am struck that it should not necessarily be the case that the only way of doing this is to import a very complicated existing procedure as a method of taking a lump sum, and then finding that that confounded the argument for simplicity. Is it not worth spending some time to see whether there is a simpler method of doing this, such as perhaps an extension of what the Minister has tempted us with today as a possibility?
Lord Freud
My Lords, if it is a nest egg that noble Lords are worrying about, then the arrears approach is not a huge distance away from what they might find quite attractive. The best thing that I can do is try to spell that out in a bit more detail in a rather considered letter to Members of the Committee, to see if it addresses their concerns. The counterpoint is that a lot of people take their nest egg and blow it on a car. Concern about the no-savings culture is the other side of the lump sum coin and those people will face later old age, if they live a long time, poorer than they otherwise would have been because it is a complicated decision. I will think a little bit harder about the arrears issue we have discussed because it might give noble Lords what they are after, possibly without needing to change very much, but I need to spell out how that might work. My team is looking ecstatic at that offer and will fully support any tea-time activities I might indulge in later.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to all Members of the Committee. I am sorry we did not hear from the Lib Dem Benches as we would then have had a full hand. I am grateful particularly to my noble friend Lady Dean, to my noble friend Lord Hutton for raising the debate in the way he did and to the right reverend Prelate for his persistent questioning. Both my noble friends continue to interrogate the Minister, which is really valuable. The right reverend Prelate said, “If it is not broken, why fix it?”. I have seen no evidence at all, apart from the Minister saying this is not such a good buy for individuals as taking it as income, that the system is broken. The Government are relying on having the upfront savings rather than the longer-term costs. That is not, in my view, a prudent way of handling finance.
My noble friend Lord Hutton, along with the right reverend Prelate, stressed that it is no use saying that we have to go for simplicity and thereby remove choice, if choice would be part of the attraction for people to save and defer taking their state pension. We do not have hard evidence on this, but we know from everything that is coming through from auto-enrolment and the pilots—including under my noble friend—that the nudge theory of encouraging people to stay opted-in and having them opt out rather than choosing to opt in was transformative. I remember when we got the figures from the Newcastle brewery, where something like 43% of its staff opted in to a pension. When it went to opting out, that went up to over 90%, and the only people opting out were students working in the summer vac. It transformed the pension regime in that brewery. It relied on nudge and inertia and ensuring that people could save in the way that was least problematic for them. Unless the Minister can show noble Lords—certainly me—that denying people the right to turn a deferred state pension into a lump sum will not only not have a negative effect on their savings but actually increase their savings, he is storing up problems for himself in the future.
Research last month by the LSE found that 483,000 people—nearly half a million, almost all of them pensioners—had either lost their home care support or were no longer eligible to claim it, as compared with 2008. Now, that home care will need to be funded by savings; it will not come out of income. People are losing the capacity to pay for home care week in, week out, as the cuts bite. My noble friend Lord McKenzie—
Lord Freud
To go back to the point of how people use their lump sum, it is towards the latter end of the pension drawdown period that you are going to need to pay for care. It is exactly at that time that any lump sum taken earlier will have been used up on other expenditure. That is why this is such a difficult area. A lump sum taken at 70 is probably not going to be around when social care is needed in the late 70s, for instance.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
How does the Minister know? I represented one of the poorest wards in the city of Norwich and the pensioners I know were desperate to have a lump sum. Very often, they cast it in terms of paying for funerals, because that was a working-class, respectable-culture consideration. They desperately wanted savings and they did not have them. They managed weekly. Sometimes their daughters might help out with the odd bit of groceries when they did their shopping but the notion is that you can read across from people in the private sector having a car or holiday.
The same arguments apply to equity release. We know the research on equity release. We know that if people take it very early they may spend it on white-good replacement or on trying to keep up a standard of living but we also know that, as they grow older, they tend to take it for personal care. If, as the Minister suggests, he believes that it is going to be blown, why, for example, are his Government continuing to keep a tax-free lump sum? By his own argument, we should scrap that, on the grounds that the Government know better than the taxpayer how to spend the taxpayer’s money. We should instead roll it into the basic pension that people have from their occupational fund because we know that only between 11% and 13% of pensioners use their tax-free lump sum to increase their pension; instead they use it to give themselves savings. We know that from the private sector. We have no reason to think that it would not apply here. I am amazed that the Minister seems to think that there are different cultures between those who have private, occupational pensions and those who do not. As a result, we are making it harder and harder for the poorest to have what each and every one of us wants—a modest cushion against, as my noble friend Lord Browne said, the rainy day. The Minister, the Government or the department seem to be pulling that possibility away from people for no good reason.
My noble friend Lord McKenzie asked about health impairment. The Minister did not answer that question at all. Under the new scheme, a spouse would not be able to inherit a deferred income that was accumulated by their deceased spouse but they could inherit the lump sum. That, too, is unfair. The couple have made a decision together that that is what they will do. They can take it in one form, but not in the other. Why? That is just the point at which the spouse may wish to have the cushion of a lump sum and is not able to inherit it. It is unfair.
The Minister may also choose to look at my other consideration, which has not been discussed today. Perhaps I should have raised it in my opening speech. Once you hit retirement age, if you carry on working, you are not entitled to continue to build up national insurance contributions. I think you should be able to do so, with employer input, although maybe that is a debate for another day.
Drawing on the report from Scottish Widows, my noble friend Lord Browne emphasised how many people retire with debt, including mortgages. He is absolutely right. Taking a lump sum that actually pays off that debt, which it would take years to accumulate through a modestly increased pension, may be the most prudent thing that those people can do, because that debt may require a much higher rate of payments to keep it covered than any other income that they could get. It could be through a loan company, for example, where they were paying APRs of 300%, 500% or 1,000%. A lump sum would pay that off and therefore increase the robustness of the rest of their income. That is what you can do with capital—you cannot do it with income. Again, I hope that the Minister will reflect on this. I know that he is concerned about people’s indebtedness as they go into retirement, and by freeing them from a burden of debt he would actually improve their financial ability to cope once in retirement.
The Minister argued about the cost of the lump sum. He seemed to suggest that taking away the lump sum would produce 85% of the £800 million savings. I am completely baffled by that figure. What he is doing is removing the up-front cost of paying a lump sum while paying out over a period of time at a higher cost to the Government. There is therefore a break-even point, five or maybe seven years down the line, at which the Government incur additional cost—not reduced cost—by getting rid of the lump sum. Obviously it is less financially attractive; a return of 2.5% or 3% is less attractive than the return of 5.4% that he is proposing. In that case, how can the Government say simultaneously that they are going to save money by getting rid of the lump sum and that if a person takes it as deferred income instead they will be better off? He is going to have to do some nimble footwork—I am sure he will be able to do so—to explain to the noble Lords how he gets to those savings.
The Minister helpfully said that people could already take a deferred pension at the end of one year as arrears of £7,500. If he were able to say that two years could be taken as arrears, I would be satisfied because that would give people the cushion that they would need, or some such flexibility. I take heart from the fact that he has responded, as I was confident that he would, to the range of feeling around the Room that this is simply the wrong way to go. All parties have genuinely attended to pensioners’ incomes, and the present Government—I include both members of the coalition—as well as the previous one are entitled to claim high credit for that. It is a very good achievement for us to have taken pensioners out of income poverty. However, we are sending them into retirement with increased capital poverty. If we wish, we have the option of allowing them to do something about that. To say that we are removing the choice to address capital poverty in the name of simplicity is, frankly, Orwellian, and normally I would expect better from the Minister than that.
Under the circumstances, I will withdraw the amendment and hope that the Minister will be able to find a way through, perhaps around the hook of an assumption that this is actually paid as arrears. I thank again all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord German
Lord German (LD)
My Lords, the amendment is an attempt to find an alternative approach to the solution of the anomaly of what is known in common parlance as the frozen pensions issue. At Second Reading I asked my noble friend if I could see the correspondence between other Governments where there were UK pensioners receiving only the frozen pension, in order to try to identify whether the idea of moving forward on the basis of reciprocal arrangements was actually going to be productive and would produce some way forward. It is clearly an anomaly; there are currently approximately 600,000 UK pensioners living outside the UK who get their pensions uprated in the same way as if they were living in the UK. At the same time, we do not uprate the pensions of about 550,000 UK pensioners, most of whom live in Commonwealth countries. All, of course, have made the appropriate financial contribution for their pension and many of them have relocated to be near family members. Many of them are former members of the British Armed Forces.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I had not expected to come in on this, but I am intrigued by the concept of mutual advantage to both countries. I have never been in a position to support—I use those words appropriately, I hope—the proposition that we have reciprocal relationships. That is primarily because the main beneficiaries are the UK citizens who have gone to the major Anglo-Saxon countries: Canada, above all Australia, to a lesser extent New Zealand, and South Africa. Obviously, there is free movement within the European Union. I am sure that the Minister will correct me if my stats are wrong, but when I last looked at this the reason why it was so costly—the figure used to be £400 million but I understand that it has gone up to over £600 million—was that four times or more British citizens go to those countries than come back to the UK. Therefore, I cannot see how it can be mutually advantageous if the UK is committed to spending four times as much pro rata as, say, the Australian Government—if those are the appropriate figures—in reverse. If it is the case, as I believe it to be, that so many more people are emigrating to those countries than come back to the UK to retire, essentially it is a one-way bid. That is why so many of us are concerned about this proposition. In Australia, particularly—I have less knowledge of New Zealand—there is income-related support which amplifies any state pension that someone may have brought with them from the UK. It is obviously means-tested but it ensures that those UK citizens have at least a minimally adequate income, so we are not talking about dire poverty, particularly as many of these people have retired and gone to join their families.
It is also the case—this was argued all the way up to the European courts, which found in favour of the British Government—that increments to the British pension in the UK were granted in the light of wider considerations of social policy, and to deal specifically with increased costs of living reflected in increased earnings within the UK. If you were to track the relevant figures—for example, in South Africa—you may well find that because of changes in currency rates, employment rates or wages, the British pension may well be worth more in the home country than in the country to which the retired person has moved as it was designed to deal with the UK situation. For many years when the state pension was first introduced there were no automatic increases at all. They were introduced as a regular item under the Wilson Government. Then, fairly quickly, Mrs Thatcher, after four years, separated the provision from earnings and attached it to prices, but only since then have we assumed regular increments, which is why the problem possibly did not arise in those early reciprocal arrangements. The pension was designed to deal with the British cost of living and not with costs abroad.
As long as people emigrating or retiring to those countries where there is no reciprocal arrangement have full information about the financial implications of their choice—that is key—then they make that decision with their eyes open to what it means. Given that the Government are seeking to impose cuts on British pensions here for widows, and cuts in universal credit, income for disabled people and so on, I could not support seeing £600 million go to people who have made an informed decision to leave this country. If we were to have reciprocal arrangements, it would result in cuts to other very beleaguered services.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 33A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord German, and to support Amendment 33B, which stands in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Sherlock. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord German, for his explanation of the motivation behind his amendment. We had the benefit of his contribution to the Second Reading debate, to which I listened carefully, in which he explained the provisions of this amendment and posed questions to the Minister on them.
However, when I looked at the mechanism he had chosen, I was slightly concerned that he was seeking to empower the Government to act in breach of the EU and international law in the form of bilateral treaties, and that he felt so strongly on the issue that anything which budged the status quo was worth arguing for. However, I understand his motivation and am intrigued by the questions that he asked, and those which my noble friend Lady Hollis asked, about how one can—specifically in regard to Canada—come to some mutually beneficial agreement in these circumstances. He is right to be intrigued by that. These are the words of the Canadian Minister and, if that is the offer that they are making, it would be interesting to know the extent to which the Government know the detail of that offer and whether an argument can be made for it.
However, I move on from that, as I wait in anticipation of the Minister’s response to these interesting questions, to Amendment 33B. Before I come to the argument for it I should say, as was explained by my honourable friend Gregg McClymont in the debate on this issue in the Commons, that we are not hostile to the government position of continuing not to uprate pensions in countries where they are not currently uprated. It would be extremely difficult to explain why we had not done this in years of government if we were now to take this position. We have the benefit of the Government’s estimate of the cost of doing so.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
My Lords, we have the benefit of the Government’s estimate of the cost of uprating those pensions that are not presently uprated, which is in the region of £700 million, plus of course the possibility of significant backdating. Once payment began then the arguments for backdating would subsequently follow; I do not think that that would be unexpected. We on these Benches agree that at present this is not a priority for our country, and that the cost is important.
That leads me directly to the justification and the reason for Amendment 33B. We promote this review for many of the same reasons that the noble Lord, Lord German, promotes his questions on engagement—to help us to reach a definitive and informed judgment on the costs and benefits of uprating. We are not calling on the Government to uprate. If the analysis that we call for, which we understand is capable of being done on a cross-governmental basis, has been done in whole or in part, then we would welcome the information that is available because it would help our understanding of the necessary information and the calculation of the costs and benefits. By this method we seek to inform the debate, and that is the consistent approach of our amendments calling for a review in different parts of the Bill.
Importantly, this issue is not going to go away; I think that we all appreciate that. In fact, as my honourable friend Sheila Gilmore made clear in the House of Commons, it is impossible to be a Member of that House without being assailed by the impressive campaign consistently being run by those who feel aggrieved because they have not benefited from uprating over a lengthy period. Indeed, many noble Lords have also been assailed by these arguments in correspondence. I remember, at the time when I was in the House of Commons, receiving correspondence regularly and indeed, on occasions, people at my constituency advice surgeries who were home-visiting relatives coming to argue and make the points for uprating in a very forceful fashion.
Those who have campaigned for uprating for these frozen pensions have been encouraged in that campaign at various times by senior politicians. Mischievously, I cannot resist the temptation to remind noble Lords that in 2004, when the Pensions Bill was passing through Parliament, the now Pensions Minister Stephen Webb told campaigners:
“I agree that pensioners who earned their pensions by paying national insurance contributions have a strong case for the value of that pension being maintained in line with inflation, and I am actively seeking such a change. As you may be aware, there is currently a Pension Bill passing through Parliament. I will take this opportunity to table an amendment, seeking to uprate the ‘frozen pensions’ of expatriates”.
My researches have not gone to the extent of trying to find out whether or not he did in fact promote such an amendment, but he certainly indicated his intention to do so. He has clearly changed his mind, and I suspect that he may not be the last Back-Bencher to find his words in the surgery haunting him once he is in ministerial office. It was once famously said by someone that when the facts changed, he changed his mind. Here the facts have not changed—they have been consistently the same—but the mind has changed.
Lord Freud
My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, pointed out, the policy on the uprating of state pensions for pensioners abroad is a long-standing one. It has been regularly debated over the years. Clause 20 provides an enabling power for regulations to restrict the availability of annual uprates, as now, in the new state pension where the recipient is living overseas. The Government’s intention is that there will be no difference in treatment between the new and old state pensions as to overseas uprating, either generally or with regard to the UK’s various bilateral agreements. I can reassure noble Lords that all our existing legal obligations with regard to uprating of pensions under bilateral agreements—along with the European co-ordination regulations—will continue to be honoured. To treat the new single-tier pension differently from the current pension would clearly go against the spirit of these agreements. However, I should make it clear that there are no current plans to enter into any new social security bilateral agreements.
There are a number of factors to be considered behind that decision. These are the number of people moving between countries, the benefits available under the other country’s scheme, the compatibility of systems and how far and to what extent reciprocity can be achieved. Future costs are also considered in both the implementation and future operation of any agreement. A bilateral agreement with Australia existed in 2001 when Australia ended it because of a dispute around the current UK policy on uprating UK state pensions paid overseas. There are no plans to enter into a new bilateral agreement with Australia, as any agreement would not achieve reciprocity between it and the United Kingdom.
I shall pick up the Canadian point. Bilateral agreements cover social security matters only, rather than matters beyond this scope which might be described as mutually beneficial. DWP officials are not aware of a discussion or correspondence on this wider scope of mutually beneficial arrangements. I cannot confirm the figures provided by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, on whether four times more go to Australia than come back, but she is normally well informed.
I need to make information available on the numbers. We are in the process of updating and quality assuring our estimate of the cost of unfreezing pensions for 2014-15. The department has moved from modelling change to the case load at a population level to a more complex methodology, which takes account of individual characteristics and provides a more accurate estimate when applied to historic data. As a consequence, we now estimate that the cost of extending the uprating of pensions currently paid overseas is slightly reduced but it will still represent a substantial cost to UK taxpayers of more than £0.5 billion per annum. My noble friend is right in saying that this is somewhat below the previous estimate, based on general populations, of £700 million. The department has recently released a statistical publication that clarifies this matter, to which I can refer noble Lords if they need more information.
On the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, on whether people have full information, the department issues the following leaflets which include information on the impact of living outside the UK and the annual uprating increase for UK state pensions: leaflet BR 23, leaflet DWP040 and leaflet DWP026. The 040 leaflet is sent out with the state pension statement, for instance. Information is available on the government website and Social Security Abroad, leaflet NI138, issued by HMRC, also includes similar advice.
The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, on reviewing overseas residents’ provision assumes that we would be able to identify and assess the behavioural link between uprating policy and migration patterns. The question about a review is whether it would raise expectations. The noble Lord posed the question about whether we would uprate if we had the money. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, was spot on when she raised the issue about making very difficult decisions on payments. Finding £500 million is not an easy business. Clearly, there will always be different priorities for £500 million per annum, as indeed the previous Government decided at a time when there appeared to be more money floating around than there appears to be today. I will not step on anyone’s grave in the collegiate atmosphere of this Committee.
The final question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Browne, was on the numbers of pension-age people moving abroad. That comes from the document from the ONS called Emigration from the UK, November 2012, which states:
“Only two per cent (or 6,000) of those emigrating were over the state pension age of 60 for women and 65 years for men”.
The report also interestingly indicates that 10% were aged between 45 and 59/64 years.
We are aware of research that suggests that a theoretical and economic case can be made to support the uprating of state pensions for all recipients abroad. However, it is notable that this analysis has not been able to provide evidence of a proven behavioural link between uprating and pensioner migration. In fact, we think it unlikely that any review would demonstrate that. In any case, the decision to emigrate abroad remains a personal choice for individuals. In the absence of that kind of evidence, we know that the cost of extending the uprating of pensions currently paid overseas remains significant at more than £0.5 billion per annum. The Government, like their predecessors over the past 60 years, believe that they must put the interests of pensioners living in the UK over the interests of those living overseas by restricting the availability of uprates to those living here or in a country where we have a legal or treaty obligation to provide them. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord German
My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. It is an interesting one because in the words, I think, of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, it is one that will not go away and will continue to raise its head. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Browne, for reminding noble Lords that at Second Reading I did preface my remarks quite clearly by saying that I was not seeking to pay huge amounts of money to deal with this matter in the manner that many people have demanded or asked. It is a question of trying to find an alternative approach, which is what I was seeking to do with this amendment and in my earlier statements at Second Reading.
As many noble Lords have mentioned, people are putting pressure on noble Lords and Members of the other House to come up with some solutions. The challenge is to think of a way in which an approach might be developed, and I put one before noble Lords in this amendment. I hope it was quite clear that the amendment was not seeking any approach beyond a quid pro quo with another Government so that the message would be clear to any other Government seeking to approach the United Kingdom on this issue. Quite a number have approached the United Kingdom over the years, including some quite surprising places such as Mongolia. If we are going to go down this route, we need to ensure that there is a clear message that there will be no additional costs to United Kingdom plc.
I note what my noble friend said about reciprocity only being looked at from a social security angle. However, that raises another point, on which I echo some thoughts back to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. If income comes to UK plc, providing the UK Government can redistribute it accordingly, there may well be opportunities in any agreement beyond just simple social security. I think that has been consistently looked at as the approach for all these reciprocal arrangements, right back to the very beginning.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I am intrigued by the notion of it being mutually advantageous. The noble Lord raised this—rightly and in an interesting way—at Second Reading and again today and has been understandably careful about not seeking to load a substantial increase on the pensions bill for people who no longer live in this country. When he talks about mutual advantage, he must have thought about what that might look like. What suggestions has he got? What propositions have been made? I cannot understand why it is about anything other than money, to the advantage of people who have left the country. Can he give us some indication of how his thinking might go in that way because I am sure it would be of considerable interest to the Committee?
Lord German
Perhaps I could put inverted commas around the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, and refer them, and the precise nature of this debate, to the Minister in Canada. I do not know what was in their mind. My noble friend the Minister here cannot know either, because of course they closed the door to any discussion with the officials from the Canadian Government. However, we need a discussion about this issue. It may well be that it is not with DWP Ministers; it may need to be at some other level.
I do not know the answer to the noble Baroness’s question. All I know is that the Canadian Government believe that they have a mutually beneficial offer to make. That seems to me to be worthy of further discussion; no more than that. I make it clear that I am very much in favour of managing expectations here. The amendment does not call for expenditure at the levels which we have seen before us, and I do not wish to see a reduction in social security expenditure for people currently living in this country as a result. However, when an offer of that sort is made, it is worthy of examination. If there were to be the sorts of things that would make it mutually beneficial, and the Canadian Government believe it to be mutually beneficial to adopt a procedure for Canadian UK pensioners, then it is worth at least finding out what is on the table. If it were to be a successful offer, that of course quite clearly sends the message to other Governments that they can come up with a deal that actually meets the expectations of this Government and the British people.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord again; he is being very tolerant, for which I am grateful. Again, I am relying on my memory, which is probably faulty, but something in the order of 85% of overseas pensioners outside the EU are in the four major Anglo-Saxon countries. However, the countries in which most of us would recognise that there are anomalies are not so much the big four Anglo-Saxon countries, which have decent social security systems for poverty relief as a safety net and so on. This is about the mixed history of some Caribbean islands, which came in under the net, before 1979, for protection of overseas pensioners, while others did not. Once we started inflating pensions by the cost of living—I am not sure that this was accidental—bilateral relations disappeared at that point because they started to reflect the British cost of living. Those countries are so poor that they are looking for a form of aid in the form of pensions. How would the noble Lord justify coming to a mutually advantageous deal with a relatively wealthy country like Canada while, because an appropriately mutually advantageous offer could not be made with Caribbean islands, that opportunity would be refused to some of the poorer countries?
Lord German
We have gone a very long way from what might be the first step in this direction. We have not yet been able to answer that first question: what do any Government have ready to offer?
Incidentally, the Government’s figures are quite clear. They say that 85% of all those with frozen pensions live in Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Those are huge numbers. One of the interesting things when you look at these issues, as noble Lords will know, is that other countries produce information, which comes to you in emails. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, asked earlier about Australian pensions. I understand that they are means-tested, but only by 50% of total income over the threshold, so if the UK pension was increased by £20 then the Australian pension would be reduced by the equivalent of £10. As we know, it is not always as clear as we suggest.
My intention in tabling the amendment was simply to be able to examine the issue in a different way, and only then to consider it further. However, it seems to me that we need an answer. I have not yet heard the answer, although of course I could not expect to hear an answer from my noble friend since the discussion with officials was not allowed to take place. However, I encourage that discussion to take place, even if it is over a cup of tea with another group of officials at some stage. In a spirit of hope that this will happen, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
“( ) Before the provisions contained in paragraphs 83 to 86 of Schedule 12 come into effect, the Secretary of State shall set out comprehensive arrangements for the passporting to benefits for those no longer eligible for the savings credit.”
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, this is a probing amendment to give us a chance to have a canter round the passporting issues. The impact assessment has a section on passported benefits. We had a brief excursion into these matters when we last met and have since had a helpful letter from the Minister. The impact assessment sets it out clearly:
“If pensioners are no longer eligible for Pension Credit as a result of the single-tier reforms then they could lose eligibility to some of these ‘passported benefits’”.
That is straightforward. It goes on to state:
“Receipt of Guarantee Credit passports pensioners to the full amount of Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit … There is little reduction in Guarantee Credit eligibility resulting from the single tier”.
Therefore, this has a limited impact on the proportion of pensioners who are eligible to be passported. Yet in his letter—and we understand the arithmetic—the Minister tells us that in 2020 there will be a fall of around 15% to 20% of the total eligible for guarantee credit in these cohorts.
Going back to the impact assessment, we are reminded that there are other benefits that are linked to receipt of guarantee credit such as health benefits and Social Fund payments, so that pensioners no longer entitled to guarantee credit as a result of the single-tier measures may also lose eligibility to these other benefits. But again we are told that,
“there is only a small impact of single tier on entitlement to Guarantee Credit”.
The cynic might conclude that, when dealing with passported benefits, the Government are seeking to play down the reduction in guarantee credit recipients but are otherwise seeking to reassure us that single tier will reduce means-testing. I accept the figures in the Minister’s letter that in the 2040s there will be some 50,000 fewer households on guarantee credit than would have been the case under the existing state pension arrangements. It is further accepted that fewer will be on guarantee credit because their income has risen. However, the working assumption is that STP will be set just marginally above the guarantee credit level, so for notionally swapping pension income for guarantee credit some 50,000 are notionally missing out on passporting. Is this correct? What are the estimated savings to government from this? There seems clearly to be no intent to compensate in any way. As our documentation makes clear, the main driver of reductions in pension credit is the demise of the savings credit. Chart 4.1 of the impact assessment shows—as a percentage of the population reaching state pension age after the introduction of single tier—the change in the composition of those eligible for pension credit, but I cannot readily locate the absolute numbers of households which lose savings credits and the notional average amounts. The chart is done in percentage terms. Can the Minister help us on this?
So far as the passporting of benefits is concerned, under current arrangements most depend on guarantee credit. However, receipt of the savings credit can unlock access to such benefits as cold weather payments, affordable warmth obligations of energy companies and, until abolition, working tax credit and child tax credit. How many pensioners will have no access to cold weather payments under STP who would have under the current arrangements? How much money are the Government saving by this, and are there plans to put in place any alternative arrangements? I beg to move.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
My Lords, in speaking to this amendment I shall speak also to Amendment 36A in the name of my noble friend Lady Sherlock and myself. Amendment 36A is a small probing amendment designed simply to draw out the Minister on the impact of the abolition of savings credit on mixed-age couples—that is, a couple where one member reaches the state pension age before 6 April 2016 and the other after. The relevant provision in the Bill is to be found in paragraph 85 of Schedule 12, and the mechanism is the insertion of Section 3ZA into the State Pension Credit Act 2002. Subsection (1) of this new section of that Act reads as follows:
“Regulations may provide that, in prescribed cases, a person who is a member of a mixed-age couple is not entitled to a savings credit”.
Subsection (2) reads:
“For example, the regulations could provide that a member of a mixed-age couple is not entitled to a savings credit unless … the person has been awarded a savings credit with effect from a day before 6 April 2016 and was entitled to a savings credit immediately before that date, and … the person remained entitled to state pension credit at all times since the beginning of 6 April 2016”.
For good reasons to do with the interpretation of statutory powers, it is unusual to legislate by example, and with this amendment I am seeking to draw out the Minister on why the Government have chosen to do so. The answer may be that there is some existing provision that has to be re-enacted. If that is the case, I would quite like the Minister to go further and explain why there is this particular example of circumstances where a mixed-age couple would not be entitled to savings credit. For the record, I think it would instruct and inform the public and the Committee if the Government explained whether it is their intention that these example circumstances will be the only circumstances in which a mixed-age couple are entitled to savings credit. How many couples do the Government expect will be affected by this very specific change?
On the broader issue of the loss of savings credit, will the Minister clarify precisely how many people are currently entitled to savings credit only? I cannot reconcile the figures from the different case load statistics that I have access to. Will he clarify how much the mean and median loss—the notional loss, if he prefers—will be? Will he engage with the question of whether or not this will create a cliff edge for those who just miss out on guarantee credit?
Turning to my noble friend’s amendment, what will happen to entitlement to those benefits that are passported off savings credit? According to the paper from his officials, these are assisted prison visits, affordable warmth, access to the Social Fund—presuming, of course, that there is anything left of it—working tax credit, child tax credit and the Sure Start maternity grant. Will these people still be entitled to those, based on the maximum income on which they could have been eligible for savings credit?
Lord Freud
My Lords, as you know, these amendments seek detailed arrangements of passporting to other benefits for single-tier recipients who would, under the current system, have been receiving a basic state pension with a modest private pension income above that level. They would also ensure that mixed-age couples, where one member has reached state pension age before 6 April 2016 and the other after, would retain access to the savings credit. As noble Lords will be aware, the savings credit, which is currently available to those aged 65 and over, will continue to be available to those who reach state pension age before 6 April 2016, and mixed-age couples who are already in receipt on that date will continue to receive it.
The guarantee credit will continue to be available for the poorest, regardless of when they reach state pension age, and receipt of the guarantee credit will, for example, continue to give access to the warm home discount scheme and to cold weather payments. Moreover, poorer pensioners, in the bottom income quintile, are among the principal beneficiaries of these reforms: more than half will be better off in the first 25 years, with a median gain of £8 a week in 2040 and £5 in 2020.
The full rate of the new single-tier pension will be set above the basic means test. Where both members of a couple receive the full single-tier pension, they will receive nearly a third more than the couple rate of the pension credit standard minimum guarantee, based on 2013 rates. This means state pension income alone will raise them above the standard income level at which pension credit runs out. Savings credit already rewards some couples for their state pension, which muddies the original intention. Mixed-age couples, where one is on a full basic state pension and the other a full single-tier pension, would also have income above the couple’s standard minimum guarantee.
A key principle of the reforms is to remove access to savings credit for single-tier households, which includes couples where one reaches state pension age before 6 April 2016. We need to balance the fairness between recipients and taxpayers in dealing with the conflict between the individual basis of the single-tier pension and the household basis of the savings credit. However, we will allow those mixed-age couples already in receipt of savings credit on 6 April to retain it, if they continue to meet the eligibility conditions.
Amendment 36A would retain means-testing for the mixed-age couple group and continue to reward some with savings credit for their state pension, but without any increase in savings incentives, which is why we oppose it. The cost of the amendment would be up to £20 million per year into the 2030s.
I shall pick up the issue of why we include the example. The power in the Bill will allow us to specify when the restrictions should and should not apply. The example in new Section 3ZA(2) captures one situation where we may wish to allow existing recipients to retain the entitlement, but we may identify more situations as we work through the detail of single tier. The numbers affected are likely to be small, with a maximum of 20,000 couples at any one time, and a total of 40,000 couples affected at some time over their retirement, which is only 5% of an estimated 800,000 mixed-age couples. Of those potentially affected, only around two-thirds would have claimed, because of the low take-up issue. Changes in circumstances during retirement mean that, on average, a mixed-aged couple would miss out for only seven years of their retirement.
The noble Lords, Lord McKenzie and Lord Browne, asked about numbers in receipt of savings credit. There are currently 540,000 receiving only savings credit. The average median loss of savings credit peaks at around £10 per week in 2020, but the net impact on household income is only expected to be £8 per week at that point.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
Before the Minister moves too far away from my specific question, which was exploring legislation by example, I should perhaps correct what I said. In explaining this, I remember suggesting that new Section 3ZA(2) was about the circumstances in which somebody would be “entitled” to savings credit. However, the wording is “not entitled to”. I wish to clarify that for the purposes of the record. I am really not clear why the Government choose to legislate by putting into primary legislation an example of the only set of circumstances that they have currently come across in which, specifically, a mixed-age couple would not be entitled to savings credit and then say they expect that there are other sets of circumstances out there but that they have not formulated them yet. Why put in any example at all? What is the purpose of it?
Lord Freud
The purpose is that we want to retain the ability to avoid cash losers. That is the purpose of this particular power. In relation to the potential impact of the removal of savings credit on passporting, I remind noble Lords that, while pension credit acts as a passport to a number of other benefits, most are linked to receipt of the guarantee credit rather than the savings credit. Housing benefit and council tax reductions are not limited to pension credit recipients; they can already be claimed on low-income grounds regardless of receipt of pension credit, and this will continue. Furthermore, there is a higher applicable amount for pensioners over 65 in housing benefit, essentially to ensure that the savings credit is not itself means-tested away for those paying rent. This higher applicable amount applies to all pensioners over 65, not just those receiving savings credit. This provision will continue for at least as long as housing benefit remains. As noble Lords may be aware, we recently announced that there are no plans to change housing benefit for pensioners until at least 2017-18.
Unlike housing support, entitlement to social fund payments, including cold weather payments, requires receipt of pension credit, and this can include people getting savings credit only. I assure the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, that we have made no assumption of savings from cold weather payments as a result of the changes in this Bill.
On the question of figures—
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Is the noble Lord saying that cold weather payments will continue as is?
Lord Freud
No, it means that we do not expect that we will be paying out less in cold weather payments because of these changes.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Then I am even more confused. If we are denying a category of people the right to cold weather payments, how is it that the bill is remaining the same?
Lord Freud
Clearly, it is because we are expecting that broadly the same numbers of people will be getting cold weather payments. Because of the complexity around this, as I was trying to indicate, we have put no assumption of savings into these figures.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I accept that the Government have not put in any assumptions of savings but if, in fact, there are going to be 540,000 fewer individuals on savings credit and presumably at least some of those would have been able to access cold weather payments under current arrangements—quite apart from couples; I am not talking here about mixed-age couples—there must be savings. There must be circumstances where cold weather payments are not going to be due to somebody in the future who would have got them under the current arrangements. We are just trying to understand the numbers and the savings.
Lord Freud
We estimate that only 80,000 who would otherwise have been claiming pension credit in 2020 will be taken out of the scope of cold weather payments. Cold weather payments will clearly continue to be linked to savings credit, but it is difficult to say whether the 100,000 who may lose savings credit would get cold weather payments for other reasons. It depends on where they are living and what is triggered. That is the reason that we have not made any assumptions. On the basis of these observations and, in particular, the reassurance in respect of support with housing costs, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I am going to withdraw the amendment—we are in the Moses Room—but I am bound to say that I think that the noble Lord would himself recognise that that answer in no significant way addressed the issues we were trying to explore. I will just restate them, and maybe we could have follow-up correspondence. Maybe we should have one of our sessions around this; it is important that we get to the bottom of it. We are seeking to understand how many individuals who would get the savings credit under current arrangements will not do so under the new arrangements in the future, whether they are individuals or couples; I am not dealing here with mixed-age couples. What is the average loss of income because of the denial of savings credit? What is the benefit to government of having restricted passporting of these individuals to a range of benefits, except that some of them may have other routes to those benefits? Of course, the cold weather payments depend on where they live; I am not asking the noble Lord to assume that they go and live in the Antarctic, Scotland or somewhere cold. Sorry, Des; I am in hot—no, cold—water.
The Minister will see the point that I am probing here. There must be savings to government from these changes and we are just trying to understand the measure of them. I take it from the Minister’s reply that there is absolutely no intent to bring forward any special arrangements to reinstate this sort of entitlement for people who will fall out of it because the savings credit is no longer applicable or because they are just at the threshold of being out of the guarantee credit. That is where S2P is going to be pitched, on the basis of all the information that we have. I am not sure that we can make much further progress on this issue this afternoon, unless the Minister is going to—
Lord Freud
I think the noble Lord made a valuable suggestion. This is one of the issues we can look at in a pre-Report session, at which we can go through some of the figures and tables. I am happy to commit to arranging that.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I am grateful for that. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Freud
“In Schedule 4 to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, omit paragraphs 11, 12, 13 and 16.”
Lord Freud
My Lords, this is a minor technical amendment. It is being made as a consequence of Part 2 of Schedule 12 which, among other things, amends and consolidates the provisions dealing with category B pensions, which will continue to be available to people reaching state pension age before the magic date of 6 April 2016. These provisions have recently been amended by the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 in order to extend category B pensions to same-sex spouses. This Bill already takes account of these recent amendments. They are consolidated in paragraphs 55-61 and 63 of Schedule 12. The amendments in the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act will therefore be redundant when Schedule 12 comes into force so this amendment simply removes them from that point. I beg to move.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for confirmation for the record that this is a genuine and consequential amendment and I accept that. I am encouraged to ask a question, which he may not be in a position to answer, and I would be happy if he could write to confirm what I suspect is a simple answer to this. As a consequence of drawing my attention to this area of the law, I am moved to ask whether the Minister can confirm if there is any difference in the transitional arrangements that will apply to members of a civil partnership or same-sex marriage who divorce if one of them has reached state pension age before 6 April 2016? I do not want to detain the Committee in the detail of that. If the answer is no that is the answer I am looking for.
Lord Freud
I am very pleased to give the answer the noble Lord is looking for. No.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
I am grateful to the Minister and am pleased to have that on record. I have nothing further to add.
Baroness Turner of Camden
Baroness Turner of Camden
My Lords, Subsections (2) to (5) of Clause 24 and Schedule 14 give employers powers to amend employee contributions and benefits in their occupational schemes to an extent supposed to be limited to the cost of the extra national insurance the employer will have to pay as a result of the end of contracting out. I am totally opposed to this clause and also to Schedule 14. The proposal potentially impacts on 1.6 million active members of private sector DB schemes. It would enable any existing protection for members’ benefits in legislation or scheme rules to be overridden. This includes specific statutory protection given to members in former nationalised industries when they were privatised and also measures of protection that employers in times past have agreed to write into their schemes.
The ending of contracting out and the associated increase in employer national insurance is, in principle, no different from any other risk employers with DB schemes might face and there is no sound justification for the Government to disturb the existing balance of power in relation to these schemes. The extra cost on employers is no greater than as might arise in the event of a small change in market interest rates. There was no suggestion of intervention to protect scheme members who lost out when the Government, not so long ago, amended the statutory basis of the pension increase from RPI to CPI. A number of us objected at the time. Governments should allow the problems arising for employers on this count to be dealt with through the established process whereby changes can be effected by negotiation and agreement. An overriding power based on being able to recover a set amount of cost could result in great unfairness as there may be no correspondence between the variable amounts members may gain from a single state pension and those they may lose if employers are allowed to determine unilaterally the form of contribution and benefit changes in occupational schemes.
I also recall, during my career as a trade union official a number of years ago, how keen we were to negotiate what we then called final salary schemes— DB schemes. As a result of the schemes that we negotiated then, there have been beneficial changes for many pensioners. As we know, though, after a certain number of years there was a bit of a campaign against DB schemes, as a result of which a number of employers decided that they would scale down their DB schemes. I have sensed that there remains not a hostility but a lack of concern and support on the part of the Government for DB schemes. These schemes excellently provided for generations of pensioners, who are very grateful for the fact that they are in existence.
What is proposed here is not in any way acceptable. I very much hope that the Government will take it away and rethink it. I am not the only person to feel this; the Minister will notice that there are a number of other amendments in this group, including my own Amendment 40, which are designed to protect employees who were covered by existing protections when they belonged to former nationalised industries that were denationalised. As a result of that, there was legislation that provided for protection. In fact, the protected persons were first introduced by an Act of Parliament in 1948 and reaffirmed by the Thatcher Government on the denationalisation of the electricity supply industry in 1990.
The Government now propose, in my view, to override the statutory provisions providing these pensions, in order to allow employers to claw back the additional NI contributions. This really is the thin end of the wedge and I do not think we should accept it. The Government should take it away and rethink it, because I regard it as quite unacceptable and so do many people, including individuals who are themselves beneficiaries of DB schemes and the unions that support them. I beg to move.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I have amendments in this group that broadly support the line that my noble friend has been taking. She was right to try to prise open what the Government’s strategy actually is.
Everyone recognises that there are consequences of contracting out, but under this clause and schedule the Government are effectively giving carte blanche to employers to change established means of paying occupational pensions among private sector employees. Government Amendments 48 and 49 actually make that worse by making it pretty explicit that the full cost of that will, or at least can, fall on the employees so that not only are the employers given the right not only to avoid the consequences of that cost and place it on to the employees, which is likely to have the knock-on effect of people opting out of the schemes, but they are overriding the long-established system whereby such schemes are governed by trustees representing the employers, the contributing members and often the pensioners in those schemes. To override the whole system of pension trustees that we have had in place for the past 40 or so years with regard to private occupational pensions is a very serious step. There are particular consequences in the area where statutory protections are built in. Past Governments have given guarantees that can be overridden by this clause.
All this can lead us only to the conclusion that the Government have a strategy and are using the excuse of the other provisions of the Bill on state pensions to go further in destroying private occupational schemes. We discussed the knock-on effect in public sector schemes at our previous sitting but here we have, as my noble friend says, more than 1.5 million people still in defined benefit schemes who have benefited from them and have every expectation of continuing to benefit from them. On top of everything else, the Government are attempting to ensure that those schemes now fail.
There are other reasons why some schemes have been curtailed and there are other reasons why the future of such schemes, in some cases, looks fragile. However, this is a deliberate attempt by the Government to make matters significantly worse. The Government must think very seriously about that. This is why my amendments and those of my noble friend would delete the bulk of Clause 24 and Schedule 14. We recognise that we have to face up to the consequence of that, but it would force the Government to rethink this and do it in the context of an overall strategy towards occupational pensions, their governance and their future, which is not there at the moment.
This clause provides the possibility of the Government reassuring us that they have a strategy but, frankly, we need to see the outlines of that strategy before we finish the proceedings on this Bill. Otherwise, I think that the message to those outside will be that, if you are in an occupational pension scheme in the private sector, we will make it cost you more and the benefits will be less and, if you are in the public sector, the Government will not compensate for the costs that they are imposing on well funded public sector schemes, as we discussed last time.
There is an occupational pension dimension to the whole pension issue. In principle we support many of the changes that the Government intend to make to the state pension, but the other part of the equation also needs to be faced up to. Frankly, I have seen no sign of a government strategy to do that. These clauses and much of this schedule will only make matters very significantly worse.
Baroness Drake
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 38ZA, 39, 45, 46, 47 and 50. The amendments in this group pose three propositions: the first is not to give the power to employers; the second is to give it only to employers with trustee consent; and then there is the amendment that I propose, which would give the power to employers only if it was subject to an explicit requirement to consult with the trustees.
Quite clearly, abolishing contracting out means abolishing DB schemes. The national insurance rebates to both employees and employers currently run at 1.4% and 3.4% on a band of earnings, so they are not insignificant amounts of money. The Bill will give this statutory override to the employers effectively to recoup that loss of their NI rebate by a choice of one of two options: increasing the employees’ contributions or reducing the value of the future benefits to be accrued. Not all employers need this statutory override to make that adjustment. It is quite clear that the closures and benefit changes of the past 10 years are evidence enough of that. However, there will be some schemes where employers cannot do that without trustee consent. The Government are clearly seeking to provide an override where that trustee consent is required so that employers can proceed without it.
If one looks at the impact assessment, it is quite clear that there is now a green light as a consequence of this clause for employers to recoup the loss of their NI rebates through an increase in employees’ contributions. The assumption made in the impact assessment is that all employees active in DB schemes, who are impacted by this, will bear the cost of increased employer’s national insurance contributions.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
My Lords, I shall speak to all the amendments in this group, particularly Amendments 38ZB, 40A and 68A, which are in the name of my noble friend Lady Sherlock and myself. In total, this is a comprehensive grouping of amendments that deals with what my honourable friend Gregg McClymont described in the Commons as,
“the more granular aspects of the ending of contracting out”.—[Official Report, Commons, Pensions Bill Committee, 4/7/13; col. 236.]
However, it is important to recognise that, although these amendments are almost comprehensive, there is one aspect of the ending of contracting out with which they do not directly engage: the abolition of contracting out itself. I feel motivated to say that with the honourable exceptions of my noble friends Lord Whitty and Lady Turner of Camden, there is broad agreement that the change to a single-tier pension and the aim of introducing simplicity into the state pension system require an end to contracting out, so we are dealing here with the consequences of contracting out, not the fact of its abolition. I will leave my noble friends to speak eloquently for themselves, and I have had private conversations with them to articulate their position on these issues.
When the Committee last met on this Bill, we debated in part the consequences of the ending of contracting out but only for public sector schemes. There were a lot of good questions for the Minister but, with respect to him, his response was essentially—this is not a direct quote—“How to deal with these consequences is a matter for future Chancellors”. The provisions that we are debating here and these amendments make it clear that that is not a luxury that employers with private sector defined benefit pension schemes have available to them.
As my noble friend, Lord Whitty, made clear in his contribution, and this has been his abiding concern regarding aspects of this Bill since his engagement with it, the ending of contracting out could have fatal consequences for occupational pension schemes. The Government’s response to that challenge is to give employers, through the vehicle of a statutory override, the powers to increase employee contributions and/or reduce accrual rates of defined benefit schemes in order to reflect the cost of the extra national insurance that the employer will now have to pay as a result of the end of contracting out. However, these powers are limited by the mechanism set out in Schedule 14, which precludes the use of them beyond the cost of the extra national insurance that the employer will have to pay.
Amendments 37 and 38, in the names of my noble friends Lord Whitty and Lady Turner, seek to delete that override power completely. While we on this Bench do not directly support these amendments, they raise a number of interesting questions. The Pensions Minister in the other place has said repeatedly, in public and in debate, that he is keen to help employers to maintain their defined benefit schemes.
I have some questions for the Minister today. Have the Government consulted employers to assess whether the changes may have the consequence that my noble friend Lord Whitty fears and lead them to close their defined benefit schemes or move employees on to career-average schemes, which are still good but not as good as defined benefit schemes? Should the costs of the additional amount of national insurance fall on to employees, my noble friends are fearful that employees will be unable to pay this from their salary and be forced to leave their schemes. Even a 1.4% additional contribution may be more than can be afforded by some workers living with static salaries and the rising cost of living. This is clearly not in their long-term interest, but if a large percentage of workers withdraw it will also threaten the viability of some pension schemes. As my noble friend Lady Drake has pointed out, 5% is a huge amount to find between employer and employee at a time when so many small businesses are seeking to get back on their feet. My noble friend reflects the views of trade unions, but have the Government discussed the changes with employees and employers, especially small businesses that will be affected by this?
However the changes are achieved—by consultation, as we advocate, or by imposition, as this Bill permits—employees will not be happy. They will struggle to understand the changes to single-tier pensions that are justified. I shall share an anecdote of my consistent experience as a Member of Parliament: I was regularly assailed on the main streets of Kilmarnock by pensioners who asked me why they had to pay tax on their pension. I became quite adept at replying. I will not bore the Committee with the explanation, which is simply that you make up the pot from untaxed income and the deal is that you pay the tax as you draw down. Try as I might, though, I do not think that I ever, even with charts, persuaded one pensioner that that was the case with regard to their pension. I spent from 1997 to 2010 as the MP for those people, and I would be surprised if I persuaded one person of the mechanism for their pension scheme and the operation in this fashion and how it was taxed, despite my very best endeavours to develop skills and take advice in order to do this.
Will employers end up saying, “We’re going to have pain over these changes whatever we do”—I am imagining the kinds of conversations that I have had with people—“so we might as well bite the bullet and close the final salary scheme.”? We know that the Government, particular the Pensions Minister, are keen to help employers retain the remaining defined benefit schemes. That is a justification for the override, as he said at col. 245 of the eighth sitting of the Committee in July 2013, but have the Government discussed with employers how many of them will use this as an opportunity to consider the closure of schemes? These are important questions that need to be tested. My noble friend Lord Whitty asks us all the time what the consequences will be.
This is a complex and expensive matter. Actuaries are costly, and scheme changes are extremely costly to achieve. The amendments tabled by my noble friends Lord Whitty and Lady Turner are helpful in raising questions that we should know the answers to, if they exist. If these measures will lead to employees being forced or inclined to leave schemes and schemes being forced to close, then we should debate that matter as I accept that it is not an intended consequence of the Government’s position.
The second issue engaged by these amendments reflects the fact that, apart from being subject to an actuarial check, this Bill gives the employer largely unfettered power. In particular, as we have heard, the employer does not need to reach agreement with, or even to consult, pension fund trustees or scheme members. As I understand it, existing employers’ rights under the Pensions Act 2005 are already quite significant. As my noble friend, Lady Drake, made very clear from her extensive experience of this, further extensions of that power should be done with great care, if at all. As she explained in convincing fashion, statutory overrides are very strong measures and should be used with care in all cases.
The opposition Benches do not believe that the override power, in this form, is needed or desirable. Amendment 38ZB, tabled in the name of my noble friend Lady Sherlock and myself, would require that changes to pension schemes could be made only with the consent of pension trustees. I accept that it is unlikely that the Government will accept that amendment, but my noble friend Lady Drake offers more of a compromise position that the Minister may find acceptable. In her Amendment 39, she proposes that an employer has the power to amend a pension scheme after consulting pension trustees, and her Amendment 50 states that regulations may require employers to reach agreement with trustees.
It is interesting that in the debate in the Commons, the Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, said—I am keeping this short but I promise the Committee that I have not changed the meaning of it; I have merely taken out extraneous words:
“To encourage … firms to be willing to carry on offering defined benefit pensions, which most of us want them to do, we need to allow them to recoup the money. Many employers will do that by having a conversation with the trustees of their pension scheme and reaching … agreement. That would be the norm. It would be quite proper … The strong incentive, therefore, is … to have a mature conversation with the trustees in order to reach an agreement. We believe that many employers will do that”.—[Official Report, Commons, Pensions Bill Committee, 4/7/13; cols. 244-45.]
If I understand this legislation correctly—and I have to admit that I cannot always guarantee that I do, given its complexity—without the statutory provisions for override in the Bill, that is what all employers would have to do. As is clear, many Members of the Committee, and all of us on these Benches, are at a loss to understand why that best practice, endorsed by the Minister himself, is not what the Government are legislating for.
Our amendments, including Front-Bench Amendment 38ZB, ask these questions: why are the powers set out in the Pensions Act 2004 not sufficient? Why is it necessary to legislate for an override in this fashion at all? Why is it necessary, as the Government are doing in Amendments 48 and 49, to give employers even more powers than in the original drafting of this Bill? What possible reason can the Government have for not reflecting their own Pensions Minister’s endorsement of best practice in their Bill? Where is the opposition coming from to consultation at least, if not to consultation and agreement, if not—as it clearly is not—from the Pensions Minister himself? I hasten to add that I reinforce that I am not reading the Pensions Minister’s words from the debate in a way that misrepresents his argument; I have taken out some extraneous words but that is all.
It is just good management practice, never mind in pensions, to consult staff. Consultation assists implementation and, consequently, staff buy-in to the need for changes. To seek the agreement of pension trustees to changes to schemes, as we propose under Amendment 38ZB, can only prove helpful to employers. As we have heard, trustees have fiduciary duties and responsibilities to act in the best interests of scheme members, so why should the Government not think it sensible, as well as best practice, to consult trustees and seek their approval?
I turn to the limitation on the power to override and the effect of the amendments in relation to this. There is a limitation on the exercise of this override power. As has been said, the employer’s override powers are limited to recouping the cost of the extra national insurance that the employer would have to pay as a result of the end of contracting out. Under the terms of Schedule 14, the exercise of this power must be certified by an actuary as doing no more than that.
My noble friend Lady Drake’s amendments, which I do not intend to engage with in any detail, given her eloquent and convincing arguments for them, are designed to put more definition in the extent of this power. In particular, her Amendments 37ZA, 45, 46 and 47 are designed to define more clearly the values that limit the exercise of the power and would clarify the power of override in a way that I am sure the Government would find helpful. They are within the spirit of the Government’s proposal and the Minister’s intentions, as explained by him repeatedly.
I have some experience of engagement with actuaries when I practised law in Scotland. Given that it is improbable that actuaries, who are notoriously independent of each other and seldom ever agree on discount rates, are likely to come separately to different conclusions, is it not better that the statutory limitations on the use of this power are expressed in such a way as set out in my noble friend’s amendments, rather than in the way that the Government have chosen to do it?
I turn to the issue of protected persons. We have not had an extensive debate on this issue or protected pension schemes, but I have been subject to some very powerful arguments, made not only by noble friends and other parliamentarians but by those with whom I have engaged in preparing for the debates on the Bill, about such persons. I have studied carefully the words of the Pensions Minister, which I encourage people to do—they are very instructive about the thinking behind some of this legislation. To me, his words clearly imply his preference for exempting protected persons. Having done that, one cannot but feel that there is a special set of circumstances arising from the privatisation of nationalised industries in respect of these pension schemes.
Curiously, the Bill is drafted in a way that allows the Secretary of State the power to keep the promises that were made to the members of the schemes. I am really interested in why this has been done. What was the motivation behind it if there was no inclination to do it?
Lord Freud
My Lords, I particularly enjoyed the stories of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, about his dealings with pensioners. I am disappointed that he and his silver tongue were unable to persuade against the pocket. After single tier is introduced, there will not be an additional state pension to contract out of. Employers with such schemes will no longer receive the national insurance rebate; they will pay the same rate as other employers and will have to continue to provide a pension scheme that is generous but which will therefore be more costly. To continue funding these defined benefit schemes and to keep them open without the rebate, employers will be forced to find other ways to reduce running costs. They may wish to reduce the future rate of accruals, or to increase employee contributions.
Employers have told us that, without the override, they will have to consider closing their schemes, particularly if they have no other way of offsetting the costs of contracting out. Clearly, members are not served by their pension schemes closing. It is vital that we support those employers who are seeking ways of offsetting the increased cost of national insurance, including where their scheme rules would not allow the change or where the consent of trustees cannot be obtained. We also recognise that trustees may be put in a difficult position if employers come to them with a request to reduce benefits or increase contributions.
Baroness Drake
On the point that trustees find themselves in difficult positions if they are asked to consider increasing contributions or reducing benefits, I am not sure whether the Minister appreciates what trustees have been doing in the past 10 years in addressing precisely those kinds of requests from employers.
Lord Freud
I understand what trustees in pension funds do and I understand that some of them find themselves in very difficult positions when having to address those issues.
Referring to those private sector employees who are contracted out immediately before implementation, who reach state pension age in the first decade of single tier, around 75% of them will receive enough extra state pension to offset both the increase in national insurance contributions that they will pay over the rest of their working lives and any potential adjustments to their occupational pension schemes. Such a move must be considered in this context.
In contrast to the figure that the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, and the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, were looking at—1.6 million in private sector schemes—regrettably, by 2016, we expect only 950,000 individuals to be affected. That figure is in the impact assessment at paragraph 128.
Amendments 37 and 38 would remove the statutory override power and prevent Schedule 14 from coming into force. The practical effect would be that an employer would be required to get trustee consent for the changes they wanted to make to their scheme should their pension scheme rules require this. For the reasons I have just set out, we feel the override is necessary.
Amendments 38ZA, 45, 46 and 47 of the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, relate to the calculation of the value of the employer’s lost national insurance rebate. For the statutory override to operate as intended we must balance two competing factors: first, safeguarding members from changes to scheme rules that go beyond offsetting the loss of the rebate; and, secondly, providing an override that remains workable for employers—otherwise in practice they will still be left with little real alternative to scheme closure. Schedule 14 sets out important safeguards in the Bill and includes powers to put further safeguards in regulations. Paragraph 2(2) of the schedule prevents the employer making changes beyond those necessary to recoup their increase in national insurance contributions. We intend for this amount to be calculated in accordance with regulations—allowing us to define annual national insurance contributions—and an actuary must certify that any changes do not recoup more than that amount before they are made.
Importantly, any proposed scheme changes cannot take effect before April 2016 and individuals’ accrued pension rights are protected by the Bill. The amount will be calculated in accordance with actuarial methods and I accept that that can be a changeable feast, as the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, pointed out. However, we intend to specify the methods and assumptions in regulations following consultation with the actuarial profession. We are working on the detail of the override regulations and are developing the legislation with stakeholders. We have shared an early draft of the key technical provisions of the regulations with the industry and will undertake a full public consultation on the full regulations as soon as possible. The override will not remove an employer’s obligations under existing legislation to consult their workforce in the usual way before making changes.
Amendments 38A, 39 and 50 refer to the role of trustees in the use of the statutory override. Legislating for trustee consultation risks unnecessarily complicating existing communication channels. It would be counterproductive to require employers to seek trustees’ agreement that the proposed changes recoup no more than the increase in national insurance costs. Trustees would be put in a position of either accepting or challenging the professional view of the certifying actuary. The proposal that the trustees could block the use of the override would negate its purpose. It is worth remembering at this point that, as with any significant alteration to pension schemes, existing legislative provision means that members must be consulted before any changes take place, which is a point I have made.
Where employers wish to make changes to their scheme, whether using the override or through existing scheme rules, it is in their interest, as my colleague Steve Webb said, to engage with their employees and scheme trustees. They will not want to make changes that are impractical or have unforeseen consequences for the scheme or themselves. We can see no reason why employers would not engage in the usual way without the trustees in this case.
We have placed a limit of five years during which employers may use the statutory override. This ends in 2021 but, as the noble Lord, Lord Browne, observed, that time limit may be extended by an order made by the Secretary of State. Based on all the information we have at the moment we believe employers who choose to use the override should be able to do so within this time limit. However, contracting out is complex and there may be unforeseen problems for some employers. An employer who is unable to use the override within the time limit, without the possibility of an extension, may have no option but to close their defined benefit scheme. This would be a compelling reason to use the power and we feel that an affirmative resolution procedure on this matter would not be a prudent use of parliamentary time.
Baroness Drake
I wish to clarify one or two points, if I may. The Minister said that these changes would still be subject to consultation with employers, by which I assume he is saying that they would be considered as listed changes and therefore trigger the listed changes regulations. What triggers that? Those provisions can be operated in a way that excludes the trustees, if the employer takes a certain route. I do not want to go into the detail; perhaps I can do so outside. I would like to understand how consultation with employers is triggered because I would almost certainly want to go on to say that what I think will be triggered will not be fit for purpose in a statutory override situation. I have a couple more points.
Lord Freud
Those are not straightforward points to answer and, given the time pressure we are under, I will write on those two matters.
Baroness Drake
I completely understand these technical matters. We are up against the clock but I think they need answering and I would want to respond to the answers. There could be an element of the positive in the second—on specifying the assumptions in the regulations—because it starts setting out the rules more explicitly. However, it appears that the Government are still proceeding on the basis that these are negative regulations. The trouble is that other interested parties cannot make an effective contribution unless this House has the opportunity to question those assumptions and those regulations. I have no idea what the delay implication would be of allowing this House to consider the proposed regulations and assumptions more actively when they are brought forward.
Secondly, I would still like an answer to what it is that can be recouped. Is it the definition of the NI rebate in 2016, or is it the NI rebate as it would evolve anyway over time under the current arrangement, meaning that, because of the reduction in the earnings element, it would contract?
Again, I do not want to get too much into protected persons but, on the fourth point, if one takes as an example the railway pension scheme, the Minister is absolutely right. Lots of people in that scheme do not have protected pensions, but they do have the shared cost. There are particular complexities that arise from shared costs and some other things as well, but I feel that there is no opportunity to flesh these out. I have spent some time looking at the railway pensions bill. Even if one did not want to challenge the Government on the principle, there are some complexities here. It is not easy just to adjust the contribution rate or to adjust the benefits in a shared cost situation and where there are variable accrual rates. How are we going to get a chance to look at these?
Lord Freud
My Lords, given our time constraints, I will pick up those issues—the shared cost and the rebate over time. With the negative and affirmative, there is a time saving and a certainty. The difference is that you get them in and, within a matter of a month, they are effectively law and they can then be prayed against, but they are in shape unless they are undone. Affirmative has to be approved. So there is quite a process and a time loss in going one way or the other, which I hope I have spelt out. Let me rush to—
Lord Browne of Ladyton
I am grateful to the Minister. I am conscious of the time, but I am also conscious that we should not move on from this particular part of the Bill with all its complexity because we are pushed for time, due to the accident of when we held this debate. I say this for a good reason. The Minister read a speaking note about affirmative resolution procedure in relation to regulations which was not written to respond to the amendment that I proposed but was a much more general speaking note. The amendment tabled by me and my noble friend Lady Sherlock related only to Section 24(8)—a very specific part that would not involve the complex regulations which the Minister narrated. The regulations in Section 24(8) will probably be two short paragraphs.
The Minister has given us a lot of other food for thought about how the regulations will be promulgated more broadly. He tantalisingly gave us some of the detail about what may be in there, which may answer many of our questions. It is inappropriate that we just move on from Committee in relation to all these issues that he has raised in his response, and which none of us has had the opportunity to tease out. There are three or four other issues that he raised in response to my contribution with which I would like to engage, because I am not certain that these arguments would stand the test of debate.
Lord Freud
Well, my Lords, I was responding to the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, on the negative procedure generally. It is fairly odd to have two separate procedures going on within one process. That is the point.
I will try to deal with government Amendments 48 and 49. Schedule 14 currently provides that regulations can create exceptions to the limits set out in paragraph 2(2). This was originally provided to deal with unusually funded schemes, such as fixed cost-share schemes, which I hope goes to the issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee raised concerns about the power. In light of this and our ongoing discussions with the pensions industry, we no longer believe that we need this power—we believe that something different is required—so Amendment 49 removes it. Amendment 48 then makes specific provision for employers with atypical scheme-funding arrangements, such as cost-share schemes. It allows those employers to recover their increased costs without affecting the safeguards provided by Schedule 14.
In the statutory override we have designed a process whereby employers can continue to sponsor defined-benefit schemes without losing the rebate. We have included provision to allow for a pivotal role for actuaries in signing off any changes but we have not restricted the ability of trustees, and indeed members, to express their views to the employer. We have ensured that trustees are not forced to decide whether to accept scheme changes or risk closure of the scheme. I hope that this reassures noble Lords and I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Turner of Camden
I thank everyone who has contributed to the debate. I agree, of course, that it is a complicated matter but, on the other hand, the complications take place within the context of what is in the Bill. The Bill makes it clear that in future employers will have the right to change the provisions of pension contributions and benefits. That is what most of us are concerned about. I do not think that the Minister’s response has dealt with the fear that people have that they are now facing a possibility that DB schemes could be under attack. They have been under attack in the past. Although I agree with everything that has been said about the necessity of involving trustees—of course I believe in that—when in the past employers have changed from a DB scheme to something less good, which has happened, the trustees have been consulted but have made no attempt to disrupt what the employer had intended to do. I therefore still do not think it is sufficient to say that the trustees have to be consulted. There has to be general consultation. The problem is, of course, that it is in the general context of the Bill, and the general context of this clause, which gives the employer power to change the benefits system through the DB scheme that may exist.
People are concerned about the continuation of their DB schemes. As I have said in the past, DB schemes which have been negotiated in the past have been responsible for improving benefits for a whole generation of pensioners. They want to continue with those schemes and to ensure that the unions to which most of them belong will have the right to ensure that negotiation will properly take place before anything can be done to remove those benefits that they all value so highly from them.
In those circumstances, while I have listened very carefully to what has been said, particularly to what the Minister has been saying this afternoon, I will look again at what he said. However, concerns still exist about Schedule 14 and the wording of this clause, and we shall certainly return to it on Report. Personally, I have not been satisfied with what I have heard and am quite certain that a number of other people will not be either. There has to be much more of a debate. Unfortunately, a number of our Members have left because we are running rather late tonight. A number of people who have tabled amendments have not had the opportunity to speak to them and so on. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
House of Lords
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Peatlands
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Greaves
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to deliver their commitments made in the statement on peatlands by the Ministers from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Welsh Government, the Northern Ireland Executive and the Scottish Government on 5 February 2013, in particular those on peatland restoration, land management policies to protect peatlands, and the inclusion of peatland restoration in national greenhouse gas emissions reporting.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord De Mauley) (Con)
My Lords, we are undertaking a number of actions supporting the restoration of peatlands, including working with the International Union for Conservation of Nature on the pilot peatland code, research to determine best practice in peatland restoration, and establishing three government-funded nature improvement areas. We are also investing more than £3 billion in a more targeted successor scheme to environmental stewardship, with the potential to include peatland restoration, and we are funding research on greenhouse gas emissions from lowland peat.
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, that was quite a positive response. Is the Minister aware of the recent report by the Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences at Aberdeen University, which found that building wind farms on undegraded peatland will not reduce net carbon emissions, and that they should not be built there? Many peatlands are in wild, remote, often upland areas, with large stocks of soil carbon. Developing them usually involves substantial excavation and draining of peat, which offsets the gains from wind power. Will the Government take these matters into account when considering their future energy strategy for the UK in conjunction with the devolved Administrations?
Lord De Mauley
Yes, my Lords. Applicants for consent for major energy infrastructure projects must provide assessments of potential biodiversity and geological impacts, including the effects of locating infrastructure on peatland. The decision-making authority must take such impacts into account before making its decision. Much can be done, through project design, to minimise and mitigate impacts. However, if there is damage that cannot be avoided, it is for the planning authorities to judge whether the benefits of the wind farm development outweigh those impacts.
Lord Krebs (CB)
My Lords, I would like to ask the Minister about the impacts of climate change on upland peat. As he will know, the report of the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change, which I happen to chair, reported this year that only 4% of upland deep peat in England is in active, peat-forming good condition. Furthermore, only one-third of upland deep peat has a management plan in place. Will he inform the House what he intends to do about the other two-thirds of upland peat that has no management plan in place to improve its quality?
Lord De Mauley
Yes, my Lords—and I should take this opportunity to thank the noble Lord for the work he does with the Adaptation Sub-Committee; it is extremely important to us. The peatland code, which was launched in September, provides a basis for business sponsorship of peatland restoration; that is a key plank in what we are doing. We are also undertaking a considerable amount of important and relevant research. Environmental stewardship, which I referred to in my initial Answer, has for many years benefited peatlands, but the new ELMS will be more focused on environmental outcomes and therefore will be more directly beneficial to peatland restoration. The three nature improvement areas that have peatlands are working hard on improving their habitats.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, is not the best way in which to answer the plea of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, to ensure that these unreliable, uneconomic and unsightly wind farms are not built on land anywhere?
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, of course, we have to take all factors into account in these decisions, but I shall pass on my noble friend’s comments to my colleagues at the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, reminded us, only around 4% of our deep peat is in sufficiently good condition still to be actively forming peat. That is a decline from 6% in 2003. We also know that Birmingham, Exeter, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield, as well as all of Cornwall, rely on peat catchments for their water. The Peak District peatlands alone supply 4 million people. Will the Minister therefore tell us what estimate the Government have made of the costs that could be avoided if the water storage and purification services provided by upland peat were restored?
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, the noble Lord will not be surprised to hear that I do not have a figure for that, but the gist of his question is entirely right. Peatlands perform an absolutely essential function in ensuring that we have clean and pure water supplies.
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, the poor condition of upland blanket peat bogs causes nearly 300,000 tonnes of CO2 to be released into the atmosphere every year. Can the Minister say at what date the Government intend to increase peatland restoration in the national greenhouse gas emissions reporting?
Lord De Mauley
I was not quite sure which noble friend was going to ask me a question then. The point on greenhouse gas emission reporting is that the metrics and technology are at a relatively early stage. We are still working on that, but noble Lords may rest assured that it is a key focus for us, and we will not rest until we have achieved that.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister said that they were looking for sponsorship for the management of these peatland areas. Does that mean that the only new areas that will get managed will be those sponsored by McDonald’s, et cetera?
Lord De Mauley
No, my Lords; that is why I mentioned the new environmental land management scheme.
Viscount Ridley
My Lords, is the Minister aware that it is not only in this country and not only with wind farms that some renewable energy projects are proving to be worse for carbon emissions, because of their effect on peat? For example, a study from Leicester University showed that biomass production from tropical peatland forests can worsen the effect of carbon dioxide emission.
Lord De Mauley
That is a very interesting point, but it strays a little wide of the Question.
The Earl of Courtown
I have got there in the end. I am looking at a slightly different part of this Question—at the end user of much of this peat, particularly the horticultural user. Would my noble friend agree that it would be wise for Her Majesty’s Government to look at the labelling of peat products for sale in garden centres, where peat material is sold as being low in peat when at least 50% of it is made up of peat?
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, that is an important point, too, because that is essentially—or at least a major reason—why our peatlands have been so badly destroyed in the past. A road map or plan has been produced from the work of the Sustainable Growing Media Task Force, which sets out recommendations on how a transition to sustainable growing media can be achieved. The Government responded in January 2013. As part of that, a growing media panel was established to oversee and co-ordinate delivery of the plan and to report on progress. The policy review will take place in 2015 to assess progress.
Ofsted: Annual Report 2012-13
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Perry of Southwark
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the remarks about “lucky children” made by the Chief Executive of Ofsted during the launch of that organisation’s Annual Report 2012–13.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted that the chief inspector has focused attention on “lucky children”. Although 78% of schools are now good or outstanding—compared to 68% when we came into office—there are still too many unlucky children. Many of them attend schools up and down the country that have been failing for years and which we are now turning into sponsored academies. The performance of sponsored academies far outstrips that of other state schools. For instance, sponsored academies open for three years improved their GCSE results by 12% versus 5% for local authority schools. The Government’s extensive programme of reform is aimed at ensuring that all children are lucky enough to go to a good school.
Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that heartening reply. Would he also join me in welcoming the chief inspector’s finding that children’s success in education is determined not by their background but by the quality of the school they attend and that lucky children are simply those who attend good schools? Does this not offer an end to the climate of low expectations for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, which for too long has bedevilled their opportunities?
Lord Nash
My noble friend is quite right. When the new chief inspector came into office, one thing that I thought he did very well was to abolish the appalling low-expectation term “satisfactory” and set much higher expectations for schools. It has clearly been proved through the academies programme and other schools that setting higher expectations for our children does work.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, the report implies that increased testing of children may improve attainment. Many teachers and educationalists believe and state that excessive testing takes time away from teaching. Do the Government agree?
Lord Nash
Assessment, as opposed to testing, is obviously crucial to ensure effective accountability and to work out whether pupils are making progress, which is an issue that I know Ofsted is very focused on. We have held a public consultation on proposals for key stage 1 assessment, whose results have not been published. As far as key stage 3 tests are concerned, we have no plans to reintroduce key stage 3 tests but we expect all schools to be able to demonstrate to Ofsted, through whatever assessment mechanism they use, that their pupils are making progress.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (CB)
My Lords, would the Minister agree that, while the use of the word “lucky” is good shock tactics—and, possibly, good politics—the primary responsibility of Government, and all of us who are involved in education, is to improve the quality of schools and teaching and to take luck completely out of the picture?
The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds
My Lords, in view of the difficulties often experienced in recruiting governors for schools, especially but not only in disadvantaged areas, what more can the Government do to encourage people to take on that role and to reduce the bureaucratic pressures that governors so often face?
Lord Nash
The right reverend Prelate is quite right to focus on governance. I put that right at the top of my agenda when I came into office because it seems to me that, whether a school is maintained by a local authority or is an academy, the key decisions are often made by the governing body, so we need to raise the quality of governance. Last year, we focused governors’ responsibility on three key functions: on setting the school’s strategy and vision; on holding the head teacher to account for pupils’ progression and for the performance management of the staff; and on money. It is important to focus governors on a limited number of tasks, but we are also dramatically beefing up recruitment, including by working with business to recruit more business governors.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, the chief inspector highlights as a key challenge that pupils do not see English and other school subjects as relevant to their daily lives. Would the Minister agree that lucky children are those who have early exposure to the world of work and make the link between lessons and future aspirations? If so, what steps are the Government taking to support and enhance careers advice throughout primary and secondary schooling?
Lord Nash
I agree with my noble friend that this is very important. It is essential that schools work closely and engage with their local businesses. Many excellent models are emerging up and down the country—I am continually coming across new ones—including: the Business in the Community business class, which aims to work with 500 schools; the Ahead Partnership in Leeds, which runs a very good organisation called “Make the Grade” that builds partnerships between businesses and schools; and Inspiring the Future as well as a number of other models that are emerging. All schools should allow their pupils a window on work through engagement with their local business communities.
Baroness Morgan of Huyton (Lab)
My Lords, the progress of schools in London, particularly sponsored academies, was particularly marked in the report. What lessons will the Government take from the London experience of introducing sponsored academies with very strong leadership, good teaching and strong governance, also backed up by the framework of the London Challenge? I draw attention to my entries in the register.
Lord Nash
The noble Baroness makes a good point, and I am grateful to her for her work as chair of Ofsted. There are two lessons from the point she made. One is that school-to-school support is the key model. We are focusing the academy programme on a regional, school-to-school cluster basis—whether that involves national chains operating regionally or local schools supporting local schools. Those are the absolute key things that we learn from the London Challenge and the academy focus. It has to be done on a local basis.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
My Lords, at the same time as publishing his report the inspector also said that grammar schools are acting as a brake on social mobility and there should be no more of them. Do the Government agree with that as well?
Exports
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to encourage more United Kingdom businesses to export goods and services.
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Livingston of Parkhead) (Con)
My Lords, the Government have significantly increased their support for exporters. UKTI expects to assist 40,000 businesses in this fiscal year, an increase of 50% over the past two years. The Government have also provided additional funding to increase support for exporters in key fast-growing markets such as India and China. In addition, the Chancellor recently announced a significant increase in UK Export Finance’s capacity to support our exporters.
Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)
My Lords, I welcome that. In particular, I welcome what my noble friend said just before Christmas about consulting medium-sized companies on what further help they might need. When he does that, will he have in mind the additional support that can and should be provided by chambers of commerce and other business organisations? Will he also look carefully at what lessons we can learn in that regard from other successful exporting countries such as Germany?
Lord Livingston of Parkhead
My noble friend makes a very good point. We have indeed looked at successful exporting countries such as Germany, Japan and the US. One feature in a number of them is, and has been over the past 20 or 30 years, the use of chambers to assist companies in overseas markets; we are indeed adopting this model. We have targeted 41 more-difficult-to-reach markets where chambers will assist us in providing support for particularly our smaller exporters, as well as the large companies that are often represented. In addition, we are looking at the success of middle-sized companies in Germany, where the UK does not do as well, and there will be a number of initiatives with them. In addition to the chambers, we are working closely with the Institute of Directors, the CBI and the Federation of Small Businesses—to name three organisations.
Lord Giddens (Lab)
My Lords, we are in the early stages of some of the greatest transformations possibly ever to affect manufacturing and even service industries, with the advent of digital production. By that I mean 3D printing, what has come to be called by some 4D printing and beyond. As a result, it may be possible for us not only to make many things here that are at the moment made abroad but to export them to other countries. What are the Government doing to ensure that the UK is in the forefront of these extraordinary possible transformations?
Lord Livingston of Parkhead
The noble Lord is indeed correct that we are seeing much change in manufacturing capability. The Government are investing significantly and have ring-fenced a science budget to assist in many UK projects. We have the “eight great technologies” that we will be investing in, and we are increasing the links between companies and universities; I commend the universities on that. We are certainly supporting the advanced manufacturing capabilities as well as a number of other technologies that we believe will really help the UK to go forward, investing in the right industries that will grow in the future.
Lord Naseby (Con)
Is the Minister aware that the extra resources being put into exports are enormously welcome, but that the weakness is still the marketing of those resources and the facilities that they provide, particularly on export finance to the SME market in general? Secondly, the Queen’s award for exports is looking exceedingly tired and is long overdue a revamp. Finally, if we are sending and attending conferences overseas on exports, can we please appoint a Minister early in the process and not turn up at the last moment, as my poor noble friend Lord Marland had to do in Colombo? He still did a very good job, but it was late in the day.
Lord Livingston of Parkhead
There are a number of questions there. At this point, I am probably not looking to rebrand the Queen’s award for exports, as the Queen does seem to be the right person to award it. In terms of UK Export Finance, my noble friend does make a good point; UK Export Finance has predominately supported larger companies. We have, however, doubled the number of regional advisers for UK Export Finance, and we have launched a new product aimed at assisting smaller companies. In fact, I was at the meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on this issue, and I heard a number of small and medium-sized businesses commending the work of UK Export Finance, but there is more work to be done.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord to his Front-Bench appearance and look forward to working with him in future. He will be aware of the publication of Good Business in September 2013, which is welcome because it puts into effect the Government’s commitment to implement the UN guiding principles on human rights. It is somewhat long on rhetoric, and a bit short on action, but one of the commitments it makes is to adjust government rules to allow human rights-related matters to be reflected in the procurement of public goods, works and services. Will he explain what is happening on this matter?
Lord Livingston of Parkhead
In terms of procurement rules—and I will talk in relation to exports, as procurement within the UK will be a different matter—we absolutely look at human rights, and discuss the subject regularly with many of the NGOs involved. We look at the relevant UN guidelines, and we will of course look to and abide by the appropriate and relevant guidelines from the UN. Government procurement is another matter and perhaps should be left for a different question.
Lord Wright of Richmond (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister accept that it is wrong to talk about encouraging businesses to export without drawing attention to the worldwide resource provided by the Diplomatic Service? It is very anxious to do everything it can to help both businesses and chambers of commerce wherever they want that help.
Lord Livingston of Parkhead
That is an excellent point. I commend the ambassadorial network; I have seen its work both as a Minister and as an exporter. Its enthusiasm and positivity to assist the UK in increasing exports is to be commended. In fact, the work of the FCO and its focus on our export efforts has been excellent. We will continue to work very closely; of course, as a Minister I am part of FCO as well as being part of BIS, and that reflects the important role that the Foreign Office has in exports.
Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)
The Government have set out a system of trade ambassadors to promote exports in particular countries, involving a number of Members of this House. Has an assessment been made of the effectiveness of this system and initiative, and what plans are there for its future expansion?
Lord Livingston of Parkhead
Trade envoys have been established to assist in countries to which government Ministers do not make regular visits. I commend the various Members of the House who act as trade envoys and thank them for their hard work. We are reviewing the success of the trade envoy programme, and how we could perhaps expand it slightly into new areas. When it works well, it is certainly helpful. We combine enthusiasm, expertise and knowledge in particular countries to assist us in increasing our overall exports and relationships with those countries.
Legal Aid
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Clinton-Davis
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the protests by lawyers on 6 January concerning further cuts to legal aid.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, we have engaged constructively with lawyers over a period of many months and we continue to do so. However, the fact remains that we have one of the most expensive legal aid systems in the world and in the current economic climate this is not sustainable for taxpayers, who fund it. We have to find efficiencies to ensure that legal aid is sustained and available for those most in need of a lawyer.
Lord Clinton-Davis (Lab)
I thank the Minister for that uninformative Answer. Does he recognise that the Justice Alliance, representing a large number of people and organisations and many senior judges, has expressed its concern about these proposals? Is it not the case that these cuts will lead to more, not less, expenditure, that cases will be bound to last much longer when people are unrepresented, that there will be a reduction in standards and that there will be more miscarriages of justice and an inevitable increase in guilty pleas? Is not the Minister concerned about all those things, as expressed by reputable organisations?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, the Government have undertaken to listen, consult and work with the profession, and we continue to do so. However, in the current economic climate and indeed with the crisis that we inherited, we needed to look across the board to ensure that efficiencies could be had. Even with the efficiencies that we will be making from this series of cuts, £1.5 billion will continue to be spent on legal aid—a figure that is among the highest in the world.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister appreciate that the figures that the Government have been giving for the incomes of members of the criminal Bar refer to turnover before VAT, tax and chambers expenses are taken off, and that therefore these figures are utterly misleading?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, the Government and indeed my honourable friend Shailesh Vara, who is the legal aid Minister, have made it quite clear that when we have referred to these figures—for example, the average figure of £84,000—they have related to fee income. The Government recognise that costs are to be taken from that fee income, and we have talked about that.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, one feature of the stand-off is that the representatives of the criminal Bar and the Government are quoting very different figures for earnings—not just the net and gross earnings. Would it not be helpful as a basis for negotiation to try to agree with the representatives of the criminal Bar a common basis for the actual earnings?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I repeat my assurance to noble Lords that the Government continue to consult. Indeed, we have just had close to 2,000 responses to the latest consultation on legal aid. As part of those discussions, I am sure that we will take on board the noble Lord’s comment, which seems a very sensible suggestion.
Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister accept that over the past few years when there have been discussions concerning cuts in legal aid on a broad basis, the Government have accepted that there are massive downstream costs which greatly erode what otherwise might seem to be an attractive saving? Can the Minister tell the House what surveys have been made of such downstream costs and what the results of those surveys are, and, in the event that such surveys were not made, how any Government could have been so monumentally imprudent as to jump into the dark in such a situation?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, I am afraid that I do not agree with the noble Lord. This is not a jump into the dark; it is a recognition of the current situation that the Government face across the board and across every department. We are seeking to focus legal aid spending on those who most need it. Spending on legal aid in the UK amounts to about £39 per head. I reiterate that one should look at some of the figures, even making international comparisons. Compared with like-for-like systems—for example, New Zealand at £18, Canada at £10 and Ireland, next door to us, at £20 per head—our legal system will, after the efficiencies are made, still remain one of the best in the world.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister has just spoken of efficiencies. How is it efficient to impair the quality of justice?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Again, I disagree with the noble Lord. Looking around the world, and speaking for the Benches behind me, I believe that our justice system is one of the best in the world and will continue to be so, despite the efficiencies being made. I do not agree with the picture that the noble Lord paints.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
My Lords, does my noble friend recognise that solicitors are also essential to criminal advocacy and that there are growing deserts in this country, which will be much accelerated by the cuts, where people will not be able to find solicitors for miles? What is he going to do about that?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Having just returned from Dubai, I can perhaps relate physically to the picture of a desert, but not in the sense of the legal aid environment. Of course my noble friend is correct to say that solicitors play and will continue to play a crucial and important part, and the Legal Aid Agency will ensure that representation for those who need it will be available.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford) (Con)
My Lords, it is this side.
Lord Beecham
I am most obliged to the noble Lord.
My Lords, does the Minister agree that VAT and expenses, to which reference has been made, actually account for 40% of the fees that are currently being quoted? What is his response to those members of the judiciary who are concerned about future recruitment of judges to deal with criminal cases in the likely event of a decline in the quantity and quality of the criminal Bar?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I believe that I have already answered the noble Lord’s question. The Government recognise that there are costs that are taken across, which is why we quote fee income. As for recruitment into the profession, and as I said, we believe that after these efficiencies are made, the criminal Bar and indeed the legal profession as a whole will continue to be an attractive proposition. We will continue to work with the profession to ensure that the standards and quality of legal representation in our country remain among the best in the world.
Severe Weather
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Wigley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what additional financial resources they will make available to enable the various relevant public authorities in each part of the United Kingdom to respond to the impact of the recent severe storms.
Lord Wigley (PC)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask a Question of which I have given private notice.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
My Lords, I hope that your Lordships will allow me to provide an Answer to the noble Lord that is slightly longer than is customary. Noble Lords might welcome an update on the current situation in line with that given by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister in the other place earlier today.
In doing that, I must first pay tribute to the emergency services, Environment Agency staff, local authorities, voluntary organisations and many members of the public who contributed to the response to the flooding over Christmas and the new year. Tragically, seven fatalities in England between 23 December and 5 January are associated with the severe weather conditions. I am sure that the House will want to join me in expressing our deepest sympathy to their families and friends.
There are currently 104 flood warnings and 186 flood alerts in place across England and Wales. Although the weather has improved, river and ground water levels remain so high that further flooding could come at short notice. There are a number of particular concerns, including in Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Somerset and on the Thames in Oxfordshire. Given these ongoing threats, COBRA continues to meet and is doing so this afternoon.
Recognising the seriousness of the situation, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government announced a Bellwin scheme to support local authorities with the costs associated with the immediate response to protect lives and properties. As of 7 January, my department has received 22 notifications from local authorities that they intend to make a claim under Bellwin for the severe weather events dating from the 6 December east coast tidal surge until now. Equivalent funding for Welsh and Scottish local authorities is a matter for the devolved Administrations.
Lord Wigley
My Lords, I am grateful to the Lord Speaker for permitting this Question, particularly as there was a Statement in the other place on Monday which we were not able to have repeated in this Chamber. I am grateful to the Minister for the Answer that she has given. Perhaps I may associate myself with the sympathy she has expressed to those families that have suffered bereavements in these tragic circumstances.
Does the Minister accept that in some areas, such as Aberystwyth and other parts of the Ceredigion coast, and, indeed, the Pembrokeshire coast, the damage was so acute that it may run into many millions of pounds to put right, well beyond the resources of small local authorities, and that the National Assembly for Wales has a very limited contingency reserve capacity? Can she give an assurance that the Treasury will help out on a basis of the needs of such areas and that that principle will be applied not only in Wales but throughout the United Kingdom?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
The noble Lord raises a question on support and funding which goes beyond the immediate process that is available to local authorities. As he knows, and as he indicated in the question that he has just put to me, the funding that local authorities in Wales may require is very much part of the Welsh Assembly’s arrangements. The funding that they may receive from a similar kind of Bellwin scheme in Wales would be a matter for the Welsh Assembly. I am not in a position to offer any further information at this time as to what the Government might do beyond the Bellwin scheme.
Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)
My Lords, in the event of the Treasury providing assistance for England, will it provide an increased amount to meet the Welsh Assembly’s need for expenditure in Wales?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
As I said, the normal response to situations of the kind we are experiencing at this time is for the Bellwin scheme to come into force. As noble Lords will know, this is a tried and tested scheme that has been in place for a substantial period of time and has worked well. The noble Lord is suggesting something in addition to that and I am not in a position at this time even to suggest that it is necessary for us to go beyond the Bellwin scheme.
Lord Deben (Con)
Does my noble friend accept that the costs of cleaning up after floods are considerably greater than the costs of protection from floods? Therefore, now that the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the official spokesman for the Liberal Democrat Party in the House of Commons have admitted the connection between climate change and flooding, can we expect that the Government will re-assess the on-going spending on flood prevention in the United Kingdom?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My noble friend raises an important point. On our investment in flood defences, it is important to make the point that this Government’s overall investment is higher than ever before. We announced in the Autumn Statement before Christmas—this has not happened before—a commitment to a protected, long-term, six-year capital settlement for flood defences. This will lead to £400 million a year by 2021 and will mean that a further 300,000 other properties are protected beyond those that already are.
Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)
My Lords, we join in paying tribute to all of those who are working in difficult circumstances to tackle these dreadful adverse consequences of our weather conditions and welcome the Bellwin scheme announcements. However, we have obtained figures in a Parliamentary Answer which make it clear that the Government have reduced investment in flood defences by as much as £100 million in real terms, lower than the level they inherited, from £646 million in 2010 to £527 million this year and £546 million in 2015. How does the Minister justify the claim that has just been made? How does she justify the proposed one-third cut in the budget of local flood authorities for 2015-16 that has just been announced in the local government finance settlement?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
On the noble Lord’s first point, as I have said, this Government are investing more than £2.3 billion on flood defences in this spending review period and the overall investment, when that is combined with local authority and private sector expenditure, is higher than in the previous four years. As for any reductions in budgets, as the noble Lord will know, because he will have heard my honourable friends make the same point, in any reductions to budgets, necessary budget cuts that we have had to make because of economic situations, front-line flooding services are not affected.
Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)
My Lords, as one who lives near Aberystwyth and is proud, indeed, to have been born in that town, I suggest to the Minister that the situation not just in Aberystwyth but in many other places on the Welsh coast that have been so badly hit is far more desperate than the Government seem to appreciate. The scale of storm destruction is such that it is impossible for local authorities or, indeed, the Welsh Assembly to render proper remedy. Although Westminster exercises sovereignty over the land and nation of Wales, with that sovereignty there is also a high and heavy moral responsibility to assist in situations of crisis such as these.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I understand the point that the noble Lord is raising. In responding to the situation and ensuring that those who are affected are properly supported, we would expect that to be the same whoever is affected and wherever in the United Kingdom they may be. As I have made clear, and as the noble Lord understands, this is a devolved matter. The Government are at the present time introducing the Bellwin scheme. We believe that that is the proper approach and we look to the Welsh Assembly to consider what action it should take.
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, my family was one of the 750,000 in this country without power for some time over the Christmas and new year period—in our case for four days, on and off, including Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I pay tribute to the companies, local authorities and volunteers who kept our local community in Godalming going. I applaud the Government for their decision last year not to merge the Environment Agency and Natural England. That would have resulted in a critical loss of focus by the Environment Agency from its core function of responding to flood defences. That was a wise move. However, bearing in mind the need to ensure that we plan in the future for such inevitable further extreme weather events, will the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs soon be in a position to say which policies and programmes it will have to cut in order to make the savings of £300 million in the next two years so that we can plan properly for any future emergency events?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
First, I echo my noble friend’s points about the real, serious effects that some people have had to contend with, particularly those in some parts of the country who were without power for substantial periods. It is worth my saying, as the Prime Minister made clear earlier today, that while the overall response to these situations has been good, a small number of organisations have not been good enough in their response. There are lessons to be learnt and we will ensure that they are. I can inform the House that the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change is meeting distribution network operators and Ofgem today to discuss power.
In response to my noble friend’s specific point, I make the same point that I made earlier, which is that in the savings that are being made in the Environment Agency, the chief executive of that agency has assured my right honourable friend that he has every intention of protecting front-line services concerned with flooding.
Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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18:00 - Division on Amendment 1 - Ayes: 306 / Noes: 178 - Amendment 1 agreed.
( ) Anti-social behaviour is—
(a) conduct that has caused, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm or distress to any person, or (b) in the case of an application for an injunction under this section by a housing provider or by a local authority when exercising similar housing management functions, conduct capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to any person.”
Lord Dear (CB)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 1, I want to be absolutely clear on one thing: anti-social behaviour can be, and often is, a blight on society and on those who suffer as victims of individuals who care only for themselves—people who are thoughtless, selfish or deliberately provocative. I believe, as many in your Lordships’ House will, too, that the law should continue to try to prevent that happening and to offer relief to those who suffer from that sort of behaviour. Their well-being is precious. On the other hand, civil liberty is precious, too, and a balance has to be struck between those two requirements.
My amendment is largely concerned with that balance and with a search for certainty, precision and clarity. It is concerned with the legal requirement that the law should be precise and not undermine fundamental human freedoms. The amendment is of course also about anti-social behaviour but the primary issue is an important and very long-established jurisprudential principle. From at least the days of Halsbury, it has been recognised that the law should be clear, reasonable, precise and unambiguous. People must know what the law demands of and grants to them. That principle is followed in all developed democracies. For example, in the USA the void for vagueness doctrine allows a statute to be struck down if it lacks sufficient definiteness or specificity so that:
“Men of common intelligence cannot be required to guess at the meaning of the enactment”.
That is from the case of Winters v New York in 1948.
Existing ASBO and public order legislation addresses anti-social behaviour by defining it in those circumstances as conduct that causes harassment, alarm or distress—a threshold test accepted by lawyers and lay people alike that has been well understood after years of judicial interpretation and never seriously challenged or openly criticised as too restrictive in scope. The Bill before us seeks to replace that three-word threshold test of harassment, alarm or distress with two new words: “nuisance or annoyance”. In so doing, it will open the door to uncertainty, confusion and legal injustice. Most of Clause 1 is concerned with the mechanics of the new injunctive procedure but the threshold test is the pivotal point around which everything else revolves. To put it another way, it is the foundation upon which all that is new will be based. The present threshold test of harassment, alarm or distress is about to be replaced with the altogether more imprecise words “nuisance or annoyance”. In other words, the net is being cast much wider—far too wide, in my opinion.
I am grateful to those who have supported me in tabling this amendment. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, was one of the most respected Lord Chancellors in the past half-century. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, was an eminent Attorney-General. Both are signatories. So, too, is the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, who brings a wealth of experience at the Bar as a practising QC and who spoke on 18 November in Committee on my behalf when I was unavoidably prevented from being in my place. That day, she tabled in my name a very similar amendment to the one we consider now. I am grateful to her for setting out the proposition with great skill—cogently, powerfully and persuasively.
She reflected that the law should be precise and not undermine fundamental human freedoms. She recognised that anti-social behaviour was a serious problem but that action to deal with it should be balanced against the need to preserve civil liberties. She reminded the House that the Commons Home Affairs Committee had said that Clause 1 of the Bill is “far too broad”. She paid tribute, as I do now, to the opinion—widely circulated in your Lordships’ House—of the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, who roundly attacked the Bill saying that, “Nuisance or annoyance”, is a phrase,
“apt to catch a vast range of everyday behaviours to an extent that may have serious implications for the rule of law”.
He went on to say:
“In my view, the combination of a low and vague threshold for the behavioural trigger, coupled with the civil standard of proof, creates an unacceptable risk that individuals will inappropriately be made subject of a highly intrusive measure that may greatly impact on their fundamental rights”.
It is not only Members of this House and of the other place who are concerned. A wide, and even disparate, range of organisations and civil liberty groups have expressed the same opposition. Justice, Liberty, the Criminal Justice Alliance, the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, Big Brother Watch, the National Secular Society on the one hand, the Christian Institute on the other, the Association of Chief Police Officers and many more have all said the same thing. A letter was published in the Times on 10 June last year in which around two dozen organisations expressed opposition to the phrase “nuisance or annoyance”. It reminded us that an injunction in those terms could be applied to anyone over the age of 10. It reminded us that it was subject to a new burden of proof, lowered to the civil burden on the balance of probabilities. It reminded us that it is open to indefinite duration and does not require any form of intent, and that a breach of the injunction can result in serious sanctions, including imprisonment.
I have a distinct feeling of déjà vu in speaking to this amendment, for it was only just over 12 months ago, on 12 December 2012, that I proposed an amendment to remove the word “insulting” from Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. The ingredients of that debate were strikingly similar to the issues today. Again, an important legal freedom was then at stake. The word “insulting” had been employed more and more to curb the exercise of free speech in public. That fundamental right was being abused. More and more, police and prosecutors were unwilling to exercise discretion—some might say that they were unwilling to exercise common sense—and they increasingly deferred to the courts for a decision. That increased the growth of the chilling effect, the definition of the word “insulting” became blurred, injustice increased and confusion reigned. Your Lordships agreed that amendment, voting 3:1 with a majority of almost 100 to strike “insulting” from the statute on the ground that it was no longer precise enough. The only real difference in that exercise a year ago and today is that then I was able to cite a very long catalogue of examples of the results of poor legislation, and today we can only anticipate that such a list will develop—albeit an anticipation with some confidence.
No doubt it is to avoid an identical problem that the Association of Chief Police Officers has advised that, although it broadly supports the new IPNA, it believes that the suggested threshold is unreasonably low and it, too, advocates a return to the “harassment, alarm or distress” test.
With all those examples of the results of imprecise and vague legislation, I am frankly at a loss to understand why the Home Office is so eager to repeat the exercise, yet again facing a solid wall of resistance from experienced groups and learned individuals. I can but recall the words of the 1960s protest song—“When will they ever learn?”.
The phrase “nuisance or annoyance” has been borrowed, or perhaps lifted, from the context of existing housing legislation, which involves of course neighbours living in close proximity. In those special housing circumstances it is clearly almost impossible simply to move out or to look the other way or pay no attention. The present test in the housing sphere is restricted to conduct affecting the management functions of the landlord. What is appropriate in an environment with two-inch-thick party walls, or with 10 or more front doors opening onto a balcony on the fifth floor of a tower block, or with cramped lifts and common parts, all of that is clearly inappropriate, surely, in a public square.
Nuisance or annoyance, I would maintain, cannot and should not be applied to the countryside, the public park, shopping malls, sports grounds, the high street, Parliament Square, Speakers’ Corner and so on, because that risks it being used against any of us and against anyone in society. That risks it being used against those who seek to protest peacefully, noisy children in the street, street preachers, canvassers, carol singers, trick-or-treaters, church bell ringers, clay pigeon shooters and nudists—yes, they, too, have raised objections with me and, I know, other Members of your Lordships’ House.
The Lord Speaker (Baroness D'Souza)
I should perhaps remind your Lordships that if this amendment is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 2 by reason of pre-emption.
Baroness Mallalieu (Lab)
My Lords, my name has been added to this amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Dear, moved it with his customary reason and calm; I fear that I shall not be following in quite the same vein.
Whoever thought up Clause 1 and managed to slip it under the radar of the other place is a strong contender for some kind of award. Perhaps it should be a citation for attempting to increase the power of the state to interfere in people’s lives; perhaps a golden globe for providing the authorities with a new and easy-to-discharge weapon in the war against inconvenient and annoying expressions of dissent; or perhaps even an Oscar for thinking up a way to take out those who are a nuisance or annoyance in any one of a thousand unspecified ways—and doing it in a manner that admits virtually no defence or safeguard and that requires the minimum of evidence.
Those on whom the Government propose to confer this extraordinary power are fully set out in Clause 4. Apart from the housing providers, to whom I will come shortly, they include the Environment Agency, all local authorities, British Transport Police, Transport for London, the Secretary of State for Health—and, of course, the police themselves. In other words, they are in every single case an arm of the state. The proposed definition in Clause 1(2), that the respondent must be someone who,
“has engaged or threatens to engage in conduct capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to any person”,
has been adopted, as we have just been told, from a very limited provision, carefully restricted to conduct affecting the housing management functions of the relevant landlord. Both the applicant and the respondent are carefully defined. It is intended to assist a housing provider to control the behaviour of neighbours—tenants—living in close proximity who, as has been said, cannot simply look the other way, pay no attention or move easily—and in a situation where, because of fear, evidence may be hard to obtain.
The Government propose to take this particular power, designed for the particular problem of anti-social neighbours, and give it to a wide range of state bodies for use without restriction against absolutely anyone. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Dear, recognises the force with which many housing providers have lobbied us between Committee and today. They wish to retain that power in their own very limited and special context. Under this amendment, they would do so.
In Committee—and I anticipate more of the same later when the Minister replies—the response of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, to my similar amendment on the ASBO definition that this amendment seeks to retain, was, “You are not thinking about the victims”. By that he clearly means those who are on the receiving end of anti-social behaviour. I have to say that he is wholly wrong in that. It is precisely because we are concerned about those who are harassed in our hospitals, caused alarm on public transport, or distressed by the conduct of others in the street that we want to see this legislation targeted at that behaviour.
In reality, most anti-social behaviour that the public worry about is already covered by existing criminal law offences under criminal damage, public order and harassment laws. There are unquestionably problems of court delays at present—and not just with ASBO applications. Inadequate resources for police, prosecuting authorities and courts are all factors. Ironically, by making IPNAs so much easier to obtain than ASBOs, for a far wider range of behaviour, and with a lower evidential burden, there is a real prospect that Clause 1 will slow down the courts by clogging them with myriad IPNA applications and will be of little help to real victims in need of urgent help.
I also remind the Minister that there are other victims of whom he appeared to take no account. They include those against whom an allegation is made that is unfair, unwarranted or untrue, or without any proper evidential basis. There is no defence of necessity or lack of intent in the Bill. I see no compensation provisions for a wrongful injunction, or any of the safeguards that normally attach to a civil injunction, especially when the defendant is not present at the initial hearing. This is all worrying, but particularly worrying for me is the lower burden of proof that is now proposed. However, my main concern is the extent to which lowering the threshold to behaviour,
“capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to any person”,
has the potential to undermine our fundamental freedoms, and in particular the way in which the proposed law might be used to curb protest and freedom of expression.
In exercising my personal right to protest in the past, I readily accept that I have on a number of occasions been guilty of conduct capable of annoying someone. Every march that delays traffic, every rally that overcrowds public transport or pavements, and every demonstration with loudspeakers, whistles and horns is no doubt capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to someone, and is usually a headache for the authorities, too. I suppose that there are Members of your Lordships’ House who have never attended a rally, demonstration or protest march, but I would place a small wager that they are in the minority. In a lifetime of attending protests, from Aldermaston as a child to the countryside march and many in between, if I have caused annoyance or nuisance, I hope that I have never caused harassment, alarm or distress to anyone.
Quite simply, the Bill currently sets the barrier too low. It threatens fundamental freedoms and, importantly, it undermines tolerance, which is surely an essential quality for living happily in an overcrowded island such as ours. Speaking in a rather different context but saying what I think is appropriate, Lord Justice Sedley some years ago put it rather well. He said:
“Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having”.
To try to prohibit behaviour that is capable of annoying someone is a step far too far, and I hope that this House will do what the other place overlooked and stop it.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)
My Lords, I support this amendment; I have signed it and I believe that it is amply justified. As the noble Baroness has just said, one of our fundamental freedoms is the freedom of speech. Surely it is clear that in exercising that freedom, one may annoy one or more other people. From time to time in this House I have witnessed a Minister explaining his present difficulty by reference to the behaviour of the previous Government, and one immediately senses annoyance on the opposite Benches. If I have an opinion which I know some or many people will disagree with, surely I am entitled to come out with it. Do I have to reasonably consider whether it will cause annoyance to somebody else, and if it would, what should be the consequence? Am I to muzzle my point of view to placate people who might be annoyed? It is absolutely plain that “annoyance” in this context, with a wide application, is inappropriate for this purpose.
The position taken up by the Government hitherto, so far as I understand it, is that this definition has been tried and tested in the courts for some 15 years. But definitions in their application are subject to the context in which they are used, and this use has been in the context of social housing and its enforcement has been in the hands of the responsible authorities for social housing. You cannot imagine an authority in that field trying to stop a street preacher, for example, on the basis that he was annoying the passers-by by the denunciations that he was pronouncing against their acknowledged conduct. It is not the same context at all, and the context influences the proper interpretation.
Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)
My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Dear. Like him, for as long as I can remember the Home Office has been bringing forward ill thought-out proposals with little regard for the consequences. Parliament scrutinises them, and they are from time to time defeated. I, like the noble Lord, thought that some lessons would have been learnt from our debate on “insulting”. I fear that from time to time the Home Office does not fulfil its purpose as the guardian of our liberties and a watchtower against the infringement of those liberties. I can go back a long time. Over the decades, Parliament has been concerned with loads of proposals of this kind which have not been thought out because they emerge from the fortress mentality of the Home Office, which imprisons so many Home Secretaries of all parties.
We have heard many objections, which I shall not repeat, to these proposals to lower the threshold and inevitably catch a much larger number of people than Parliament would want. As a lifelong criminal law practitioner, I, like the noble Lord, Lord Dear, give the highest of values to the importance of certainty, and the European Convention on Human Rights affirms the common law. When she agreed to the removal of the word “insulting” from Section 5 of the Public Order Act, the Home Secretary, informed Parliament that:
“There is always a careful balance to be struck between protecting our proud tradition of free speech and taking action against those who cause widespread offence with their actions”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/1/13; col. 642.]
I agree wholeheartedly with the need for a careful balance. This proposal, including the Government’s amendment, is the wrong side of that balance. “Harassment, alarm or distress” is well tested by the courts and in its application. “Nuisance or annoyance” is such an elastic term that it could, if it were applied widely, be used as open-ended machinery to catch all sorts of people who really should not be before the courts. Somebody with a placard saying that the end of the world is nigh, a preacher or maybe a politician on the street during an election may well be caught because they will certainly cause annoyance to someone. Are those the kinds of people that we want to haul before the courts?
The Government say that their formula is hallowed and supported by 15 years of case law and is readily understood. The reality is that it has been tested only within the narrow confines of housing-related cases, and there are limitations on who can bring such actions. Like all former constituency Members, I have experience of dealing with housing problems. I can affirm that there is sometimes a need for strong action to be taken in cases where people are stable and cannot move. You have to do something to try to remedy that situation. There may be strong arguments for a lower threshold there, but to extend that lower threshold in a situation which has been tested only in the housing section is a bridge too far.
I fear that the Government’s amendment does not help us; it merely underlines the situation and may indeed make it worse. The test to be satisfied is the balance of probabilities. I heartily disapprove of such a test, which can ultimately lead to a loss of liberty for the individual for disobedience. The court must consider and decide whether it is,
“just and convenient to grant an injunction”.
What on earth does that mean? Convenient for whom? Just is perhaps a slightly easier concept, but I wonder how far it has been tested. We are familiar with the concept of the interests of justice, but “just and convenient”? One is horrified that this kind of clause, these kinds of words, are put in a statute at all.
For the existing ASBOs, the test is, of course, the criminal one of proof beyond reasonable doubt. The alleged burden is well known and well established, and when it is suggested here that the order must be shown to be necessary, why do we have to depart from the long-hallowed practice, which has been tested?
I support, and pray in aid, what the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, said when she quoted Lord Justice Sedley. I shall not repeat the words, which are still ringing in our ears; I shall merely say that, as the noble Baroness told us, he finished by saying:
“Freedom to speak … inoffensively is not worth having”.
We do not want to catch people who merely annoy, or merely cause a nuisance. There must be a higher threshold.
It was my duty, as Attorney-General, to consider prosecutions when anti-Semitic material was published. Even that legislation could be said to be an infringement of free speech, but over the decades there was material so unacceptable that it had to be dealt with firmly. Where my discretion had to be exercised, I tried to approach the decision with the greatest care. Deciding not to prosecute was probably more difficult than deciding to prosecute. There have been other limitations on free speech over the years, and when Parliament attempts to limit free speech, each and every one of those limitations must be considered with the utmost care. We must be ever vigilant not to breach the fundamental concept of free speech.
Lord Faulks (Con)
My Lords, I fear that I am about to break the consensus. I hope that in doing so I do not cause too much nuisance or annoyance. The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dear, and others is rather different from the one that was before your Lordships in Committee. The amendment there sought to include a requirement that anti-social behaviour had to be established beyond reasonable doubt before an injunction was obtained. Given the evidential problems that this would have created, the amendment has sensibly been altered so that it no longer requires a criminal standard of proof before a judge can order an injunction.
I tabled an amendment that reflected the views of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I was a member. We had proposed that a reasonableness requirement should be imported into the definition of anti-social behaviour. In other words, there should be an objective element, to deal with the argument that the whole concept of anti-social behaviour was too subjective. The Government’s Amendments 2 and 3, particularly Amendment 2, seemed to me entirely to meet our concerns, and in this regard I am specifically authorised by my noble friend Lord Lester, who is unable to be here today, to say that he supports the Government’s position and would oppose Amendment 1.
It is clear from the speeches that we have already heard that there is concern that the obtaining of an injunction would be too easy, and that there would be a risk of freedom of speech, freedom of association, and the freedom to indulge in activities that some people might regard as annoying, being inhibited. Is this a realistic fear? First, it must be remembered that under Clause 4 the applications can be made only by an agency—for example a local authority, a housing provider or some other such body. That is a defence against inappropriate use. It means that a victim of anti-social behaviour has to go through the filter of a hard-working agency in order to establish the fact that there is sufficient basis to seek an anti-social behaviour order—or, in this case, an IPNA. If it were to be done on the say-so of one individual deciding, perhaps unreasonably or capriciously, that someone else had been guilty of anti-social behaviour, that indeed might be objectionable. But the use of an agency provides an important filter.
At Committee stage, and even at Second Reading, the Minister referred to the guidance. The guidance is given to the front-line professionals—not, with great respect to my noble and learned friend, the courts—to make sure that they do their job correctly. That guidance, which was then in draft, is now, according to an amendment, to be made a specific statutory provision. Page 24 of the advice says that,
“in deciding what constitutes ‘nuisance or annoyance’, applicants must be mindful that this route should not be used to stop reasonable, trivial or benign behaviours that have not caused, and are not likely to cause, harm to victims or communities. For example, children simply playing in a park or outside, or young people lawfully gathering or socialising in a particular place may be ‘annoying’ to some, but are not in themselves anti-social. Agencies must make proportionate and reasonable judgements before applying for an injunction. Failure to do so will increase the likelihood that an application will not be successful”.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
I am following my noble friend’s argument closely, but could he give an example of the kind of thing for which he thinks this provision might provide a remedy?
Lord Faulks
It would provide a remedy for myriad different circumstances—perhaps the sort of behaviour where youths gather specifically under a particular person’s window and regularly play noisy music, are aggressive and perhaps smoke cannabis, providing day by day harassment of individuals.
Lord Faulks
It might be, but the problem is that the test for harassment is fraught with imprecision, as is any test that any Government might provide. Whether something gets over the hurdle of harassment will be somewhat uncertain. No doubt it will be argued in a particular case that it does not go far enough to constitute harassment, but it will nevertheless be anti-social behaviour by anybody’s definition.
Lord Cormack (Con)
So what is the objection to having harassment in the Bill?
Lord Faulks
The objection is that there is a risk that the hurdle will be too high and that the judge will say, “This is extremely anti-social behaviour and I profoundly sympathise with the individual but, looked at under the definition of harassment, it does not go quite that far”. That behaviour could be completely ruinous of an individual’s life, but perhaps not have that quasi-criminal description that the substitute definition has.
Lord Faulks
The greater test will always include the lesser, but areas that may or may not be considered by a court to get over that hurdle may be profoundly distressing in the non-technical sense to the individual but may not be regarded as sufficiently distressing to come within the definition. There is inevitably a degree of vagueness about any definition, whether you choose the one that the Government choose or the one proposed in the amendment. But I fear that the test is too low.
Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)
Could my noble friend deal with a major objection? An order can be obtained on hearsay evidence, so the judge does not have to hear from somebody who says, “I’ve been distressed or annoyed”; it would be sufficient for someone to say, “I’ve heard someone else describe himself as annoyed because of the behaviour in question”.
Lord Faulks
The question of hearsay evidence is important, and I am glad that my noble friend raised it. One difficulty about the orders is that individuals are often terrified of those who are responsible for the anti-social behaviour. They are terrified of being identified as the source of the complaint. If they have to give evidence, they will not want to do so. They therefore provide their perfectly bona fide complaint to an agency. Hard-pressed agencies will have to assess whether this is de minimis or of sufficient gravity before deciding whether to proceed.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
Is my noble friend saying that the procedure can be based on an anonymous complaint?
Lord Faulks
It can be on the basis of an anonymous complaint, though a judge will need to be satisfied of its substantiality. There are individuals who simply would not seek an injunction if they thought that they could be clearly identified as the source of the procedure. Of course, judges are used to weighing up hearsay evidence, which has less weight than direct evidence. A judge is unlikely to make an order if they think that it is double-hearsay or comes from an unreliable source.
Before making an order, a judge also has to decide that it is proportionate and necessary, in accordance with the Human Rights Act. As I submitted, it is no light thing for the agencies to assemble the evidence necessary to satisfy a judge. The Law Society has carefully considered the arguments against Clause 1. Although more than happy to criticise government legislation—and even this Bill, in some respects—it remains absolutely firm in its support of the existence of the power described in Clause 1, fearing otherwise that the hurdle would be too high and that the power to prevent anti-social behaviour would be damaged.
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, I am anxious to support the Government on Clause 1, because there is a great deal to be said for the replacement of ASBOs by IPNAs. However, the noble Lord seems to be arguing that the existing test for ASBOs—harassment et cetera—is too high. Is he arguing that, at the moment, people cannot get ASBOs because the test is too high and therefore that it must therefore be reduced for the new IPNAs? In my experience, the problem with ASBOs is that they are very often given for inappropriate things.
Lord Faulks
It is a marginally lower hurdle, but as I understand it—and the Minister will confirm—the choice of words was not an arbitrary matter but the result of a very wide consultation among the professionals concerned in order to reach a test that was sufficient to establish gravity but not so high that the scourge of anti-social behaviour could not be prevented.
In its briefing on this part of the Bill, the Law Society made the point that if injunctions are used in the case of noise nuisance, as an alternative to possession proceedings, they can result in the person or family staying in their home but with restrictions on their conduct, rather than the much more drastic step of eviction. Although an IPNA can be obtained on the balance of probabilities, with or without the amendment, the criminal standard must be satisfied before any breach can be established: that is, beyond reasonable doubt. I respectfully suggest that this provides an extra safeguard, so that this will not result in people being deprived of their liberty inappropriately.
I am also concerned about how coherent Amendment 1 is. It requires “harassment, alarm or distress”—a quasi-criminal test—with the exception, which was not in the original amendment in Committee, of a housing provider or local authority in a similar housing management position. In the case of social housing, the hurdle to be surmounted appears to be lower, so there is a two-tier test for anti-social behaviour, depending on whether you are a private tenant or are in social housing, where an injunction is much more easily obtained. That is hardly a satisfactory distinction, and I wonder how enthusiastic the party is about such a classification.
I do not know, of course, how the party opposite—or at least its Front Bench—regards this amendment. It will be borne in mind that MPs on all sides in the House of Commons were at pains to stress what a scourge anti-social behaviour is to their constituents, and that there ought to be substantial and sensible powers to prevent it. Indeed, the shadow Home Secretary said generally of the powers in the Bill that she thought they were too weak.
We are all passionately in favour of freedom of speech, freedom of association—
Lord Elton (Con)
Will my noble friend forgive me? He has just said that he cannot understand why there should be a lower test in social housing. Surely the answer is that if you are in social housing you cannot move out of the way, people are free to do what they like to you and you are trapped. Therefore, a lower standard of unsociability has a much greater effect on the person affected. It is exactly the right proportion.
Lord Faulks
Of course I entirely accept the noble Lord’s point that those in social housing may not have options and therefore certainly need the protection at a lower level. My point was that it is rather inelegant to have a different test where there might theoretically be greater room for manoeuvre if there is a private tenant. The test ought to be the same.
I was repeating the fact that I sympathise with all those who have spoken in favour of the various freedoms that we value so much in this country. If we vote in favour of the amendment—if it is put to a vote—we will of course be able to congratulate ourselves and say that we have acted in the finest traditions of freedom. I will have the good fortune of going back to my house where, at least at the moment, there is no great history of anti-social behaviour in the area. Other noble Lords will perhaps be in a similar position. But let us not forget those who are in less fortunate circumstances, who do not have room for manoeuvre and whose lives are made totally miserable by this anti-social behaviour. I fear that if we accede to this argument, we will fail to take them sufficiently into consideration and will make bad law.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, we have just heard an interesting speech from my noble friend Lord Faulks. I am sure that I speak for every Member of your Lordships’ House in congratulating him on his forthcoming move to the Front Bench—because, as we all know, he is to be Minister very soon. It is therefore hardly surprising that he should have spoken with such passion in support of the Bill.
Lord Faulks
I am grateful to my noble friend for his kind congratulations, but I should say that I spoke on this issue in Committee before I was appointed, to very much the same effect.
Lord Cormack
One is tempted to call that “cause and effect”, but I will not.
This noble House concluded its contentious business somewhat earlier than we had expected last night. I went home and turned on BBC Four, on which there was a most remarkable programme on the Salvation Army in which various officers made some extremely sincere but perhaps contentious statements. One gentleman in particular made the point that anyone who did not believe in Jesus Christ, as many of us do, was in fact condemned to eternal damnation. Imagine that being said on a street corner or anywhere else. Do we really want to deny people with sincere and genuine beliefs the opportunity of expressing them? I have always felt—although I did not agree with many of the things ascribed to him—that Voltaire had it right when he said, “I detest what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. That really should be implicit in all our legislation.
I find it somewhat difficult to accept that a Conservative Government or—let me correct myself—a Conservative-led Government are prepared to introduce this lower threshold in the Bill. Although my noble friend Lord Faulks said that it was different from the debate that we had on insulting a little over a year ago, and of course in some senses it is, nevertheless it is similar. It is also very different from what was implicit in the Defamation Act that came into force just a week ago today, whereby we introduced legislation—quite rightly, in my view—that makes it more difficult to engage in frivolous and vexatious complaining.
In this particular provision, in this clause of the Bill —much of which I approve of—we are seeking to lower a threshold and in the process place many people in possible danger of having their civil liberties, including their right to speak as they would, taken away from them. Of course I accept, as my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern accepts, that it is right that social housing should be treated differently—of course it is. In his intervention a few moments ago, my noble friend Lord Elton put that point succinctly and correctly.
Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)
My Lords, I should like to take further what the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, said about who is going to be involved at the beginning of this process. Whatever the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, said, it is not going to be a judge; it is probably going to be a police officer. I want to think about the use of language and I am going to give two examples of the use of language which distinguishes the word “annoying” from the language in previous Bills about distress and harassment.
I want to take your Lordships back to 1970s Soho where, as a young constable, I was patrolling with a much more streetwise officer. We were approached by a rather large Westminster councillor who was objecting to people handing out leaflets about rent rises. He said that he was really annoyed by this. The officer I was with said, “Well sir, my Aunt Mabel is annoying but I’m not going to let anybody arrest her for just being annoying”. That was in the 1970s. I now want to take your Lordships to the very top of government in 2007. The right honourable Tony Blair has announced that he is about to leave and the right honourable Gordon Brown thinks he is about to be the Prime Minister but he is still the Chancellor. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Reid, is not in his place to confirm this story as he and I were involved in it when he was the Home Secretary. The Chancellor was about to move out of No. 11 with his red briefcase to announce a Budget to a particularly unstartled world when we discovered that a man was standing amid the cameras dressed in a full union jack outfit with a notice saying “John Reid for Prime Minister”. It was reported to me, as commissioner, that the Chancellor was likely to be annoyed; it was pointed out to me in very firm terms that the putative Lord Reid was going to be extremely annoyed; and, as the commissioner, I was annoyed because the Home Secretary was annoyed, but nobody used the terms “harassment”, “distress” or “alarm”.
The difference between simple words relating to annoyance and how they will be interpreted on the street by housing officers, police officers and so on is very important. This is not a matter for judges. People will be told to move on and get out of the road by people who are in authority because that is the easiest thing to do when dealing with somebody who is complaining. This is an absolutely awful piece of legislation and we should avoid it.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
My Lords, a point that has not been made sufficiently—I think that the noble Lord, Lord Dear, referred to it in his very admirable opening speech—is the extra burden that passing Clause 1 unamended would impose on the police and local authorities. No one should underestimate that. If the only gateway for getting redress for annoying conduct, which I think we all agree is so low a test as to be almost meaningless, is via a local authority or the police, does anyone really believe that they will not be subject to a mass of citizen inquiries and applications? Of course they will. Indeed, many people who might be thought a little obsessive will no doubt badger the poor local police endlessly until they get what they call redress—that is, an application by the police for an injunction under Clause 4. Apart from all the more important civil libertarian aspects of this issue, we should not forget the potential extra burden—and, I suggest, vexatious burden a lot of the time—that will inevitably result from Clause 1 going through unamended.
Lord Walton of Detchant (CB)
My Lords, I rise briefly to give warm support to this amendment tabled and so ably presented by my noble friend Lord Dear and others. I firmly believe that the threshold in the Bill is set far too low.
I have been a lifelong supporter of Newcastle United Football Club. My friend, the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, who unfortunately is no longer in his place—and I call him “friend” in the social sense, not in the parliamentary sense—is for reasons best known to him, despite having been leader of Newcastle City Council, a Sunderland supporter. If I were to chide him and say that he is foolish to continue to support that team, which has been absolutely hopeless all season, despite beating Manchester United last night, and if I were to say that the team is in fact languishing at the foot of the Premier League and in imminent danger of relegation, I think that he would be extremely annoyed because he is a loyal supporter of Sunderland. If I persisted with that theme, he would reasonably regard me as a confounded nuisance.
If one looks at this clause and interprets it in a strictly literal sense, I would potentially be in breach of this statute if I said those things. In fact, I do not for one moment believe that he would seek an injunction; at least I hope not. Having said that, I believe that the clause is absolutely unacceptable and needs to be amended. There is even a possibility that the clause as drafted could act as a sort of charter for individuals of paranoid personality or malicious intent in leading them to seek this kind of injunction much more frequently than would ever have happened in the past. This clause is unacceptable and I strongly support the amendment.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, in response to that I can say that frequently and over decades I have been annoyed and alarmed and distressed by Manchester City.
When I read this Bill I too was concerned about the threshold, but as someone who has something—I know—of a reputation as a fluffy liberal I understand the Bill’s architecture much better than I did when I first came to it. It meets the principles enunciated at the start of the debate. I have understood the context as well, and am reassured that the everyday annoyances that have been used as examples and of which we are all capable will not be caught. Crucially, I have understood that preventing behaviour from escalating and staying out of the criminal justice system are at the heart of this part of the Bill.
Noble Lords have talked about the body of case law that has been built up in the housing sector; there was certainly an effective, large lobby from it at the earlier stage. I agree with my noble friend Lord Faulks about the difficulties of discriminating between two housing sectors. It is not that one is caught in social housing but not caught in owner-occupied housing—from which it may be very difficult to move—in quite the distinctive way that has been described.
Even as a lawyer I see that “convenient” in the term “just and convenient” has an everyday connotation that seems a bit baffling in this context, but the term has a pedigree, as does the case law built up in the social housing sector. It is quite a hurdle to overcome. Lawyers in this House far more experienced than me may correct me, but I understand the term to incorporate “reasonableness”, “proportionality” and “appropriateness”. I do not see the examples that have been cited as being caught within this; I have seen neither the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, nor even the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, at a rally or on a march, nor many of my friends who might want to be lobbying outside the MoJ against legal aid cuts. It just does not extend in that way, because there is that protection.
Unlike the current ASBO, the IPNA takes offenders directly into the criminal justice system.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I apologise for interrupting my noble friend and am grateful to her. May I ask her the same question I asked my noble friend Lord Faulks? Can she give us a specific example of something that would be prevented by the Bill as it stands?
Baroness Hamwee
My noble friend is asking for examples of behaviour. It could be kids kicking a football around on a bit of open ground—which happens on a bit of open ground next to my house. I am lucky enough to live on the Thames but I find it extremely annoying to have discovered that rowing is the most noisy activity: one might not have expected it. It could be a bit of drinking—not drunken behaviour but people sitting around with a can of lager. I know from neighbours’ comments that they feel apprehensive about that and, although there has never been anything for them to be apprehensive about, they just do not like people sitting around drinking cans of lager in public. I also suggest dogs being exercised on the same ground where children play—there are a lot of annoyances in that kind of area. People see me and no doubt think that I am a poor old lady delivering pizza leaflets for tuppence a thousand when I am delivering political leaflets.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Is my noble friend suggesting that all these examples should be capable of being stopped by the courts?
Baroness Hamwee
Of course, if people feel threatened and their lives are badly impinged upon. That is what the Government are trying to prevent by this Bill. I do not want to downplay the impact of some bad behaviour on many people who react in a way in which I would not necessarily react, but the impetus to prevent—
Baroness O'Loan (CB)
Can the noble Baroness explain precisely how judges are supposed to interpret a threat and a feeling of being threatened from the words “nuisance” and “annoyance”? Also the use of the word “threatened” would indicate a much higher threshold.
Baroness Hamwee
I would say because of the context of the Bill, the clear policy underlying it and the evidence that would have to be given. I have heard the exchange about hearsay evidence but a judge has still got to be convinced that it would be just and convenient, and therefore proportionate, as I understand it, to grant an injunction.
Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)
When the noble Baroness uses the word “frightened” is she not arguing the case for maintaining the present position of causing harassment, alarm or distress?
Baroness Hamwee
Of course, these things are all subjective to some extent and perhaps that was an inappropriate word for what I was trying to describe. However, with what is reasonably frightening one is attempting to put objectivity into it; what may be unreasonably frightening would fall into a different category.
Perhaps I may now refer to the preventive nature of the provisions and say that, in considering whether the clause impinges on the fundamental freedoms of individuals—and we are talking here about individuals and not peaceful assembly—the convention rights, including freedom of expression, are protected in any event, as I understand them. The Minister will no doubt explain that the Government have responded to the JCHR’s concerns.
I have been critical about the reliance in the Bill on guidance. I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, about it not being appropriate to give guidance to the courts—I made that point at the previous stage—but they would not be guided in the way that the potential applicants listed in the Bill would be, and the guidance will now be statutory.
The noble Baroness the Lord Speaker has confirmed that the second amendment—the reasonabless amendment —would fall if this amendment were agreed to. I finish by saying that I will still feel free to annoy people by delivering leaflets and by expressing minority opinions. I fear that, as a child of the 1960s, the musical exhortation has not persuaded me.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, was right in this, at least in drawing attention to the scourge of anti-social behaviour. When I represented the constituency of Newport East I was all the time aware that there were households and, indeed, communities whose lives were very seriously blighted by anti-social behaviour. There is enormous political pressure on MPs representing constituents to find ways to crack down more aggressively and more effectively on such behaviour patterns. That pressure is, of course, amplified by the tabloids.
That is precisely why we should be moderate in this matter, why we need to be restrained and why we must try to get the right balance. Therefore, the provision in law that a threshold of “harassment, alarm or distress” must be exceeded seems to me to strike the right balance. I think that it is dangerous and improper to lower the threshold to “nuisance or annoyance”. It is surely unthinkable that we should risk introducing legislation that could impair the rights of people to go on demonstrations, as my noble friend Lady Mallalieu offered as an instance, or of kids playing football in the street, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, worried about. There are all manner of other innocent behaviours that are, indeed, annoying, but that in a free society we should not dream of legislating to prevent.
The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, did not annoy me—he never could annoy me—but he startled me with the arguments he scraped together in his gallant speech in support of the Government’s position. He asked: is it a realistic fear that people would be subject to IPNAs for trivial and inadequate reasons? He offered the thought that the requirement that applications would have to be made through an official public agency should be seen as a filter and a safeguard. The vast majority of public officials handle their responsibilities fairly, properly, scrupulously and reasonably. I hate to say this, but it is also, surely, an observation that all of us have made that if you put a man in uniform, or if you vest official authority in a person, some will find themselves tempted, and succumb to the temptation, to use power overweeningly. We have to be very careful indeed.
The noble Lord says, further, that guidance will be offered to these agencies so, again, we do not really have cause to worry. I am sure that the guidance will be a force in the right direction, but guidance is only guidance; it is flimsy and an insufficient protection. The much better protection would be not to write this risk into law. He offers a much more reassuring protection—that such injunctions could be made only at the discretion of a judge and that we can rely upon the judges to exercise common sense, decency and appropriate restraint and to be animated by a mature and wise sense of justice. In that case, why legislate? We do not need to do this. We can rely on the judges not to order injunctions against people who are merely guilty of causing trivial annoyance. It does not seem sensible, in the present circumstances in which the resources of the courts have been very attenuated, to add this burden to them.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. What are we here for if not to protect civil liberties? Justice and convenience are very often in tension. I suggest that what may be for the convenience of the Government politically, for the convenience of local citizens, whose annoyance threshold is perhaps rather low, or for the convenience of agencies may be very ill assorted with justice. I think that the Government’s position is unwise and I very much hope that the House will support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dear, and his colleagues.
Lord Mawhinney (Con)
My Lords, I support this amendment. The arguments for it have been set out so clearly and persuasively by the noble Lord, Lord Dear, the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, that I will not repeat them, particularly at this late stage of our consideration. I will make three quick points as my contribution.
First, I listened in particular to the point made by my noble friend Lord Faulks about MPs on all sides of the House complaining about and explaining the anti-social behaviour that some of their constituents face. As an MP of some 26 years’ standing, I can tell him that that is absolutely right: any MP worth his or her salt could give him numerous examples of anti-social behaviour and of the sense of inadequacy and frustration over the law seeming not to apply in those circumstances. However, one of the strengths of our bicameral arrangement is that this, your Lordships’ House, can consider such matters in a slightly different frame from the pressured one of representing constituents, some of whom are hard done by because of the law of the land. This House has the opportunity to reflect on the broader principles and bigger issues. This House sets the framework that, just occasionally, the House of Commons has not managed to get around to addressing because of the other pressures that Members of Parliament legitimately face. This is an opportunity for us to behave in a way that is in the national good and not just one that may be pleasing to some, or to some vested interest groups.
Secondly, my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay illustrated the ability to cause annoyance, and of Ministers causing annoyance to the other side of the Chamber when they blame the previous Government for problems they face today. Incidentally, I know my noble and learned friend would accept that this is a two-way street: it is not just Ministers in this Government who have blamed the previous one; Ministers in the previous Government blamed us as well. The distinction I want to leave in the minds of noble Lords is that we are a sophisticated body. I was interested in the reaction to my noble and learned friend’s point. We all smiled, nodded and were very civilised about it. Out there are people who are not as civilised, tolerant, understanding or forgiving. This legislation may be of interest to them in a way that it would not be to us. We have to bear that in mind when we cast our vote.
Thirdly, as a former chairman of the Conservative Party, I am saddened that the Government have brought forward this particular piece of legislation. It is a matter of record that I—along with the noble Lord, Lord Dear, and others—was a signatory to the legislation in December 2012 that amended by an overwhelming majority of your Lordships’ House the Public Order Act and took out the word “insulting”. Now we are offered in its place “annoyance”.
The sad fact is that it is not that surprising. I speak with some knowledge when I say that, internally, Governments occasionally believe that the combined wisdom of both Houses is not really up to scratch when compared to the wisdom of a department of state on a particular issue. I see nods on the other side of the Chamber that encourage me to understand that I am not making a party-political point at my party’s expense. It is one of the realities, and I will say something about departments of state: they have long memories. I have to say to my noble friend on the Front Bench—who is my friend in the personal sense, as we have known each other for many years—that I am saddened that I judge this to be an example of long memory.
Your Lordships threw out “insulting”—rightly so —and annoyed a lot of people in the process. They pleased a lot of people as well. Today I hope, not out of any sense of vindictiveness, as I have been a fully paid-up member of this party for a long time, that at the end of this vote the only people who will be annoyed are those who thought to bring forward this particular piece of legislation. I hope that, under the guidance of the noble Lord, Lord Dear, we will now amend it.
Lord Carswell (CB)
My Lords, noble Lords who have spoken in favour of this amendment have produced a gamut of compelling reasons why your Lordships should support it. I will briefly focus on one aspect of the amendment and the original draft as produced to your Lordships, that of the court that has to interpret and apply the provisions, a function of which I have had fairly long experience in my time. The words “nuisance” and “annoyance” are what a distinguished jurisprudent called “weasel words”. They are highly subjective and are liable to be interpreted by different people in different ways, which is a recipe for judicial inconsistency and an invitation to those who wish to oppose people expressing opinions that they dislike. In my experience, that would be certain to lead to litigation and to further harassment through the courts.
I am reminded of a remark made by a former First Minister of Northern Ireland, subsequently a Member of this House, who said in his Parliament that people were offended by something that he had said that was rather controversial at the time. He added sweetly: “A lot of people came from a long distance to be offended”.
How are the courts to carry out their function of interpreting and applying the words “nuisance or annoyance”? To put oneself in the shoes of a judge, it is worth remembering that a lot of these cases, perhaps a large majority, will come before junior courts, which have neither the time nor the resources to enter into long jurisprudential arguments. I have long maintained that judges should be given discretion and that, whatever the legislation is, it should not circumscribe the discretion of a judge too closely but should leave a modicum of room for the judge to come to a proper conclusion on the facts of the instant case. However, this should operate within the parameters of reasonable certainty of the law. The principles that a court is asked to apply should be sufficiently clear for both the court and, equally important, those citizens who seek to know the obligations that the law places on them.
The provision of “just and convenient” would go no further. It would not satisfy the principle of reasonable certainty of the law. Indeed, a court should seek to achieve that in any decision, on an injunction or any other part of the law. It does not reduce the deficiencies in the substantive provision.
For those reasons, and for others that your Lordships have expressed, I strongly support the amendment. The provision in the Bill without the amendment is too uncertain and too wide. The amendment gives a proper degree of certainty and security of the law.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I am not seeking to annoy or cause a nuisance, but I believe that it may well be the will of the House now to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, on behalf of Her Majesty’s Opposition, and then the Minister.
Baroness Howells of St Davids
My Lords, it is my right to speak. People have mentioned cats and dogs; nobody has mentioned race. If this is the wish of the House, I will not.
I rise to support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dear. I believe that the Bill will allow the law enforcers to use subjective prejudices to harass and even charge persons as young as 10. This law does not take on board the fact that this nation is now multicultural but still has not unlearnt its racial prejudices. The clause could have as damaging an effect as the sus laws which black people have fought and struggled to have repealed. We are not unaware that the sus laws are still enforced by a change of language, as was done at the Notting Hill Carnival in 2013.
Britain is now a land of many cultures, and what one culture will subscribe to is not always acceptable to others and may easily be interpreted as annoyance and nuisance. Anyone with a racial bias could misinterpret the actions of anyone, especially someone of colour, as being offensive and feel it within their right to accuse them of breaking the law. Such actions as the Bill proposes could criminalise many innocent persons and further damage the fragile gains that we have made in this country.
A child as young as 10 may not even know that he or she is breaking a rule. This happened under sus many times—because I have worked in the community, I speak from within. This is what happens when people are given the wrong law. A group of young people speaking loudly or displaying high spirits of any kind could be accused of causing a nuisance or annoyance to others who are not aware of the culture. They could be young people gathering together to chat, especially on housing estates where there is not an awful lot of room. Young people are more prone to be victims of this law because they feel deeply and express it. Others in society, I agree, also feel deeply, but they have the means of concealing their real feelings.
I should like to quote Assistant Chief Constable Richard Bennett of Thames Valley Police, who said he would not expose anyone to the obscenities he had hurled at him at times when he was delivering the law. I worked in the community as a human being. I am not representing the black community. I know what I had hurled at me and the discomfort it caused people that I was engaged in trying to help right the wrongs that were going on.
My motive for speaking here so openly and frankly has been curtailed, and I will not delay your Lordships longer. This clause, if unchanged, will have serious effects on the black community and divisions will be even further stretched, as under the sus law.
Lord Scott of Foscote (CB)
My Lords, I wish to take very little time to make a point which is worth making and has not yet been made. I express my complete support for the main thrust of paragraph (a) of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Dear, but I wish to express my reservations about paragraph (b) of that formulation. Paragraph (b) refers to anti-social behaviour being,
“in the case of an application for an injunction under this section by a housing provider”—
“housing provider” is defined in Clause 19 of the Bill—
“conduct capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to any person”.
I think that paragraph (b) is ill advised and would be better left out.
The Housing Act 1996, amended by the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, provided for “relevant landlords”. That expression is much the same as, but not identical to, the definition of “housing provider” in the Bill. It provided that the courts, on the application of a “relevant landlord”, could grant an anti-social behaviour injunction if the person in question, the respondent, had engaged, or threatened to engage, in housing-related conduct capable of causing a nuisance or annoyance. There we have the expression “nuisance or annoyance” in the amended 1996 Act. Housing-related conduct is defined as meaning conduct directly or indirectly relating to or affecting the housing management functions of the relevant landlord.
There is no repeal provision in the Bill, so these provisions relating to the actions that relevant landlords, as defined, can bring will remain as part of our law, notwithstanding the Bill becoming an Act. Moreover, it is common in tenancy agreements for there to be a covenant by the tenant not to engage in any conduct that might constitute nuisance or annoyance to the surrounding dwellers in flats or houses. That too will remain. There is no repeal provision so far as that is concerned either. The new right being given by this Bill to persons who suffer from the behaviour, whether it is nuisance or annoyance or, as the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Dear, would have it,
“conduct that has caused, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm or distress to any person”,
is new. For my part, I do not see why the actions in that regard should not apply as much to housing providers as to anybody else. If housing providers are relevant landlords they can bring the actions referred to in the 1996 Act as amended. If they are not, why should they not be in the same position as anybody else? That is the point I make. This amendment would be improved and would be more consistent with the current law if paragraph (b) was removed.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, this is one of those debates that are quite special to your Lordships’ House. I spent 13 years in the other place and I have been in your Lordships’ House for three and a half years. I think other noble Lords who served there would agree this is not the kind of debate that we often heard in the other place. This House is made all the more relevant and important because of that. It is also one of those debates that Ministers from any party in Government would perhaps refer to as “interesting” and “helpful”. It certainly has been a very interesting debate. The noble Lord, Lord Dear, the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, and the noble and learned Lords, Lord Mackay and Lord Morris, have done this House a great service by bringing forward this amendment.
I want to be clear at the outset that I think everybody who has spoken wants to see effective and swift action to tackle serious anti-social behaviour and to treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves. It is not overdramatic to recognise that, if left unchecked, anti-social behaviour can destroy lives. Ongoing anti-social behaviour can cause alarm and distress and, in some cases, leaves people feeling utterly devastated and unable to cope. It creates total misery.
In previous debates, I have spoken of my experience in supporting victims, both as a Member of Parliament and a county councillor. There is no doubt that when anti-social behaviour orders were brought in they created a significant change in the way such cases were dealt with. There were teething problems but experience has shown that they are an important tool in tackling such serious problems. That is why I just do not understand why the Government are embarking on such a dramatic change in this legislation. Obviously, improvements can always be made to any system and we would support improvements to anti-social behaviour orders. However, this really is a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and does not improve the position for those suffering from anti-social behaviour.
I am not a lawyer—I am perhaps in a minority among those who have spoken today—but all my experience and instincts from dealing with this issue tell me that these proposals from the Government are ill thought-out and unworkable. Noble and learned Lords with far greater experience and knowledge than I who have spoken have come to the same conclusion. As we have heard, the concern is that the Government’s new proposed threshold for granting an injunction for engaging or threatening to engage in causing nuisance or annoyance to any person on the balance of probabilities if the court considers it to be just and convenient is too vague and too broad. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, described it as open-ended machinery that would catch people who should not be before the courts. The danger is that in the rush of those being brought before the courts for nuisance and annoyance we could lose focus on the serious cases of harassment, distress and alarm.
The very real concerns about how this power could be used and abused were raised at Second Reading and in Committee. In preparing for this debate, I started to draw up a list of activities that could be brought into the remit of Clause 1. I had to give up after several pages and hours. The noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, described it as an extraordinary power, and indeed it is. I appreciate and welcome the experienced and knowledgeable legal views but this is not just a legal issue. It is a moral issue of dealing with those people who are suffering the most. The Government are not targeting the behaviour causing the most serious problems but creating a catch-all clause that could affect almost everybody at some point. There is no doubt that some people and some activities inevitably cause some degree of nuisance and annoyance. However, is an injunction, which in most cases will be pretty weak and ineffective—although at the extreme end it could involve custody—the most appropriate way of dealing with these cases, or should we accept that in our everyday lives some level of nuisance or annoyance is a consequence of ensuring the liberty and freedom of the individual? Liberty and freedom are not open ended. There have to be constraints and the test of harassment, alarm and distress spoken about today is the appropriate point to place those constraints.
The ACPO lead for children and young people, Jacqui Cheer, emphasised this point in November when speaking to the APPG on children. She said:
“I think we are too ready as a society, as the police and particularly with some legislation coming up on the books, to label what looks like growing up to me as anti-social behaviour”.
There have also been concerns that one person’s annoyance may be another person’s boisterous behaviour. Indeed, as the noble and learned Lords, Lord Morris and Lord Mackay, and the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, said, it need not be boisterous behaviour. Exercising fundamental democratic rights of protest or even just expressing views in a forceful manner can cause nuisance or annoyance.
The Minister’s amendment suggests that behaviour has to be reasonably expected to cause nuisance and annoyance. That is an admission that the Government now recognise the unreasonableness of the clause that they have previously defended to the hilt. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, made clear, while that change on its own may be welcome, it does not address many of the points being raised here today. It still leaves the test as nuisance and annoyance to any person on the balance of probabilities. That is not good enough. I was interested in the points made by the noble and learned Lord on “just and convenient”. I accept his assessment of the value and usefulness of that. If the boisterous behaviour to which I referred is ongoing and causes harassment, alarm or distress, then action obviously has to be taken. But as it stands, even with the government amendment, a one-off event that causes nuisance or annoyance to any person on the balance of probabilities would still lead to injunction.
In Committee the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, relied largely on the definition in the Housing Act 1996. Noble Lords have concerns about paragraph (b) of the amendment. I do not share their concerns because it is appropriate in limited circumstances for the existing law aimed at people in social housing to remain to give housing providers the tools to deal with tenants in such circumstances. No change is being sought to that position and that is what part (b) of the amendment makes clear.
I will now address some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, in his defence of the Government, which I am sure we will hear in due course from the Front Bench as well. One great benefit of ASBOs is how seriously anti-social behaviour is taken. The issue of alarm, harassment and distress is crucial and there are appropriate sanctions for dealing with it. We could end up with more of these orders being imposed but in most cases they will be a weaker response to dealing with anti-social behaviour. The noble Lord referred to the guidance and he read it out very quickly. I have a copy of that guidance. It is somewhat confusing because it says, as he rightly quoted:
“It should not be used to stop reasonable, trivial or benign behaviours that have not caused, and are not likely to cause, harm to victims or communities”.
Where in the Bill is harm referred to? Guidance is not legislation. The legislation, as it stood, referred to alarm, distress and harassment. The Bill refers to nuisance or annoyance. Guidance suggesting there has to be harm as well does not override what is in the Bill. Noble Lords who were defending the Government’s position, when asked whether they could give examples of activities that would come under the Bill’s definition of nuisance and annoyance but not cause alarm, harassment and distress, were unable to do so. Every example they gave of where action should be taken caused harassment, alarm and distress. It is quite clear that the existing legislation is the best way to define the kind of behaviour that is disrupting lives.
The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, also raised the issue of hearsay evidence. It is currently the case with anti-social behaviour orders that professionals can give advice on behalf of those suffering so that they themselves do not have to go to court to present their case. The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, made a very important point about the courts being clogged up and about the pressures on police officers having to respond to every case of nuisance and annoyance. Has the Minister given any consideration to how the police should respond with their increasingly limited resources to cries for help from people suffering what they consider to be nuisance and annoyance and whether they will then be able to deal with very serious cases of anti-social behaviour?
The existing test of harassment, alarm and distress recognises the seriousness of anti-social behaviour and the need to take action against those who breach an order. The definition proposed by the Government is too broad and the remedies are too weak. Setting the threshold so low undermines fundamental freedoms and tolerance. It is a great shame that, having had warning at Second Reading and in Committee of the great concern in your Lordships’ House, the Government did not come back today with something a bit better than the amendment being put forward. There are serious concerns about this, not just because it would catch too many people but because those who are really causing distress in our communities will not be the focus in tackling problems. I urge the Minister to accept the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Dear. The only compromise that would be acceptable today would be if the Minister were to say that he accepts that there has to be a change of definition and that he can assure us that that would be “harassment, alarm and distress” and not “nuisance and annoyance”.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach) (Con)
Well, my Lords, this has been an interesting debate. I am not particularly thick-skinned, so I am clearly sensitive to the views that have been expressed by this House. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dear, and other noble Lords who have spoken, because they have done justice to this debate by the contributions they have made. I owe it to the House to explain the Government’s position, and perhaps I can then take this issue on.
Clause 1 is clearly an important part of the Government’s reforms, and I begin by acknowledging that there has been some common ground on the need to include it in the Bill. We have indeed reached some common ground on the elements that we need to include in Clause 1 to make it effective. First, I am glad that the civil standard of proof for the new injunction has been accepted by so many noble Lords. Secondly, I welcome the tacit acceptance of the “just and convenient” limb of the test for an injunction. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Carswell, said that this is a proper consideration for courts in any case, but it is right that we should make it explicit as one of the limbs of the test.
The terms of Amendment 1, as compared with the amendments put forward in Committee, are a welcome demonstration that this House listens carefully to the evidence put before it both by noble Lords and by front-line professionals, and that it adapts its approach accordingly. The Government have also listened to the concerns expressed by noble Lords in Committee and by the Constitution Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and that is why I have tabled Amendment 2, which we believe addresses the concerns about the breadth of the “nuisance or annoyance” test. Although Amendment 2 is not part of this group, it addresses exactly the same issue—the appropriate form of the test for the grant of an injunction—and, accordingly, it is important that your Lordships consider Amendments 1 and 2 together.
As I said in the debate in Committee when my noble friend Lord Faulks tabled his amendment, I believe it is inherent in the way that the court will look at any application for an injunction to consider whether it was reasonable to grant an injunction in the circumstances of the case. I am grateful for my noble friend’s contribution, and I look forward to him joining me on this Bill before we conclude our consideration of it.
I thank my noble friend Lady Hamwee for her contribution to this debate. I also thank other noble Lords who wanted to speak but were not able to or who have forgone their right to speak in order to expedite this debate. In that I include my noble friends Lady Newlove and Lady Berridge.
Lord Elton (Con)
Will the Minister take on board the fact that our concern is not with the Government’s purpose but with the effects of the legislation?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I shall be coming on to that, but I felt I had to place what I was going to say in some context—and I am grateful for the discipline of the House in allowing me to do just that. Our aim is to allow decent law-abiding people to go about their daily lives, engage in normal behaviour and enjoy public and private spaces without having their own freedoms constrained by anti-social individuals.
The test for an injunction, when taken as a whole, coupled with the wider legal duty on public authorities, including the courts, to act compatibly with convention rights, would ensure that the injunction cannot be used inappropriately or disproportionately. As I have explained, government Amendment 2 is designed to strengthen the first limb of the test so that the conduct must be such that it could reasonably be expected to cause nuisance or annoyance. This limb on its own is likely to preclude an injunction being sought or granted under this Bill to deal with bell ringers, carol singers or children playing in the street. However, there is a second part to the test.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I ask my noble friend the same question that the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, was unable to answer. Can he give one example of a problem that would not be resolved by the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Dear? What is the problem that the Government are seeking to deal with? Can he give one example?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
If I might say, it solves the problem of over-complex legislation. Having two tests for the single problem of anti-social behaviour was not the Government’s intention in drawing up this legislation.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I do not want to detain my noble friend, but I am asking for an example of the kind of behaviour that would not be caught by the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Dear. We understand the Government’s intentions, but it is not clear what the problem is that they seek to remedy. Can he give one example that would not be caught under the amendment?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I do not intend to give any examples to my noble friend. I have given the reason why we have a single test for anti-social behaviour leading to an IPNA. I have given my reasoning, and I hope that my noble friend will accept it; I am not going to go into listing individual activities that the IPNA is intended to address. That is why we have a single test and why noble Lords will understand that I am speaking in justification of that single test.
The second part of the test is not a throwaway test, as some have suggested. It is under this limb of the test that the court will consider whether it is reasonable and proportionate in all the circumstances to grant an injunction. In making such an assessment, the court will consider the impact on the respondent’s convention rights, including the rights to freedom of speech and assembly.
I agree with the noble Lord that we should not leave it to the courts to apply these important safeguards. All these factors will weigh on the minds of front-line professionals in judging whether to apply for an injunction. Our draft guidance makes this clear. This will be backed up by a framework of professional standards and practice operated by the police, local authorities and housing providers.
Having said all that—and I apologise to my noble friend for not giving him an example—I have listened to the strength of feeling around the house on this issue. The Government’s purpose is plain: we wish to protect victims. ASB, or anti-social behaviour, ruins lives and wrecks communities. In our legislation, we need to ensure that authorities seeking to do so have coherent and effective powers to deal with anti-social behaviour. Recognising noble Lords’ concerns, I commit to take the issue away to give myself the opportunity in discussion with the noble Lord and others to provide a solution that clarifies the use of the legislation and safeguards the objective, which I think is shared around this House, of making anti-social behaviour more difficult and protecting those who are victims of it.
On those grounds, and on the understanding that the Government will return to the issue at Third Reading, I will not move for now government Amendment 2, and I hope that on the commitment to discuss the issue the noble Lord, Lord Dear, will not press his amendment.
Lord Dear
My Lords, we have been detained for something over two hours and I shall take no more than a couple of minutes of your Lordships’ time to say what I have to say. First, I sincerely thank all those who have spoken in this debate, particularly the three signatories to my amendment and the Minister, who has had to sit through a varied and interesting debate.
Secondly, I want to pick up on the chilling effect. The experience with the word “insulting” in the Public Order Act is sufficient in itself to indicate what front-line practitioners will do. Governed as they are by very well-oiled complaints machinery, they will undoubtedly be faced with many examples when a set of circumstances are produced for them, and they will be virtually pressurised into taking some sort of action, to pursue the case and push it through to the courts to decide. That is the easy option, and it is what happened all too often with “insulting”. To take an exercise in discretion and turn around to the complainant and say, “Frankly, I think we should let this one go by”, is not an option that they will take willingly. That is undoubtedly why the Association of Chief Police Officers as one group has said that it thinks that “nuisance and annoyance” is wrong and that we should stay with the well tried formula of “harassment, alarm or distress”.
The choice between those two wordings is the pivotal point of the legislation—the absolute foundation on which everything else hangs. We can talk for as long as we like about reasonable, just, convenient, necessary and all those adjectives, and try to make it work but, if the pivot does not work, all the rest falls away. The pivot suggested by the Government is “nuisance and annoyance”. We have no knowledge of what will happen if that comes into play, but we know what will happen with “harassment, alarm or distress”; it is well proven, well tried and respected, and has never been faulted. To move way from that is a step into the dark.
We have had no examples whatever of the sort of conduct that “nuisance and annoyance” seeks, rightly, to address. I pay great tribute to the Minister, for whom I have a huge liking and respect, but unless he can satisfy me—and I suspect that this is the case with others in the Chamber, from what I pick up from the atmosphere—that he is willing to move immediately to “harassment, alarm or distress”, I must seek to divide the House. I invite him to respond to that.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
As far as I am concerned, if I go into discussions between now and Third Reading, all the aspects that the noble Lord has related in his speech, and those expressed by other noble Lords around the House, will be on the table. I do not want to prejudge the outcome of those discussions. All that I can say is that I wish to make sure that when we come back to Third Reading we have a House that can unite behind legislation on this issue. I do not think that that is an unreasonable expectation, and I believe that it represents the sentiment in which this debate has taken place this afternoon.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
I have listened with great care to this debate, and I was undecided when I came into this Chamber as to what I would do. What I have not yet heard from the Minister, to my understanding, is what is wrong with the amendment and why it will not actually meet what needs to be done.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I was asked a parallel question by my noble friend Lord Forsyth. We are trying to simplify the legislation so that we make it easier for practitioners, no matter in what circumstances they are dealing with the application for an IPNA, to have a test that is capable of being applied in all areas.
I have listened to this debate. There may be ways in which the noble Lord’s amendment can be modified to advantage. It is important to recognise that he has made a very valid contribution to this debate, and I would like to have the opportunity to consider further what he is proposing in his amendment.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
My Lords, if I understand the position that the Minister has taken up, he will have an open discussion, the precise outcome of which cannot, of course, be forecast. He will take account of all aspects of what has been put forward in the hope that we can, between us, reach an agreed solution to the problem which has the support of the whole House.
Division 1
Ayes: 306
Labour: 155
Crossbench: 87
Conservative: 25
Liberal Democrat: 16
Independent: 7
Bishops: 3
Democratic Unionist Party: 1
Green Party: 1
UK Independence Party: 1
Ulster Unionist Party: 1
Plaid Cymru: 1
Noes: 178
Conservative: 116
Liberal Democrat: 54
Labour: 2
Crossbench: 2
Independent: 2
Ulster Unionist Party: 1
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, in Committee, Clause 1(5)(a) was the subject of some debate. It and the related provision in Clause 21 have also been a subject between the Home Office and the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Essentially, this provision places a duty on the court to avoid, as far as practicable, imposing prohibitions or requirements in an injunction or a criminal behaviour order which would conflict with the respondent’s religious beliefs.
The Government have consistently maintained that this provision related to the manifestation of the respondent’s religious beliefs, rather than to the religious belief per se. However, for the avoidance of doubt, we have decided not to remove the provision from the Bill, on the basis that the courts would in any event, by virtue of the operation of the Human Rights Act, be bound to consider whether the proposed prohibitions or requirements were compatible with the respondent’s convention rights, including but not limited to the right to the freedom of religion. I beg to move.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
My Lords, I can quite understand the reason why this particular safeguard or defence in injunctive procedures is to be removed. The noble Lord may rest assured that I am with him as far as the argument goes. I have written to his noble friend and had an answer this morning pointing out that, in normal civil injunctive proceedings, there are a significant number of available defences—depending on how one counts them, 15 or 20 or more. The Bill as it stands would have allowed for three; this will reduce it to two.
I still do not understand, because in his letter to me—which I thank him very much for, and for keeping me in the loop on correspondence generally to do with this Bill—the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, merely said that he did not agree with me. He did not explain why in one set of civil injunctive proceedings under this Bill there will remain two defences, but in any other injunctive proceedings there will be 15 or more. That seems a two-tier approach, so what is the direction of travel in that respect?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, perhaps I may come back to the noble Earl in advance of Third Reading on that to specifically clarify the issues that he has raised. In terms of what the Government have done thus far, our understanding and direction of travel is clear, responding directly to the concerns raised on this issue.
Baroness Hamwee
“( ) For the purpose of determining whether the condition mentioned in subsection (2) is fulfilled, the court shall disregard any act of the respondent which he or she shows was reasonable in the circumstances.”
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, Amendments, 4, 5, 24 and 25 are all directed at a defence for an application for an IPNA or for a criminal behaviour order. My amendments are different from definitions of the first condition which is the requirement for an injunction or an order.
There must be cases where the conduct can be expected—or maybe we will end up with “reasonably be expected”—to cause the impacts that we have been debating. Nevertheless, there is good reason for that conduct. It is not clear to me if, as drafted, there is any defence other than “I didn’t do it” or that the conduct does not meet the test.
In the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, Section 1(5) includes a provision similar to the one which I have set out in two of these amendments—that:
“For the purpose of determining whether the condition”,
of the test,
“is fulfilled, the court shall disregard any act … which … was reasonable in the circumstances”.
In case that point is not clear enough, I have specifically used the term “defence” in my more homemade Amendments 5 and 25.
There must be an opportunity for the respondent or defendant to explain himself, and I would not be happy to leave whether or not to proceed to the discretion of the applicant or prosecuting authority, whichever we are talking about. At the previous stage, the Minister said that he would take away the first of each pair of these amendments to explore whether it was appropriate to introduce an explicit reference to reasonableness. I appreciate that he went three-quarters of the way to doing so this afternoon. I know that he gave no commitment at that stage, but in any event I do not believe that his amendment, had he pursued it, would have met the point of a defence. Conduct which could reasonably be expected to cause nuisance or annoyance might still be conduct for which, in particular circumstances, there is good reason. The court should actively have to consider this.
The point is made more important by the fact that it is likely in this area that there will be a lot of litigants in person, so the legislation itself needs to be extremely clear.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Hamwee for her explanation of these amendments. She explained that they seek to provide the respondent or offender with a defence as to why an injunction or criminal behaviour order, which are also included in these amendments, should not be granted—namely, that the behaviour was reasonable in the circumstances. My noble friend has pointed out that this issue is distinct from the amendment that we have already debated, which is related to the first condition for the grant of an injunction.
If I may respond at this point to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, about his queries in the previous debate, I can say that the provisions in Clause 1(5) are not defences; they are factors for the court to take into account when imposing restrictions or requirements. The two issues mentioned should not be confused with defence issues.
The Earl of Lytton
Do I understand from the Minister then that the normal range of civil defences would continue to apply in the normal way, in connection with matters under this Bill as everywhere else?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
As I understand it, that is the case. I was going on to argue the question of defences because that was the issue that my noble friend wanted to sort out. However, I hope that we have saved the price of a stamp by clearing that up in the Chamber.
In effect, my noble friend is seeking to argue that it is not enough to be able to establish, in the case of the injunction, that the conduct in question could reasonably be expected to cause nuisance or annoyance but that it should also be necessary to show that the conduct was unreasonable in the circumstances. My noble friend has pointed to the reasonableness defence in Section 1 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which applies to the ASBO on application, although it is worth noting that no such defence is contained in Section 1C of that Act, which relates to the ASBO on conviction. I am sympathetic to the point that she raised and I hope to persuade her that it is already effectively covered.
I will deal first with the injunction. As my noble friend will be aware, the second condition that must be satisfied is that the court considers that it is “just and convenient” to grant an injunction for the purpose of preventing the respondent from engaging in anti-social behaviour. As I have already indicated, in applying this limb of the test, the court will look at whether it is reasonable and proportionate in the circumstances of the case to grant an injunction. It will be open to the respondent to argue that he or she had a good reason for his or her conduct. The court will weigh that up against the evidence submitted by the applicant and come to a view. If the court is satisfied that the reason put forward by the respondent is a sound one, I fully expect it to conclude that it will not be just and convenient to grant an injunction. Therefore, the defence is, in practice, inherent in the drafting of Clause 1 as it stands.
In the case of the criminal behaviour order, it is again important to look at the wider context in which the court will apply the test in Clause 21. The same public law principles of reasonableness and proportionality will apply. It would therefore be open to the offender to argue that there were reasonable grounds for the conduct in question, which the court would then consider alongside the evidence presented by the Crown Prosecution Service.
I might add that there is no reasonableness defence in Section 1C of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which provides for ASBOs on conviction—the forerunner to the criminal behaviour order. That section does, however, stipulate that the court may consider evidence presented by the prosecution or the defence, which will be the position in relation to the criminal behaviour order, albeit that is not expressly stated in the Bill.
In addition, it is worth pointing out that, in deciding whether to apply for a criminal behaviour order, the Crown Prosecution Service would need to be satisfied that there was sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of obtaining an order and that it was in the public interest to apply for an order. The prosecution would therefore consider any evidence which showed that the conduct of the respondent was reasonable in the circumstances.
In short, the point made by my noble friend is well made. I assure her that a respondent or offender will be able to raise such a defence, which will then be properly considered by the court alongside evidence submitted by the applicant for the injunction or order. In the light of this reassurance, I do not believe that these amendments are necessary and, as a result, I hope that my noble friend will be prepared to withdraw Amendment 4.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, my noble friend is having a difficult enough day, so I reassure him immediately that I will seek to withdraw the amendment.
I notice the reference to the public interest test in the case of the criminal behaviour order. As regards the injunction—this is not a matter for this afternoon—I wonder whether my noble friend might consider a reference to the point in the statutory guidance. I reassure my noble and learned friend that I am seeking not guidance to the court—I would not dare—but guidance to potential applicants in order to prevent them going forward if it is not appropriate that they should go forward in the circumstances that I sought to outline. As I said, it is not a matter for this afternoon and I know that the Government are consulting on the guidance but I hope that my comment at this point can be taken as a contribution to that consultation. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, in developing our anti-social behaviour reforms, the Government have, both formally and informally, sought the views of the front-line professionals who will use the new powers. We have listened to them and, where appropriate, have accepted constructive proposals to improve the measures in the Bill. The amendments in this group exemplify this approach.
Under Clause 1(8), applications for injunctions against over-18s to prevent nuisance and annoyance will be heard in the county court and applications against under-18s will be heard in the youth court. However, some cases of anti-social behaviour involve mixed groups of under and over-18s. To allow for such cases, Amendment 19 would enable rules of court to be made which would, in turn, enable the organisation applying for an injunction to seek permission from the youth court for the application against the adult—or, indeed, applications if there is more than one adult—to be heard in the youth court alongside the applications in respect of one or more under-18s. The youth court may grant the application if it is “in the interests of justice”. If not, the application will be denied and the application in respect of the adults will be heard in the county court in the normal way.
If the case is heard in the youth court and an IPNA is granted, Amendments 8, 9, 10 and 11 provide that any subsequent proceedings in relation to the adults will be heard in the county court—for example, if there are proceedings for a breach. Only the initial application for the grant of an injunction will be heard in the youth court.
Amendments 6, 7 and 21 are consequential on Amendment 19. These amendments help put victims first. In most cases, it will prevent them having to attend court and give evidence twice. The amendments will also reduce costs and save court time. By linking these hearings in the youth court, we will retain the experience and expertise of its judges in protecting the best interests of respondents under 18. I beg to move.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
We understand the reasons for these amendments and for wanting to try to ensure that cases involving those under 18 and those who are adult, where they relate to the same issue, can be tried or dealt with in the same court. Therefore, I certainly have no wish to argue against the principle of what the Government are seeking to achieve. However, in the letter that the Minister sent to us on 18 December, in which he outlined these amendments that were being tabled, he said in respect of this issue:
“We believe that it is in the best interests of respondents aged under 18 for linked cases involving adults to be transferred to the youth court rather than vice versa”.
Can he confirm that that means that a case could not be held in the adult court if somebody aged 18 was involved? Perhaps for the sake of argument I may take as an example—perhaps it is very exceptional—a case where there are, say, four or five adults and one person under 18 who happens to be 17 and a half. Under these amendments, is it the Government’s position that it would not be possible, if the parties wanted it, for the matter to be dealt with in the adult court? Are they saying that if the cases are going to be dealt with together, that can happen only in the youth court? I should be grateful if the Minister could clarify that point.
I stress that we are not opposed to what the Government are seeking to achieve, but I pose the question in the light of the sentence in the letter that was sent to us where reference was made to believing it to be,
“in the best interests of respondents aged under 18 for linked cases involving adults to be transferred to the youth court rather than vice versa”.
Does that mean that they could never be held in the adult court, even if for example there were four or five adults and one under 18? I think that I know the answer to this, but could the Minister say why the Government believe that it is in the best interests of respondents aged under 18 for linked cases to be in the youth court rather than vice versa?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, I will clarify that. As was put down in the letter of my noble friend on the final point, there is an understanding and appreciation that with youths under 18, youth courts have certain specialist knowledge in dealing with these cases. The point, which has been raised over and again, is that one of the key things, especially when it comes to such matters, is reforming and addressing particular issues, and ensuring that we prevent reoffending. We feel that the youth courts, particularly in the cases of under-18s, are best placed to deal with these issues. I can confirm that a case involving a person under 18 cannot be transferred to the country court in any circumstances.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
“Paragraph (b) is subject to any rules of court made under section 18(1A).”
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
“( ) In subsection (1) “the court” means—
(a) the court that granted the injunction, except where paragraph (b) applies;(b) the county court, where the injunction was granted by a youth court but the respondent is aged 18 or over.”
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
“(b) a judge of the county court, if—(i) the injunction was granted by the county court, or(ii) the injunction was granted by a youth court but the respondent is aged 18 or over;(c) a justice of the peace, if neither paragraph (a) nor paragraph (b) applies.”
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
“(b) a judge of the county court, if—(i) the injunction was granted by the county court, or(ii) the injunction was granted by a youth court but the respondent is aged 18 or over;(c) a justice of the peace, if neither paragraph (a) nor paragraph (b) applies.”
The Earl of Listowel
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, I will speak also to the other amendments in my name in this group. Amendments 12 and 13 to Schedule 2, and Amendments 34 and 35 to Clause 37, seek to remove imprisonment as a sanction for children breaching their IPNAs or failing to comply with police dispersal orders respectively. Schedule 2 provides for supervision orders to be made against children breaching their IPNAs. This is adequate for dealing with children of all ages. There is no need to introduce detention as an additional sanction for over-14s. The case for why this is necessary has not been made. Will the Minister explain why this is seen by the Government as necessary?
Amendment 34 removes imprisonment as a sanction for children failing to comply with a police dispersal order. Amendment 35 sets out a range of alternative sanctions for such children. These measures aim to ensure that the discretion of the court is not fettered. I am grateful to the Minister for allowing us an opportunity to meet yesterday to discuss my concerns in this area. I will come to my final Amendment 86 in this group, which is on youth services, when I have discussed the other amendments.
There are two key reasons why imprisonment should not be available for children breaching their IPNA or failing to comply with a police dispersal order or power. First, imprisonment is expensive, ineffective and counterproductive. In 2010-11 the reoffending rate for children leaving custody was 72.6%. Youth custody is expensive. The average cost of a place at a secure training centre is £178,000 per annum. There is clear evidence to suggest that for many children, incarceration increases the risk of recidivism. Imprisoning children, even for a short period, can introduce them to criminal networks that become impossible to escape later.
I fear that we may be introducing more children to schools of crime and preparing them for later universities of crime. I have visited many young offender institutions and secure training centres. I visited Feltham young offender institution 13 or 15 years ago, and then visited it recently with a number of chief executives from London local authorities and the chair of the Youth Justice Board, Frances Done. It was striking how much things had changed in that time. Thanks to this Government, there are far fewer young people in custody, which is very much to be welcomed. Those young people who are left are very challenging, tough and difficult to work with. In the Bill, we are considering bringing in some young people—children—who have not even committed a crime to spend three months or so in detention with these very hard nuts. Do we really want to mix such children with such children?
From that visit to Feltham young offender institution, the concern of the chief executives of the local authorities in London about gang violence also became clear. We heard a transformation from my first visit to Feltham. No longer were two young people getting into a fight with one young person, but 13, 14 or 15 young men would be attacking one or two boys because they were not in the right gang. It was important for the secure estate to know from the local authorities which gangs their particular boys came from, so that they could manage the risks around that.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, the noble Earl knows how sympathetic I am to his amendments, particularly in regard to detention. I made a cack-handed attempt at about 11.43 pm on day 4 out of five of Committee to raise issues about Schedule 2, and I have some questions for the Minister.
I am aware that Part 1 of Schedule 2 contains some significant safeguards—I hope the Minister will not feel upset at my using that term—and that paragraph 1(3)(a) provides that the applicant for a supervision order or a detention order must consult the youth offending team. There is no explicit provision for the court to consult the youth offending team although it may be good practice. Can he give me any reassurance on that score?
Secondly, is the Minister able to give me an example—I am sorry if it seems as though I am harking back to an approach adopted in an earlier debate, but I have asked this question before and it will not come as a surprise to him—of such a severe or extensive breach that only detention would be appropriate, without that activity also being a criminal matter? Perhaps he will also say whether there is a role for guidance from the Home Office, and what that role might be, for rules of court and for sentencing guidelines in this connection.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I have not always felt that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has addressed herself to issues that are hugely important or pertinent in this Bill, although she has gone into a great deal of detail. However, the point that she has just raised about the circumstances in which the Government envisage these powers in respect of juveniles being appropriate is extremely important.
There is a risk that the Government will, no doubt inadvertently, create a perfect storm around some of these matters. The powers under the dispersal order—we will come to this later—can be exercised without proper prior consultation. This can then lead to young people in breach of a dispersal order being potentially subject to detention, with all the consequences that the noble Earl described.
I can envisage circumstances in which the perhaps over-hasty, ill thought through use of dispersal order powers will lead to young people being rounded up and to some of them, because they are in breach of a dispersal order, being potentially subject to detention. That seems to be a toxic cocktail for community relations in many of our towns and cities.
Therefore the question that the noble Baroness has just asked the Minister is extremely important. What are the circumstances in which it is envisaged that detention is the appropriate outcome of a breach of, in particular, a dispersal order? What are the circumstances? What is the context in which this will be done? Are the Government going to provide sufficient guidance to make that clear? Otherwise, I can envisage circumstances in which young people will be detained as a consequence of something that was perhaps ill thought through at the time, with enormous social consequences.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I share the noble Earl’s appreciation of the late Paul Goggins, in my case from when he was a very good Prisons Minister. I am equally sad to learn of his death.
In the context of these amendments I share his concerns that we should be looking at detention for, as it were, a first offence; for something which, as my noble friend Lady Hamwee pointed out, might not even be a criminal offence. If it is a criminal offence, of course, we do not need the detention powers in the first place. I look forward with interest to what my noble friend has to say. I hope that he has been allowed to be more helpful to my noble friend Lady Hamwee than he was on a previous amendment.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for his generous and kind comments, which we appreciate, for our former colleague Paul Goggins. He was an exceptional MP and, for those who knew him and were very fond him, he was an exceptional person as well. We are very sad to lose him.
On the amendments, rather along the lines of the issues raised by my noble friend Lord Harris of Haringey, perhaps I may ask some questions about dispersal orders. The extension of dispersal orders that the Government are proposing seems quite strange. Previously, dispersal orders were for 24 hours, with democratic oversight in consultation with the local authority, and covered a restrained geographical area. That has changed because under the Government’s proposals they are for 48 hours with a much wider geographical area. There is no involvement of the local authority but there is the involvement of a member of the police force of the rank of inspector or above.
The Minister will recall that we discussed in Committee the lack of clarity around the operation of dispersal orders. A number of questions were put to the Minister but we did not get answers then. Given this extension and the change in how the Government want dispersal orders to operate, it is a concern that the detention, particularly for young children, would remain for a much broader and wider offence about which we have had very little information, and I read the debate again today. It raises some questions for the Minister to answer. Why does he think that these dispersal orders are appropriate? Does he think it likely that, because of the wider area, the increased length of time and the fact that there is no democratic oversight, we shall see more dispersal orders? Is it appropriate in those cases that we may see more breaches of them?
It raises a concern that something as minor as a dispersal order, which can be issued by a police offer on the spur of the moment, when there is not really a process in the way we would expect, could lead to detention. The extension of how the Government are planning to use dispersal orders in the future, retaining detention for young people if there is a breach, gives rise to concern. Will the Minister explain why he thinks it appropriate, how he thinks it will be used and on how many occasions? I am concerned that we may see an increase in dispersal orders. I am very unhappy about the Government’s proposals in any case, but if we see an increase there could be an increased number of breaches and we could then see detention of young people. Will the Minister explain how this will operate and why he thinks it is appropriate?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I start by joining in the tributes being paid to Paul Goggins. I know that my colleagues in the Home Office share this view. We were together yesterday evening when his illness was mentioned. His loss this morning is a loss to British public life and I am happy to pay tribute.
I am very grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for tabling these amendments. It is right and proper that we consider these matters. His amendments raise important issues about whether detention is appropriate for someone aged under 18, and we debated this at some length in Committee. I was pleased that we had the opportunity for a productive meeting yesterday and I hope that I will be able to answer some of the points made by the noble Earl and other noble Lords.
The Government strongly support the use of informal interventions and rehabilitative approaches, particularly when dealing with young people. That is at the heart of our overall approach to anti-social behaviour. However, detention must be available to the court if the new injunction is to act as an effective deterrent and to protect victims and communities in the most serious cases. When we consulted on the new anti-social behaviour powers, 57% of those who responded were in favour of the breach sanctions for the injunction for under-18s. Only 22% disagreed, with only a further 4% against any custody for under-18s.
The injunction is a court order and must be supported by tough sanctions to ensure compliance. However, in contrast to anti-social behaviour orders, under-18s will not be unnecessarily criminalised and saddled with a criminal record for breach. However, it is only in the most serious or persistent cases of breach that a court may detain someone aged under 18. Schedule 2 to the Bill makes clear that a court may not detain a young person for breach of an IPNA,
“unless it is satisfied that, in view of the severity or extent of the breach, no other power available to the court is appropriate”.
Where this is not the case, the court may impose a supervision order on a young person and Part 2 of Schedule 2 to the Bill sets out a number of non-custodial requirements that can be attached to such an order. The relevant requirements are a supervision requirement, an activity requirement or a curfew requirement. These are three of the requirements which may be attached to a youth rehabilitation order, the youth equivalent of a community sentence.
We would expect the youth courts to do all they can to ensure that a young person’s rehabilitation is effective. In making any decision to make a detention order, the court must consult with the youth offending team and inform any other body or individual the applicant thinks appropriate. If the court does decide to make a detention order, it must give its reasons in open court. The availability of custody as a sanction in exceptional cases reflects the current position as regards the anti-social behaviour order on application. Indeed, breach of an ASBO on application attracts a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment as well as a criminal record.
The previous Administration took the view that there needed to be effective sanctions for breach up to and including imprisonment, including in cases involving young people. While it was generous of the noble Earl to congratulate the previous Government on this aspect of their policy, we do not believe that they got the balance quite right between punishment and rehabilitation. That is why we are treating breach of the IPNA as a contempt of court rather than as a criminal offence: we believe that they were right to include the option of custody for both adults and juveniles. To remove that option for juveniles would significantly weaken the effectiveness of the injunction and thereby weaken the protection we are seeking to afford to the victims of anti-social behaviour.
I shall address some of the concerns expressed by the noble Earl and other noble Lords. Of course, a vital part of preparing for the introduction of these new powers will be appropriate training and support for the judiciary, police and other front-line professionals in how these powers are applied to young people, and the Home Office is already discussing these requirements with the Ministry of Justice, the Judicial College and the College of Policing.
I can inform the noble Earl that young offenders under 18 years of age may be placed in a young offender institution run by the National Offender Management Service, NOMS, a privately operated secure training centre or a local authority secure children’s home. Placement is made by the placements team of the youth justice board, which is notified by the court when custody is given. They will use their expertise and will be informed by the relevant youth offending team to place them in an appropriate establishment suitable for their needs. The youngest and most vulnerable young people will be placed in secure children’s homes. There are no longer any places for girls in young offender institutions, so they will be placed in a secure training centre or secure children’s home.
Under the Bill, the court must consider any representations made by the relevant youth offending team in considering whether to make a detention order against an under-18. Moreover, the applicant for a detention order or a supervision order must consult any youth offending team and inform any other body or individual the applicant thinks appropriate. I hope that helps to reassure the noble Earl.
I shall go on to the dispersal order.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
The noble Lord made the point about it being a contempt of court. Can he tell me in how many other cases young people can face detention for a contempt of court?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Off the top of my head, I cannot, but I hope that the noble Baroness will allow me to write to her on that. I will copy in all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate and put a copy in the Library.
As for breach of a dispersal direction, I can offer the noble Earl some comfort and, in doing so, I should like to correct the impression I gave in Committee on 20 November that custody was an option for breach of a dispersal direction by a person aged under 18. I can, in fact, reassure the noble Earl, the noble Lord and the noble Baroness that this is not the case. Detention and training orders—the juvenile equivalent of imprisonment —must be made for a minimum of four months. That means that where the maximum term of imprisonment that could be imposed is less than four months, as is the case here, a detention and training order is not an option in relation to a juvenile offender. The court will be left with the options of a youth rehabilitation order, a fine, a conditional discharge or an absolute discharge. I hope that is of some reassurance and apologise if my previous comments misled noble Lords. I hope I have been able to reassure the noble Earl as regards the dispersal powers.
In the case of the IPNA, I fear that we have to agree to differ on the appropriateness of having custody as a long-stop option for breach of an injunction by a person under 18. For the sake of victims of anti-social behaviour, we remain strongly of the view that, in exceptional cases, a detention order should be available to the courts. We should not weaken these provisions by removing that option.
Amendment 86, the final amendment in this group, seeks to place a new responsibility on local authorities to provide youth services to prevent young people becoming involved in anti-social behaviour. This obligation is already effectively provided for by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which places a responsibility on local authorities to formulate and implement a strategy for the reduction of crime and disorder in their area, where crime and disorder includes anti-social behaviour and youth anti-social behaviour. That Act includes a responsibility for local authorities to keep the strategy under review, monitor its effectiveness and alter it accordingly. Local authorities must ensure that their strategy focuses on the types of problem in their area, based on an analysis of local levels and patterns of crime and disorder, and the misuse of drugs and alcohol. Therefore, if an area has a particular problem with youth anti-social behaviour, the local authority has a responsibility to put measures in place to reduce the problem. I would expect this to include preventive measures. In addition, the Children Act 1989 places an obligation on local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in their area who are in need and to promote the upbringing of such children by their families by providing a range and level of services appropriate to those children’s needs. This includes services to prevent young people becoming involved in anti-social behaviour, crime and disorder, as well as services to support those young people and their families who become involved in anti-social behaviour or crime.
I hope I have reassured my noble friend Lady Hamwee, the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, and the noble Earl that the duty he seeks to create through this amendment already exists and that local authorities have these crime and disorder reduction strategies in place. In these circumstances, I hope the noble Earl will be prepared to withdraw his amendment.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I am most grateful to all those who have spoken: the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Smith of Basildon, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris Haringey. I am grateful to the Minister for his careful reply, particularly for giving some detail about the training of the judiciary and other people in contact with young people in this regard. That is terribly important and a place where we fall down to some extent. Again, I encourage the Government to think about the use of mentors in this kind of training of professionals working around young people. It is so important to develop an understanding of young people in front-line police officers who work on a beat and regularly come into contact with such young people, and other workers. Allowing and supporting them to become mentors to a young person for a period of three to six months, and helping them to reflect on that and how it works, benefits them but also benefits the young person who often needs that kind of relationship.
The Minister made a number of other interesting and helpful points. I express some concern about the placements—the disposals, if you like—within the secure estate. Because of the Government’s success in reducing the number of young people in custody, a number of secure children’s homes have been shut down. I am not sure if the secure training centres have also shut—I think places in them have been reduced. The courts have less range and freedom in choosing disposals. Sometimes, they will simply be driven to choose what is available, even for a fairly vulnerable young person. One recalls the suicide of a young person who was recognised as being vulnerable but was sent to a secure training centre because there was no space available in a children’s home. Shortly after that, he hanged himself. That was about five years ago. There are difficult decisions to be made. This is an area we will have to agree to disagree on.
I was really pleased to hear that there will not be the detention of children under breach of dispersal orders, if I understood the Minister correctly. That is very good news. I will not keep the House any longer at this time. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
“( ) the respondent is aged 18 or over,”
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, in Committee, my noble friend Lady Hamwee questioned whether it was appropriate for under-18s to be excluded from their own homes on the grounds of anti-social behaviour. After further consideration, I am content to make a change that ensures that only adults can be excluded from their home where there is a threat of violence or a significant risk of harm to others.
Councils have wider safeguarding duties and other legislation that allows for a child to be removed from the home when it is in their best interest. For instance, local councils already have duties under the Children Act 1989 to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. Where a young person is committing serious anti-social behaviour to the extent that agencies are considering applying for an injunction with the power to exclude that young person from their home, the local council should first consider whether the child is “in need” under the Children Act and, if so, provide appropriate support as an alternative to simply excluding a young person from their home. A Part 1 injunction could still play a role in transforming the young person’s life as well as protecting victims from further anti-social behaviour. However, if removing them from the family home is considered necessary, this should be done under existing legislation and not just be seen as a chance to disperse the problem to another area.
I do not believe that this change will weaken agencies’ ability to deal with anti-social behaviour caused by minors. Agencies can still apply for an injunction to stop the young person’s behaviour and the court can attach a power of arrest to the order in cases where an individual has either been violent or threatened violence when committing or threatening anti-social behaviour, or where there is a risk of significant harm to another person by that individual. The power of arrest will act as a deterrent and allow the police to take swift action to protect the victim or communities if the injunction is breached. Of course, youth offending teams will play an important role in identifying the problems that drive the young person’s behaviour and measuring the risk they pose to others to ensure that the right action is taken. However, we accept that excluding a young person from their home using an injunction will not be the right action and I therefore commend the amendment to the House. I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, the bad news for the government Front Bench is that this amendment was put down in the flurry of amendments that my noble friend Lord Greaves and I rushed to table when the timetabling of business was changed. That encourages me to continue that sort of scattergun approach to matters I think need to be discussed in Committee, but of course I am extremely happy to see this among the government amendments and to know that the change will be made. I am very grateful to the Government for listening.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, this amendment follows up the debate in Committee initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, about Clause 13. This clause preserves an existing power available to social landlords to apply for tenancy injunctions to prohibit anti-social behaviour which relates to or affects their management of their housing stock.
In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, sought to challenge Clause 13 on the grounds that its provisions were not tenure-neutral. As I have indicated, Clause 13 simply preserves an existing power available to social landlords under Section 153D of the Housing Act 1996. That section, which, I might add, was inserted into the Housing Act by the previous Administration in 2003, responded to calls from social landlords that they needed to be able to hold their tenant responsible for the behaviour of visitors. However, strictly speaking, Clause 13 is not necessary, as an injunction under Clause 1 can be used to achieve the same end of holding the respondent responsible for the anti-social behaviour of the visitors to their property, regardless of tenure.
We included Clause 13 in the Bill because social landlords were familiar with tenancy injunctions. However, given the points raised in Committee by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, and after further consultation with social landlords, we have decided to remove the clause to ensure that the injunction is completely tenure-neutral. This will fit in with our wider approach of simplifying anti-social behaviour powers through the Bill, while ensuring that social landlords, like the police and other agencies, will have access to the tools they need. I beg to move.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the government amendment. Any move towards increasing tenancy neutrality in the Bill is to be welcomed. I will raise one issue with the Minister, which arises from the letter that he sent to us setting out the reasons for the changes that were being made. The paragraph in question states:
“However, as the IPNA can do everything a tenancy injunction can do, we are satisfied that there is no compelling case for retaining this bespoke provision for those living in social housing”.
Earlier in the letter, the Minister had said:
“The provisions in respect of the IPNA are tenancy neutral”—
I am not sure whether that is regarded as different from tenure-neutral—
“save for the provisions in clause 13”.
From that, one would assume that if Clause 13 is disappearing from the scene, then the provisions in respect of the IPNA are indeed neutral. With the comment in the letter that,
“the IPNA can do everything a tenancy injunction can do”,
that was why the Government felt that they could withdraw Clause 13. Of course, not only does Clause 13 cover what is said in Clause 12(1), that an injunction,
“may have the effect of excluding the respondent from the place where he or she normally lives”,
it also states:
“The court may include in the tenancy injunction a provision prohibiting the person against whom it is granted from entering or being in … any premises specified in the injunction (including the premises where the person normally lives)”,
and,
“any area specified in the injunction”.
In the light of the statement in the letter that the IPNA can do everything a tenancy injunction can do, are we to assume that that part of Clause 13(3) would or could apply to any tenure and not simply to those tenures previously covered by the tenancy injunction? As I understand it, the Government appear to have moved on that point and the provisions in respect of the IPNA are now neutral. Bearing in mind what Clause 13(3) said, which went beyond merely,
“excluding the respondent from the place where he or she normally lives”,
which covered,
“any premises specified in the injunction”,
and,
“any area specified in the injunction”,
is that something that is still to be reserved for social housing tenants or is it something that, if it was deemed necessary or desirable, could now be applied to anybody in any form of tenure?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, to clarify, as I said earlier in moving the amendment, an IPNA could impose the prohibitions that were specifically referred to in Clause 13 as well. For example, an IPNA could be used to deal with visitors to a property. As such, the provisions are covered in an IPNA. Therefore we have tabled the amendment in light of the comments made by the noble Lord in Committee.
Lord Rosser
That would be irrespective of tenure? It would not apply purely to social housing?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
As I stated earlier, the purpose behind the IPNA is that it would be tenure-neutral.
The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds
My Lords, Amendments 18, 26 and 29 set out to remove the presumption that a child will be named publicly when they are involved in youth court proceedings relating to the new anti-social behaviour orders. I am very grateful to the Children’s Society, the Standing Committee on Youth Justice and others for concentrating my thoughts on this issue.
The Bill as it is currently written suspends Section 49 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 for children subject to the new orders and breach proceedings. For 80 years, Section 49 has provided a presumption against revealing details of a child’s identity. This Bill means that children will be named publicly as a default unless the court makes an active choice not to name them. My amendments do not prevent the court from naming a child if it thinks it appropriate to do so. They simply mean that a child will not be named by default.
The issue of publicly naming children is an important one. It raises a number of concerns regarding rehabilitation and safeguarding and is contrary to the usual presumption of anonymity that is granted to children in criminal proceedings. The presumption to name children has significant implications for the safeguarding of children. Naming a child publicly could mean that they are subsequently targeted by individuals or gangs wishing to exploit their vulnerability. Identifying a child as having been involved in anti-social behaviour could indicate that the child may be tempted to engage in risk-taking behaviour or that they will be more susceptible to being groomed. Children with special educational needs are also more likely to be involved in ASB, making them particularly vulnerable to exploitation.
Naming, thereby shaming, children can hinder the successful rehabilitation of those who wish to make a fresh start. It can be counterproductive by prolonging the problems that children have in re-engaging positively with their community. It can also make it extremely difficult for professionals to obtain services instrumental in a child's rehabilitation. There is little evidence that identifying a child is effective as a deterrent.
In our debates yesterday we were concerned with the Government’s very positive response to the need for education, health and care plans for children in trouble. I believe that this element of this Bill works in the opposite direction. In the age of the internet and social media, details of a child's identity are indelible once they are revealed. Children should not have this stamp on them from such a young age because it can affect their future ability to get a job, obtain housing and contribute to society. Naming and shaming through ASBOs has criminalised, stigmatised and negatively labelled young people and has in some cases perpetuated problems rather than helping to resolve them.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights has expressed concern about the impact of reporting on a child’s right to privacy in its pre-legislative scrutiny report. Naming and shaming contravenes the anonymity usually granted to children in criminal proceedings and denies the right to privacy in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Local Government Association has also expressed concern, especially about a child who receives or breaches an IPNA but who has not actually committed a criminal offence.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I support the right reverend Prelate. I was grateful to the Minister for the chance to discuss this matter yesterday, and I understood from what he said that he expected the courts to use naming and shaming to a very limited extent. That is comforting to some degree, but I worry about this, because many young people who will be drawn into this procedure are the sort with whom I am familiar from my parliamentary work with young people in or on the edge of care. The familial experience—the father often absent from the home, often violence in the home, often alcohol or other substance misuse in the home—has left many of them feeling deeply worthless and very guilty about themselves. We all know, I think, that when a young person sees a parent desert them, they do not think, “This is a very irresponsible adult”; they think, “What have I done to drive this person away from me?”. The risk is that, by the state coming along and publicising their name in the newspaper as a bad boy, they will think, “Yes, look, even the local newspaper thinks that I am useless, worthless, a bad boy and there is no good in me”. That is one area of concern for me.
The other is that when these young people grow up in a family where there is little love or attention and they are not listened to, sometimes, if they cannot get any fame, at least notoriety—their ability to be notorious—is something that they can chase after. If they will not be listened to in their home or anywhere else or given attention in school, at least if they cause a lot of aggravation they can see their photograph in the local newspaper. There are real reasons to be concerned about this. I am very grateful to the right reverend Prelate for tabling the amendment and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, in Committee, I tabled an amendment on the clause which was an attempt to suggest a compromise before we had even discussed it, because I knew that the Government would be keen to stick to the general approach. That amendment would have meant that the clause applied only to 17 and 18 year-olds.
As the right reverend Prelate said, the existing provisions are not absolute. I have some questions for the Minister arising from them. Given that there is currently discretion to allow reporting that is in the public interest, and given the public policy underlying the Bill, would that not be a strong indicator to the court on how to view the public interest test? Would not reversing it, so that the individual is named unless the court decides otherwise—apart from the consequences for the individual; I entirely take the points that have been made—mean additional process for the courts?
I suspect that there would have to be a pre-trial application for anonymity. If I am right, how does one ensure anonymity before that or in the listing of the application? The right reverend Prelate made the point that that would overturn the culture—in fact, the practice—of the youth court. It would be much easier for it to be able to continue with its current practice.
The existing provisions contain a lot of detail about lifting restrictions. Conversely, if one has reversed the presumption, what is the trigger for restriction to apply? What would be pointed to in an application to restrict reporting? Another question is whether any stakeholders have argued for the provision that we see in Clause 17.
Finally, what consideration have the Government given to how communications have changed, particularly with Twitter, which spreads information almost faster than a heartbeat and certainly before restrictions could be applied? Ironically, the law brought into effect in 1933 seems more appropriate for the age of speedy communications, where you start with restrictions and then consider whether to lift them. That would work much better for communications 80 years on.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, I add just a word based on my experience of how these things are dealt with in the courts. The advantage of the present rule is that a uniform rule applies throughout the country and avoids the problem, which is commonplace in the courts, of different practices in different areas and different judges taking different views. The uniformity of the rule is one advantage.
The second point, which the noble Baroness just mentioned, is that it is essential, if a reporting restriction is to be effective, that it be asked for at the beginning. There is always a risk that somebody nips out of the court before the order is made and the damage is then done but the individual can say, “I wasn’t there when the order was made”. To be effective, it has to be made at the start.
The third point is representation. I do not want to go into the issues about legal aid, which are not a matter for this debate, but there would be concern that people who are not very experienced and not attuned to all the matters raised by the right reverend Prelate fail to take the point. My impression is that if the point is taken as eloquently as the right reverend Prelate made it, the court would be very slow not to make an order unless there were compelling reasons for refusing the application, but it requires an application to be made, because I suspect that a court will not take the initiative without that.
Those are advantages of the present rule which would be lost. Obviously there is a balance to be struck, but I would be interested to know to what extent study has been made of the effect of losing those advantages, if the Bill is to remain in its present form.
Lord Rosser
My Lords, I will be brief. The Minister has been asked a number of relevant questions and I am sure that noble Lords will be waiting to hear the responses. In particular, do the Government anticipate that their proposal, with provision for suspending Section 49 of the 1933 Act, is likely to lead to a significant increase in the number of children being named as a result of that suspension of Section 49? Or do they take the view that it will lead to very little increase at all because they think that courts will regularly make decisions—an active choice—not to name the child in question? The question has already been asked about the Government’s intentions, not in respect of numbers or an exact figure, but whether they are looking for a significant increase in the number of children named. Is that the purpose of this? Or is their view that even though they are making the change, it may not make a great deal of difference because the courts are more likely to look at this matter and make the active choice not to name the child in question?
The answer may be that it is already covered in the draft guidance. I have not looked at the guidance to see if it is. However, if it is not already in the guidance, is it the intention that the guidance which will be issued to professionals will say anything about making applications to courts for children not to be named where professionals are directly involved? If it is not in the guidance is it the intention that it should be put in that guidance, and what in fact would it say?
I will leave it at that; the concerns have been expressed about this. Obviously there are already circumstances where children can be named as far as legislation is concerned, and I do not want to pretend that that is not the case. Clearly the Government were expecting that numbers of IPNAs would be issued and, therefore, that that might have an effect on the numbers of children being named. Whether that would still be the case in light of the amendment that has now been carried will remain to be seen. Nevertheless IPNAs will still be around, and that may lead to an increase in the numbers of children being named. It would be helpful to know the Government’s stance. Is that what they are looking for—or do they not see it making a great deal of difference? Will they be giving advice to anybody? I know that they cannot give advice to the courts, but will they give advice to professionals who might be appearing in court in order to make sure that courts are reminded at the very least that they do have this power to make the decision that children should not be named?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, this again has been a good debate on an important issue. Though it is a small part, it is an important part of these provisions. I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds for presenting these amendments for our discussion.
As the House will know, the Government do indeed believe that there is a need for reporting restrictions in respect of under-18s in certain cases, where it is both necessary and proportionate to allow for effective enforcement of an injunction or criminal behaviour order. This will enable communities to play their part in ensuring that the injunction and criminal behaviour order are effective in tackling anti-social behaviour by alerting the police if the respondent or offender breaches their conditions. Publicising the injunction and the order in certain cases will provide reassurance and increase public confidence in agencies’ willingness and in their ability to take action against perpetrators of anti-social behaviour. Potential perpetrators will be deterred from committing anti-social behaviour due to reporting. So while I understand the sentiment behind these amendments, I believe that there is a strong case for maintaining the default position under Clauses 17, 22 and 29. This mirrors the current position for anti-social behaviour orders.
The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that response and I am at least partially reassured by what he has said, particularly in the promises to discuss with the judiciary and bring this debate to their attention, as well as emphasising the guidance to the professionals involved in such cases. I am grateful to those noble Lords who have spoken in the debate and I emphasise again the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, on just how damaged the children involved in these cases can be. They often feel deeply worthless.
Whether we are here as legislators or in the actual practice of the courts there is a need for us all to be aware, yes, of the needs of the community, which are very much at the fore of the discussion of IPNAs, but also of the needs of the child and the effect that will have on the community. If those needs of the child are not met then the damage to the community in the future can be much greater. However, I am at least partially reassured and so beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“(1A) Rules of court may provide for a youth court to give permission for an application for an injunction under section 1 against a person aged 18 or over to be made to the youth court if—
(a) an application to the youth court has been made, or is to be made, for an injunction under that section against a person aged under 18, and(b) the youth court thinks that it would be in the interests of justice for the applications to be heard together.”
Commonwealth Games 2014
(10 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure the success of the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the House for this opportunity to raise the important events which will take place in Glasgow this year on the occasion of the 20th Commonwealth Games. I look forward to hearing the response from the Government by the Minister after our short debate this evening. I welcome those who have chosen to speak here tonight, and in particular I welcome the maiden speech from my noble friend Lord Haughey, who I am sure will be a welcome addition not only to this debate tonight, as a Glasgow boy, but in the debates that we will have in this House for many years to come.
I recall vividly a breakfast meeting on 29 July 2002, after a few glorious days in Manchester supporting Team Scotland at the Commonwealth Games. It was in the immediate aftermath of Sir Chris Hoy’s first gold medal the night before at the velodrome, when Louise Martin from Commonwealth Games Scotland and I shook hands, having looked each other in the eye and felt, “Yes, we could do this too”. We felt that not just Manchester but Glasgow was capable of hosting the Commonwealth Games and, 12 years on, it will be an immense pleasure to see the Games come to Scotland. In those 12 years there have been many moments, both when in office and after leaving it. I recall the bid presentations in Melbourne during the Games there in March 2006, when the Nigerian bid for Abuja claimed that it was a little bit of Scotland in Africa and therefore we should stand aside for them. There was also the elation when, from Sri Lanka in late 2007, it was announced that Scotland and Glasgow had achieved this success.
In July this year we will see 70 teams with 4,500 sports men and women coming to Glasgow for 12 days of high-level sporting activity and competition across 13 venues and 17 sports. It will include a record five para sports where disabled competitors will take part in the main event at a higher level than ever before. That has been recognised as potentially the best ever representation in Commonwealth Games history for that important aspect of these multisport games.
The preparations are well under way. Today the Queen’s baton relay is in Cameroon. Ninety-two per cent of the tickets have been sold. The venues are not only all ready but are all in use by the public, which is perhaps unique for a multisport Games of this sort internationally. The venues are already being used in a way that will ensure the legacy for the future. The Clyde-siders, who are the Games volunteers, had 50,000 applications resulting in 15,000 successful volunteers being chosen. They are currently being notified and are to welcome the thousands and thousands of visitors to Glasgow and look after the competitors during these 12 days in July and August. There is a cultural programme which will include the first ever music biennial, with newly commissioned works that will ensure that the city is promoted not only across Scotland and the UK but worldwide as a centre for cultural excellence, in addition to sporting excellence.
This has been a tremendous all-party effort, supported initially when my Sports Minister, Patricia Ferguson MSP, was leading the bid in the early days through to the now Scottish Government’s Sports Minister, Shona Robison, who has seen through the implementation of the preparations. This is at all levels of Scottish government—the city council, which is clearly in the lead in all this, has played a key role—and in successive Administrations. Of course, there has been advice, assistance and support all along from London 2012.
Today, in relation to the engagement of the UK Government, I hope that the Minister will specifically address in his summing-up a few important issues where the co-operation of the UK Government is important for the efficiency and success of the Games. For example, on visas for athletes and their team supporters, is the Home Office ready to ensure that that demand can be met? In relation to security and protocol, will the appropriate co-operation be in place to ensure that the Games run smoothly? Will UKTI and other UK bodies support investment conferences in attempts to ensure that the Games can maximise business interest in Scotland? Crucially perhaps, after the last few weeks, will the UK weather forecasting authorities keep everybody very well informed?
We had three key objectives when we launched the bid a decade ago. One was to showcase Glasgow and Scotland to the world as a venue for international sporting events. The second was to ensure that there was a lasting legacy in the city and beyond, both economically and socially—and, crucially for Scotland’s and Glasgow’s health, on a sporting basis. The third was to provide a platform on which Scottish and other athletes could perform to the highest level. As I have said, the venues are all in place. They include some outstanding new venues that have already been used for international competitive events. Those venues and the events themselves have been recognised with Glasgow’s ranking in recent weeks as the ninth best venue in the world for international sporting events. We can safely say that the Commonwealth Games this year will not be the last international sporting event to be held in Glasgow. The city has done a tremendous job, efficiently making sure these venues are ready and that they are of the highest possible international standard.
There is an important economic legacy for the east end of Glasgow and the regeneration of that part of the city. There is an economic legacy in terms of apprenticeships and a graduate training programme as well. There will be an economic legacy in the promotion of Scotland as a destination for tourists and for business. There is also a crucial sporting legacy. Since the bid was secured, sporting participation in the city has risen by 40%, using these new venues and the fresh interest there has been. The potential for a sporting and health-related legacy is clearly there and I am sure the city and the Scottish Government will be focused on that in the months and years following the Games. There is an important role for UNICEF, which has been chosen as the major charity partner of the Games. It will be raising funds before and during the Games to spend on sport and realising the potential of young people, not just in Scotland but critically across every country of the Commonwealth, supporting projects that ensure that sport changes lives in the way that we know it can.
In relation to performance, these stadia are going to be fantastic venues to see some incredible performances. The new Emirates stadium includes not just a marvellous velodrome named after Sir Chris Hoy but a fantastic arena which will be used for other indoor sports as well. The aquatic centre at Tollcross is world-class and recently hosted a contest between the USA and Europe in swimming that was so competitive it went to a swim-off. That is the first time I have ever heard of a swim-off at an international swimming competition. It was so competitive and energetic that it resulted in such an exciting conclusion. The most recent venue to open is a new hockey centre, which I hope will generate an interest in hockey among another generation of young Scots, not just for the Games but far beyond.
My final point is that sport has the almost unique potential to unite people in all kinds of different circumstances and to give people the ambition and inspiration to realise their potential. It is really important that in Scotland and Glasgow in July and August we use these Games to their fullest potential to unite not just people there on the spot but a generation in having ambitions for a better future. From the very beginning these Games—the bid, the operation, the organisation, the preparation and now their actual execution—have been conducted on an all-party basis in Scotland at all levels of government. Therefore, it is critical at a time when Scotland faces a huge choice in September about its future that, for that two-week period in July and August, the two contesting points of view in Scotland for a yes or no vote in a referendum due to take place seven weeks later set aside their differences, call a truce, put an end to public campaigning and do not exploit the Games but instead put Glasgow and Scotland first, join together and make sure that these are the best Commonwealth Games ever.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, on securing this appropriately popular debate and on giving an insightful assessment of the preparation for the Games and the important role government can play in ensuring the success of the Games. He is right; the 20th Commonwealth Games in Glasgow will be a powerful and genuine celebration of world-class sport and culture. Their success will be in no small part the result of the work of three people who deserve recognition and praise for their dedication, professionalism and all-party approach, as he mentioned, to the preparation of the Games. Shona Robison has been a superb champion for the Games and for sport in Scotland. The indefatigable Louise Martin has brought a lifetime of experience and expertise to play in preparing for the Games, and Gordon Matheson, leader of Glasgow City Council, deserves full recognition for understanding how the Games can boost the interests of the city of Glasgow and how sport can be a catalyst for regeneration, enhanced reputation and enthusiasm.
My appeal to the Government in their support for the Games is threefold. First, please will the Government reflect the will of the athletes in the political fora surrounding the Commonwealth Games? Politics and sport are increasingly interdependent. The athletes want visas swiftly and a safe, secure and successful Games. They also look to Government to urge all members of the Commonwealth to meet and practise the aspiration set out in Commonwealth Games Federation Article 7, which reads:
“There shall be no discrimination against any country or person on any grounds whatsoever, including race, colour, gender, religion or politics”.
We are a member of the Commonwealth, where 40 of the 53 member nations—over 70%—have some laws or regulations on their statute books persecuting same-sex relationships. That is unacceptable.
Secondly, I hope the Government can confirm that they have by now learnt one of the more painful lessons from the post-London 2012 experience—namely, the need to invest far more than before into ensuring that we translate the inspiration of the Games into opportunities for participation and that we raise the bar to unprecedented new heights for the young people of tomorrow, particularly in all our schools. That means that work needs to be done now to ensure that local authorities are ready to do more in the provision of access to sports facilities, and that governing bodies are assisted by Government to work through their clubs not just to welcome new members but to have in place the trained coaches, volunteers and equipment necessary to capture the interest of every single individual who will be inspired to take up sport and physical recreation. The capacity and capability to respond with a sports and health legacy for all concerned should be audited now.
Finally, key to the success of this decade of international sporting events is the work of the volunteers. Volunteer Development Scotland and Volunteering in Sport 2011-2015 are excellent initiatives. I hope the Government will work to put in place additional policies to ensure that the 15,000 volunteers—the Clyde-siders—are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to capturing the enthusiasm of all volunteers to work in community sport after the Games are over. We need a raft of new policies backed by investment to increase participation at all levels, both in Scotland and throughout the United Kingdom. The Commonwealth Games gives us a chance to deliver on that agenda.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for bringing forward this debate. It is fitting that the Commonwealth Games are in this great cycle of sporting events that we have had. The run of events that we have experienced over the past few years, and are going to experience, started with the Manchester Commonwealth Games where we British proved to ourselves, much to our surprise, that we could do it. My mother’s home town is a very fitting place to make sure there is investment in the people and the structure behind a successful festival of sport, which is what the Games are, unlike a championship, no matter how glorious. Games are where you bring everything together. The most wonderful thing about sport is the fact that it brings people together on common ground where they have common interests and communication. No other subject can do that.
Games present a greater opportunity than even bigger sporting championships. Thus we must cash in on this to invest in our future. I agree with my noble friend Lord Moynihan about the fact that we have to invest in people at grassroots level. We are on depressingly familiar territory here because we usually agree on this. London 2012’s great legacy is the idea. We were never going to get it right first time. Glasgow gives us the opportunity to build on that—not just for Britain but internationally since the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games are the two great international movements—to learn about how to create enthusiasm and to take it into other sports. The Rugby League World Cup has worked on this and the Rugby Union World Cup will, I hope, go on and do more with it. But this is the great legacy that will come from the Games. I am glad that emphasis has been put on participation and involvement. I hope that we will build successfully on the information and practice that have gone before. That is the true legacy of this. Buildings are great but ideas can last for ever.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, I should like to declare an interest in that I sit on the Spirit of 2012 trust, I do some work with SSE which is a Games sponsor, and I am also an ambassador for UNICEF. I am very much looking forward to the Commonwealth Games this summer. The reality is that the vast majority of the work needed to deliver successful Games will already have been done. I have every confidence in the Games time being a great success.
Many experiences of 2012 will have been passed on to Glasgow, which has an experienced team. The House also benefits greatly from having the expertise of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, who did a superb job at LOCOG and has first-hand experience of Games delivery. This is my first opportunity formally to welcome him to your Lordships’ Chamber.
The Commonwealth Games are different. There is a reason why they are called the friendly Games. I competed for Wales at three of them and have many happy memories. I am delighted that the Commonwealth Games have led the way in terms of the inclusion of disabled athletes in such a positive way. While in the past there were wheelchair racing demonstration events at Olympics and major athletics events, such as world and European championships, the Commonwealth Games have embraced disability sport with full medal status events.
It is easy to forget that it has not always been that way. In the Commonwealth Games in Auckland in 1990, 1500 metres and 800 metres wheelchair races were included in the programme, but the teams were not allowed to stay with the mainstream teams or to have any kit. I remember that my fellow Welsh athlete Chris Hallam, who sadly passed away last year, and I had to share a single vest. Luckily, my event was first. In 1994, in Victoria, Canada, we were very nearly part of the team. There was a little bit more inclusion, and thanks to the largely negative comments of the Australian chef de mission, who suggested that disabled athletes should not be there, there was suddenly a turnaround in people’s opinions. That set the path forward for Manchester, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, also had a massive effect on the London Games.
While I do not wish to see an integrated Olympics and Paralympics, I think there is much greater possibility within individual sports at international level for the integration of disabled people. The Commonwealth Games prove very clearly that it can be done. In future, I would love to see integrated world championships and European championships. People go to watch the sport, not necessarily to watch disabled or non-disabled people.
Now that the excitement of 2012 is behind us and Glasgow is very nearly upon us, I urge the Government not to forget the importance of elite sport. We clearly see the decline of Australians in Olympic sport—but sadly not in cricket—since they thought that with the major games out of the way they no longer needed to support sport at this level. Nobody wants that to happen in the UK.
The legacy of these Games is not just about participation or stadia, although they are important. It is a massive opportunity for young athletes. For me, it bookended my career. It gave me a step up, and it gave me the way out at the end. We have a huge opportunity to look at how we use those athletes at a local level. With the size and scale of the home country teams, I am really looking forward to seeing what plans they have to keep the momentum of participation going as well as giving the governing bodies another chance to see what they can do for coaching and volunteering. Some really embraced 2012, and some sadly missed the boat completely. They have a second chance to do better. I am also looking forward to what can be done to improve accessible tourism and transport and it gives us another chance to look at PE in schools, which I do not believe we have quite right at the moment.
Finally, I wish the Glasgow Commonwealth Games much success. It will be a great event.
Lord Haughey (Lab)
My Lords, it is with a feeling of great honour and humility that I stand before the House to deliver my maiden speech. First, I would like to thank my noble friend Lord McConnell for securing this debate that will allow me to talk on a subject that is very dear to my heart. Before I broach the subject matter, I would like to say thank you to Black Rod and his staff who have been nothing but supportive when I have been lost in the building. I thank the doorkeepers who have been great and supportive and the catering staff who looked after my family famously when we were here on the day of my introduction. I would also like to say a thank you to my mentor, my noble friend Lord Browne, and a very special thank you to my sponsors, the noble Lord, Lord Martin, and my noble friend Lord McAvoy. I also express my appreciation for the extent and depth of welcome that I have received from noble Lords on all sides of the House.
For my part, I would like to talk about the legacy of the Commonwealth Games. As I drive through Glasgow, I see many infrastructure projects that are in full flow on both the stadia and the housing requirements, and I am heartened by the amount of construction jobs that have already been created and, more importantly, the ones that will be sustained going forward. When all the medals have been distributed and the Games have come to a conclusion, Glasgow will be left with world-class sporting infrastructure that I hope will help young budding athletes to achieve their dreams and goals. It is vitally important that we utilise these facilities to the maximum for many years to come. The way the athletes’ village, consisting of 700 houses, will be converted to affordable housing is a master stroke by Glasgow City Council. It is something the east end of Glasgow was crying out for. It will also play a major part in the overall regeneration of the area.
Securing the Games for Glasgow gave us a great opportunity to tackle youth unemployment. Two of the legacy initiatives that went a long way to achieving this are the Commonwealth graduate fund and the Commonwealth apprenticeship initiative. The graduate fund is designed to encourage employers to create new graduate-level jobs in and around Glasgow. It targets the recruitment of unemployed graduates by offering financial incentives to employers to take on a new employee. The fund is worth £l0 million and is providing funding opportunities for 1,000 graduate jobs in the city. The apprenticeship initiative was created by Glasgow City Council as a way to assist suitably qualified Glasgow school leavers into apprenticeships by offering financial incentives to businesses in return for new vacancies. The success of this initiative will not only benefit Glasgow school leavers but will help business growth in the city as well. Over 2,500 apprenticeships have already been created, which is remarkable. As a result of the success of this initiative, the leader of Glasgow City Council, Gordon Matheson, has committed to the continuation of this initiative to the end of the current administration in 2017, which is a great boost for some of Glasgow’s young people at a time when it is most needed.
As someone who employs 170 apprentices and is committed to helping to create opportunities for the young people of today, I applaud these efforts by the council in creating a lasting legacy from the Games. For the unemployed who are part of the 15,000 volunteers, I hope that the experience they gain through working at the Games will give them confidence and enable them to find employment thereafter.
I am sure that the great people of Glasgow will deliver a memorable occasion that will be well received throughout the world and one that we can be truly proud of. This will be equalled only by the legacy that will be enjoyed by thousands of Glaswegians for many decades thereafter.
As noble Lords have probably already heard, people from Glasgow tend to talk a bit faster, so all week I have practising making my speech last a bit longer. I got my six-minute speech off to a tee, and I had a wry smile when I arrived tonight and was told I had three minutes and should make it snappy. I shall finish as I started. I feel truly privileged and honoured to be part of this wonderful establishment. I hope that my experiences in business and life will help me add further value to this noble House.
Baroness Prashar (CB)
My Lords, it is huge privilege to follow the very thoughtful maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Haughey. He is a fine example of what apprenticeships can do. We can see that not only has he benefited from an apprenticeship, but he is benefitting others. I share his affection and passion for Scotland because I was a post-graduate student in Glasgow and did my placement in Gorbals. My experience of Gorbals reinforces for me how awe-inspiring the noble Lord’s achievements are. From very humble beginnings as a Gorbals boy, through an apprenticeship he has set up a global business that is now the largest employer in Scotland. He is truly a Gorbals boy made good, not just a Glasgow boy made good. His commitment to giving back to society is equally impressive. Through his City Charitable Trust he supports local and global initiatives, sports, particularly football, and entrepreneurs and he acts as a role model by visiting schools. The commitment of the noble Lord, Lord Haughey, to social justice and zero youth unemployment and his real-life experience and commitment to giving will be a great inspiration to this House and we all look forward to his further thoughtful contributions. I thank him for a wonderful maiden speech.
It is clear that a great deal of effort is being devoted to ensure the success of the Commonwealth Games, and they will be successful. Crucially, these Games also provide opportunities above and beyond the hosting of a major event. They offer the potential to inspire cultural engagement, creativity and learning. This is an opportunity to promote intercultural relations, global citizenship and the values of the Commonwealth as enshrined in the Commonwealth charter, and also to deepen connections between the people of the Commonwealth. Intercultural and interdisciplinary learning, and the international links they will foster, will be important in developing understanding and trust among the nations of the Commonwealth, which in the long run will help with the prosperity agenda. Glasgow has a rich cultural tradition, and the Commonwealth Games are an opportunity to add another chapter to the city's cultural story and further enrich its cultural and educational credentials through intercultural experience.
As deputy chairman of the British Council, I am delighted that the British Council, in association with others, will be using education and the arts to make such connections between Scotland, the wider UK and the Commonwealth, through projects such as Commonwealth Class, and a rich and diverse cultural programme, which will provide a platform for voices from across the Commonwealth to be heard through music, dance, visual arts and the written word.
It is important that such activities are seen not just as a sideshow but as an integral part of these friendly Games. They will lead to long-term connections between the citizens of the Commonwealth and help to promote the values of the Commonwealth for the common good. After all, the Commonwealth is the Commonwealth of the people, not just an intergovernmental organisation. Its strength is its people, and these Games are an opportunity to showcase that, particularly after the controversial CHOGM held in Sri Lanka. It will be helpful if the Minister can assure the House that these educational and cultural activities will be both highlighted and supported in the long run.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, the Commonwealth Games are unique, with a personality of their own, and will be truly sensational in Glasgow this summer. They are not the Olympic Games or the Paralympic Games, but they have the potential to ignite that same spirit that we all felt so keenly in the summer of 2012. I know this from my own experience. When my swimming career was coming to an end, I realised that I had the opportunity to do my final swim at the Manchester 2002 Commonwealth Games trials—finishing not so much on home soil as in Mancunian waters.
I am delighted that Glasgow is following the tradition of holding events for disabled athletes; indeed, there will be the most events ever for disabled athletes at a Commonwealth Games. Post-Glasgow, we will all need to look at how we can develop this element further to make it even more meaningful and impactful. I am also interested in the whole idea of soft power, and the impact that the Games can have in that respect. Will the Minister comment on what is happening, particularly with his colleagues in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to ensure that we have the largest number of high-level Ministers and Heads of State at the opening ceremony and throughout the Games this summer?
Glasgow will get it right if it puts athletes at the centre of the Games, if it has sport at its heart, and if it builds an extraordinary, exceptional experience for athletes, spectators, the Commonwealth family and the media. Thousands of people are already working to this end, and they are in the final straight of their preparation. Hats off to Louise Martin, who has already been mentioned. Hats off, too, to Mike Hooper and his team at the Commonwealth Games Federation, whose expert eyes have been all over this project from the outset.
We should also look further than Glasgow, because it is not beyond the realms of possibility that we could think about another home nation bid for a future Commonwealth Games in the not-too-distant future—perhaps in Wales, perhaps in London, but certainly another event that could extend further that decade of fantastic sport throughout the UK. Glasgow 2014 has the potential to be sensational, to light up this summer with the golden hue of sporting success and to leave a sporting, social and economic legacy. It has such potential for Glasgow and for Scotland. It will be great for Britain and great for the Commonwealth.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, on securing this debate. Before I go further, I also congratulate a fellow new boy in your Lordships’ House, the noble Lord, Lord Haughey, on his maiden speech—a snappy but sincere speech about the benefit for young people in his native city. When the eyes of the world are on Glasgow and Scotland, they will see the friendly Games in the friendly city, which will afford the athletes the best platform to strive their hardest in their given sport.
In what both the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, said, we saw politics and sport mixing. However, as the wise counsel of the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, indicated when he talked about the caution that we should exercise, politicking and sport do not mix. The noble Lord’s warning about the constitutional and political debates that will be taking place in Scotland at the same time as the Commonwealth Games should be heeded.
For completely understandable reasons, major events such as the Commonwealth Games are hosted by cities. However, in view of the level of funding that goes into them, I hope that your Lordships will allow me to make one comment about the areas and sports that are not from the cities. That includes a sport—rugby sevens—that originated in the constituency that I formerly represented in the Scottish Parliament. Rugby sevens is one example of how the Commonwealth Games can show, in a microcosm, the benefits that sport can bring. It will now be featuring in its fifth Games, and I hope that friends from New Zealand will not be too disappointed when I say that I hope that they will not win the gold medal, because they have won it for every Games that they have participated in so far. The sport originated in 1883 in the Greenyards in Melrose; it will now be in Glasgow, and then an Olympic sport for the first time in Rio in 2016. With the World Cup sevens coming soon in 2018, we can see the best example of an amateur sport, with a community basis and a strong heart, also having a global profile.
As the purpose of this debate is to ask the UK Government to do what they can, I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, about using all the might and all the persuasive powers of the United Kingdom Government to promote this sport as one element of the Commonwealth family—the family of sports in the widest sense.
Last week I was in Taiwan, and I flew from Hong Kong, where the Hong Kong sevens is now possibly the biggest sport in the area. It is sponsored by Cathay Pacific. Then, coming back to London, when you are on the Heathrow Express you see that that sponsors the English rugby sevens team. This is a local sport with a massive heart, and with, we hope, a global following to come. It is one of the examples of the sort of sport for which Glasgow will afford one of the best windows that we can secure.
Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-Afl)
May I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for securing this timely debate? I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Haughey, on his excellent maiden speech. He is a man of great achievements, who will clearly add much value to this House.
As noble Lords have said, there is no doubt that the Commonwealth Games is a fantastic sporting event, but it is much more than that; it is about the wider Commonwealth family. It was sport that first brought my father to Britain in the late 1940s after serving in the British Army in the Second World War. As a Jamaican, he was a member of the Commonwealth, and in coming to England he did not see himself as travelling to foreign parts. As far he was concerned, he was coming to another part of the extended Commonwealth family. He was coming home, in effect. Even the fact that it snowed on his first day as a professional cricketer for Warwickshire did not diminish his feeling of belonging to that family. But he did remark that he thought he had signed for Warwickshire as a professional off-spin bowler, not as a professional snowball thrower.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, made a point about cricket, and I note that cricket has been included in the Commonwealth Games only once, in 1998 in Malaysia. I was going to suggest that one way of securing the success of the Glasgow Commonwealth Games would be to bring in cricket, even at this late stage. However, given the current state of the England cricket team, perhaps we need another four years to reflect on that idea.
The Glasgow Games will be another opportunity to promote para-sporting events. One of the most exciting developments in sport over the past few years has been the recognition of Paralympic athletes as stars in their own right. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, have played a huge role in that success.
The Glasgow Commonwealth Games chief executive has wisely ensured dialogue with LOCOG 2012, so that lessons learned from the London Olympics can benefit the Glasgow Games. In particular, there is an awareness that the ticketing system must be efficient and the cost of tickets affordable for most people. As he has said:
“It’s your Games. Filling the stadia has been one of our key principles”.
As the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, said, the fact that 50,000 people from all over the United Kingdom have applied for 15,000 volunteer roles shows the level of interest.
This event is a great one for sport, but it is bigger than that; it is about the wider Commonwealth family. It is a window to the benefits of that family—and that is a gold medal message.
Baroness Seccombe (Con)
My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, on giving us this joyous subject to debate. On a really lovely summer day in 2012, I was fortunate to have a ticket for the stadium for both the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games. I was with my family, all of us wearing the obligatory GB T-shirt and equipped with the union flag, and so on. As we boarded the Tube, it was such fun to see other families similarly attired and excited in anticipation of what was to come. After all, we knew it was unlikely that any of us would ever see such a glorious event in our lifetime again.
The welcome we received from the Games-makers was exceptional and certainly made a huge contribution to the excellent organisation. They also created a great atmosphere of fun and enjoyment. Our seats for the Olympics were in row 57, which was quite a climb, particularly when once I went up the wrong staircase. In contrast, at the Paralympic Games, row 20 was a fantastic change, from which we watched the wonderful achievements of the Paralympians. Both days made me very proud to be British, and I am sure that the support given to our athletes lifted their magnificent performance. They gave us a superb and humbling experience, and one I shall never forget.
The Government’s role was imperative throughout, and the organisation and attention to detail was of the highest standard. I am sure that lessons were learnt which must be of assistance to the Scottish organising committee as it makes the final push to fine-tune its plans and to enthuse the public. I am sure that it will be the greatest success, so I can only encourage everyone to enjoy this most important sporting association.
This year, I am off on what I hope will be an equally balmy summer’s day to the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. I am geared up to be suitably attired and ready to roar our home teams on as they battle to win. Whatever the results, I know that we will have had another very special day, when probably some will indulge in a wee dram.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord McConnell for securing this debate and, in particular, for not being in any sense modest about the way in which the Games came about, and the distinguished role that he played in that. It would not have happened without his foresight and his thinking about it, and that it has happened has been because, as with our experience of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, these things work only if they are done on an all-party basis. My noble friend exemplifies how that can happen.
I played a very minor part in the Paralympic Games, as I was involved in distributing the flowers as part of the medal ceremonies. A flower girl I was, and I enjoyed it very much; it was one of the highlights of my summer in 2012. Through that, I met Shona Robison, and was impressed, as has been said already in this debate, by the care and concern expressed and her acknowledgement of the need to work together across parties towards this event. I am sure that it will be successful.
I thank all speakers for the wide-ranging contributions, which will help us to focus on some of the important issues. In particular, my noble friend Lord Haughey made a very good point in his snappy maiden speech that a lot of these things are very local. The great value that comes from these huge projects is that they can and do invigorate across all sectors of the host city and town, with the apprenticeships and the work involved on graduate schemes, and will have a lasting legacy around that.
The Question asked the Minister to respond as to what steps Her Majesty's Government were taking to ensure the success of the Games. However, as has been pointed out, there are very limited direct steps that the Government can take, since this is not a reserved issue. Indeed, if noble Lords read the reports from the organising committee, the Games preparations are going extremely well, so I do not think that there will be much to say on that. But the wider context that has been raised in this debate by many speakers is that we need to think again about how we do big projects in the UK and the values that come from that. The investment is not just in the Games itself but in the enthusiasm that it generates, and the focus on the sport —and how good it is that my sport, squash, is being played in Glasgow, although it does not yet appear in the Olympic Games. All that makes for a much better country, with a much better engagement of people in the activities that make us the nation that we are.
When he comes to respond, I hope that the Minister might pick up on some of the legacy issues that have been touched on. I was very struck by what the organising committee said about this when they did a survey which asked people what they wanted the legacy to be. They found that in Scotland—and I would not think it would be different in the UK as a whole—people wanted a successful Games, of course, but they also wanted their children to be more sporty, which is shorthand for them doing more exercise and being involved in sport. They also wanted to ensure that funding for sport in primary schools was continued and that more girls could be enthused to enjoy sport. As we have heard today, that might also be applied to those with disabilities. Although one could expect the Government to say that this is not their responsibility, a lesson which was picked up in the excellent report from one of our own committees, Keeping the Flame Alive: The Olympic and Paralympic Legacy, is that we need to invest more in these activities. I hope the Government will pick this point up and respond to it.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, on securing this debate. I believe that he can take great pride in what he and others embarked upon and are now seeing fulfilled. It has been an excellent debate, and the maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Haughey, was, rightly, warmly welcomed across the House. With all his roots in Glasgow, the noble Lord could not have a more appropriate debate to launch what I am sure will be a long and fulfilling career in your Lordships’ House. We all very much welcome the many contributions he is going to make.
It is a privilege and opportunity that the 2014 Commonwealth Games are taking place in Glasgow, in Scotland, in the United Kingdom. The Games are expected to draw around 6,500 athletes and officials, competing in 17 sports in 40 venues—I have increased the number from the one suggested by the noble Lord, Lord McConnell—with a global audience of around 1.5 billion people. We have the prospect of watching countless great athletes—the likes of Usain Bolt, Laura Trott, David Weir and Jessica Ennis-Hill. My noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed highlighted the rugby sevens, and I do not think that a sport could not have a more robust champion. The Commonwealth Games are the only major games where the sports programme for elite athletes with a disability is fully integrated with that for non-disabled athletes. As the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, said, this is something that we want to build on in the legacy of Glasgow. I also agree with the points made by my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond on this matter.
As has been said, preparations for the Games, led by the organising committee, are proceeding extremely well, with venues such as the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome already open and hosting major events. The Government are committed to strengthening our engagement with, and role within, the Commonwealth. A strong Commonwealth is important to the national interests of all its members and can help promote UK objectives of democratic values, good governance and prosperity. The noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, spoke powerfully about the importance of the Commonwealth for cultural engagement, international relations and the effect on its people. My noble friend Lord Moynihan also mentioned the equally important values of democracy and non-discrimination.
With over 2 billion people, the Commonwealth makes up nearly a third of the world’s population, including some of the world’s fastest growing economies. It provides a platform for trade, investment, development and prosperity. Glasgow 2014 provides an exceptional opportunity to build on the experience and legacy of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and to promote Glasgow and Scotland worldwide. The Prime Minister has made it clear that the UK Government will do everything they can to ensure the 2014 Commonwealth Games are a success. I know of his visit to the arena, for instance, and his personal commitment.
Working closely with the Scottish Government, Glasgow City Council and the organising committee, the UK Government have a number of reserved responsibilities, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, including managing the border and national security, facilitating entry to the UK of athletes, coaches and support staff from the Commonwealth nations and accrediting them to use the Games venues and managing the more formal international relations with visiting Heads of State and Heads of Government. The contribution of the UK Government is managed through the Cabinet committee system in the normal manner with regular meetings of officials and Ministers. There have been meetings in the past two days while I have been hearing more about these matters. There is no doubt at all that Ministers are fully seized of the importance of their responsibilities to fulfil the reserved matters and to co-operate with those in Scotland.
As has been said, legacy was a key element of the plans for the 2012 Games and the Glasgow Games, from the start of work on the bids. It is striking that the president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, said that London,
“raised the bar on how to deliver a lasting legacy”,
and created,
“a legacy blueprint for future Games hosts”.
I am in no doubt that Glasgow will be very much in the forefront of legacy.
Noble Lords in their places tonight have played a crucial part in the delivery of the 2012 Games and their legacy. I mention in particular my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond, a distinguished multi-gold medal-winning Paralympian who played such a part in delivering the 2012 Games. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, an exalted Paralympian, is now a trustee of the Spirit of 2012 Trust—an independent trust established to keep the 2012 Games’ legacy flame alive. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Moynihan, an Olympic medallist, chaired the British Olympic Association with such distinction. I mention this because we wish that all the experiences and knowledge from those Games are shared with all those concerned in organising such an important Games later this year.
The noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Haughey, mentioned regeneration, apprenticeships, infrastructure and employment. All these matters will make a huge difference to east Glasgow and well beyond. They are part of this economic legacy. UK Trade and Investment has announced that more than £11 billion in trade and investment has been generated from the 2012 Games. The Glasgow Commonwealth Games offer another platform to promote the UK as a partner for business and an investment destination. Her Majesty’s Government, in conjunction with the Scottish Government, will host an inward investment and business conference during the Commonwealth Games. I express particular gratitude to Glasgow City Council for making the city chambers available during the Games.
The economic benefits from the London Olympics and Paralympics have been extremely well spread. In fact, it is estimated that those Games will have created the equivalent of between 51,000 and 62,000 jobs each year between 2004 and 2020. These figures are hugely important, and I am sure that they will be reflected in Glasgow. As regards tourism, VisitBritain is now actively engaged in using the 2014 Games to promote Scotland across the world. The GREAT campaign is also seeking to promote the Commonwealth Games.
The Games makers and other Games-related volunteers were one of the extraordinary aspects of the 2012 Games. My noble friend Lady Seccombe highlighted this. The organisers of the Glasgow Games have been recruiting 15,000 volunteers, known as Clyde-siders. These opportunities were heavily oversubscribed, a testament to the esteem in which the Games makers are, and I am sure the Clyde-siders will be, held. I agree with my noble friend Lord Moynihan about the importance of ensuring that volunteering and fostering the volunteering spirit are enshrined in policy and the way in which we conduct business.
I also want to raise the cultural aspect of the Commonwealth Games. The two strands are a Scotland-wide programme called Culture 2014, and a Games-time celebration running alongside the sporting action called Festival 2014. They will make a very powerful contribution indeed.
A number of points were raised about a truce, including by the noble Lord, Lord McConnell. I have to say that this is very much a matter for the two sides in that debate to decide upon, but my hunch is that most people are going to be rather more interested in the sport and the athletes than in political exchanges.
A number of noble Lords mentioned the Queen’s baton relay. As has been said, it is in Cameroon tonight. British high commissions across the Commonwealth have played an active part in supporting the relay and raising its profile.
In July and August 2014, the Commonwealth family —as my noble friend Lord Taylor of Warwick mentioned; that is absolutely the right reference for this institution—will come together for a festival of sport. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, rightly used the words, “coming together”. It will be a positive celebration of peace and unity. This precedes the first official event to mark this year’s centenary of the start of the First World War, which will take place in Glasgow the day after the end of the Commonwealth Games. It, too, will be a time for the whole nation and our Commonwealth partners to come together and pay tribute to the brave men and women of the Commonwealth who sacrificed so much.
A number of points have been raised, about which I had better write to noble Lords. When future bids are made is a matter for the Commonwealth Games associations of the nations concerned. However, it would be fair to say that if any of the nations were minded to bid, I am sure that it would be very much welcome to the Government. The Games will be in Australia in 2018. There have been five occasions when that country has generously hosted the Games, so let us see.
I conclude by expressing my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, and to your Lordships who have spoken in this debate. There is much that I would wish to reflect on regarding the importance of the sporting legacy and, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said, of ensuring that the next generation of people are playing more sport. I understand that 1.5 million more people are engaged in sports since 2012. We need to build on that, and I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Grey- Thompson, will keep us up to the mark on these matters.
I wish the organisers of the Glasgow Games—the friendly Games, as has been said—and the people of Glasgow all the very best for a successful Games. I know that the UK Government will do all that they can within their reserved responsibilities to support the Games and to ensure that they are a great success for Scotland, for the United Kingdom and for the Commonwealth.
Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill
(10 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
“Guidance
(1) The Secretary of State may issue guidance to persons entitled to apply for injunctions under section 1 (see section 4) about the exercise of their functions under this Part.
(2) The Secretary of State may revise any guidance issued under this section.
(3) The Secretary of State must arrange for any guidance issued or revised under this section to be published.”
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, ahead of Report in the House of Commons, the Government published draft guidance for front-line professionals on the new anti-social behaviour powers. With the exception of those sections dealing with the review of criminal behaviour orders and the community remedy, this was to be non-statutory guidance.
In addition to the draft guidance produced by the Home Office, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs published a draft practitioner’s manual for tackling irresponsible dog ownership. Of course, the content of the draft guidance has been the subject of discussion during our Committee deliberations. On a number of points, noble Lords expressed concern that our expectations of how the power should be used would be in guidance with no statutory basis.
While I believe that the new powers have sufficient safeguards to ensure appropriate and proportionate use, I see merit in making the guidance statutory for all the new anti-social behaviour powers. Our intention is not to be prescriptive; it is essential that professionals and the courts have the flexibility to consider the facts of each case and choose the most appropriate course of action. However, statutory guidance will help them use the new powers more effectively. The amendments in this group will achieve that result and I trust noble Lords will support them. I beg to move.
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, I wish to speak on the statutory guidance sections. I have one little amendment, Amendment 57, in this group, and it is fairly clear what it means.
This is the first time that I have spoken at this stage of the Bill, apart from one intervention, so I should declare my interests again in relation to this group and some others that we will come to. They are my membership of a district council in Lancashire as a councillor, my membership of the British Mountaineering Council, of which I am a patron, and my vice-presidency of the Open Spaces Society, and they relate to things that will come up later.
I thank the Ministers—particularly the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, who is not yet in his place—for the way in which they have approached this Bill, for the way in which they have been open to discussion and to holding meetings with the Bill team, and for the large amount of material that they have sent out in letters and so on. Their readiness to look at a lot of the questions raised at Second Reading and in Committee, and to come forward with quite a lot of amendments today—most of the amendments that we are discussing at the moment are government amendments—shows that they have been willing to listen. I have absolutely no doubt that the parts of the Bill in which I am interested—those on anti-social behaviour—are a lot better for that process, so I will put on record my personal thanks to them.
These amendments are all about guidance. As the Minister said, they mean that the guidance that we were told would be issued—we have already seen the draft guidance—and that is now out for consultation with various bodies will become statutory. This is very welcome. A caveat to that is that I would much have preferred the guidance to be statutory instruments and regulations, as those would have had the benefit of having to come before the House of Commons and your Lordships’ House. Nevertheless, it is better that the guidance should be statutory rather than it being left open as to whether or not people will bother to produce guidance. The fact that it is statutory guidance means that there will have to be proper consultation on it, that it will have to be published and everybody will know that, and that the Ministers issuing the guidance will have some accountability to the Houses of Parliament if we want to raise questions as a result of what is in it. That is welcome and it is being welcomed by a number of organisations with which I am in touch.
The guidance referred to in this group of amendments covers a number of different parts of the Bill, including IPNAs—I am interested that we are still calling them IPNAs following the amendment that was agreed this afternoon; I was trying to work out whether they should now be called IPHADs but at the moment they are called IPNAs—criminal behaviour orders, the powers of police community support officers, community protection notices, public space protection orders and the question of the closure of premises, and there may be others. The point that I would have made if I had been able to get in during the debate this afternoon is that the Bill is not really about everything that was discussed this afternoon.
Most of the debate was about free speech, freedom of assembly and the right of people to protest, as by-products of Clause 1. In practice, this Bill is about anti-social behaviour—or at least the majority of it that refers to anti-social behaviour is—and about whether it is successful in tackling anti-social behaviour more effectively than the existing regime based on ASBOs. I am optimistic that it will be more successful, but the guidance that we are discussing is going to be crucial to how it works on the ground. At the moment if you have to make an ASBO, you have failed.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
As has been said, the Home Office has already published draft guidance for front-line professionals. The purpose of these amendments is to refer to it in the Bill, with the conferring of powers on the Secretary of State to issue it. In one of the letters sent to us, the Minister also said that:
“We also undertook in response to yet other amendments to revisit the terms of the draft guidance for frontline professionals”.
That letter set out a list of the areas where they would review the draft guidance.
Is the outcome of that review known or is it still taking place? If it is still taking place, is the intention that we will see the outcome of the review of the draft guidance and know what it is before we get to Third Reading? We have at least had the advantage in the discussions we have had so far of knowing what was in the already published draft guidance and, if it is being looked at again, we ought to have sight of any revisions being made to it before we conclude our discussions on the Bill. That would be extremely helpful. Is it now the Government’s intention to review the draft guidance in the light of the carrying of the amendment earlier today, which must presumably have some impact on the draft guidance that has been issued?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Greaves for his amendment and his comments. I have scribbled down here that I would convey his thanks to my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach. I have so conveyed them and he has obviously heard them, so there we are.
Turning to Amendment 57, I can assure my noble friend that any guidance produced under the new clause proposed in Amendment 56 will automatically apply to any person or body designated under the new clause proposed in Amendment 53. We will come on to that amendment later in our proceedings but suffice it to say that, by virtue of subsection (2) of the proposed new clause, any designated person or body would be treated as a local authority for the purposes of Chapter 2 of Part 4 as a whole. As such, the guidance produced for local authorities under the terms of Amendment 56 will be applicable to persons or bodies designated in accordance with the provisions in Amendment 53. I hope that reassures my noble friend in relation to his amendment.
On the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, and taking the second question first on revisions to guidelines in the light of the vote, obviously the vote has happened and we shall look at the outcome. The guidelines will be finalised once the Bill has reached its final stages in Parliament.
As to where we are on the guidance, we are currently working with councils, the police and others. Over the coming months we will discuss the effects of the guidance but any results and further alterations will, unfortunately, not be available before Third Reading. However, the final draft of the guidance will reflect the terms of the Bill as enacted.
With those reassurances to my noble friend, I hope that he will be minded not to move his amendment.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, Amendment 22 is in similar terms to the one tabled in Committee by my noble friend Lady Hamwee and proposed by the Joint Committee on Human Rights in its report on the Bill. The amendment will specify in the Bill that when considering whether to make a criminal behaviour order, the court must be satisfied to the criminal standard of proof that the offender has engaged in behaviour that causes or was likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to any person.
The government position was that, as the case law is clear on this point, there was no need to provide for the criminal standard in the legislation. This approach is in line with that taken in other legislation providing for other types of civil preventive orders. However, on reflection, we are satisfied that there are sufficient grounds here for taking a different approach. Part 1 expressly provided that an IPNA was subject to the civil standard of proof so, unless express provision was made in Part 2, we accept that there could be some doubt that the criminal standard would apply in proceedings in respect of the criminal behaviour order. This amendment therefore removes any such doubt. I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Government for having reflected and I thank them for the amendment.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves
My Lords, this amendment is just trying to help the Government. They have a bit here that is wrong. I raised it in Committee and I thought it would be sorted out. I apologise that I did not notice that it had not been until it was too late to get it on the Marshalled List. Never mind: it has appeared.
In all these different sections and all the alphabet soup of IPNAs, PSPOs and the rest, there is a definition of what the local authority is in relation to that particular area. In the case of IPNAs it is all the principal local authorities. In most of them it is the lowest-tier principal local authority. For example, in relation to public space protection orders it reads:
“‘local authority’ means—in relation to England, a district council, a county council for an area for which there is no district council, a London borough council, the Common Council of the City of London or the Council of the Isles of Scilly”.
The definition here in relation to criminal behaviour orders is outdated. The definition in Clause 28(4) has, I think, been picked up from previous legislation which must have been enacted before there were any unitary authorities apart from the Isle of Wight, and certainly before there were any unitary counties. It simply reads:
“‘local government area’ means—in relation to England, a district or London borough, the City of London, the Isle of Wight and the Isles of Scilly”.
This means that those areas where there is a unitary county, not a unitary district, are not included and so they are simply missed out of the list. These include Northumberland, Durham and Cornwall, for example, and, I think, one or two more.
My amendment will simply delete “the Isle of Wight”, which is a unitary county, and insert the words,
“a county in which there are no districts”.
That is equivalent to the wording elsewhere. As I say, I am just trying to help the Government by making the legislation cover the whole of England and to get it right. I beg to move.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, I am for ever grateful to my noble friend Lord Greaves for continuing to keep us on our toes with his scrutiny of the various definitions of local government area as used in the Bill. This amendment relates to Clause 28 which, as my noble friend said, requires a chief officer, in carrying out a review of a criminal behaviour order made against a person under 18, to act in co-operation with the council for the local government area where the offender lives.
This is an area of statute law where there is more than one way of defining a local government area. I have to advise noble Lords that the definition in Clause 28 is correct, but I accept that the drafting could always adopt a different approach. In order to preserve the overall structure laid down by the Local Government Act 1972, the area of a unitary council is usually designated both a county area and a district area, even though it has only a district or a county council. Therefore, in an area where there is a unitary county council, that council will be the council for the district in which the offender resides. In short, the provision works as drafted.
Just as a clarification on the issue of the Isle of Wight, my understanding is that it is a case apart in that it still has districts, albeit no district councils. The express reference to the Isle of Wight therefore avoids any ambiguity in this respect. In light of this explanation, I hope that my noble friend is minded to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Greaves
I refer the Minister to page 31 of the Bill and the meaning of “local authority” under community protection notices, for example, where the list is different. That specifically refers to,
“in relation to England, a district council, a county council for an area for which there is no district council, a London borough council, the Common Council of the City of London or the Council of the Isles of Scilly”.
It does not refer to the Isle of Wight specifically and separately but refers to,
“a county council for an area for which there is no district council”.
In Clause 67, on page 40, the definition is identical to that for community protection notices.
It may be that, as the Minister said, Northumberland, Durham and Cornwall are districts as well as counties, but that would be news to them since they think that all their districts were abolished a few years ago and that, in common parlance, they are unitary counties. In normal lists of local authorities in England, you refer either to unitary authorities if that is what you mean—you could do that—or to unitary districts and unitary councils. Clearly, unitary districts such as those in Berkshire are districts and so come under the general thing of districts.
Even if the Minister’s rather obscure explanation is right, why is the same terminology not used in different parts of the Bill? Different terminology is used for IPNAs, community protection notices and public space protection orders. It is different because it has simply been picked up, in the case of Part 2 of the Bill on criminal behaviour orders, from previous legislation. All I ask is that the Minister goes away and looks at this again. Even if what he says is right, surely the terminology in the different parts of the Bill should be the same. Could the Minister respond to that?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, again, if I follow my noble friend’s point, it partly proves my own that different drafting approaches to this issue can achieve the same end. I am assured that the Bill is not defective as drafted so I urge my noble friend to accept the approach we have taken, but I listened to his comments again. I assure him that I will sit down with my noble friend Lord Taylor and the officials once more to get the required assurance that the drafting is correct. I will write to my noble friend Lord Greaves in that regard.
Lord Greaves
I am grateful for that. I hope the Minister will write to me in good time: I will put the same amendment down at Third Reading if I do not get satisfaction. If it is true that the Isle of Wight is a case on its own and has to be mentioned separately, why is it not mentioned separately in all the other cases of IPNAs, PSPOs, community protection notices and so on? The Minister seems to have it both ways. Again, he has not answered my basic question as to why—so that people can understand it—the same terminology is not used in different parts of the same Bill. The answer will be that different officials wrote different parts of the Bill but that is no reason for not standardising it when you have the opportunity. Having said that, when a Minister makes an offer, I believe it is within the traditions and courtesy of the House to accept it. I will do so and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“Guidance
(1) The Secretary of State may issue guidance to—
(a) chief officers of police, and(b) the councils mentioned in section 28(2),about the exercise of their functions under this Part. (2) The Secretary of State may revise any guidance issued under this section.
(3) The Secretary of State must arrange for any guidance issued or revised under this section to be published.”
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“( ) In deciding whether to give such an authorisation an officer must have particular regard to the rights of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly set out in articles 10 and 11 of the Convention.
“Convention” has the meaning given by section 21(1) of the Human Rights Act 1998.”
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, there are two government amendments in this group. It may assist the House if I set out the case for the reform of the existing powers available to the police and, in doing so, also address Amendment 32, which has been tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith.
In Committee, the Opposition questioned whether the new dispersal power is needed—indeed, the noble Baroness mentioned that earlier in the debate—and whether there is any problem with the existing powers. It is true that both of the existing dispersal powers have been used successfully to deal with anti-social behaviour and alcohol-related disorder. However, they also have limitations. Section 30 of the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 is used to deal with persistent anti-social behaviour in an area and requires the agreement of the local authority in designating a dispersal zone. That approach is not as swift and responsive as it could be. This Bill takes a different approach. Where there is persistent anti-social behaviour in an area, it is the council that is able to put in place the measures to promote long-term, sustainable change in an area. It uses not a dispersal power but the new public spaces protection order.
Section 27 of the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 is a police-only power, so can be used more quickly; but it can be used only in relation to alcohol-related disorder, and that is too limited. In reforming the anti-social behaviour legislation, we have sought to streamline the powers and make them more flexible. That is the philosophy behind all the anti-social behaviour powers in this Bill. The new dispersal power will allow police to respond quickly so that victims do not have to suffer the anti-social behaviour while a dispersal zone is put in place. I believe that agencies should not have to label an area an ASB hotspot before the police are able to act. These labels are a stigma on communities and can hinder the hard work of local agencies to improve the quality of life in those areas. I agree that the existing dispersal powers are not “broke”—to use a well known expression—but that does not mean that we should not take this opportunity to improve them. Combining the best elements of the existing powers makes the new power a more effective tool to protect victims of anti-social behaviour.
In its written evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee, ACPO stated that the new dispersal power,
“will strengthen police powers to remove people from areas for poor public place behaviour in general and are not overly focussed on alcohol related disorder as at present”.
It said that the two existing powers,
“have proved to be very effective tools and combining these orders will simplify their administration and reduce costs”.
This is echoed by a number of individual police forces and the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, which also welcome the new dispersal power. The Criminal Justice Alliance stated that the new power,
“could alleviate antisocial behaviour from particular areas quickly with far less administrative bureaucracy than previously”.
All these organisations caveat their statements with the note of caution that it will be important that the new power is used proportionately and sensitively, and we agree. As I have explained, the new power is designed to allow the police to act quickly to prevent anti-social behaviour from escalating. This does not mean that we expect the police to act in isolation from other agencies; indeed, we acknowledge that there will be many situations where it is appropriate to involve the local authority in the response to anti-social behaviour.
However, to require the police to consult the local authority routinely before the dispersal power is used would severely constrain its use. As for providing democratic oversight of the police, which some have suggested is the reason for local authority involvement, that is not the role of the local authority. As with all police activity, police and crime commissioners will provide the democratic accountability for the use of dispersal powers.
I believe that it is right to reform the dispersal powers. That said, we have listened to the concerns expressed in Committee that the new dispersal powers could be used to restrict peaceful protests and freedom of assembly. That brings me to government Amendments 31 and 33, which I hope will be agreed by the House. I remain satisfied that the test for the exercise of those powers precludes them from being used in such a way. However, given the strength of feeling on the matter, we have tabled the amendments. Amendment 31 makes it clear that, before authorising the use of the dispersal powers, the authorising officer must have due regard to the rights to freedom of assembly and expression as enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights. Similarly, Amendment 33 makes clear an officer’s duty to consider those rights before issuing a dispersal direction.
Similar concerns were raised in the context of public spaces and protection orders. Although not in this group, Amendment 54 places a similar duty on the local authority to have particular regard for those two convention rights before making such an order. Again, as public authorities under the Human Rights Act, local authorities are already duty bound to act compatibly with convention rights, but we recognise that, in the context of the Bill, it is helpful to reinforce that point.
I hope that that reassures noble Lords that the new dispersal powers will not be used in a way that conflicts with an individual’s convention rights. I commend the government amendments and the provisions of Clause 32 to the House.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I am sure that we are all grateful to the Minister for Amendments 31 and 33. They are clearly intended to address one of the problems which arises from the clauses on dispersal orders. They address the issue of whether this power could be used in respect of people conducting a demonstration of some sort—at least, I assume that that is what they do. Perhaps when the Minister responds, he could tell us the strength of the words,
“have particular regard to the rights of freedom of expression”,
in relation to a demonstration which may be a bit rowdy, a bit difficult or a bit challenging, as opposed to a straightforward, entirely sedate slow march or, indeed, to someone standing still waving a placard.
For example, could the power be used under circumstances in which, having given regard to the rights of freedom of expression, the inspector concerned decides that he has thought about it but, none the less, he wishes to use the power? If the Minister can reassure us about that, clearly the issue has been adequately addressed by Amendments 31 and 33.
I address my remarks to the wider issues raised by Amendment 32 in the name of my noble friend, which would remove Clause 32. I suspect that that is a rather blunderbuss approach to a matter on which we have been trying throughout the passage of the Bill through your Lordships’ House to get clarity on: in what circumstances the power might be used and how that might happen. We asked many questions in Committee about how this might happen, to which we have had very little in terms of answers. I certainly recall raising the issue of the rank of the police officer who would authorise the use of the power in a specified locality. I accept that the Minister described inspectors as comparatively senior police officers—and indeed they are comparatively senior police officers compared with a constable or a police sergeant—but they are not comparatively senior compared with an assistant chief constable or a superintendent. These are relative terms.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the amendments that he has brought forward. He did respond to the debates in Committee by bringing them and we welcome the provisions on freedom of expression and assembly. However, as my noble friend Lord Harris of Haringey said, he and I both raised more fundamental concerns about the changes being made by the Government. I do not propose to repeat the comments made by my noble friend or comments that I made previously but the fact is that we did not receive satisfactory answers in Committee, particularly on how the dispersal orders will work in practice or on the evidence base for why they are being extended and changed.
In Committee, the Minister said that he would write to me with that information. Again, I take the same view as my noble friend Lord Harris: my apologies if I have missed the Minister’s letter to me in the many letters that we have received or have been copied into. However, I do not appear to have received the letter that he promised with information on the evidence base for changing the orders. I was very interested in the comments that the Minister made this evening when he opened and I wish that I had had them in writing previously, as I thought I would. That would have given me an opportunity to consider them properly but I will read Hansard to see what he said.
In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, tried to extract information about how the orders would work in practice. He made a similar point tonight, but when he made it in more detail in Committee the Minister accused him of being mischievous. It is fair to say, he does have a mischievous streak. That has been evident but it was not evident on that occasion and it is not evident this evening.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I think that was the phrase I used—that the noble Lord had a mischievous streak to his nature.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
No, it was not. The Minister accused him of being mischievous in that regard. He cannot rewrite Hansard. My noble friend was making then, and is making now, a genuine attempt to find out how the orders will work in practice, step by step. The points made about the police officers are ones to which I should like answers.
We are not opposed to dispersal orders. I made that point before and I will make it again. We introduced them in 2004. There was some controversy at that time but we think it was the right thing to do. The issue we have is with the significance of the changes being made in the geographical area and the timescale and the lack of involvement from the local authority. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, made the point that our issue is not with any demographic oversight the PCC can provide after the event. It is with ensuring that, where there is to be a dispersal order, democratically elected community representatives ensure that the power is used to the best effect and that they do not cause any further problems and misunderstandings by not using it appropriately. That consultation and involvement with local authorities is very important.
When the Home Affairs Select Committee recommended as part of its pre-legislative scrutiny in the other place that there should be a duty to consult local authorities over dispersal orders of more than six hours, the Government agreed and said they would amend the legislation. They have not done so and it would be helpful to hear from the Minister why the Government are not now fulfilling their commitment to HASC. There must be a reason why they are no longer choosing to do that.
As far as I understand it, the Minister said that the police have now said that they find the dispersal order powers useful. At the risk of being accused of a blunderbuss approach, I have tabled the same amendment to try to get some answers. What was the evidence base for bringing such significant changes forward? Did the police come along and say to the Government, “There is a lack of flexibility in the current orders. There are delays in implementing them. We do not want to have to liaise with local authorities. We want to go it alone. We need them to be longer. We need a wider area.”? Did they raise those concerns prior to the Government bringing this forward? I am not aware that they did or that there were any such concerns raised by the existing orders, but if there were, can the Minister let us know that? In his comments in Committee regarding the involvement of local authorities he used phrases such as “it is likely” the police will work with the local authority and he referred to draft guidance, which states that the authorising officer “may wish where practical” to consult local council or community representatives. That is very vague and it is not my understanding of the commitment made to the Home Affairs Select Committee.
I am just trying to understand why the changes were brought forward in the first place, who complained about local authority involvement and who thought that was hampering the process or the use of orders? If the Minister is unable to answer these questions at this stage we will have to conclude there is no evidence base but I would very much regret the Government bringing forward such significant changes without an evidence base. I reiterate the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Harris. We need some real understanding of how this will work in practice, given the very significant changes that are being made.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, this gives us an opportunity to come back to a subject where there has not been a great deal of meeting of minds. I am anxious to make sure that we are all reading this situation in the same way. I will address the various points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey—I accept that he is not making them out of mischievousness but out of genuine inquiry as to how the operations are going to work—and the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith.
When we talked about setting this process up, I thought my speaking notes made it clear that information that we provided in the consultation we had on this was about making efficient dispersal arrangements and providing them in connection with the public space protection order. One of those things deals with territory and one deals with situations. I think we all agree that when we are dealing with territory, there is often quite a bit of history—there is certainly a lot of experience—and local government and the police can work very happily in hand together to deal with it. When we are dealing with situations and people, it is very important that we have a clear order of command. In areas which may well have provided trouble in the past or, indeed, in situations which are known to the police and local authorities to be likely to be troublesome, there may well be some prior discussions.
One of the great advantages of using inspector grades to take these decisions is that most inspectors have territorial responsibilities and local knowledge is very important. Indeed, in terms of policing—and it is an operational matter involving the police, not local authority employees, for example—it is the police who have that local knowledge. They have access to that local knowledge and an inspector would have access to it by consultation with sergeants and constables. Indeed, it need not be at inspector level that the decision is ultimately made. If it is a complex issue that requires great sensitivity, the inspector is perfectly entitled to go up to superintendent or even chief constable level before determining that the dispersal order is made. However, this legislation provides the facility for it to occur.
The noble Baroness talked about the evidence. To my mind, the evidence is pretty self-explanatory in that what we need is a clear command structure. The Government feel that this is the right thing. We have presented it to the police. I met Richard Antcliff of Nottinghamshire Police city community protection team before Christmas. He welcomes these new powers. His team is a partnership team of police officers, police staff and council officers. I went to Nottingham in October to see its work. He is very positive about the new dispersal power and sees it as a key intervention in dealing with anti-social behaviour in the city of Nottingham. The work in Nottingham is co-operative, and that is surely the sort of thing we want.
Lord Harris of Haringey
I am not trying to hold up progress through the Bill. I am sure the project that the Minister went to see in Nottingham is excellent, but if it is being interpreted, on the basis of a conversation that he had with somebody there, who was no doubt in deep awe of the Minister, as a statement of police support for this change, it is going a little far. It may be that it is more than that, but the point still remains. The clause we have at the moment simply states,
“a police officer of at least the rank of inspector”.
It does not say, “a police officer of at least the rank of inspector who has, for example, an intimate knowledge of the communities concerned and the likely impact of this action”. If it said something like that, and I appreciate that that is not legislative drafting, that would reassure on that particular point, but it does not. It could simply be an inspector. I think it quite likely that some police forces, given that they are about to receive a large new volume of technical legislation, will decide to have an inspector somewhere—or maybe even a superintendent; it does not really matter which—whose sole purpose will be to ensure that all the boxes have been ticked in terms of following the legislation. That is not the same as someone with an intimate knowledge of what the community consequences are likely to be in that locality.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Although the noble Lord is not being mischievous, he is being extraordinarily cynical. Effective operation of a police force is that police force’s job; it is not our job here in Parliament, as we construct the law, to tell the police how they should effect the law. The law requires us to ensure that dispersal orders are operated properly and that full consideration is given to the rights of peaceful protest and political expression. We have made it clear what the law is, and it is up to the police to decide what they should do. The view that I have expressed—it is, of course, just an opinion—is that it is right to involve inspectors in this sort of decision-making, because, as I think the noble Lord would agree, when it comes to local knowledge of policing situations, it is frequently the inspector who is in the best position. If he does not know, he can ask a superior officer, and also consult the officers involved in policing that particular area.
I am sorry, but I feel that the noble Lord is making heavy weather of what I considered to be a fairly straightforward matter. He asked what sort of protest would not be approved of. I have already said that if people were carrying hate messages on placards they might well be considered to be out of order, and a dispersal order could be the most effective way of handling that situation. I gave that simply as an example.
As I explained in Committee, the dispersal will be authorised by an officer of the rank of inspector or above. This is in line with all the other responsibilities that police inspectors have. A neighbourhood policing inspector will have a detailed knowledge of the local area and what the consequences of using the dispersal power may be. Ultimately, as I have said, it is an operational matter.
I hope I have answered noble Lords’ questions. Have I answered the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and the questions asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith? The noble Baroness asked me about our response to the Home Affairs Select Committee. As she said, we did not make any commitment. We made it clear that we would accept the committee’s argument that the dispersal power would benefit from the additional safeguards, to ensure that its use was proportional and appropriate, and that we would change the legislation to state that the use of the dispersal power should be approved in advance by an officer of at least the rank of inspector. This ensures that the wider impact on, for example, communications can be considered properly before use. Those were the commitments that we made to the Select Committee.
Lord Harris of Haringey
I am under strict instructions from my Front Bench not to pursue this point at any length. But before the Minister sits down, may I ask him whether he would accept that if, at Third Reading, there was an amendment that said, “In deciding whether to give such an authorisation, an officer must have particular regard to the likely community impact of such an order”, that would solve the problem? It would place an obligation on those in the police service, however they had chosen to organise themselves, to consider the community impact. At the moment, the officer’s only obligation is to consider whether he or she is,
“satisfied on reasonable grounds that the use of those powers in the locality during that period may be necessary for the purpose of removing or reducing the likelihood of”,
certain events. That is not the same as having regard to the likely community impact.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
No. I am sorry. I cannot commit the Government to accepting such an amendment.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“( ) In deciding whether to give a direction under section 33 a constable must have particular regard to the rights of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly set out in articles 10 and 11 of the Convention.
“Convention” has the meaning given by section 21(1) of the Human Rights Act 1998.”
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“Guidance
(1) The Secretary of State may issue guidance to chief officers of police about the exercise, by officers under their direction or control, of those officers’ functions under this Part.
(2) The Secretary of State may revise any guidance issued under this section.
(3) The Secretary of State must arrange for any guidance issued or revised under this section to be published.”
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, under Clause 45 it is an offence to fail to comply with the terms of a community protection notice. The defences provided for in Clause 45 in respect of this offence in part repeat the grounds on which the making of a notice can be appealed. However, criminal proceedings on breach of a notice should not be the forum to repeat earlier proceedings on an appeal against a notice. Amendments 37, 38 and 39 therefore remove this particular defence contained in subsections (3) and (4) of Clause 45. It will continue to be open to a person charged with the offence of failing to comply with a notice to argue that they took all reasonable steps to comply with the notice or that they had some other reasonable excuse for the failure to comply. This will bring this aspect of the Bill into line with the approach taken with the public spaces protection order and the closure powers where a reasonable excuse defence also applies. I beg to move.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
(a) to a constable, or(b) to a person employed by a local authority or designated by a local authority under section 50(1)(c)”
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, the Bill confers the power to issue a community protection notice on the police, local authorities and persons designated by a local authority. Provision is made for items used in the commission of the offence of breaching a notice to be forfeited or seized on the order of a court. As my noble friend Lady Hamwee pointed out in Committee, forfeited items must be handed over to a constable and disposed of by the relevant police force. Similarly, the power to seize items is vested in a constable. My noble friend suggested that amendments be made to confer similar powers on local authority personnel in the interests of parity. The Government are satisfied that this would be a sensible extension of these provisions and Amendments 40 to 45 to Clauses 47 and 48 modify the provisions accordingly.
My noble friend also tabled amendments in Committee which sought to enable persons authorised by a local authority to serve a closure notice. I said then that I could see merit in such an approach and that is why the Government have tabled amendments to achieve just that. Amendments 63 to 70 would allow the local authority to contract out the service of the closure notice, while the decision to issue the closure notice would continue to rest firmly with the local authority. I commend the amendments to the House.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My noble friend Lord Greaves often describes what this House is about as ensuring that Bills are workable. That was what was in my mind in tabling these amendments at the previous stage. I do not suppose that the world will change dramatically as a result of them, but I am glad that we are making the Bill more workable at local level. I am grateful for that.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“( ) Where an item ordered to be forfeited under this section is kept by or handed over to a person within subsection (2)(b), the local authority by whom the person is employed or was designated must ensure that arrangements are made for its destruction or disposal, either—
(a) in accordance with the order, or(b) if no arrangements are specified in the order, in whatever way seems appropriate to the local authority.”
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“( ) In this section “designated person” means a person designated by a local authority under section 50(1)(c).”
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“Guidance
(1) The Secretary of State may issue—
(a) guidance to chief officers of police about the exercise, by officers under their direction or control, of those officers’ functions under this Chapter;(b) guidance to local authorities about the exercise of their functions under this Chapter and those of persons designated under section 50(1)(c).(2) The Secretary of State may revise any guidance issued under this section.
(3) The Secretary of State must arrange for any guidance issued or revised under this section to be published.”
Lord Greaves
“( ) A public spaces protection order on land which has the status of—
(a) a town or village green or forms part of such a green,(b) access land under Part I of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, or(c) a footpath, bridleway, restricted byway or byway open to all traffic that is shown in a definitive map and statement of rights of way under Part III of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981,shall not restrict those rights that are conferred on persons by virtue of that status.”
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I return again to the relationship between public spaces protection orders and what I call special categories of land. This in an important issue, so I will dwell on it for a few minutes. I raised this at Second Reading and in Committee I suggested that these special types of land, where public access is specified and guaranteed by other legislation, should be excluded from public spaces protection orders. The categories of land are: access land under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act, which is mountain, moor, heath, down and commons and now includes the coastal footpath and coastal access land where that has so far been designated in England; village greens and town greens; and rights of way—mainly footpaths and bridleways—which appear on a definitive map and the statement of rights of way which nowadays comes under the Wildlife and Countryside Act and is held by top-tier local authorities.
The purpose of the designation of these kinds of land is to allow public access. To have public spaces protection orders put on them which deny that access looks like an easy and quick way for local authorities to prevent access, which is otherwise a fairly difficult and convoluted process. Public footpaths can be closed or diverted. There is a process by which, over time, access land can have its designation removed. There is also a process by which exceptions and exclusions can be made to access land, under the CROW Act. However, these take time and are difficult, for very good reasons.
In Committee, the Minister said this was okay but that rights of access were for specific purposes. For village greens it is informal recreation. For footpaths it is, obviously, walking along them. For access land it is for accessing that land on foot, together with a restricted number of ancillary activities, such as stopping and having a picnic or taking photographs, but there are a lot of activities which are not allowed. Anti-social behaviour may well be taking place on some of that land which is affecting the enjoyment of it by the people for whom the designation has been made, such as the people walking on it. That is a fair point, so Amendment 47 does not say that public spaces protection orders should not be made on this land. It says that, if they are made, they cannot remove the right of access which is the whole purpose of the land.
I know the Government do not want to do this. I do not know why, because it is very sensible. Nevertheless, I am pressing the case to give the Minister the opportunity of saying exactly how these access rights will be protected. I have had a letter about this from Norman Baker, who was in charge of the Bill within the department. I will read some of it out, because it has not been widely circulated and it is worth putting on record:
“I note your concerns that the new public spaces protection order is a much wider power than the three orders it replaces, and as such could be used to restrict access to common land, access land and rights of way on the definitive map. However, I believe the test and the safeguards we have built in mitigate such a risk.
As Lord Taylor made clear during the debate in Committee, these types of land are important and certainly worthy of the additional debate they received. In fact, in the draft guidance, we specifically mentioned a number of these categories of land because of their importance to both the local community and visitors to the area”.
One of the points that I raised in Committee was the importance of the national bodies that look after this kind of land—the Ramblers, the British Mountaineering Council and the Open Spaces Society, as well as landowners’ organisations and others—being involved in any change in the system. Mr Baker writes:
“We also made clear that where restrictions were necessary, national bodies could play an important role in the consultation process”—
that is not something that I had picked up—
“to ensure that all those affected have a chance to comment. I know my officials are continuing to work with interested groups with a view to making this even clearer in the final iteration”.
This is the vital importance of the statutory guidance, as it now will be, to prevent what I might call rogue local authorities—there are one or two—taking advantage of this legislation and doing things that are not intended. The letter continues:
“However, in terms of restricting access on certain categories of land, I do not believe that this would pass the test, in part because of the final limb, which states that the anti-social behaviour, ‘justifies the restrictions imposed by the notice’. Given the importance of these areas, whether coastal access land or registered common, I cannot envisage a level of behaviour that would constitute such a draconian response. Where a problem behaviour does exist, the flexibility within the PSPO means that the behaviour itself can be targeted rather than access in its totality. This is a major failing in the current system where unless the anti-social behaviour is related to dogs or alcohol, the local authority is left with limited options, too quickly resorted to ‘gating’ in some situations.
In addition, the behaviour that has to be restricted on this land has to be ‘unreasonable’. Again, given the rights afforded to commoners through other legislation, I fail to see how someone exercising these rights in a responsible manner (for instance, pannage) could be considered to be acting in an unreasonable way. As such, I believe these rights are adequately protected”.
In reading that out, I apologise to the Minister if I have stolen his thunder and he was going to say exactly the same things. However, at the very least, I would like him to guarantee here in the Chamber that what I have said is true and that that is the way in which the Government look at it. In the end, of course, how it comes out in the wash will be how we will judge it. However, the discussions that we have had have been useful in clarifying these issues and in concentrating the minds of people in government as to exactly how these things might work. I hope that the Government will accept my amendment. I have no great optimism about that but, anyway, I beg to move.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Greaves has once again articulated his argument well and, if I may say so, he has also articulated mine. In quoting the letter from Norman Baker he has to some degree stolen my thunder. However, as my noble friend asked that I reiterate the position of the Government on the record, I will do so.
The types of land that he mentioned in his amendment are important and worthy of the additional discussion. Common land, village greens, rights of way and open access land all play an important part both in local communities and in our nation’s heritage. This is exactly why they should be protected from the minority of anti-social individuals who ruin this enjoyment by acting in a way that is unreasonable. I am glad that my noble friend has accepted that the new public spaces protection order could be used positively to protect the categories of land he identifies.
The amendment itself, though, seeks to protect any rights conferred on individuals or groups as a result of other legislation. As I have said before, this amendment is unnecessary. For a new order to be made, the activities have to be “unreasonable”. I do not believe that someone exercising their rights to, for example, collect firewood in a particular woodland could be considered to be acting unreasonably. In addition, while in theory the council could seek to restrict access to that land altogether, I do not believe that that would meet the final limb of the test—namely, that the activities justified the restrictions. Such an absolute ban would likely be disproportionate in legal terms. Indeed, it is the flexibility that we have built into the new power that makes sure that the nuclear option, to use that phrase, is truly a last resort. Where problem behaviour does exist, this flexibility means that the behaviour itself can be targeted rather than access in its totality. This is a major failing in the current system where unless the anti-social behaviour is related to dogs or alcohol, the council is left with limited options, and too quickly resorts to gating in some situations.
However, I do believe that where the anti-social behaviour is unreasonable and so bad as to justify restrictions, the council, in consultation with the police and others, should have the ability to act, and act fast. That said, given the continuing concerns which my noble friend has expressed, I assure him that Home Office officials will continue to work with interested bodies to see how the statutory guidance can address these issues more effectively. We have already emphasised in the draft guidance the importance of these categories of land, but the draft guidance is exactly that—a draft. We want to make sure that by the time we publish the final statutory guidance, it reflects the needs of professionals and the interests of the users of rights of way, access land and village greens.
Many professionals will be aware of the special rights and protections afforded to such land, but where they are not, we can make sure they have the relevant information so that their decisions and actions reflect the needs of the whole community. In the light of these assurances I have given, rather reiterating points made by my friend, colleague and fellow Minister Mr Norman Baker, I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Greaves
I also dodged the issue of whether Norman Baker was right honourable or honourable.
I am grateful for what the Minister has said and I think that the general tenor of what the Government are saying on these has shifted a little bit in the right direction. I am grateful to the Minister for his help and assistance in these matters.
I still think there is a possibility of conflict—for example, if there is a village green where traditionally the kids play cricket in the middle of summer, and the cottages around the village green are all bought up by townies who go and live there at weekends and complain about the fact that cricket balls are coming into their gardens. That is the kind of conflict which could happen, and where a PSPO might try to stop them playing cricket despite the fact that that was part of the traditional informal recreation there.
However, the national organisations now clearly have an accepted role, which was in doubt at the beginning of this process, so—combined with the tenacity and vigour with which my friends in the Open Spaces Society pursue these matters—I hope that it will never get to the High Court to sort things out, but at least I am happy in the knowledge that that would be possible if it came to it. Having said that, I am grateful to the Minister for all his help, and for that of his colleague, and I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, the government amendments in this group flow from the debates we have had in Committee about the consultation requirements attached to the making of a public spaces protection order and the preparation of the community remedy document. In responding to the points raised in Committee, particularly by my noble friend Lord Greaves, we have sought to strike a balance between the need to ensure that appropriate consultation takes place, while avoiding the imposition of unnecessary bureaucratic burdens on local authorities, the police or police and crime commissioners.
In relation to public spaces protection orders, the key amendment is Amendment 54, which brings together and augments the consultation and notification requirements already provided for in Chapter 2 of Part 4 of the Bill. The key additions are the requirement to consult with the owner or occupier of the relevant land, so far as it is reasonably practical to do so, and to notify any county council, parish council or community council. These requirements are in addition to the existing duties to publish the proposed text of an order before it is made or varied, and to consult the chief officer of police, the local policing body and any community representatives whom the local authority thinks it appropriate to consult.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I suppose that I ought to say thank you. As my noble friend Lady Hamwee said, when amendments come back like this from the Government, you sometimes think that all the time and effort spent in Committee has produced something worth while. Therefore, I am very grateful to the Government: when I saw this particular amendment, I thought that it was a late Christmas present.
It is an odd amendment because it is an odd new clause, including two completely different things. However, both are very welcome. The reference to the rights of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly are extremely useful. With this Bill—and all the fuss this afternoon bemused me a little—I have always been of the view that the public spaces protection order provisions had the potential to be a greater danger to freedom of speech and assembly and to the civil right to protest and so on than the injunctions for the prevention of nuisance and annoyance. The reason, as the Minister said when he introduced an earlier amendment, is that PSPOs are about territory and areas, and therefore, unless very specific provisions are made, they apply to everybody. Unlike IPNAs, which are injunctions against individual people or groups of people, as I understand it public spaces protection orders, which can last for up to five years and are renewable, would apply to everybody and stop normal activities such as handing out leaflets, parading with banners, making speeches and holding meetings. Therefore, this part of this new clause is extremely useful and valuable and the Government are to be congratulated. I am a little bemused as to why on earth they did not just produce a clause such as this and attach it to IPNAs, as that might have defused a great deal of the fuss earlier today. However, that is for the Government to think about, not me.
The publicity stuff is useful. A lot of this brings together what is already in different bits of the Bill and puts it in one place. The specific provisions are very useful. My amendment is just to query the difference in subsection (4) of the proposed new clause, under the definition of “necessary publicity”,
“in the case of a proposed order or variation, publishing the text of it”,
and,
“in the case of a proposed extension or discharge, publicising the proposal”.
I am not quite sure what the difference is there, and this is to probe that in a minor way. I am grateful for the inclusion of the county councils and parish councils under “the necessary notification”, which is common sense, but sometimes you put forward amendments on these matters and common sense does not always apply. On this occasion it has and again I am very grateful.
My final point is that one of the things that my friend Norman Baker sent to me was a draft of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 (Publication of Public Spaces Protection Orders) Regulations. This point is not exactly in this amendment but perhaps noble Lords will bear with me for two sentences. The regulations set out the instructions to local authorities that where a public spaces protection order has been made it has to be published on the council’s website and the council has to,
“cause to be erected on or adjacent to the land in relation to which the public spaces protection order has been made … such notice … as it considers sufficient to draw the attention of any member of the public using the land to the fact that a public spaces protection has been made and the effect of that order being made”.
It is the same for variations.
Again, this is very welcome. The fact that it will be in regulations is welcome, because councils will not be able to get out of it. If the notices fall into disrepair over time, they will have to replace them and keep the information before the public. I put these amendments forward in Committee, and I am grateful that the Government are taking them up and putting them into a statutory instrument regulations. I thank the Government for this amendment and those in relation to the community remedy documents, where, as the Minister said, the Government have taken up my suggestions about consulting the local authority. That will be in the Bill. This is all excellent stuff. Thank you very much.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, may I say a word following on from Amendment 54? It is on a matter that I raised in Committee, which is how parts of this Bill fit in with the existing nuisance legislation.
My noble friend Lord Clement-Jones and those with whom he worked on what is now the Live Music Act 2012 remain concerned about the possibility of local authorities using public space protection order powers when there is existing nuisance legislation that could be used against a particular nuisance—though I think that they do not regard much music as “nuisance”. There have been some awkward examples of some local authorities banning busking and other live music-making during “reasonable hours”; and when I say that, I would probably agree that they are reasonable, but I do not particularly want to bring that into the equation here. During hours when there have been a small number of complaints, the local authorities would argue that such action is reasonable and there is a concern that the powers might be used far more extensively than the Government would have in mind. They have spoken to me about balancing competing rights between freedom of expression and the right to peaceful enjoyment of one’s possessions—in this case the items that are being used for busking.
I am making the point now in the hope that the Government may be able to say something about guidance on the fit between the statutory powers under this Bill and statutory nuisance. I raised the issue at the previous stage following discussions with the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. I know that officials are working on this area of the guidance but I also know that those who have been in touch with me will be grateful if they can have further discussions on and further input into what will now be statutory guidance. Clearly those who are working on these issues day-to-day still feel uncomfortable that their concerns about what I called “workability” have not quite been taken on board.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I thank my noble friends Lord Greaves and Lady Hamwee for their hard work on this section of the Bill. They have proposed a number of amendments, many of which have informed government thinking. Indeed, these government amendments are based on ideas that came from the debates we had in Committee with them. We have yet to dispose of my noble friend’s Amendment 55, but I hope he will at a suitable moment see fit not to move it.
The role that my noble friend Lady Hamwee has emphasised depends on the statutory guidance, which is very important in this area. This is a matter for consultation. We want to get the statutory guidance right and ensure that it allows councils maximum flexibility. We do not want to miss the chance, particularly as the guidance will now be statutory, of making sure that we give background information on the exercise of all the elements of these parts of the Bill for the efficient use of anti-social behaviour powers.
I hope I have reassured my noble friend Lady Hamwee on the importance we attach to the guidance and my noble friend Lord Greaves about our recognition of the need to publicise what is going on in connection with the consultations that will take place.
Lord Greaves
Why does it say “publish” for one and “publicise” for the other?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I am sure someone will know the answer to that; I am not entirely sure. “Publish”, I suspect, implies that it is in a particular form; “publicise” is perhaps multiple publication. However, I am only hazarding a guess, without being particularly good in my command of language.
Baroness Hamwee
I will not speculate about whether “publish” is a technical term, which I think it probably is. “Publicise” is about spreading it around in a practical way.
However, returning to my question, will the guidance —I hope it will—make clear that, where possible, it would be more appropriate to use existing legislation, such as noise abatement notices, than these wider powers?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
It may be that that is one of the things that is considered in the guidance. We will make use of what we have available to us. There is no repealing of the Noise Abatement Act 1960, for example, in the Bill.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
“(7) An interested person may not challenge the validity of a public spaces protection order, or of a variation of a public spaces protection order, in any legal proceedings (either before or after it is made) except—
(a) under this section, or(b) under subsection (3) of section 63 (where the interested person is charged with an offence under that section).”
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, in Committee my noble friend Lord Faulks and other noble Lords questioned the effect of Clause 62(7). He asked whether this had the effect of stopping an application for judicial review against a council that makes a public spaces protection order. I agreed to go back and consider the matter further. On reflection, it is true that, as originally worded, the clause meant that judicial review was not available. This was because an interested person can challenge an order in a broader way than is open under a judicial review and, as such, the requirement for that process did not seem necessary. I believe that this is right: it ought not to be possible for the same person to challenge a public spaces protection order on effectively the same grounds through two different legal procedures.
However, as my noble friend pointed out, because only “interested persons” as defined in the Bill may challenge a decision to make an order, this has inadvertently left national bodies and others who do not fall into the category of an “interested person” without any means to challenge a decision. Amendment 51 rectifies this and ensures that the option of judicial review is available to those who do not qualify as “interested persons”. I hope the House will agree that this is a fair way of ensuring that all parties with an interest in a public spaces protection order can challenge the terms of the order should they consider there to be a case for doing so. I beg to move.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, there was quite a lot of discussion about this question in Committee and it became clear that the Bill was not very clear. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser was involved in those discussions. The amendment now proposed is extremely welcome and has been welcomed by various national organisations that were concerned about it. Again, it is to the credit of the Government that they have seen the sense of this and sorted it out.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, in Committee I undertook to consider an amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville that sought to acknowledge the excellent work of the City of London Corporation in managing some of the important public spaces in and around the capital. We agree that my noble friend’s proposal has significant merit. Amendment 53 therefore provides for statutory custodians, such as the City of London Corporation, to be designated by order of the Secretary of State. The effect of such an order will be to enable the designated body to make public spaces protection orders in respect of the land they are also responsible for managing. The amendment also includes the safeguards proposed by my noble friend ensuring that the local authority will continue to have precedence in the decision-making process. Therefore, a designated body will be able to make a public spaces protection order only where the local authority does not wish to act.
In addition, any designated body will be able to make an order only in respect of those matters it already has the power to regulate through by-laws, so there will be no extension of scope. For the time being, the City of London Corporation is the only body that we have in mind to designate under this order-making power. This is in line with a similar provision that currently exists under the terms of the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 in respect of dog control orders which will be replaced by the provisions in the Bill.
Amendments 52, 58, 59, 60 and 61 are consequential on the main amendment. I am once again grateful to my noble friend for raising this issue on behalf of the City of London Corporation. I trust that these amendments address the issue that he and it has raised and, accordingly, I commend them to the House.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to government Amendment 53, to which my noble friend has just spoken. In responding to my amendment in Committee, my noble friend Lord Ahmad was kind enough to acknowledge that there appeared to be a strong case for extending the availability of public spaces protection orders to bodies other than local authorities. I am most grateful that further consideration has confirmed that view. I know also that the City of London Corporation, whose position prompted my earlier intervention, is grateful for the constructive and open-minded approach taken by officials during discussions on this point. No doubt, other bodies that manage public spaces under statute but are not local authorities will also find the change helpful.
My noble friend will recall that in my amendment in Committee, to which Her Majesty’s Government have now helpfully responded, I alluded to Epping Forest. In this appreciation of the Government response, I quote a testimonial about the Corporation of London from 1979—35 years ago—when I moved in the Commons the Second Reading of a private City of London (Various Powers) Bill on behalf of the City which primarily related to Epping Forest. Two of my noble friends who are now in your Lordships’ House spoke in that Second Reading debate: my noble friend Lord Tebbit, then MP for Chingford, and my noble friend Lord Horam, then replying to the Bill as Under-Secretary for Transport. They were thus witnesses to the quotation uttered by the late Arthur Lewis—then and for the previous 34 years Labour MP for West Ham, where he was Tony Banks’ predecessor—when he spoke in that debate. I quote the conclusive passage in his speech:
“I do not trust the Department of Transport. By its actions over the years it has not proved that it has the best interests of the people at heart. The City of London has proved this. It has done so for 100 years, and certainly to my personal knowledge for the past 34 years … I have gone along to many Ministers, ministerial advisers and local government officers. I have never found any of them so accommodating or helpful as the City of London authority and its officers. They have not put themselves out in the way that the City of London’s officials have. When I have problems or difficulties over Wanstead Flats, West Ham park or Epping Forest, I know that I get better treatment from the authority’s officials than I do from ministerial Departments”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/3/79; col. 1203.]
I am confident that the Home Office will be rewarded by the Corporation of London for government Amendment 53 with just such similar imaginative service in future.
Finally, to wind up, I also thank the Minister for taking up the drafting point in Clause 67(2) that I raised in Committee in relation to the interpretation of Chapter 2. I note that this has been addressed in the Report stage print of the Bill now before us and I express appreciation for the Government’s reaction to that.
Lord Rosser
I will just raise one or two questions on these amendments. Again, I look particularly at what was said in the letter we received from the Minister. On these particular government amendments, that letter ended by saying that any public spaces protection order,
“made by a designated body under the provisions of the new clause would take precedence over a PSPO made by the local authority in whose area the land is situated”.
As I understand it, that means that a PSPO made by the City of London Corporation—if it was so designated—would take precedence over a PSPO made by the local authority covering the area of Epping Forrest, Ashtead Common, Hampstead Heath or any other areas. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm whether that is the case. It is what the last sentence of his letter dealing with these government amendments says, as I just read out.
On the face of it, that would appear to be rather odd because Clause 55, which deals with public spaces protection orders, says that two conditions must be met, the first that,
“activities carried on in a public place within the authority’s area have had a detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality”.
If the City of London Corporation has responsibility for managing an open space, presumably most of those who will be deemed to be affected on the basis of the,
“quality of life of those in the locality”,
are unlikely to actually live in the open space and likely to live in the areas surrounding it, which are presumably within the area of the local authority.
I am not seeking to raise some frivolous point, and my intention is not to oppose this amendment. What I am getting at is whether there are potential areas of conflict now between what the City of London Corporation may deem to be necessary or desirable in a public spaces protection order and the views of the local authority, bearing in mind that it is surely only the local authority that can make the judgment on whether activities were being carried on which had a detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality. I would be grateful if the Minister could clear that up. Perhaps I have misunderstood it. If I have, I am sure the Minister will explain that when he responds.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, first, I thank my noble friend for his kind remarks and I reiterate the Government’s thanks for raising these issues. On the noble Lord’s point on clarification of the letter, it is my understanding—and we are just double-checking—that the letter got the position the wrong way round, so we apologise for that. I trust that clarifies the point.
Lord Rosser
If I may confirm what the letter should have said, it is that the PSPO made by the local authority has precedence over that made by the City of London or a designated body. That clears it up. I thank the Minister very much.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“Bodies other than local authorities with statutory functions in relation to land
(1) The Secretary of State may by order—
(a) designate a person or body (other than a local authority) that has power to make byelaws in relation to particular land, and(b) specify land in England to which the power relates.(2) This Chapter has effect as if—
(a) a person or body designated under subsection (1) (a “designated person”) were a local authority, and(b) land specified under that subsection were within its area.But references in the rest of this section to a local authority are to a local authority that is not a designated person.(3) The only prohibitions or requirements that may be imposed in a public spaces protection order made by a designated person are ones that it has power to impose (or would, but for section 66, have power to impose) by making a byelaw in respect of the restricted area.
(4) A public spaces protection order made by a designated person may not include provision regulating, in relation to a particular public space, an activity that is already regulated in relation to that space by a public spaces protection order made by a local authority.
(5) Where a public spaces protection order made by a local authority regulates, in relation to a particular public space, an activity that a public spaces protection order made by a designated person already regulates, the order made by the designated person ceases to have that effect.
(6) If a person or body that may be designated under subsection (1)(a) gives a notice in writing under this subsection, in respect of land in relation to which it has power to make byelaws, to a local authority in whose area the land is situated—
(a) no part of the land may form, or fall within, the restricted area of any public spaces protection order made by the local authority;(b) if any part of the land— (i) forms the restricted area of a public spaces protection order already made by the local authority, or(ii) falls within such an area,
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“Convention rights, consultation, publicity and notification
(1) A local authority, in deciding—
(a) whether to make a public spaces protection order (under section 55) and if so what it should include,(b) whether to extend the period for which a public spaces protection order has effect (under section 56) and if so for how long,(c) whether to vary a public spaces protection order (under section 57) and if so how, or(d) whether to discharge a public spaces protection order (under section 57),must have particular regard to the rights of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly set out in articles 10 and 11 of the Convention.(2) In subsection (1) “Convention” has the meaning given by section 21(1) of the Human Rights Act 1998.
(3) A local authority must carry out the necessary consultation and the necessary publicity, and the necessary notification (if any), before—
(a) making a public spaces protection order,(b) extending the period for which a public spaces protection order has effect, or(c) varying or discharging a public spaces protection order.(4) In subsection (3)—
“the necessary consultation” means consulting with—
(a) the chief officer of police, and the local policing body, for the police area that includes the restricted area;(b) whatever community representatives the local authority thinks it appropriate to consult;(c) the owner or occupier of land within the restricted area;“the necessary publicity” means—
(a) in the case of a proposed order or variation, publishing the text of it;(b) in the case of a proposed extension or discharge, publicising the proposal;“the necessary notification” means notifying the following authorities of the proposed order, extension, variation or discharge—
(a) the parish council or community council (if any) for the area that includes the restricted area;(b) in the case of a public spaces protection order made or to be made by a district council in England, the county council (if any) for the area that includes the restricted area.(5) The requirement to consult with the owner or occupier of land within the restricted area—
(a) does not apply to land that is owned and occupied by the local authority;(b) applies only if, or to the extent that, it is reasonably practicable to consult the owner or occupier of the land.(6) In the case of a person or body designated under section (Bodies other than local authorities with statutory functions in relation to land), the necessary consultation also includes consultation with the local authority which (ignoring subsection (2) of that section) is the authority for the area that includes the restricted area.
(7) In relation to a variation of a public spaces protection order that would increase the restricted area, the restricted area for the purposes of this section is the increased area.”
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“Guidance
(1) The Secretary of State may issue—
(a) guidance to local authorities about the exercise of their functions under this Chapter and those of persons authorised by local authorities under section 59 or 64;(b) guidance to chief officers of police about the exercise, by officers under their direction or control, of those officers’ functions under this Part.(2) The Secretary of State may revise any guidance issued under this section.
(3) The Secretary of State must arrange for any guidance issued or revised under this section to be published.”
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“( ) For the purposes of this Chapter, a public spaces protection order “regulates” an activity if the activity is—
(a) prohibited by virtue of section 55(4)(a), or(b) subjected to requirements by virtue of section 55(4)(b),whether or not for all persons and at all times.”
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