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Oral Answers to Questions
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
1. What her policy is on the future governance of professional football.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mrs Helen Grant)
I should explain to the House that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State cannot be with us today, as she is in the United States.
I continue to work with the football authorities in pressing for improvements in the game. They have made some very positive changes, notably to their governance and financial fair play rules, but I believe that they can and will make further progress. We intend to legislate if football fails in that important task.
Tom Greatrex
I declare my interest as one of the founders of the Fulham Supporters Trust, and I can increase the Minister’s burgeoning understanding of football by telling her that this has not been a great season for Fulham so far.
When the Select Committee reported in 2011, it referred to some of the problems of the role of supporters in the game. In his response to the Committee’s follow-up report almost exactly a year ago, the Minister’s predecessor said that he would soon set up an expert working group, under the auspices of the Department, to examine the role of fans in the governance of football, but as yet that has not happened. Will the Minister tell me when exactly it will happen, so that fans can see that the Government are taking the agenda seriously and not just paying lip service to it?
Mrs Grant
I am very interested in this issue. I have met representatives of Supporters Direct, and we are considering a recently updated proposal that we have received from the organisation in the last few weeks relating to the setting up of the expert group, which will enhance supporter engagement. I am keen to press on with this. I will continue to work with the Football Association and with football authorities, and will take the FA up on its offer to provide secretarial support for the group.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
Given the recent conviction of the former owner of Birmingham City football club for money laundering, the fraud convictions of the putative owner of Leeds United, and the fact that we still do not know the identities of the individuals who own Coventry City, does the Minister agree that a “fit and proper person” test should be applied to the owners of football clubs, and that it should be administered by the authorities and, if necessary, given the legal security of being underpinned by statute?
Mrs Grant
My hon. Friend has made an important point, but I believe that the enhanced checks and requirements that have been introduced by the football authorities are making some difference. I am also hopeful that the Football Association regulatory authority will ensure that changes in club ownership are much more fully scrutinised.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Is the Minister aware that 12 months ago her predecessor promised us that the Government would present proposals based on the Select Committee’s report? The current situation in Coventry is disgraceful: fans have to make a round trip of about 70 miles to Northampton. When will we see some real action to deal with that?
Mrs Grant
I think that we are starting to see some action, but I agree that we need to see more. Last August the Football Association introduced reforms which included smaller boards and a new licensing system to deal with matters relating to ownership, finance and supporters. I think it fair to say that a start has been made, but more needs to be done, and if it is not done, we will legislate.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
2. What recent estimate she has made of the number of businesses that have secured contracts from (a) Broadband Delivery UK and (b) local authorities for broadband infrastructure development in England and Wales.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
Broadband Delivery UK has entered into a framework contract with BT and Fujitsu. There are 40 local authority projects in England with funding from BDUK, and the Welsh Government have one project in Wales. All the contracts have been delivered via BT. I am pleased to say that, under the super-connected cities programme, 70 suppliers have been registered, 300 vouchers have been awarded, and 1,000 more are in the pipeline.
Ian Lucas
In a recent report, the Public Accounts Committee said that local authorities were contributing £236 million more than the Department had predicted in its 2011 business case, and that the sole monopoly provider, BT, had contributed £207 million less. As the Minister responsible throughout the programme, does the Under-Secretary of State believe that that is an effective use of public money?
Mr Vaizey
I do. Ofcom confirmed yesterday that we now have the best broadband in the European “big five”, and the fastest roll-out of 4G in the world. We continue to press ahead with 5G, we have published our spectrum strategy, and we have one of the most formidable digital infrastructure programmes in the world.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I commend my hon. Friend on the work that he is doing, but he no doubt shares my disappointment that Thirsk, Malton and Filey will have only 78% high-speed cover by 2015-16. Will the Government reverse their priorities to ensure that, with the help of NYnet’s excellent work, broadband will penetrate the hardest-to-reach areas in rural constituencies?
Mr Vaizey
North Yorkshire has one of the most advanced broadband programmes so far, with more than 75,000 premises already passed. The councils in north Yorkshire are to be commended for that. As my hon. Friend knows, we have awarded an additional £250 million in order to push out our programme for rural broadband to help rural premises and businesses.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
Recently the Prime Minister was mocked by Chancellor Merkel for the slow progress in rolling out broadband across the UK and the number of not spot areas, many of which reside in my constituency. Although I accept that this is largely a devolved issue, what extra help can the Minister give the Welsh Government to ensure that when the Prime Minister next meets the German Chancellor he is not embarrassed?
Mr Vaizey
More than 100,000 premises in Wales have already been passed and the target is to reach almost 700,000 by early 2016. If the Prime Minister sees Chancellor Merkel again and wishes to discuss broadband, he can present her with the Ofcom scorecard, which shows that Britain’s broadband is better than Germany’s. I would not say that this was a case of schadenfreude—except that schadenfreude is the only German word I know.
Sir Nick Harvey (North Devon) (LD)
Will smaller companies with innovative technologies get a slice of the action in reaching the last 10% of hardest-to- reach rural areas? To that end, although the money offered by the Department for Communities and Local Government is welcome, is there not a danger, if it must be match funded by local authorities at a time of funding crisis, that the process will be much slower than it would otherwise be?
Mr Vaizey
I hate to get territorial but the money has actually been offered by DCMS not DCLG. It is important that the money is match funded because having local authorities involved makes the programme even more effective than it already is, but as my hon. Friend knows we have a £10 million innovation fund for the last 5%, which we are hoping many young and nimble companies will apply for.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
3. What plans her Department has put in place to ensure a suitable commemoration of the first world war.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
The Government will deliver a four-year programme to mark the centenary, focused around the themes of remembrance, youth and education. We will lead the nation in appropriate acts of remembrance and provide a framework for learning, community and cultural projects through a package of funded activity worth nearly £100 million.
Stephen Metcalfe
As part of our local commemorations, I am leading a project that will see schools, veterans organisations, sports bodies, clubs, societies and the wider community in Basildon and its two twin-towns of Heiligenhaus in Germany and Ville de Meaux in France come together to create a unique trilingual exhibition exploring social attitudes then and now called “Never forget”, “N’oubliez jamais” and “Niemals vergessen”. Does my hon. Friend agree that the commemorations offer an excellent opportunity to remember that however dark the hour, there is always light and hope to be found?
Mr Vaizey
This is becoming a multilingual Question Time. Having recently visited Thurrock and seen for myself the amazing cultural activity that goes on in my hon. Friend’s part of the world, I have to say that the innovation he talks about does not surprise me in the slightest.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
Will the Minister say a little bit about the importance of the contribution of what were British empire troops—troops from Commonwealth countries of today? What exactly is happening to link up with other countries to commemorate and highlight their vital contribution in the first world war?
Mr Vaizey
We have an extensive engagement with Commonwealth countries and we are determined to acknowledge the role of the Commonwealth countries, recognising that the war could not have been won without them. With your indulgence, Mr Speaker, I will write to the hon. Gentleman detailing exactly the activities we are undertaking with Commonwealth countries.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
14. Will my hon. Friend work with me and the dedicated voluntary group Swindon in the Great War, which is doing everything it can to mark the significance of the centenary with commemorative events, but which is finding the process of obtaining funding a challenging one?
Mr Vaizey
My hon. Friend is a neighbour of mine and I know that there is a lot of cultural activity and innovation in Swindon. He will have many small community groups that will want to apply for funding, and I will certainly assist him as much as I can. The Heritage Lottery Fund is extremely keen to make the application process as simple as possible.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
Will the Minister join me in congratulating local communities who are taking initiatives to raise funds to commemorate the first world war, particularly those in the Shankill road in my constituency who are getting together with people in other communities to raise a suitable commemorative memorial in Woodvale park? That is a tremendous initiative and it deserves to be congratulated.
Mr Vaizey
The right hon. Gentleman makes an incredibly important point. The remembrance activities must involve all communities, and we should be tremendously proud of the way in which the communities are getting involved. One of the important parts of the commemorations over the next four years will be to bring younger generations into these activities.
Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)
On that important point about younger generations learning about the almighty sacrifices that were made in the great war, will the Minister give us an update on the millions of pounds of funding he has put towards schools’ battlefield tours?
Mr Vaizey
I am pleased to tell my hon. Friend that more than £5 million has been set aside to enable secondary schools to visit battlefield sites. Over the course of four years, every secondary school in the United Kingdom will be able to send at least two pupils to visit the battlefields of world war one.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
May I urge the Minister to think carefully about the contribution that Members of this House and of the other House made to the first world war? On 6 November 1914, Arthur O’Neill, a Member of this House, was killed at Klein Zillebeke while on active service. Four days later, Henry Parnell, a Member of the other House, and Bernard Gordon-Lennox had also been killed. They have a war grave at Klein Zillebeke. Would it not be a good idea to commemorate them in Belgium? Perhaps the Minister could mention this to any important Belgian visitors who might be coming here today.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
4. What steps she is taking to increase supporter engagement with football clubs.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mrs Helen Grant)
Supporters are key to the success of any football club and I commend their active engagement in the sport. My Department works closely with Supporters Direct and the Football Supporters Federation, and will of course continue to do so.
Stephen Doughty
I thank the Minister for her answer. I should like to put on record my membership of the Cardiff City Supporters Trust and the Cardiff City Supporters Club. Given the importance of emblems, colours and club names to national heritage, what consultations does the Minister think should take place as a matter of course with supporters’ representatives if any changes to those elements are proposed? Does she think that that should form a key part of future licensing arrangements for football clubs?
Mrs Grant
The role that supporters play is critical, and I am encouraging the football authorities further to develop their relationships with supporter groups. As the hon. Gentleman knows, financial support is made and supporter liaison officers are in place. The offer of secretariat support for the expert group that I have mentioned is also a welcome move, but more needs to be done.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
5. What assessment she has made of the desirability of changes to the funding basis of the BBC.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
No assessment has been made at this stage. The review of the BBC’s charter will be the appropriate juncture at which to consider all aspects of the BBC, including how it is funded. We have not yet set out proposals for the timing, scope or process of the charter review.
Mr Sheerman
Does the Minister agree that, despite the BBC’s annus horribilis over the past year, the licence fee has delivered the finest broadcasting company in the world, and that we should defend it? Could we have a “fit and proper person” test for the chairman of the BBC? Is it not time that we had fresh leadership at the BBC?
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
The BBC is for ever telling us that the licence fee represents excellent value for money. If that is the case, does the Minister agree that it would have nothing to fear from moving to a voluntary subscription arrangement? Presumably, everyone would be queuing down the street to pay their subscription, if it provided such excellent value for money. We certainly do not need the criminal law to force people to pay it.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Despite its disadvantages, the licence fee remains a good way of funding the BBC. Of course no one wants to see 50 people go to prison each year for non-payment, but given the financial implications of decriminalisation, this is clearly a matter to be considered alongside the other funding issues at the time of the royal charter renewal. Will the Minister therefore confirm that the Government will reject new clause 1 to the Deregulation Bill, tabled by the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen)?
Mr Vaizey
My Secretary of State is on record as saying that this is an idea that needs considering, although I do not want to get ahead of myself, because there is a question on the matter further down the Order Paper. She is also on record suggesting that the best way to consider it is as part of charter review.
Mr Speaker
The Minister may not have long to wait for the question that he anticipates.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
11. Does the Minister agree that any change to licence fee enforcement would go against the coalition agreement of 2010, which committed to a full financial settlement for the BBC up to the end of 2016-17, given that it has been estimated that the amendment, if passed, could cost the BBC £200 million a year in revenue?
Mr Vaizey
My hon. Friend illustrates the point perfectly. There are many complicated issues surrounding the debate that has started about decriminalisation of non-payment of the licence fee. It is important that all those factors are taken into account, which is why the Government’s position is that it is perhaps better to do so during charter review.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
6. What assessment she has made of the social and economic effects of betting shops in areas with high levels of deprivation.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mrs Helen Grant)
The Government continue to examine the relationship between area deprivation and the impact of betting shops as part of our ongoing review, which will report later this spring.
Alex Cunningham
Many of my constituents and I enjoy watching football and other sports on television, but we are sick and tired of betting ad after betting ad during every event under the sun. Coupled with the increasing number of bookie shops in communities, that is driving betting culture, particularly among young people, who are promised an easy fortune but do not get it. Will the Government do anything to cut the advertising and this escalation of betting promotion to protect our communities into the future?
Mrs Grant
The hon. Gentleman raises a lot of important issues there, but I can tell him that considerable pressure is being kept on the industry. I met the chief executives of the big five bookies in December and January. We requested and they have complied with strengthened player protections. The Secretary of State has also asked the Gambling Commission to consider tougher and mandated player protections. She has also asked other regulators to review gambling advertising.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
15. Given that more money is staked on the national lottery than is staked in betting shops across the nation, is that not a much bigger threat to deprived communities? Is it not better to have a betting shop on the high street than an empty shop, which is often the challenge?
Mrs Grant
My hon. Friend needs to remember that betting and gambling are safe activities. Betting is legal and is enjoyed safely by many millions of people up and down the country. We just need to ensure that those who are vulnerable are properly protected. This is what the Government are determined to do.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
What analysis have the Government made of the link between betting shops and the explosion of payday loan outlets on our high streets?
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Having stood shoulder to shoulder with the betting industry, the Government have been forced into a series of humiliating climbdowns in the Lords on virtually everything that we have been telling them that they must do—review of pre-watershed advertising, regulating spread betting, one-stop shop for self-exclusion and adopting the code of the Association of British Bookmakers as mandatory, having told us that that was unnecessary. I wonder whether the Minister ever feels that she is in office, but that we are running her Department. I have another instruction for the Minister: give councils the powers that they are calling for to limit the number of fixed odds betting terminals in their areas. Are the Government on the side of local people or of the betting industry?
Mrs Grant
I am staggered by the shadow Minister’s statement. He complains about the number of bookies on the high street and about the proliferation of FOBTs, yet it was his Government’s Gambling Act 2005 and liberalisation over 13 years—their relaxation of the rules—that put the country in the position that we are in now. I am afraid that I will take no lessons from him.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
7. What steps she is taking to increase women’s participation in sport and physical activity.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mrs Helen Grant)
Our £1 billion youth and community sport strategy is delivering new ways to help women and girls develop a sporting habit for life. We have invested £2.3 million in a year-long pilot in Bury looking at ways to break down the barriers to female participation. I am glad to tell the hon. Lady that the pilot is producing some very good results.
Heidi Alexander
Back in February, the Minister made some remarks about the fact that different types of women may be attracted, or not attracted, to different types of sports and physical activity. Although I agree with the general point she made, I was worried by her simple characterisation of some sports as “feminine” and others as “unfeminine”. Does she regret her choice of words? Does she accept that many women would see her remarks as simply some sort of throwback to the 1920s?
Mrs Grant
I caution the hon. Lady about believing everything she sees and reads in our newspapers, and I am a little surprised at her question. Nevertheless, I am happy to provide clarification by saying to her what I said to the press: we should be listening to what our women and girls want, and we should be giving it to them. We should not be prescriptive, but we should be listening. As a sportswoman myself, I believe that there is a sport out there for everyone. In addition, I think our sports governing bodies need to work harder and be even more innovative in attracting women. We also need to share best practice so that other sports can learn lessons from sports, such as boxing and netball, that are doing particularly well in attracting women.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
Will the Minister join me in congratulating the Kent FA on its highly successful Goals for Girls event held in my constituency last Saturday and Sky Sports on covering it live? Is that not an example of how broadcasters should be showcasing women’s and girls’ sport, encouraging them to participate in all sorts of physical activity?
Mrs Grant
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and I know that a considerable amount of football activity takes place in her neck of the woods. While she was attending her event last Saturday, I was attending a girls under-15s international in Maidstone, where England won 8-0. On her point about the media, if we want to see more women in sport and an increased profile of them, we need the media to do more. The BBC and Sky have upped their game since the last Olympics, with individuals such as Barbara Slater doing a lot more.
Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that we should take this opportunity to place on the record our great thanks to our successful Olympians and Paralympians in Sochi, particularly Lizzy Yarnold and Jade Etherington? This should be used to encourage more women to reach the top of their chosen sport.
Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)
8. What support the Government are providing for PE and recreational sport for people with limb loss; and if she will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mrs Helen Grant)
Since this Government came to power, an extra 200,000 disabled people are playing sport on a very regular basis. Through Sport England, we are investing £170 million to improve sporting opportunities for those with disabilities, including limb loss.
Alison Seabeck
Given the success of our Paralympians in both the summer and winter games, and the inspirational effect they have on young amputees, does the Minister share my concern that NHS England is supplying either a sports limb or a standard limb to young people, thereby restricting their capacity to compete or take part in recreational sport? Will she agree to talk urgently to her colleagues in the Department of Health about that, because it is having a serious impact?
Mrs Grant
I am certainly very happy to take up the matter that the hon. Lady raises. Increasing participation in sport for disabled people is a key priority for this Government and for Sport England. There is still an unacceptable gap between the numbers of disabled and non-disabled people doing sport, and we need to make sure that the gap closes.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that skiers such as Kelly Gallagher and our Paralympians are a fine example of what everyone can achieve in this country?
Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)
9. What recent discussions she has had with social media companies on tackling online antisocial behaviour.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
I chaired a meeting with social media companies on 13 February to discuss measures to protect people when they are online. We confirmed our position that social media companies should respond quickly to incidents of abusive behaviour on their networks and ensure that they have measures to protect users. We intend to continue to work with industry on those issues.
Mr McKenzie
We have continually called on the Government to introduce legislation to deal with the epidemic of cyber-bullying that we are witnessing, so why do they not make it an offence in its own right?
Mr Vaizey
Working with social media companies in a flexible, responsive way is the best way forward. We have covered a whole range of issues, including age and identity verification, the reporting of abuse, adjudication, auditing, filtering and funding; we can cover all of those comprehensively and flexibly through dialogue.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Adam Simmonds, the police and crime commissioner for Northamptonshire, is determined to tackle online crime, and particularly the issue of child victims. He set up a child exploitation prevention team, which is a national lead pilot. Will the Minister work with colleagues in the Home Office to ensure that Government funding for such pilots can be directed at local police forces, and not just at regional or national crime agencies?
Mr Vaizey
I will certainly bring my hon. Friend’s concerns to the attention of the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims; in fact, this afternoon, he and I will chair the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, which brings together a range of stakeholders to talk about these issues.
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
10. What discussions she has had with FIFA and the Football Association on the rights of migrant workers in Qatar employed in preparations for the 2022 World cup.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mrs Helen Grant)
While there have been no direct discussions with the FA or FIFA, the Government have regular discussions with the Qatari authorities on issues including human rights, and welcome their pledge to investigate the treatment of migrant workers.
John Mann
May I suggest that the Minister pulls her finger out and starts raising this issue? The football industry seems far more concerned about the weather during the World cup than the fact that hundreds of Nepalese and Indian workers have died constructing the sites. Even more grotesquely, perhaps, those who get seriously injured are left financially destitute precisely because they are injured. Will the Minister raise this issue properly, as the Government should?
Mrs Grant
Indeed, the issue has been raised by colleagues in the Foreign Office, but we will of course continue to encourage the Qatari authorities and other interested parties to do more. We need to make progress on improving the living and working conditions of migrant labourers. Of course, we stand ready to support those efforts where we can.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
12. What information her Department holds on the number of local newspapers that have closed since May 2010; and what steps she plans to take to support such newspapers.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
The Department does not hold that information, but our local press plays an incredibly valuable role in local communities, and we appreciate the challenges facing the sector. We have a number of policies to support local newspapers.
Nic Dakin
I thank the Minister for his answer. Does he have a view on the number of local papers that have, like the excellent Scunthorpe Telegraph, since May 2010 moved from being daily newspapers serving their community to being weekly newspapers serving their community? What impact does that have on communities?
Mr Vaizey
I understand that the Scunthorpe Telegraph has made that move and that, as a result, its circulation has gradually risen by a small amount. The Government have restricted the amount of local papers that councils can put out, relaxed media ownership rules, and continued to have statutory notices in local papers, so we do want to support local papers where we can.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
Is not one of the big tragedies resulting from the loss of local newspapers the impact on journalistic training and the quality of scrutiny of our councils? Is the Minister having discussions with colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government about this important matter?
Mr Vaizey
I acknowledge the hon. Lady’s point that we rely very much on the quality of local journalism to hold local councils to account, and it is important that, where possible, savings are made and money continues to be invested in local journalism. My local newspaper group, which publishes the Oxford Mail and the Herald, tries to invest as much as it can in local journalism because it recognises that that is what sells its papers.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
13. What steps she is taking to support contemporary arts. [R]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
The Arts Council invests funding to nurture and champion talented artists across the country. Over the life of this Parliament, this Government are investing nearly £3 billion in the arts.
Sarah Champion
The film maker, Steve McQueen, learned his craft with the support of small-scale contemporary arts organisations, as do the majority of our artists. Does the Minister agree that for our internationally regarded arts scene to flourish, grass-roots contemporary arts organisations need the security of Government funding to maintain the significant contribution that they make both to our economy and to our culture?
Mr Vaizey
I certainly do, and I am pleased to see the amount of funding that is going to the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, which the hon. Lady used to run. Further to my earlier reference to my visit to Thurrock, I was delighted to see the new artists’ studios that have opened there to support artists from the local area.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
I have already mentioned in passing the £250 million superfast extension programme and our European pre-eminence in all matters broadband. Since we last met, we have published our spectrum strategy, and both the Secretary of State and the Sports Minister have travelled to Sochi to support the extremely successful Team GB, which had the best results in any winter Olympics for 90 years.
Kate Green
Trafford Park in my constituency is due to be connected to superfast broadband as part of the Greater Manchester rural broadband programme, which is vital for the many businesses located on the park. What can the Minister do to ensure that the programme remains on track so that every business in priority areas of economic growth is connected following the completion of the BDUK programme?
Mr Vaizey
I will strain every sinew to ensure that the programme remains on track. That is my pledge to the hon. Lady and I am pleased to say that our programme is now ahead of schedule, that BT has completed its £2.5 billion commercial roll-out and that we have the best broadband of the big five in Europe.
Mr Speaker
The Minister’s endeavours will be a challenge to the most vivid of imaginations.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
T2. In Macclesfield, we are rightly proud of our rich silk heritage, which will be highlighted during the 200th anniversary of our Sunday school building, which is part of the Silk Museums Trust. With that in mind, will my hon. Friend tell the House what steps are being taken to celebrate the heritage of our traditional craft industries?
Mr Vaizey
Of course I can. My Department works with the Heritage Crafts Association and other bodies on the Craft Industry Board set up by creative and cultural skills to support the economic growth of the craft sector. I am also delighted that the craft sector has been chosen as one of the groups in the second phase of the apprenticeship trailblazers and that, at the end of last year, we managed to list at grade I the Queen Street Mill in Burnley, which is a late 19th-century textile weaving mill. I thank my hon. Friend for that question.
Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)
It is the right of each and every child to have the experience of, and opportunities in, culture and the arts, and it is important for our economy too. So it is of great concern that at GCSE, fewer children are sitting art and design. Music is down 9% and drama is down 13%, and we see the same happening in A-levels. How can we nurture the next generation of talent and how can young people fulfil their potential as human beings and engaged citizens, never mind their creative potential in the arts, if they do not have the chance in school? Does the Secretary of State’s assertion that the Government are making great strides to ensure that the arts are a central part of every child’s education not sound increasingly out of touch?
Mr Vaizey
I met the Minister for Schools only this week to discuss the success of our cultural and music education plans. We are the first Government to introduce a national music education plan. We set aside hundreds of millions of pounds to create music hubs, to extend the In Harmony scheme and to support the teaching of music in schools. The Secretary of State for Education has, through his own personal initiative, supported initiatives such as Shakespeare in schools and heritage schools, and the Arts Council has its bridge organisations. There is a lot going on in cultural education and in music education, and I urge the right hon. and learned Lady to have a look.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
T3. Does the Minister agree that the BBC’s duty to provide fair and impartial coverage needs to reflect the views of the many people who question the so-called consensus on climate change and that the BBC must stop acting like the public affairs department of Friends of the Earth?
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
T5. Power sellers are purchasing thousands of tickets to top musical and sporting events online within seconds and selling them on minutes later for massive mark-ups. What are the Government doing to stop this distortion of the market and to stop fans being ripped off?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mrs Helen Grant)
We do not have any plans to introduce legislation, which is what I am constantly asked about. We want all the various organisations and events as well as everyone else connected with ticketing to look at the facilities that are available and I am confident that that will happen so that people can enjoy events in the right way and access tickets at a fair and reasonable price.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
T4. In a few weekends’ time, Tamworth council will hold its 10th St George’s day festival, which is a great day out for all the family and a boon to local businesses. Feel free to come along, Mr Speaker, if you wish. Will my hon. Friend support that initiative and encourage other local authorities to follow Tamworth’s lead, which makes the best use of our heritage assets and encourages local people to take a greater interest in the local history and traditions?
Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
T6. The Minister responsible for the arts will, I am sure, be aware that the critically acclaimed film “Under the Skin”—which, incidentally, had its UK premiere at the excellent Glasgow film festival last month—was one of a number of UK co-productions in recent times. What assessment has the Department made of the impact of precluding co-productions from funding through the enterprise investment scheme on the British film industry?
Mr Vaizey
The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting point. We support co-production across the world and have signed many co-production treaties over the past three years. I am not quite clear how those treaties are inhibiting the creation of British films; I rather thought they were supporting them. If he wants to write to me in greater detail, I will respond more fully.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
T8. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Following the Minister’s January meeting with the Tourism Alliance, she was keen to secure a cross-Departmental council with the aim of boosting Government action to boost tourism growth. Will she advise the House on what progress has been made in setting up that council?
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
T7. Many of my constituents are concerned about the advertising of gambling through broadcast media, particularly at times when children and young people see it—that is, the kind of advertising that makes it seem easy to win big money very quickly. What steps is the Minister taking to tackle that problem?
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
Wiltshire council has more than met the match-funding requirements for Government support for broadband so far. I welcome the superfast broadband extension programme, but will the Minister assure me that that early commitment will count in favour of the council and not against it when the Government seek match funding for the latest scheme?
Mr Vaizey
We want councils to match fund the money we have put up for the superfast broadband extension programme, as it is important that they are involved. I recognise the amazing work that has been done in Wiltshire, and I have visited to see the work being done on broadband roll-out. I hear what has been said.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
My constituents are concerned about the impact a third betting shop will have on a small geographical area in Formby, and they are amazed that there is nothing that they or their councillors can do to prevent that shop from opening. Will the Minister listen to people up and down the country who are concerned about the impact of too many betting shops and will she allow local communities the powers to prevent the spread of such shops?
Mrs Grant
I always try to listen. These are important issues. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that local authorities have good powers at their disposal to control the location and number of betting shops through article 4 directions and use of their licensing conditions, but of course I shall continue to listen.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
According to the recent health survey, the only two forms of gambling in which the poorest people are more likely to participate than the richest people are bingo and scratchcards. Given that fact, can the Minister justify allowing 16-year-olds to buy scratchcards when for any other form of gambling the minimum age is 18? Will she review that urgently and ensure that buying scratchcards is something that can only be done by 18-year-olds?
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
1. What assessment he has made of the cumulative effect of the Government's policy programme on disabled people.
Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab)
3. What assessment he has made of the cumulative effect of the Government's policy programme on disabled people.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
6. What assessment he has made of the cumulative effect of the Government's policy programme on disabled people.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mike Penning)
The Treasury regularly produces analysis of the cumulative impact of coalition changes, including welfare. However, even independent bodies such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies do not feel that results can be broken down reliably for the disabled community.
Alex Cunningham
In my Stockton North constituency, 860 disabled people have been referred to the Work programme, but only 60 have found employment as a result. Does the Minister agree that a 7% success rate is appalling? What will he do to ensure that Work programme contractors provide greater specialist support for disabled people to help them into work instead of abandoning them?
Mike Penning
There was only one Government who abandoned disabled people on the Work programme and that was the previous Administration, and that is the truth. We will not allow that to happen. We will work very closely—[Interruption.] Opposition Front Benchers can try to shout me down, but it is the truth, and everyone knows it is the truth. Yesterday I was in Leeds where we talked to employers, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, to give them the confidence to employ people with disabilities and long-term illnesses.
Sandra Osborne
The Government finally seem to have woken up to the scale of the problems that Atos has in delivering the work capability assessment. Why then has it been awarded the personal independence payment contract when it is clear that it has such serious capacity problems?
Mike Penning
We are doing something to address the Atos WCA contract that the previous Government brought in. We are working with it to get it out of that programme, because we are not happy with the quality. We will work with it and Capita in ensuring that PIP produces exactly what it needs to do.
Nia Griffith
A disabled constituent of mine, in common with many others, has been called in four times for assessment by Atos and had his entitlement docked. He has gone to appeal, had a successful result, and had it reinstated four times. Will the Minister talk to his colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions about setting a limit on the number of times that Atos can call in people for a reassessment in any given period? It is a total waste of public money as well as causing immense distress to constituents.
Mike Penning
That is exactly what I have been looking at. In particular, I have been looking at tribunal cases, as we have a backlog of cases on the WCA, the policies before PIP and the disability living allowance. I am looking carefully at what is happening. Some can actually go for up to 10 years. That is what I intend to do for people who are desperately in need of the benefit, so that they are not called in as much as they are now.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that it is really important that everyone in this country can fulfil their potential and do really well in the workplace? To that end, what is being done to engage employers and help disabled people do really well in business?
Mike Penning
As I have said, we have a programme going round the regions at the moment—it was started by the Prime Minister in London—to give employers the confidence to take on employees and to break the myth that it is more expensive and more difficult to employ disabled people or people with long-term illnesses. We all know that they will give more loyalty, dedication and commitment than anyone else in the work place.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
I welcome the written statement from the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), that discretionary housing payments can be made available for long-term or indefinite periods for disabled people. Will the Minister ensure that that applies across the board so that people do not have to keep being reassessed when there is no realistic prospect of them recovering?
Mike Penning
That is exactly what I am looking at now, as I alluded to in my answer to the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith). We want to ensure that when someone has gone to appeal and won at the tribunal, they are not called back in, because there is a suspicion that that is vindictive. We will ensure that that does not happen.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
The introduction of personal independence payment requires applicants to complete a demanding form—I am sure that the Minister would call it rigorous—so what assistance is his Department providing to people who are blind or partially sighted in completing the paperwork?
Mike Penning
PIP is replacing disability living allowance, less than 6% of the recipients of which ever had a face-to-face assessment. At the moment, around 90% to 95% of claimants are being called for a face-to-face assessment, which is much too high, and we will bring that down as much as possible. We are working with the relevant lobby groups, particularly the Royal National Institute of Blind People, to ensure that the information is available in a way that can be used across the board.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
This morning I received a letter from my constituent Tracy, a distressed and house-bound disabled woman who put in a claim for PIP last August but is still waiting for a home visit. She has been told that she might have to wait another six months. It is yet another example of how disabled people are being failed. What is the Minister going to do about it?
Mike Penning
People are waiting too long for PIP assessments, partly because of the number being called for face-to-face assessments—between 90% and 95%— which is much too high. The policy was for that to be about 70%, so I think that it could be reduced further. We are looking carefully at whether it is absolutely necessary for that number of people to be called for assessment. When a face-to-face assessment is not needed, PIP will be granted without it.
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
2. What assessment she has made of the effect of Government policies on occupational gender segregation.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities (Jenny Willott)
We asked the Women’s Business Council to look at how we could tackle the barriers women face in the workplace and when choosing a career. It published its recommendations in June last year, and we are working closely with businesses and across Government to turn them into reality.
Bridget Phillipson
It is worrying that the number of female apprentices has dropped, and much more needs to be done to attract women into traditionally male-dominated sectors, such as engineering and manufacturing. When will we see some progress from the Government on that?
Jenny Willott
The Government are very proud of our record on apprentices. Over this Parliament we are funding a quarter of a million more apprenticeship places. In fact, more girls and women are taking up these opportunities than boys and men, particularly at the higher levels, where over 60% of apprentices are women. There is an issue with the proportion of women taking up more traditionally male apprenticeships, which is something I will be taking up with the Minister for Skills and Enterprise, my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock).
Women in Public Life
Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)
4. What initiatives she has taken to enhance opportunities for women in public life.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities (Mrs Helen Grant)
The Government have enabled political parties to use positive action, should they so wish, to increase participation by under-represented groups. We have extended to 2030 their ability to use women-only shortlists. We have also set an aspiration that 50% of new public appointments should be filled by women by the end of this Parliament.
Mr Burns
Does my hon. Friend accept that it was a Conservative, Mrs Pankhurst, who campaigned for votes for women; that it was the Conservative party that gave all women the vote; that the first woman to take her seat in this House was a Conservative; and that it was the Conservative party that provided this country’s first woman Prime Minister? We will take no lessons from others about our commitment to enhancing opportunities for women. As I am sure you will appreciate, Mr Speaker, the Unites States will have an opportunity in two years’ time to elect a woman as their next President—Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Mrs Grant
Yes, my right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Our party has a proud record on all these areas. However, we recognise that we are on a journey and that it is far from complete. It is therefore very important that all parties continue to prioritise that very important issue.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
I wonder whether the Minister can help me. Since 3 February I have been asking various Government Departments about the gender breakdown of public appointments they make and which ones are paid. All the Departments consistently refer me to a table published by the Cabinet Office that makes no reference to which roles are paid. Will she ensure that we know how many women appointed to public office by this Government are paid and how many men similarly appointed are paid?
Mrs Grant
I know that this is an important issue for the hon. Lady and that she raised it during the international women’s day debate. The Government have a very good record on public appointments. I will do my best to find that information for her. I am aware that she has made a freedom of information request. If she does not receive an answer in the next few weeks, I shall be very happy to look into the matter further.
Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)
Will the Minister join me, and I am sure many hon. Members in this House, in congratulating Boni Sones OBE on her achievements in founding and running Women’s Parliamentary Radio? Her work will be archived at the London School of Economics and has led to the book “When There’s a Woman in the Room”. Does the Minister agree that Boni Sones deserves this House’s sincere thanks for encouraging women to participate in public life in the UK and overseas?
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)
Will the Minister join me in condemning the Financial Secretary’s comment this week that there are no women on the Monetary Policy Committee because
“appointments are made on merit”?
Mrs Grant
I am not aware of the exact details of what my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary has allegedly said, but as the hon. Lady has already heard, this party has a proud record in relation to women’s progression. The coalition has driven through a number of policies to promote women and to allow them to develop on merit, and I am sure that that process will continue.
Gloria De Piero
When Labour was in government there was always a woman on the Monetary Policy Committee. Again, I invite the Minister to condemn the comment by the Financial Secretary that
“appointments are made on merit.”
Mrs Grant
It is obviously a matter for the Bank of England to make its own appointments. However, these are issues for everyone: for Parliament and for all businesses. We must do whatever we can to make sure that women progress and get into positions of power, and I am in no doubt that that process will continue if we all work together.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
By maintaining the law that allows the Labour party to use women-only shortlists for selecting its candidates, the Minister must accept that that means either that Labour party selection committees are inherently sexist and turn down the best woman for the job in favour of a man, or that we are not getting the best person for the job in the seats concerned. Can she tell us which one of those it is?
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
5. What steps she is taking to support women in work.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities (Jenny Willott)
There are record numbers of women in work and we are taking strong action to support them, including by extending the right to request flexible working from June this year, introducing a new system of shared parental leave from next April, and supporting families through the new tax-free child care scheme from next October.
Chi Onwurah
For international women’s day last Friday, we held a What Women Want at Work event in Westgate community college. Women from across the constituency raised many issues, including zero-hours contracts, sexism, stereotypes and the minimum wage, but the No. 1 issue was child care and how it prevented mums from going to work and those in work from having children. Will the Minister now back Labour’s pledge to increase free child care for three and four-year-olds to 25 hours?
Jenny Willott
This Government have done a huge amount to improve the child care situation for women in work. We have increased the number of hours that are available free for three and four-year-olds and extended that to more deprived two-year-olds. Under universal credit, we will increase the amount that is refunded for recipients of child care tax credit from 70% to 85%. As I said, from next year we are introducing tax-free child care for parents of children under the age of 12. We are also increasing the number of child care places, and this is having an impact. For example, the cost of child care, particularly after-school child care, is starting to come down in England.
Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)
7. The renaissance in manufacturing, particularly in the car industry, means that there is a skills shortage that could be reduced if more women chose that career path. Will the Minister encourage other companies to act like Jaguar Land Rover, going into secondary and primary schools to advocate such career paths?
Jenny Willott
The right hon. Lady is right. This is very important. The Government are doing quite a lot of work to try to encourage the number of women going into science, technology, engineering and maths. The Government have a project with the Royal Society on diversity in STEM and we are supporting a scheme of STEM ambassadors going into schools to encourage people to take up those subjects. Of the 25,000 ambassadors, 40% are women and 10% are from ethnic minorities, so the Government are doing as much as they can to try to increase the number of women in these areas.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
8. What discussions she has had with her overseas counterparts on steps to promote the role of women in work internationally.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jenny Willott)
We participate in the EU presidency Gender Ministers meetings, which enables us to discuss all the goals in the Europe 2020 strategy and the Beijing platform for action, including women’s employment.
Only yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities spoke at an international event at the Commission on the Status of Women, organised with the Tanzanian Minister of Equalities, specifically to promote women working in the science, technology, engineering and maths industries.
Andrea Leadsom
I thank the Minister for that answer. Although I agree with the Financial Secretary that appointments should be made on merit, does the Minister agree that City regulators’ record on appointing high-calibre women is pathetic, and that if they were to identify those women, that would go a long way to promoting women in work internationally and they would be very good role models?
Jenny Willott
The hon. Lady is quite right. We definitely need to increase the number of women in senior roles, not only in the City and financial institutions but across the country more generally. This Government have done a huge amount of work with Lord Davies to increase the number of women on boards and we are starting to see a significant increase in the number of women in those positions. At the beginning of this Parliament, the figure was 12.5%; it is now more than 20% and we are on target to hit 25% by next year. I agree with the hon. Lady, however, that this is an important issue that we need to tackle.
Business of the House
(10 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Andrew Lansley)
The business for next week is as follows:
Monday 17 March—All stages of the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Bill [Lords], which is a consolidation measure, followed by a motion to approve a Ways and Means resolution relating to the Pensions Bill, followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Pensions Bill, followed by a motion to approve a statutory instrument relating to mesothelioma.
Tuesday 18 March—A general debate on Ukraine, followed by motions to approve statutory instruments relating to combined authority orders, followed by a motion to debate three EU proposals on criminal procedural rights.
Wednesday 19 March—My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will open his Budget statement.
Thursday 20 March—Continuation of the Budget debate.
Friday 21 March—The House will not be sitting.
The provisional business for the week commencing 24 March will include:
Monday 24 March—Continuation of the Budget debate.
Tuesday 25 March—Conclusion of the Budget debate.
Wednesday 26 March—Motion to approve a statutory instrument, followed by remaining stages of the Inheritance and Trustees’ Powers Bill [Lords], followed by, if necessary, consideration of Lords amendments.
Thursday 27 March—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.
Friday 28 March—The House will not be sitting.
I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 20 and 27 March will be:
Thursday 20 March—A debate on the contribution of women to the ordained ministry of the Church of England.
Thursday 27 March—A debate on the seventh report of the Transport Committee on local authority parking enforcement, followed by a debate on the eighth report of the Transport Committee on access to ports.
Ms Eagle
I thank the Leader of the House for announcing next week’s business.
Reports this week have suggested that the House might prorogue at least a week earlier than the recess date the Leader of the House has announced, because there is so little business in the Commons. Will he confirm whether that is the case? If so, why will he not give us some more Opposition days so that we can set out our alternative to this clapped-out, zombie Government?
Last year, Eurosceptic rebels on the Tory Back Benches tried to amend their own Queen’s Speech in order to deliver a referendum on EU membership. In a panic, the Prime Minister was forced into setting an arbitrary date for an in/out referendum, proving that he is desperately trying to manage his own party rather than acting in the national interest. While the Prime Minister is banging on about Europe, Opposition Members are clear that our national interest is best served by remaining in Europe, focusing on tackling the cost of living crisis and providing an in/out referendum should there be a further transfer of powers. Is the Leader of the House expecting his Eurosceptic rebels to attempt to amend the Queen’s Speech again, and if so, what else will the panicking Prime Minister be forced to concede to buy them off this time?
Last week, the Leader of the House was unconvincing when he tried to claim that the Government take account of votes in the Commons, despite the fact that they have ignored more than 20 of them. Later this afternoon, the House will vote for a second time on a Back-Bench motion to end the badger cull. Will he now confirm that if the House again votes to end the cull the Government will abide by the will of the House?
Yesterday, it was revealed that a report on the Work programme that was ready six months ago is being suppressed by Ministers, because its contents would embarrass the Government. The report reveals that nearly 50% of employers found the programme ineffective and criticised the support that participants received. So far, more than £1 billion of public money has been spent on the Work programme, yet people who go through the scheme are more likely to return to Jobcentre Plus than to get a sustainable job. The Department for Work and Pensions is acquiring a reputation for incompetence and cruelty. Given the importance of tackling long-term unemployment and the public money spent on this programme, will the Leader of the House arrange for the Work and Pensions Secretary to make a statement on the serious allegation that the report is being withheld?
When the Chancellor gets to his feet for the Budget statement next week, the British people will wonder why, despite his self-satisfied spin, they still do not feel any better off. In 2010, he predicted that the economy would grow by 8.4%, but it has grown by just 3.8%. In 2010, he told us that he would balance the books by 2015, but we will instead have a deficit of nearly £80 billion. He told us that he would get Britain working, but there are 1 million young people without a job, and under-employment is at the highest level since 1992. He told us that we are all in this together, but he has cut taxes for millionaires, while working people are £1,600 a year worse off and thousands are forced to turn to food banks to feed themselves at the end of the month. It is not a recovery if millions of people do not experience it.
On Saturday, the Deputy Prime Minister told his spring conference, without any sense of irony, that “consistency matters in politics”, so how are the Liberal Democrats doing? On Tuesday, the right hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow) failed to move a new clause in his name in relation to the hospital closure clause in the Care Bill, despite claiming to have led the opposition to it. Despite all the Lib Dem handwringing in public, when it came to it, not one Liberal Democrat voted to remove the draconian ministerial powers from the Bill. At the Lib Dem spring conference last weekend, the hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) said that the new homes bonus was “incoherent”, “unfair” and “absurd”. Who would have thought that he is actually a Minister in the Department responsible for it? The Liberal Democrat party president, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), has called the bedroom tax “wrong and unnecessary”, although the Deputy Prime Minister reaffirmed his strong support for it in the House yesterday. It is clear that what we get with the Liberal Democrats is the rhetoric of Arthur Scargill and the voting record of Mrs Thatcher. It is no wonder they were beaten into fifth place in a by-election last week by the Bus Pass Elvis party. Come the general election next year, we will all just be waiting for the Liberal Democrats to leave the building.
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House for her response. On the date of Prorogation, she is getting a bit confused. We have published the calendar, including the recess dates, which are not changing—Prorogation is not a recess; it is Prorogation—and as she knows, the date of Prorogation is subject to the progress of business.
We are using less time than we expected for two reasons. First, the House of Lords is not insisting on its amendments, but accepting the amendments that are made in this House. As far as the Government are concerned, that is a good thing, because we are securing agreement on Government legislation and consuming less time in ping-pong than would otherwise be the case.
The other reason, which the shadow Leader of the House ought to acknowledge but does not, is that there is a zombie Opposition. Yesterday, the Intellectual Property Bill came forward on Report and Third Reading, and not one Labour Back Bencher spoke. The Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, which is a major piece of legislation, had its Second Reading a fortnight or so ago. Three Labour Back Benchers spoke all day, one of whom was a Labour Whip, hoisted rapidly on to the Back Benches in order to say something.
We have a zombie Opposition who do not have anything they want to say. That deals with the hon. Lady’s point about Opposition days. The days have been allocated, although we will happily talk about the matter. There is nothing else that the Opposition are able to talk about, but they may be able to think up something. However, there were many weeks earlier in the Session when they had the chance to debate the economy and they did not do so. We will have a chance to debate the economy in the Budget debate and we will find out what the position really is.
That will be very interesting, given what has been said in the last couple of days. The shadow Business Secretary said on the “World at One” programme:
“Most of our thirteen years in office we didn’t have a debt, er, a deficit,”—
he was a bit confused about that—
“because we hadn’t had the financial crash.”
That is complete nonsense. The shadow Chancellor said:
“I don’t think Governments should spend money they haven’t got”.
The Opposition are in a parallel universe. They ran a deficit not just in the immediate run-up to the last general election, but from 2002. They did not mend the roof when the sun was shining. They spent money that they did not have. One pound out of every four that they spent went on borrowed money. That was a disgrace, and what was the result? The result was that 7.2% was wiped off the value of the economy of this country. That is the equivalent of £3,000 for every household in the country.
That is why we are pursuing the long-term economic plan, which will no doubt be the centrepiece of the Budget debate that I have announced. We are reducing the deficit that Labour left us, taking 3 million people out of income tax altogether, freezing fuel duty, capping welfare, delivering the best schools and skills for young people, creating more jobs, and backing small business and enterprise. We are doing those things. That is the debate that will matter most in the business that I have announced. It would not be appropriate during the Budget debate to have an Opposition day. The Opposition will have the chance to have their say. Perhaps they will explain why they are in such denial.
The House voted for the European Union (Referendum) Bill by 304 votes to none in this Session. It was not a Government Bill, but a private Member’s Bill. The House knows perfectly well that it was not a coalition commitment. The same principle will apply in the next Session. If the ballot affords it, there will be an opportunity for a Member to bring forward a private Member’s Bill in the same way.
I do not know where on earth Labour is coming from on that issue. The moment the leader of the Labour party got up and talked about it, the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) said that it was a “shoddy compromise”. The Institute of Directors was more or less right when it said that
“the EU has to change, and it makes sense to put such changes to the British people.”
The Government have already put it into legislation that there cannot be a further transfer of powers to the European Union without a referendum and the consent of the people of this country. As a Conservative, I believe that the people of this country are looking not simply to have that but to have a renegotiation of our relationship with the rest of Europe. They want a focus on the things we want to achieve, such as completion of the single market, competitiveness, free trade and working together on issues that matter, while at the same time ensuring that we in this country have greater freedom and sovereignty to decide on issues that we are responsible for, and that do not need to be agreed and delivered through a European Union mechanism. We are clear that an EU referendum for that purpose is necessary, but that is not the same as what the Labour party is offering.
The shadow Leader of the House also asked about the Department for Work and Pensions, but that is a bit rich coming from the Labour party, which every time has left government with unemployment higher than when it came to office. Labour Members are now complaining about my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and a Work programme that has supported 1.36 million people. There are 1.6 million more jobs in the private sector. There are nearly 1.3 million more jobs than when Labour were in office. For a Department that is concerned with getting people into work, that is a record of which it can be proud.
Mr Speaker
Order. As always, large numbers of right hon. and hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye. I simply remind the House that we have a statement on school funding followed by two statements by Chairs of Select Committees on the reports of those Committees. We then have what I advise the House is a very heavily subscribed debate under the auspices of the Backbench Business Committee on the badger cull. The consequence of all that is that there is a premium on brevity, and I ask colleagues to ask single, short supplementary questions without preamble, and for the Leader of the House to provide characteristically pithy replies.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
May we have a debate in Government time on the operation of the Freedom of Information Act 2000? My right hon. Friend will have seen yesterday’s Court of Appeal judgment, which from my reading seemed clearly to misunderstand what this House and the other place set out in primary legislation. I am glad the judgment will be challenged, but a debate would be helpful so that the House can fully understand who makes the law—this place, or judges.
Mr Lansley
I agree with my hon. Friend that it was a disappointing decision, and the Government will appeal it in the Supreme Court. We have been clear that preserving the confidentiality of communications between the Government and the heir to the throne is an important principle to be protected. Indeed Parliament endorsed that approach when it passed the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, amending the Freedom of Information Act. The case obviously relates to earlier papers, but the House is clear about that principle.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Humberside police has the highest number of child rapes reported to it of anywhere in the country, with 176 cases reported last year, alongside 193 adult cases. The Ministry of Justice has cut funding to the Hull rape crisis centre, and if it closes, people will have to travel 60 miles to Leeds for face-to-face specialist crisis counselling. May we have a debate on the Government’s commitment to rape crisis centres and their secured funding?
Mr Lansley
If I may, I will ask my hon. Friends at the Ministry of Justice to respond to the hon. Lady on that point. She will know of the Government’s commitment to this issue, and in the action plan published on Saturday she will have seen further references to our support for action relating to domestic violence against women and girls, and to issues relating to her point. She will also know that Ministers at the Ministry of Justice will respond to questions on Tuesday if she is in her place.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
May we have a statement on the Government’s position regarding whether the recent environmental statement consultation on HS2 complied with Standing Order 27A? Does my right hon. Friend believe that it could be subject to a complaint?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend, and the House, will have noted that this week it was settled that the assessor appointed by House authorities will summarise the responses to the consultation report to Parliament by 7 April. The Standing Orders Committee has already ruled that the environmental statement is compliant, which I hope will be helpful to my hon. Friend.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
This week a new report shows that an EU-wide target of just 30% of energy from renewables by 2030 would create an extra 500,000 jobs, yet UK Ministers are leading the charge against strong and binding renewable targets. May we have an urgent debate on the number of jobs the UK will miss out on, and on the need for the Government to change their position?
Mr Lansley
I am sure the hon. Lady, if she has not already done so, will read the written ministerial statement on the European Environment Council. The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs both attended and, rightly, pursued ambitious targets. They argued that it is very important for us not to have binding renewables targets, because it is necessary for each country to meet not just the challenge of climate change but supply and security requirements.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I understand that the Prime Minister’s excellent policy to have an in/out referendum by 2017 cannot be introduced as Government legislation, because it is being blocked by the Liberal Democrats. May we have a statement from the Leader of the House next week on whether he would welcome a Back-Bench amendment to the Queen’s Speech asking that the EU referendum be debated in Government time?
Mr Lansley
If I may speak frankly to my hon. Friend, the Government’s objectives are put into the Queen’s Speech—that is what we set out as a Government. On behalf of the Government, I have to say that, if the Government do not agree that there should be an EU referendum Bill, then we do not agree that. I am afraid it is then for the House to decide by other means.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
May we have a debate soon in Government time on the operation of the National Crime Agency? It is not operating in the way it should in Northern Ireland, because of issues in the Northern Ireland Executive, where the nationalist parties are blocking it. Criminal assets cannot be seized in Northern Ireland and there are real dangers for the UK as a whole—it is a national issue. May we have a debate on what the Government are going to do about that?
Mr Lansley
The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point. He will recall our disappointment—and I imagine his—that the legislative consent motion was not forthcoming to enable the NCA’s remit to extend to Northern Ireland. I cannot promise a debate immediately, but he knows that this is a matter of continuing concern to my hon. Friends at the Home Office. We will continue to consider the matter and update the House.
Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD)
High energy prices affect everybody, but the worst affected are those who live in rural areas off gas grid. They are unable to avail themselves of the dual fuel discount and rely on liquefied petroleum gas or fuel oil. May we have a statement from an Energy Minister late next week to set out what will be done as a result of the package that I am sure the Chancellor of the Exchequer will want to announce in his Budget statement to help precisely those people?
Mr Lansley
I understand what my hon. Friend is looking for. I cannot anticipate what my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will say in the Budget statement, and therefore whether there will need to be a statement to follow it, but I will, if I may, draw this matter to the attention of Energy Ministers. They completely understand the point he is making and it has been a matter of discussion and debate in this House. It is something we continue to keep in mind.
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
The Leader of the House has announced that there will be a motion to approve a statutory instrument on 26 March. Will he advise the House on the subject of that statutory instrument?
Mr Lansley
No. That is provisional business and I will announce it next week.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
May I request an early debate, in Government time, to discuss a risk assessment of the Flood Re replacement of the statement of principles? I understand that the Prime Minister is organising a review of many of the exceptions, but it has come to light that leaseholders will not be covered. Leaseholders do, of course, own their own property, and it is unacceptable that their insurance will go up prohibitively and put them in a higher risk bracket that in most likely circumstances they will not be able to afford.
Mr Lansley
I will ask my hon. Friends at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to respond to my hon. Friend on that point. In addition, issues relating directly to this matter are being debated during the House of Lords consideration of the Water Bill, so we may have an opportunity to consider them when the Flood Re provisions come back from the House of Lords.
David Wright (Telford) (Lab)
Businesses in Telford want a link between the M54 and the M6 northbound and the M6 toll road, and are concerned about the fact that the project is being significantly delayed. May we have a statement from a Minister about the plans that are being made?
Mr Lansley
I am very interested in this subject, because I often use, as it were, that road—
Mr Lansley
It is very helpful to have the hon. Gentleman in the Chamber. We would all fall into error without him, would we not? We fall into error with him, actually.
I travel up the M6 on my way to Anglesey on the old Telford road, and it is frustrating not to be able to make the connection between the M54 and the M6. I will speak to my colleagues at the Department for Transport, and I shall be interested to hear what they have to say.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
Will the Leader of the House join me in welcoming the support of the hon. Member for Telford (David Wright) for my campaign for a link between the M6 southbound and the M54? I should welcome a debate on the issue, and I invite the Leader of the House to join me on the new road link at any time.
Mr Lansley
I may have an opportunity to stop over in my hon. Friend’s constituency. When I was last there, I had a very good time.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
Can the Leader of the House explain why the Secretary of State for Education has not made a statement on the raising of the participation age? According to statistics from the House of Commons Library, a significant number of young people have been abandoned and are not in education, employment or training, although the law says that they should be.
Mr Lansley
I think that our proposals for young people are very positive. We have made it clear that they should not be in the position that the hon. Gentleman has described, but I will of course speak to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education so that he can respond to the hon. Gentleman and look into the issue.
Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)
Given the news that the new Jaguar Land Rover engine plant next to my constituency is creating 750 skilled jobs, and Sainsbury’s is creating 200 in my constituency, may we have a debate about the role of volunteers, jobcentres and colleges in the upskilling of employees in their new positions as the economy continues to grow?
Mr Lansley
That is a good point. When we point out, rightly, that 1.6 million more people are in private sector employment, we should bear in mind that that is more than just a big number. A great many specific companies are creating jobs such as those to which my hon. Friend has referred, and that is a very positive development, especially when jobs in this country—such as those being created by Jaguar Land Rover—are a result of successful competition in global markets.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
We learnt today that G4S was repaying more than £100 million following its overcharging for electronic tagging. May we have a statement from the Justice Secretary about this corporate chicanery?
Mr Lansley
I recall that we did have a statement from the Justice Secretary at the time when the failings of the companies concerned were identified. He made clear our determination to secure redress for the taxpayer, and I pleased to say that it is evident that he succeeded in that regard.
Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
May we have a statement on the proposed sale at auction of Wisbech magistrates court? One taxpayer- funded body, the Ministry of Justice, is selling it at a reduced rate because a second taxpayer-funded body, Cambridgeshire police, is refusing to vacate it as a sitting tenant, thus preventing a third taxpayer-funded body, the local authority, from redeveloping the site, and therefore not offering the taxpayer value for money.
Mr Lansley
I know that this matter is important to my hon. Friend’s constituents in Wisbech. The Ministry of Justice negotiated for some time with Fenland district council, which then withdrew its offer. The Ministry decided that sale at auction was the best option, but the auction did not proceed because an offer was received from a local developer at what it considered to be an acceptable market price. It is likely that the sale will be completed imminently, but I have asked the Ministry of Justice whether the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara)—who is responsible for the courts and legal aid—could discuss the issue with my hon. Friend as a matter of urgency, in order to establish the position.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has been kind enough to arrange for the responsible Minister to reply to me on the personal independence payments, where problems are growing by the day—I have more and more cases—but surely the time has now come for the Leader of the House to arrange for the Secretary of State to come here and make a statement on the problems with PIPs and what he is doing to sort them out?
Mr Lansley
I think the hon. Gentleman and the House will be aware that we are making progress with the transition to PIPs and there are clearly issues that have to be resolved to make that happen. I will talk to my hon. Friends at the Department for Work and Pensions and see what further update they can give the House on the progress being made in dealing with those outstanding issues.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
To mark yesterday’s 25th anniversary of the web, Tim Berners-Lee called for a digital Bill of Rights, something my party also called for at its recent spring conference. Will the Leader of the House make sure time is available for such a Bill to be debated, and could he persuade the Queen to include it in her speech?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend will know that I am not in a position to anticipate the contents of the Queen’s Speech.
Mr Lansley
I was interested in what Tim Berners-Lee had to say. My hon. Friend will recognise that it is a legislative challenge to contemplate such a thing, but it is important to understand how we can secure the rights of people using the internet and the protections they are looking for while at the same time making sure that it is the bastion of freedom I think it was always intended to be.
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
Will the Prime Minister be making a statement to the House following his visit to the middle east? If so, does the Leader of the House anticipate that being on Monday or a different day? Secondly, given that debates on the middle east in Westminster Hall are regularly over subscribed, is it not time that the Government put, in Government time, a full day’s debate on the Israel-Palestine question?
Mr Lansley
I am not presently anticipating a statement by the Prime Minister and I do not think it is customary for there to be statements following every visit the Prime Minister makes. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the Prime Minister makes a great number of visits, including substantial numbers of trade missions, as he has to Israel and many other countries, and we do not make statements as a matter of course.
There has been a wide range of debates in Westminster Hall and elsewhere on the middle east, including most recently on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, but so far as the Israel-Palestine negotiations are concerned, I am not aware of the House having had any recent opportunity for a debate. However, he and other Members who seek to have such a debate could of course approach the Backbench Business Committee.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
May we have a debate on science and technology skilling, because over 30% of the 200 businesses I have polled in my constituency were concerned about the science and technology skills of their new recruits? A debate would enable us to discuss how we can improve those skills and help businesses in places like Tamworth, which has an unemployment rate of just 2%, find the resources they need.
Mr Lansley
I agree with my hon. Friend. This is very important. He will recall the initiative just last September of a £400 million fund—£200 million from the Government matched by £200 million from the private sector—for university science departments to develop world-class facilities so that Britain can meet the science industry’s demand for highly skilled young people. In my constituency, only last week recruitment was taking place for the first entry to the university technical college in Cambridge, which is offering courses and places focusing on life sciences training for young people, and similar things are happening in other places. We need these developments, and we are very much aware of the demands coming from industry for those kinds of skills. I hope in Tamworth and elsewhere we will increasingly be able to support the places that are required.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
The Keogh review looked at operations and other procedures that revise or change the appearance, colour, texture, structure or position of bodily features. May we have a debate on why the review makes no mention of the damage, disfigurement and permanent scarring that can result from tattooing and piercing, an area in which there is very little regulation of those without the skills and ability to carry out those procedures?
Mr Lansley
I confess that I have not had an opportunity to look through Bruce Keogh’s review in detail, although I was probably responsible for initiating it. I will look at it, and I will check with the Department of Health as to its position on this and ask it to respond directly to the hon. Lady.
Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)
Given the situation in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, the Leader of the House will be aware that the tourism trade has been affected on the peninsula. May we have a debate on this in Government time? The effect has been devastating over half term, and Easter is nearly upon us. We are going to have to make plans to ensure that everyone in the UK understands that the peninsula is open for tourism and business.
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I am very pleased that the railway line through Dawlish will reopen by 4 April, a fortnight earlier than was previously expected. If an opportunity arises for a debate, I suspect that it is more likely to be on the Adjournment than by other means, but it would be helpful for the Government and for Members to make it clear that the south-west will be open for business, including tourism, this summer.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House answer the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) about the Work programme evaluation report, whose existence was revealed yesterday by “Channel 4 News”? The report apparently points out that people who are out of work on health grounds are getting a particularly raw deal. When will it be published?
Mr Lansley
I confess that I do not know when it will be published, but I will talk to my hon. Friends at the Department for Work and Pensions and ask them to reply to the right hon. Gentleman.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
May we have a statement on the future of children’s heart surgery units? Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming today’s NHS England report, which confirms that the Leeds heart surgery unit is safe and running well?
Mr Lansley
Yes, I will join my hon. Friend in welcoming today’s report. It is important that children’s heart surgery units should be safe, and that any past failings in the standard of care that they provide should be identified and dealt with. This report is not the same thing as the review of the future of children’s heart surgery centres, which was conducted not on the basis that the existing units were unsafe but on the basis of determining how the highest clinical standards could be sustained in the future. That review has yet to be completed by NHS England, but I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health will want to report to the House when that moment arrives.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The number of those needing life-saving organ transplants continues to rise, but the number of donors is staying at the same level. Will the Leader of the House agree to a statement or a debate on this vital, life-saving matter?
Mr Lansley
I am able to tell the hon. Gentleman that organ donation rates have risen by 50% since 2008. There were two reviews under the last Government. Also, transplant rates have increased by 30% since 2008. That is encouraging, and it is partly a result of investment in transplant nurses. As he will know, the relationship between skilled staff and the family at the point at which the question of donation arises is an important one, and I hope that we will be able to make further progress on that.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
As the Leader of the House will know, I have introduced a Bill to increase the maximum sentence for those who cause death while driving while disqualified, from the present two years to 14 years. May we have an urgent statement from the Ministry of Justice on what is being done to address this issue?
Mr Lansley
I cannot promise a statement, but I know that my hon. Friend is concerned about this, and that the Secretary of State for Justice feels very strongly about these issues. He will be answering questions in the House on Tuesday, and perhaps my hon. Friend will be in his place at that time to ask him about this.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
Following the passage of the legislation earlier in the week, will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on the future of district general hospitals? Warrington and Halton hospitals have already lost their vascular services; a review of maternity services is now under way; and nearby Whiston hospital continues to have financial problems. My hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) and I would like some reassurance from the Minister that our local hospital will not have its services downgraded or removed, as we have seen previously under this Government.
Mr Lansley
The legislation passed earlier this week does not threaten district general hospitals. It secures a commitment to the fullest consultation to enable us, if necessary, to reconfigure services on the basis of clinical quality as well as finance. Under the 2009 special administration regime of the previous Government, the process was finance-driven, not quality-driven. I am astonished at the effrontery of the hon. Lady getting up to talk about a vascular services review that started under her Government—as far as I am concerned—and about Whiston hospital, which was one of a number of unsustainable private finance initiative projects put in place by the previous Government. They had no idea where the money was going to come from to pay for that from within the local economy.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
I was recently approached by a constituent who expressed concerns that Plymouth city council is granting planning permissions for pop-up shops to sell what are generally known as legal highs. As my right hon. Friend knows, Plymouth is a university city with 30,000 students in it. I have great reservations about selling these legal highs. May we have a debate on the matter so that we can have a better understanding of what Government policy will be?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. Planning control, as he knows, considers the land use impact of different types of development, but does not generally regulate the sale of particular items inside shops. The Home Office, however, is taking a comprehensive approach to tackling this reckless trade, working closely with the Local Government Association and trading standards. My hon. Friend will be encouraged that the Minister for Crime Prevention has commissioned a review to see how we can enhance our response, including possible legislative responses, alongside better health promotion and education.
Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
This week, sadly, sees the third anniversary of the start of the Syrian conflict, and yet we seem no further forward today than we did a year or two years ago. The international community, including the United Kingdom, bears a heavy responsibility for this. May we have a debate in Government time so that this House can explore all possibilities to start the international community along the course of a peace settlement?
Mr Lansley
We all share the evident sense of deep disappointment expressed by the hon. Gentleman at this third anniversary about how damaging the situation in Syria has been to the people there and to international peace. He will recall that the Foreign Secretary made a statement on Monday, 24 February, which included reference to the situation in Syria and ongoing questions there. I cannot promise a debate at the moment. It is something that is regularly reported to this House, and if time were to be available for a debate at this stage, I know that it is something that the Backbench Business Committee would certainly want to consider.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Recently, a large cargo ship was apprehended by the Israeli navy with a record haul of rockets being transferred from Iran to Gaza. Yesterday, a record number of rockets were launched from Gaza into Israel. Given that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is in Israel for the first time as Prime Minister, may we have a wide-ranging debate on the middle east, including our relations with Israel and the sanctions to be imposed on Iran?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I will not repeat what I said to the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr Love). There are Members throughout the House who might seek to initiate a debate with that broader scope.
Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)
The unmanned level crossing at Smithy Bridge has not worked properly since it was installed. Local people have been inconvenienced, and there is the potential for safety risks. Does the Leader of the House agree that we should have a debate on Network Rail’s ability to manage such projects effectively?
Mr Lansley
I cannot promise a debate immediately, but I recognise the issues. Issues relating to level crossings more generally have come to the fore. Network Rail has a considerable programme of investment. It has been straightforward recently about the failings that have occurred with level crossings and with its approach to the safety concerns expressed about such crossings. I hope that that is changing. If I may, I will take the opportunity to ask my hon. Friends at the Department for Transport about this and ask them to respond to the hon. Gentleman directly.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Has my right hon. Friend seen my early-day motion 1174 about bingo taxation?
[That this House believes that bingo plays an important role in the community; notes that Harlow Mecca Bingo has 54,000 members; further notes that despite being a soft form of gambling, bingo is subject to a gross profits tax of 20 per cent, despite all other forms of gambling being taxed at 15 per cent; and therefore urges the Government to reduce the bingo tax so that it is in line with other forms of gambling.]
May we have an urgent debate, with a full House, so that we can support the 54,000 members of Harlow Mecca Bingo and ensure fair taxation for bingo clubs, in order to boost bingo across the country, to boost employment and to boost prizes?
Mr Lansley
I have seen my hon. Friend’s early-day motion. It is a pity it was not tabled earlier in the Session, as it could have been early-day motion 66—that would have been even better. I will take his question as a further application to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. My hon. Friend will understand that I cannot anticipate what the result will be, but he will of course have opportunities to raise these issues during the Budget debate.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
May we have a debate or a statement on the Highways Agency, particularly the way in which it manages temporary road schemes? Businesses at Tollbar End in Coventry, where there is a three-year scheme, have been badly affected because people have been held up while going to work in the morning. Some businesses have said that if they had known it was going to take this long they might not have invested in Coventry. May we have a statement, and will the Leader of the House get the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill) to respond to the issue, as I raised it with him last week in the Department for Transport?
Mr Lansley
The hon. Gentleman will recall that Transport Ministers will be responding to questions here again next Thursday but, as I wish to be as helpful as I can, I will ask them to respond directly to him about this scheme. Transport schemes often take much longer than we might imagine they would, but it seems that this one has taken a long time.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
May we have a statement on communications by Action Fraud with my constituents, whose cases are referred to it and they then hear nothing?
Mr Lansley
I cannot promise a statement but I will try to make sure that I get an appropriate response from Ministers, particularly if my hon. Friend is able to give me additional details.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
Last Friday, more than 100 women attended my “Labour Listens” event in my constituency. They were deeply concerned about the sexualisation and objectification of women, which is still common in the media, exemplified by The Sun’s page 3. As the Government seem to be struggling to fill their time, may I help them by suggesting that we have a debate in Government time about the sexualisation of women?
Mr Lansley
I am pleased that the hon. Lady was able to celebrate international women’s day with women in her constituency. She raises an important issue. Some of the most damaging effects of objectification of women are evident in some of the violence against women and girls, which of course was the subject of the further action plan that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary published on Saturday. We do not have the immediate prospect of a debate on these issues, but I hope that she recognises that in the sense I have outlined we are addressing some of the abuses that result.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
May we have a debate on banking? In the light of recent events, the House should particularly explore whether The Co-operative Group has
“the ethics of responsibility, co-operation and stewardship”
claimed in 2012 by the Leader of the Opposition or is simply a very badly run institution with appalling corporate governance?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend is right; many Members will be very disappointed by this situation, particularly given that, not very long ago, the Leader of the Opposition was talking about the ethics and responsibility of the Co-op—it is a pity that it came to all this. Many of us have a sense that we are having to deal with so many of the abuses in the banking system in the past. The Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 2013 will be very important in that respect, and I hope that some of the principles that this Government are putting in place for future conduct in the banking system will be fully embraced in the governance of the Co-op.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
All the scientific evidence now agrees that concussion can be fatal, yet the Rugby Football Union, the Welsh Rugby Union, the Football Association, the premiership and the governing bodies of many of the other sports in this country are in complete denial about the danger that is posed to many of their players, particularly young players. I do not want a debate on this, because the danger is too serious; I want the Leader of the House, now that we are getting on so well, to organise, with me, the setting up of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into concussion in sport, so that we can save people’s lives.
Mr Lansley
I cannot offer the hon. Gentleman that. I recognise the problem; obviously, I had a health interest over many years, and on a number of occasions I remember neurologists describing some of the difficulties to me, and I think that some of those doctors have been at the forefront of making the case to some of the sporting bodies that the hon. Gentleman talks about. If I may, I will refer the issue to my friends at both the Department of Health and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to see if they can facilitate a response to his points.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
On Monday, I attended the annual Westminster gathering of the British Association of Leisure Parks, Piers and Attractions, and heard both of its optimism for the future and its concerns. Leisure parks and piers are vital ingredients of our seaside resorts, and the best of them can be found in Cleethorpes. Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate to consider how best the Government can encourage and support our seaside towns?
Mr Lansley
I am very glad that those representing leisure parks and piers were able to be here at Westminster. Those who watch our proceedings in the House sometimes might not realise the sheer volume and extent of interest in what goes on in the Palace of Westminster far beyond the debates in the Chamber. My hon. Friend is right about the issues for coastal towns, which he understands so well. That is why we created the coastal communities fund of £23.7 million in 2012 to help coastal towns and villages provide training and employment opportunities. In August last year, we announced that that fund would be increased to £29 million, and that it would be extended until 2016. That in itself is a manifestation of the Government’s support for the issues that my hon. Friend raises.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
In manslaughter cases in which a single punch to the head has resulted in death, we are seeing absurdly low sentences, as permitted under sentencing guidelines. Obviously, I want much tougher sentences. Will my right hon. Friend agree to give the Chamber the chance to debate this very serious issue?
Mr Lansley
I am interested in what my hon. Friend has to say. I think that the subject may be in the scope of debate on the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill. I encourage him to raise these issues; it is important for Parliament to set out its expectations regarding sentencing guidelines. The Bill will, I hope, be an opportunity for the issue to be debated.
Mr Speaker
Order. I thank the Leader of the House and colleagues for the very timely progress that we made in this session.
School Funding
(10 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
With permission, I would like to make a statement about the action we are taking today to deliver fair funding in English schools.
The school funding system that we inherited is unfair. Previous Governments knew that the system was unfair but failed to act to reform it. For too long, the school funding system has been based on historical data that were out of date and no longer reflected pupils’ needs. That has resulted in a system that is opaque, overly complex, and, frankly, unfair to pupils, parents and teachers.
Sometimes, similar schools just miles apart can be funded at very different levels, merely because they happen to be in different local authority areas. In other cases, schools with many disadvantaged pupils can end up being funded at a level that is well below that of a nearby school in a more affluent catchment. For example, a school in Birmingham in which only 3% of pupils receive free school meals gets higher funding per head than a school in Shropshire in which over 30% of pupils are eligible for free school meals. That unfair and inefficient allocation of funding to pupils stops us making sure that all children get the best possible teaching.
Many right hon. and hon. Members have campaigned for fairness, and the coalition has made it clear that it not only recognises the problem but will act decisively to address it. I pay tribute to the many hon. Friends who have campaigned strongly on the subject for many years: my hon. Friends the Members for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey), for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), for Worcester (Mr Walker), for Norwich South (Simon Wright), for Chippenham (Duncan Hames), for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), for Gloucester (Richard Graham), and for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), and many others.
I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), who tells me that she first raised the issue 13 years ago in her maiden speech. Most of her campaigns deliver success over a shorter time scale. I hope she will be pleased with the announcement today.
We have already made more progress than any recent Government in moving towards a fair funding system. We have made significant progress at a local level, where we inherited an unnecessarily complicated system. Our reforms for 2013-14 and 2014-15 mean that the system is now fairer, simpler and more transparent, with at least 80% of funding now allocated on the basis of the need of each pupil within a school. These local reforms represent a significant step forward, but we now want to make funding fairer at the national level by addressing the distribution of funding between local authorities.
The Government announced in the spending review last summer that they would consult on how to allocate schools funding in a fairer way, and we will now do this. Today I can confirm that in 2015-16 we will take the first huge step towards delivering this fairer national funding. This will be the first time in a decade that funding has been allocated to local areas on the basis of the actual characteristics of their pupils and schools, rather than simply on the basis of historical levels of spending.
Given the importance to schools of stability and certainty in these difficult economic times, we have decided not to set out a multi-year process of converging all local authorities towards a single funding formula. We have concluded that the right time to do this would be when there are multi-year public spending plans, so we can give greater certainty to schools. But the case for action is so strong that we intend to act immediately—I know that the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) will be pleased to hear this—to deliver a substantial £350 million boost to schools in the least fairly funded local authorities in the country. We will be able to achieve this—Opposition Members will welcome this as well—without any local authority receiving a cut to its per pupil schools budget. The extra money will be allocated in April 2015, for the 2015-16 financial year, delivering in this Parliament, and not, as previous Governments have done, talking and then delaying until the future. No local authority or school will lose from this proposal, but around four in 10 areas will gain. We are able to deliver this significant boost by using money from within our protected schools budget and because of additional money from the Treasury. This is only the start of the transition to fairer funding and eventually a national funding formula, but it is the biggest step towards fairer school funding in a decade.
Today, the Secretary of State and I are publishing a consultation on fairer school funding in 2015, and I will explain briefly our proposals in this document. To allocate the additional funding fairly, we are proposing that for 2015-16 every local authority will attract a minimum funding level for every pupil and school. We propose to set a minimum funding level for the basic amount that all pupils should attract; for deprived pupils; for pupils with English as an additional language; for pupils with low levels of attainment on entering school; and for pupils who have been looked after—for example, in foster care. We also propose to set a minimum level of funding that all schools should attract, regardless of size, to help with fixed costs, such as employing a head teacher, and to help smaller schools. I plan to set a minimum level of additional funding that schools in sparsely populated areas that are vital to serving rural communities should attract.
We will also, of course, apply higher funding to certain areas where teacher pay costs are higher. Our consultation document sets out our proposals in full for all the minimum funding levels. Where there is a gap between a local authority's budget and what it needs to meet our new minimum funding levels, the Department for Education will give the local authority additional funding to close that gap in 2015-16. Where a local authority's budget already exceeds what it needs to meet our minimum funding levels, we will not make any change to the amount of per pupil funding that it receives from the DFE. I confirm that no local authority and no school will receive less funding per pupil as a result of these proposals.
The proposals will mean that local authorities that currently receive unfairly low funding, such as Cambridgeshire, will have their funding significantly boosted. Based on the indicative figures set out in our consultation document, Cambridgeshire will see a long-awaited increase to its schools budget of about 7%. That will increase Cambridgeshire’s per pupil funding rate from about £3,950 a year to £4,225, an uplift in 2015-16 of £275 a pupil. Based on current estimates, that equates to a boost of about £20 million for schools in Cambridgeshire. I am sure that the announcement will be welcomed by Cambridgeshire MPs, including the Leader of the House and my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge, and their constituents who have campaigned for many years for further funding.
Cambridgeshire is just one of 60 local authorities that, based on current estimates, stand to gain from today’s historic announcement of an extra £350 million in funding for schools. I can tell hon. Members that by percentage rise the top 15 of the 60 authorities are likely to be Bromley, Cambridgeshire, Brent, Sutton, Northumberland, South Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Merton, Croydon, Bournemouth, Buckinghamshire, Cheshire West and Chester, Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Devon. In addition, areas such as Norfolk would receive an extra £16 million, Derbyshire £14 million and Surrey almost £25 million. Of course, many traditionally low-funded rural authorities are on that list, but hon. Members will want to note that areas such as Blackpool, Brent, Bury and, indeed, Stoke-on-Trent would gain under these plans. I hope that Members on both sides of the House will welcome these announcements.
I know that the plans will certainly be welcomed in many schools across the country, scores of which have been generously funded by the coalition Government at a time of austerity, with a £2.5 billion pupil premium being added to a per pupil budget that is protected in cash terms. We understand, however, that schools, like all public sector organisations, face cost pressures from pay, energy price inflation and the necessary implementation of the proposals of the Hutton report on paying for high-quality public sector pensions. The changes will ensure that the least well-funded schools can now not just deal with such pressures but spend extra money to improve attainment.
The consultation document we are publishing today sets out our proposals in detail. A copy of the document will be placed in the House Library and in the Vote Office. We welcome input and feedback from schools, local authorities and the wider public. I look forward to considering their views before we announce final arrangements for school funding for 2015-16.
Today’s £350 million increase in funding represents a huge step forward towards fair funding in English schools and will make a real difference on the ground. It delivers fairness without creating instability, uncertainty or cuts in better-funded areas. We remain committed to further funding reform once the long-term spending plans are available after the next spending review. I commend the proposals to the House.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for the statement and the small amount of notice we had of its contents.
There are growing pressures on education funding and demographic trends are dictating the need for more school places, with the National Audit Office reporting the need for an additional 250,000 places by next year. That has big implications for the allocation of education funding.
Ministers have shown a degree of complacency in addressing the primary school places crisis. In less than a month, parents will learn the outcome of their application for their child’s primary school place and we know that under this Government we have seen a doubling of the number of classes with more than 30 pupils and—do not worry, I will not take up 1,400 words, as the Minister did—a trebling in the number of primary schools with more than 800 pupils. The pressures are real, which is why it is so alarming that according to NAO data two thirds of all places created by the free school programme are being diverted from areas of high and severe need for primary places. In secondary schools, only 19% of places—[Interruption.] Government Members should listen to this—they should listen with their ears, rather than their mouths. In secondary schools, only 19% of places are in areas of need. That cannot be right, particularly on a day when another free school has gone into special measures.
We have to take any statements on finance from the Schools Minister with a pinch of salt, because he has form. He used to claim when in opposition that the pupil premium would be additional money in real terms for schools, but, as he admitted today in his statement, it is not additional money in real terms. What are the implications of the statement for the pupil premium and for non-local authority schools?
The idea of a national funding formula has merit, but it must be debated openly and transparently. The coalition has said that it is committed to a new national funding formula by 2015-16. Can we assume from today’s statement that this has been filed away in the drawer marked “Too difficult”, and that there will be no new comprehensive funding formula under this increasingly impotent Government?
The Minister claimed that previous Governments did nothing on this. That is nonsense. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that a new national funding formula will have winners and losers. If Ministers are pursuing the national funding formula, they must do so in an open and transparent way and be clear about who will lose out. So can the right hon. Gentleman confirm—[Interruption.] Hon. Members are living in cloud cuckoo land if they think no one is going to lose out. Can the Minister confirm that there are no losers from this announcement because he has decided to leave the bad news for those he intends to hit with cuts, including his hon. Friends who are so voluble, until after the next general election?
If this is genuinely new money for education, it will have a Barnett formula consequential for the devolved Administrations, which I know will be of interest to all political parties in the devolved nations, including the Minister’s own party. Can he confirm that this announcement contains new money from the Treasury, and say how much the Barnett consequential of that new money will be for the devolved Administrations and how much he is taking from his existing budget? It was not clear from his statement how much is new Treasury money, and how much he is cutting from the schools budget to pay for this part of the announcement. I would be grateful if he clarified those figures.
The Minister said in his statement, “We are able to deliver this significant boost by using money from within our protected schools budget and because of additional money from the Treasury.” The House deserves to know how much will come from each source, where the money is being taken from within the protected schools budget and what the Barnett consequentials are. We learned this week that Ministers have been known to put the cart before the horse in devising policy, and only then to think how they might pay for it. Can the Minister assure us that this is fully costed and not simply another botched spending announcement from the Department for Education?
Mr Laws
I am grateful, I suppose, to the hon. Gentleman for his response, but all of us in the House are still none the wiser about whether the Labour party supports the proposals I am announcing today. Perhaps there could be some indication of this from the Labour Front Bench. Do I take it from all those critical comments that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) proposes to send back the money we are going to allocate to Stoke-on-Trent—potentially £4 million to his area? We are unaware from the statement whether the Labour party supports these proposals. Or is the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) genuinely embarrassed that his party failed to deal with the issue of underfunded areas year in, year out, in spite of clear evidence of unfair funding throughout the country?
To come to the points that the hon. Gentleman did make, few of which were about the contents of my statement, I do not know how he has the nerve to accuse this Government of complacency over school place planning, when the amount of money that we are putting into basic need is many multiples of the amount that the previous Government put in. How can he talk about complacency when his was a Government who ignored all the forecasts of the Office for National Statistics from 2003 onwards and were taking out 250,000 primary schools places at a time when the population was increasing? That is behind many of the problems that we face in parts of the country today where Labour was closing down places when it should have been funding them.
On the pupil premium, it is clear that we have protected, in cash terms, the settlement for every pupil, and the pupil premium is on top of that. I invite the hon. Gentleman to go to schools across the country, particularly to those in areas of high disadvantage, and try telling them that this is not extra money. It is making a massive difference in some of the most deprived schools. Furthermore, I can confirm that in 2014-15 the pupil premium will rise for primary schools from £900 to £1,300, and for secondary schools to £935. It will give schools thousands and thousands of pounds extra over a young disadvantaged person’s time in education to improve their educational outcomes, and I am very proud of that.
We have also made it clear that the right time to set out the national fair funding formula is when we have multi-year plans, so we can create a sense of certainty. We are not, as previous Governments did, simply kicking this issue into the long grass. For the first time, we are delivering the uplifts that will make a real difference in areas such as Cambridgeshire and the others that I have mentioned. If the hon. Gentleman wants to campaign on that, he is welcome to do so.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
Gloucestershire is one of the lowest funded local authorities, so the Minister of State’s announcement will be very much welcomed by schools in the Forest of Dean and across the county. Will he set out for my benefit the amount of extra funding that we will get in Gloucestershire? The good news in his announcement can be detected in the fact that there are only eight Labour Back Benchers interested in schools funding. That is a triumph and shows the success of his announcement.
Mr Laws
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. He notes quite correctly that the Labour party does not like to hear good news on this or on any other issue. I can tell him that the news for Gloucestershire is good. The proposals on which we are consulting today would give almost £10 million extra to Gloucestershire schools. They would potentially increase the per pupil funding rate from just over £4,200 per pupil to £4,331. Furthermore, south Gloucestershire is a gainer from these proposals, gaining more than £8.5 million. Its per pupil funding rate would rise from around £3,969 to £4,217, which is a massive increase that will be welcomed by schools in that area.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
Under this Government, changes to local government funding have benefited the wealthiest areas at the expense of the areas of greatest deprivation, especially in places such as Sefton and the other metropolitan boroughs. Can the Minister assure us that the same thing will not happen when it comes to school funding?
Mr Laws
I completely disagree with the hon. Gentleman. If he goes to some of the most disadvantaged communities in the country, he will find that they are extremely welcoming of the Government’s actions, particularly on the pupil premium that has been put into authorities, some of which were already receiving generous levels of disadvantage funding. Schools in many of those areas welcome the action that we have taken as a coalition Government. They welcome the pupil premium, which, because it follows disadvantage, has gone heavily to the areas he is talking about.
Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)
This is welcome news for Cambridgeshire. As my right hon. Friend knows, Cambridgeshire receives less funding than anywhere else in the country. That has been really showing in our schools, which have been reducing their teachers and struggling under this unfair funding formula. In the past 10 days alone, 750 of my constituents have signed a petition calling for immediate support. I ask my right hon. Friend to look kindly on Cambridgeshire when he comes to administering his £350 million pot.
Mr Laws
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend and I compliment him on the work that he and other county MPs in Cambridgeshire have done to raise the issue. I know that there is real anger in Cambridgeshire about the fact that it has been left as such an unfairly underfunded authority for so many years. I hope that schools in that area will welcome the uplift. The increase on which we are consulting would take the per pupil funding in Cambridgeshire from £3,950 to £4,225, which is an increase of around 7%. That is a significant uplift for its schools.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
In my experience, announcements made at the Dispatch Box often sound very fair, but when we look at the detail we find a lot of the devil in there as well. I caution Government Back Benchers to heed those words. Some local authorities are missing out but will receive what is effectively transitional funding. How long will that last? Will they fall off a precipice in 2016 and find themselves severely disadvantaged? What transparency will there be, because it is very important that we are able to scrutinise this, including in relation to capital funding? I am waiting for Corelli college in my constituency to hear from the Education Funding Agency, but it is very difficult to find out by what criteria it is being judged so that I know what to expect when funding is decided. We need more transparency in all cases.
Mr Laws
This is not overnight funding; we intend to address these issues for the long term. On fairness, I just point out to the hon. Gentleman, as I did in my statement, that the funding will help not only underfunded rural areas, but areas such as Brent, Blackpool, Bury and Stoke-on-Trent. On capital funding, if he has concerns about schools in his constituency, I would be happy to meet him to discuss them.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
Cambridgeshire has been underfunded for 30 years now and, at £600 per pupil below the English average, is right at the bottom of the pack. At last this Government are doing something about it, as others have not. On behalf of all those who have campaigned on the issue for so many years, particularly the Cambridgeshire schools forum and Cambridge News, I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister. I urge him to ensure that this actually happens.
Mr Laws
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. We are determined to ensure that these changes take place. I congratulate him on being such a robust campaigner for these changes—hardly a week has gone by over the past few years when he has not lobbied me for fair funding for Cambridgeshire. I know that there are schools in the county that are in vision distance of schools in other authorities that are funded in a totally different way. That was always unfair and we are now addressing it.
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
Currently, schools get the pupil premium based on the number of parents who apply for free school meals. If all children in reception, year 1 and year 2 will get a free school meal in future and parents no longer have to apply, how will the pupil premium be allocated?
Mr Laws
As the hon. Lady will know, that is an issue in places, such as Newham and Durham, where the eligibility checking service is being used to ensure that all those pupils still get the pupil premium. In the medium term, I believe that the answer is to move to a more automatic system so that, rather than having to rely on parents applying, we can ensure that the money is delivered automatically. It should not be necessary for parents to have to apply and for schools in some parts of the country to be so reliant on that process, which often means that they do not get the money they deserve. We will certainly ensure that that issue is addressed as we take these reforms forward.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
Schools and families in Swindon will warmly welcome this announcement. Will my right hon. Friend outline the extent of the increase that schools in Swindon will enjoy and pay tribute to the work of f40—the Campaign for Fairer Funding in Education—and my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), who has worked so hard with many of us on that?
Mr Laws
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his welcome. Swindon is one of the authorities that will benefit from these changes. It currently receives funding of around £4,100 per pupil. Under the proposals we are announcing today, which we will consult on, that will increase by £100 per pupil, delivering almost £3 million extra to Swindon.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
Halton is the 27th most deprived borough in England. Is it a gainer under these proposals? Will it gain as much as, say, Cambridge?
Mr Laws
There are 153 authorities, so I will have to write to the hon. Gentleman on that point. He can also pick up a copy of the details from the Vote Office. Given the level of deprivation, his constituency will be receiving a huge amount of pupil premium funding, which was never received under the Government he supported.
Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
I join my Cambridgeshire colleagues in welcoming this rise, which is much needed by schools in East Cambridgeshire and Fenland in my constituency. Does he agree that parents will not forget the unfair allocation left by the previous Labour Government, which has penalised our schools for the first half of this Parliament?
Mr Laws
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Cambridgeshire parents will not forget the underfunding under the previous Government, and they will also be worried about what would happen if a Labour Government came back in, because there seems to be a complete absence of commitment to these changes on the part of Labour Members.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
It is good finally to get this statement, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) said, the devil will be in the detail in relation to where the money comes from and where it goes to. Given that 16 to 18-year-olds are already funded 22% less than five to 16-year-olds, does this change mean that they will be funded even less, or are they also captured in the concept of fair funding?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. There should be one question and no comments from a sedentary position—not from a Whip.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
For many years, schools in my county of Leicestershire have bumped along the very bottom of the education funding league tables, in stark contrast to schools in Leicester, which get £700 per year per pupil more than the county. I commend the excellent work of the f40 group, ably championed by my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker). Teachers, parents and pupils across Leicestershire will welcome this statement, but will my right hon. Friend assure the House that this is the beginning of a movement towards fair funding, not the end of it?
Mr Laws
I welcome my hon. Friend’s comments. As I made clear, this is the first major step towards fair funding, not the last one that we believe is necessary. He will be pleased to know that the proposals that we are issuing for consultation take per-pupil funding in Leicestershire from £3,995 up to £4,197—an increase of over 5%.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
We have heard much today about fairer revenue funding for schools, but I would like to press the Minister again about fairer capital funding. When I met him in November, he was confident that he had secured enough money from the Treasury to fund the expansion of primary schools in London to meet rising demand, but in Lewisham we are £27 million short if we are to provide a school place for every child between now and 2017. What guarantee will he give me on funding these expansions?
Mr Laws
At the end of last year we announced a massive allocation of capital for basic need right across the country, with an additional premium for London that was very much welcomed by the London authorities. We have allocated for basic need many multiples of the amount that the previous Labour Government did. London has been a huge gainer. We have increased the period of time for which we allocate the money to three years to allow for forward planning. However, if the hon. Lady is still concerned about the situation in her area, I would be delighted to meet her and go through the figures.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
I welcome the statement and note that it has taken a coalition Government to make some progress on fairer funding for our schools. Given that last year, under its current administration, Poole had the worst key stage 2 results across the country, will my right hon. Friend confirm the position for Poole? Does he agree that any extra money that goes to Poole must be put into our schools to support teachers in improving the outcomes for our children?
Mr Laws
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Once again, I praise her resilience in campaigning on this issue throughout the long period of the Labour Administration, who ignored the issue. I am pleased that it is a coalition Government who are proposing to raise the amount of funding for Poole from just over £4,000 per pupil to £4,142, which would give Poole over £2.25 million of additional funding.
Kevin Brennan
The civil service is meant to be independent; this is outrageous.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. If Opposition Front Benchers insist on speaking, it should be sotto voce and not so that the House can hear exactly what the hon. Gentleman has said. He had his go at some length—at sufficient length, in my judgment.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
It is very interesting that the Minister is able to give the allocations that are relevant to Government Members, but not those that are relevant to Opposition Members. Will schools in Hull gain from his proposals?
Mr Laws
I have mentioned many of the authorities represented by Opposition Members that will gain from the proposals, including Blackpool and many other parts of the country. Of the 153 authorities, 62 will gain. I do not believe that Hull is one of the authorities considered to be underfunded. The hon. Lady can check the precise figures in the papers that are in the Vote Office.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
I really welcome the announcement. It is a significant step towards a fairer funding formula, which children in our counties were denied by the previous Government. Labour continues politically to use the education budget for its own areas. I am keen to hear what the announcement will mean for children in Suffolk, if the Minister has that information available.
Mr Laws
Labour Members are making a lot of noise, which reflects their embarrassment at the fact that this was a problem for years under a Labour Government and they did nothing about it. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman does not like to hear good news, but I can give him some more good news for Suffolk, whose funding will go up by more than £9 million, from £4,241 a pupil to £4,347. [Interruption.] I am sorry that Labour Members cannot take this in a measured way or accept that we are doing the right thing to deliver fair funding.
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)
Under the current funding regime inherited from Labour, South Gloucestershire is the second-lowest-funded local authority in the country. I have long campaigned for there to be no difference in funding when it comes to areas of deprivation in Kingswood and in neighbouring Bristol, which—this is desperately unfair—gets £750 more per pupil. May I welcome the massive increase in funding for south Gloucestershire pupils and ask the Minister, on behalf of my constituents, what that will mean for pupils in Kingswood?
Mr Laws
I am happy to confirm the figure that I mentioned a moment ago to another Gloucestershire MP, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper). South Gloucestershire, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) correctly indicates, is one of the areas that have been underfunded for a long time. Under the proposals on which we are consulting, its funding will go up from the current £3,969 per pupil to an indicative figure of £4,217. That 6.3% increase is significant and I know that parents in my hon. Friend’s constituency will welcome it, even if the Labour party does not.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. The whole House heard the hon. Gentleman’s remark from a sedentary position. An apology would be appropriate.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the hon. Gentleman for acting honourably and trust he will now be a little quieter.
Sir Nick Harvey (North Devon) (LD)
May I warmly welcome this significant step in the right direction? An extra £200 per pupil in Devon is a very welcome step. Of course, we still want to see a fair funding formula, but I recognise that the time to do it will probably be next year, when there is a comprehensive spending review. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, in the event of a new Government being elected and not progressing with this next year, the extra moneys he has announced today will go permanently into the system and will not simply be a one-year deal?
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement and on targeting funding towards pupils in the schools that need it most. Will he provide a little more information on the implications for north Yorkshire?
Mr Laws
I can confirm that north Yorkshire is one of the authorities affected by today’s announcement. Its current funding per pupil is £4,338 and, if the consultation goes ahead, it will rise to £4,435. [Interruption.] I am sorry that Labour Members genuinely are not able to accept that this is a serious matter and that some of these areas have been underfunded for many years. In spite of this serious issue, the coalition Government took the decision to apply the pupil premium and add it to many areas that were already very well funded. We took that deliberate decision in the knowledge that that would put deprivation first, and we are now making sure that we also correct this injustice.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
I very much welcome the Minister’s statement. It addresses the unfair funding system for students in Medway, which has some of the worst key stage 2 results in the country. There is a seven-year difference in life expectancy between two parts of my constituency. Will the Minister clarify how Medway local authority will benefit under the proposal? [Interruption.]
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
May I tell my right hon. Friend that this announcement will be warmly welcomed in Cheltenham and across Gloucestershire—including in schools such as Balcarras, whose sixth-form funding has been particularly badly hit by the inclusion of the historical element in the funding formula—but when will we hear further announcements about progress towards a fully fair funding formula, and will that happen within the next 12 months?
Mr Laws
We will now have the consultation on the measures announced today. We will listen to the feedback we get from parents, teachers and others, and we will then make a final decision about the settlement for 2015-16. Given the importance of stability, we do not think it right to fix plans for years beyond 2015-16 until we know the education budgets for those years. It is for the country to decide at the next election whether it wants to return parties that are committed to ongoing funding reform.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
In the London borough of Harrow, 12 primary schools will add an extra class to each year group this September, and a further three primary schools will do the same the following September, which amounts to 3,000 extra school places. One problem is the lag between the pupils being allocated and the funding following them. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that there will be no attempt to reduce the amount of pupil funding in those schools, and that the funding will increase in line with his statement?
Mr Laws
We are certainly trying to ensure that in areas such as my hon. Friend’s we put in extra money to support the expansion of school places that is taking place. As he knows, we have now had the biggest increase in the primary population since the end of the second world war, and we are making sure that we put all funding, including capital funding, into the system to support that increase.
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend confirm that had the funding criteria been in place a few years ago, the Labour county council would not be shutting down Skerton school in my constituency?
Mr Laws
Certainly. We are announcing significant amounts of money today. Hon. Members on both sides of the House need to reflect on the consequence for many millions of young people over a long period of the fact that their schools were not funded fairly in many parts of the country.
Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
I thank my right hon. Friend for the announcement about basic needs capital earlier this year, including the £35 million to enable Sutton to provide extra secondary school places. In his statement, he mentioned Sutton as one of the potential beneficiaries of the changes. Sutton has been short-changed in funding for education for at least 30 years, if not 40 years. Will he give us some indication of the good news that pupils, teachers and schools in Sutton can now expect in securing extra resources for teaching?
Mr Laws
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for welcoming this announcement. In the paper on which we will consult, Sutton is among the top five authorities that we consider to be under-funded and is therefore among the top five beneficiaries. He will know that the funding rate in Sutton is £4,360 at present; under the proposal we are consulting on, it will rise to £4,637, which is an increase of 6.4%.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the combination of fairer area funding, the pupil premium and the protection of the overall schools budget amply demonstrates the Government’s commitment to investing strongly in our nation’s future, while targeting additional resources transparently at the places where they are most needed?
Mr Laws
I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. I am incredibly proud of what we will have done on school funding by the end of this Parliament. At a time of austerity, we have put a massive amount into deprivation funding, which has helped constituencies across the country and the most disadvantaged areas in particular. Now we are dealing with the long-standing injustice of other areas having been short-changed.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
I welcome the movement, at last, towards fairer funding. I also welcome the additional amount for Stoke-on-Trent—a city that is close to my heart, as well as to my constituency. Will the Minister expand on what today’s announcement will mean in the long term for my county of Staffordshire?
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
Wyvern college in my constituency is one of many Wiltshire schools that has been historically underfunded. Will the Minister meet me to discuss its 10-year deficit? On a more positive note, will he outline the additional per pupil funds that will be available to all Wiltshire schools as a consequence of today’s announcement?
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
Like other Members, I welcome this important step to put right, in the case of Cornwall, more than three decades of unfair funding. That has left a legacy of crumbling schools that have simply not kept up. My right hon. Friend knows about Helston community college, because I took a delegation to see him about it. Will the fairness that is being brought in be reflected in future announcements on capital funding?
Mr Laws
I assure my hon. Friend that we will bring fairness to capital as well as to revenue funding. Under the last Government, capital for maintenance and rebuilding was allocated largely on the basis of pupils, rather than on the basis of the condition of the estate. We are surveying the entire school estate. That will allow us, later this year, to make long-term announcements on capital that are informed by the actual condition of schools across the country.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
When I started campaigning on this issue in 2008, Labour said locally that I was trying to steal money from neighbouring urban areas. Even after this announcement, neighbouring urban areas such as Hull and Doncaster will receive hundreds of pounds more per pupil than my area to meet the additional needs in those areas. I welcome the announcement. Will the Minister tell us how much extra brass we will be getting in the East Riding of Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire as a result?
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
This announcement, along with the pupil premium and free school meals for poor pupils, shows that the Government have a relentless focus on the poor. When the Minister says that funding will be based on the actual characteristics of pupils and schools, does that relate to areas within counties and not just to counties? Will he set out how the proposals will help my constituency of Harlow?
Mr Laws
I should explain that what the Government will do under these proposals is to ensure that each local authority area is funded fairly. There will still be flexibility for individual local authorities to take decisions about how they allocate that money to their schools.
Simon Wright (Norwich South) (LD)
I welcome the proposals, which could mean several million pounds of extra funding for Norfolk schools. Will the Minister confirm that heads will have the freedom to use this money to support the professional development of teachers and to assess more effectively the impact of training on pupil outcomes?
Mr Laws
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support. He has been a robust campaigner for fairness for Norfolk. He is right to say that we must focus not only on the quantity of additional money that is going to areas such as Norfolk, which will get £16 million extra under our proposals, but on ensuring that the money is spent effectively. I believe that providing high-quality continuing professional development for teachers would be a good way of spending it.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
Will the Minister join the tributes to my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) who, ironically, cannot be here today but has done incredible work over many years on this issue? Will he also confirm his announcement on schools in sparsely populated areas, which is important for Nidderdale high school, Upper Wharfedale and other schools in North Yorkshire?
Mr Laws
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the work done by the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) in leading the recent campaign at a national level with the so-called F40 authorities, and I am sorry that he cannot be here today because his area gets an uplift. I agree that sparsity should be a consideration. We must ensure that where we need more schools because of rurality, that is reflected in the way we fund local authorities.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
A surprising last-minute entry, Mr Bill Wiggin.
Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)
I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to the statement and hearing how my right hon. Friend is teasing Labour Members by not telling them their figures. Will he remember and reinforce the unfairness that we have had to put up with for so many years, and turn the knife by telling us how much Herefordshire is getting?
Points of Order
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance. We have had a blatant attempt by the Minister not to answer questions from Labour Members. I asked him specifically about the impact on Halton. I have just checked the figures, and—surprise, surprise—Halton is not included among the areas that will benefit. The Minister deliberately answered Government Members, but would not answer questions from Labour Members. That is a great disrespect to this House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
The hon. Gentleman knows, as the House knows, that that is a continuation of the debate and not a point of order for the Chair. He has made his point, and I am sure the Minister has heard it.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. We were told that the figures for our constituencies would be in the document, but I went to the Vote Office and they are not. We have only a list of 62 authorities that have benefited from the £350 million that has been announced today. Furthermore—this is important—the document states that there are implications for converging funding under one formula in the future. That clearly has serious consequences for the constituents of those of us who miss out, but we are not being told. We have a right to know.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it in order that in a serious debate on school funding, the shadow Minister behaves like a school bully in the playground—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I thought the hon. Gentleman was going to make a point of order further to that raised by the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford). That is not a point of order but rather a matter for me to deal with. I have dealt with it, and the shadow Minister has acknowledged that and apologised.
I fully appreciate that the hon. Member for Eltham is making a point about which he feels passionately, but it is not a matter on which the Chair can rule at this moment. The information given to the House by the Minister is a matter for him. He is here and hears the point. If he would care to respond to the point of order, I give him the opportunity to do so.
Madam Deputy Speaker
The hon. Gentleman has already made his point and it was not a point or order. This statement has run for three quarters of an hour and has now come to an end.
Local Government Procurement
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Before I call the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee, it might be helpful to the House if I explain again briefly the new procedure to which it agreed last year—[Interruption.] Order. If hon. Members are dissatisfied with the last statement, they must find another way of taking up their points and not cause a disturbance in the Chamber.
Essentially, the pattern is the same as for a ministerial statement. The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) will speak for up to 10 minutes—there is no obligation to take all that time—during which no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of his statement, I will call Members who rise to put questions to the hon. Gentleman, and call him to respond to those in turn. Members can expect to be called only once. Interventions should be questions and should be brief, and those on the Front Benches may take part in questioning. The same procedure will be followed for the statement from the Chair of the International Development Committee, which follows this statement.
I call the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
(Select Committee Statement): I am delighted to present the sixth report from the Communities and Local Government Committee on local government procurement, HC 712. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving us this opportunity, as well as our special adviser, Colin Cram, and the second Clerk to the Committee, Sarah Coe, who led the work in producing the report.
Local government spends about a quarter of its annual expenditure—some £45 billion—on procuring goods and services. At a time of financial constraint in local government, my Committee thought it timely to examine how successfully councils across the country are delivering value for money and meeting wider objectives. I am pleased that we found evidence of much good progress in many local authorities. Councils are cutting costs and reducing the burdens on those doing business with them, strengthening links with the delivery of community objectives, improving risk management, and taking steps to reduce fraud. We also found, however, that evidence of progress was patchy across the country. That is extremely worrying given that councils face the challenges of managing increasingly complex procurement operations, while at the same time, for obvious reasons, they need to make cost savings and preserve the quality of services for their communities.
The Committee makes a number of recommendations in the report about how the sector and its partners, including central Government, can work together to ensure that councils step-up their efforts to commit to delivering first-class procurement. As in all our reports, the Committee takes a localist approach, giving councils the freedom to tailor their approaches to meet local needs—hence we urge the sector to take the lead in this matter. The Committee makes three overarching recommendations and a number of specific points. I will refer initially to the three overarching points.
First, local government needs to lead the change in partnership with central Government and other partners. We commend the work undertaken to date by many councils and the Local Government Association. We endorse the sector-led approach to supporting council action since it is an effective means of spreading good practice while tailoring procurement to local needs. Nevertheless, a step-change is now needed for successes to be replicated across the country, and for detailed support to be provided to tackle all complex aspects of procurement. We therefore conclude that the LGA, with the support of DCLG, should establish a taskforce with representatives of the private and third sectors to develop an action plan for improving council capacity to conduct effective procurement. We recommend that the Cabinet Office dedicate resources to ensure that lessons learned in central Government are translated into effective council action where appropriate, and vice versa.
Secondly, procurement excellence needs to be embedded across councils, not seen as the preserve of a handful of specialists. A lesson we learned during the Committee’s visit to my city of Sheffield, was that procurement should not be seen as a niche activity, conducted in back offices by a narrow set of specialists, but rather as a vital cross-cutting activity that requires in-depth skills from all staff involved in designing, commissioning and particularly managing services once contracts are let. To achieve that, councils must step up training, and the sector—especially the LGA—needs to ensure that procurement skills are embedded across councils. Investment in procurement skills should be seen as a wise investment now because it saves money in the future. Councils should look at adopting the toolkit developed by Sheffield city council, and the Cabinet Office should consider how the Government’s Commissioning Academy can help develop the skills of local government officers.
The third overarching recommendation is the need for political and officer leadership. Procurement improvement must be spearheaded by council cabinet members and front-line councillors, with the close involvement of senior officers. We commend the LGA for putting procurement at the top table within councils. We can see considerable advantage to councils identifying a lead cabinet member and a senior officer who will take overall responsibility for procurement. Councils should also ensure that front-line councillors have a clearly defined role in reviewing and scrutinising procurement, including outsourced contracts, and their impact on services for residents. In the end, that is what is important: services for residents.
We would like all councils to make an annual statement to their full council meetings to set out their strategy for incorporating economic, social and environmental value in procurement, including employment terms and conditions, impact on local economies and small businesses, and relationships between contractors, customers and the relevant councils.
In total, the Committee makes 29 specific recommendations. You will probably be pleased to hear, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I do not have time to go into all of them, but I will mention some key recommendations.
On value for money, councils have shown that they can save millions of pounds through joining up with each other and other public sector bodies, directly or via procurement organisations, to buy some goods and services. However, opportunities are not being taken fully and we estimate, conservatively, additional savings of approximately £1.8 billion could be achieved with better collaborative approaches. The LGA should review collaborative approaches and produce best practice guidance. It should continue to focus on supporting councils to collaborate in key spend areas—particularly in IT, energy and construction, where it is relatively easy for collaboration to save money—while recognising the importance of local freedoms and flexibilities. Securing savings should not come at the expense of delivering wider commissioning objectives, such as supporting local economies. There can be no compulsion to collaborate or to join a centralised procurement body. Councils must retain the flexibility to deliver local priorities, but should consider examples of good practice.
On delivering economic, social and environmental objectives, the Committee was clear that councils should exploit fully the potential of their procurement spend to deliver local strategic priorities, including social, economic and environmental objectives, by letting contracts, as appropriate locally, on the basis of best value, not simply lowest price. A case in point is support for small local businesses, which all local authorities are keen to support. Some 47% of council spend is currently channelled via small and medium-sized enterprises. There is clearly much good practice, but more could be done, for example by the LGA disseminating best practice and guidance.
On reducing costs to businesses, the cost to a business of a typical council procurement exercise can be about £40,000 to £50,000. A Centre for Economics and Business Research report published in July 2013 found that UK procurement processes were the most expensive in the EU and took some 53 days longer than average. Too many councils are applying EU regulations over-zealously. The Government and the LGA should spell out what is a proportionate approach. Pre-qualification questionnaires should be standardised, so that councils do not require a new form for every contract and potential suppliers do not find themselves having to fill in different forms for every local authority and every public body. There should be standardisation to reduce costs. Councils must include requirements in contracts that contractors stick to timetables for paying their subcontractors right down the supply chain, with spot checks on implementation. It is not acceptable for firms to delay payment, which puts smaller firms, in particular, at risk of cash-flow crises.
Outsourcing a contract does not mean outsourcing responsibility for ensuring quality and consistency of service to residents. It is therefore alarming that in the worst cases councils not only fail to monitor quality but bear the costs when a contractor fails to deliver its side of the contract. It is vital that councils are equipped to manage complex contracts. Greater voluntary collaborative work between regional procurement bodies can open up access to specialist procurement skills to help to tackle this problem.
On fraud, we found little hard evidence of significant fraud, but widespread unease that, as more services are put out to tender, local authorities are at much greater risk. Councils must not “let and forget” contracts, but proactively tackle fraud throughout the lifetime of a contract, not just during the tender phase. Contracts let by public bodies must be transparent and performance against them auditable. We support the Government’s commitment to open-book accounting. Councils should consider placing similar requirements on information provision by contractors as applied to a public body under freedom of information regulations to provide a level playing field. We heard that one of the best means of identifying fraud was whistleblowing. More needs to be done to support whistleblowers and the Government must publicise arrangements for an anonymous reporting channel.
The measures set out in our report will help to achieve a vision of better procurement and commissioning from local councils. We hope that the Government, local government sector leaders and individual councils will pay heed to our recommendations.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I welcome the statement and the contribution we have all made to the report. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we uncovered many examples of good practice, but that no authority is doing all those things? We desperately need to ensure that examples of good practice are followed by all local authorities, so that every resident benefits from the good practice of the best authorities.
Mr Betts
Absolutely. That was the theme right the way through the inquiry. There is a lot of good work out there and the best way to persuade local authorities to change is to show them another local authority that is doing things in a better way. That is why the LGA is key to delivering improvements; with many of our reports, that is probably not the case. We are looking to the LGA and the Department for Communities and Local Government to work together to set up a taskforce to bring examples of good practice together and disseminate them to councils up and down the country.
Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent chairmanship of the Select Committee and for this inquiry in particular. If he were to read my article for the new think-tank, the Entrepreneurs Network, he would see that I suggest a kitemark scheme for local government that encourages councils to be small-business friendly, not least on procurement. Does he think that the LGA could adopt that and take it forward?
Mr Betts
The Select Committee did not consider that particular proposal, but it is interesting. We recommend that the LGA sets up a taskforce and I am sure that that is something it can consider. Indeed, every council should consider it. One of our recommendations is that once a year there should be a report to the whole council on a local authority’s procurement practices, with specific attention given to how local authorities deal with small businesses and local businesses as part of their commissioning approach. That is something individual councils could consider, too.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his Committee’s report. Procurement is about not just getting value for money, but ensuring that small local companies can access contracts. Did the Committee consider the procurement of local food and produce, so that we have the chance to ensure that good quality, high welfare standard food is fed to our children and used in our hospitals?
Mr Betts
We did not look specifically at food contracts—obviously, with £45 billion of spending, there is a wide range of contracts—but we found that local government commissions and procures about 40% of its expenditure from small businesses. That is a higher percentage than for central Government, so there are many good examples. We recommended that councils should have an annual report. That would allow them to consider how to deal with small businesses and tailor commissioning to enable them to compete for contracts; that is an important element of the recommendation. That should be embedded in council policy from the beginning. Councils should not just suddenly think, “Oh dear, that contract hasn’t really given small businesses a chance” after it is let. It should be embodied in the policy of the council from the beginning.
Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Select Committee on which I serve, on his statement. Does he agree that the £45 billion of procurement for which local government is responsible makes a considerable contribution to economic growth and sets a good example—I think he alluded to this in his response to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish)—that central Government would do well to follow? Procurement should benefit the British economy rather than being expended overseas, something we unfortunately see with central Government procurement, such as with the contract for the Thameslink deal that should have gone to Bombardier but went to Siemens.
Mr Betts
Some of the councils that we studied took a robust and considered approach to benefits for their local economies, while others did not do quite so well in that regard. Again, it is necessary to learn from good practice. We asked the Government to carry out a post-legislative review of the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012, which gives councils certain responsibilities, to consider its impact on local economies, and to extend its social value requirements to smaller contracts, which it does not currently cover.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I welcome the report, but I urge my hon. Friend and the Committee to go further. I asked a succession of ex-council officers, serving officers and members of residents’ associations in the London borough of Hillingdon to consider some of the issues raised in the report. Let me give some examples. The first is the use of part 2 of the “Cabinet Meetings” document to maintain secrecy on matters relating to contracts that should be open and transparent, including poor performance and, in particular, decision making by councillors. The second is the use of compromise agreements involving a gagging clause preventing staff from exposing what has gone on after they have left.
As for my third example, let me introduce my hon. Friend to a term that is currently being used in the London borough of Hillingdon: the term “be restructured”. It means that the department of a whistleblower, or anyone who questions or criticises any decision made by the council, particularly decisions made by the leader of the council, will suddenly “be restructured”, and the whistleblower will be without a job. That is unacceptable. I think that I was the first Member to refer to the Transparency International report in the Chamber, and I am glad that my hon. Friend has drawn on it, because it revealed the openness of local government to abuse and, indeed, corruption. I think that we must be eternally vigilant.
I urge the Committee to move on to the agenda that has been set out in my constituency, and look into the concerns that have been expressed about local government performance in our area.
Mr Betts
My hon. Friend has raised a number of points. Let me deal first with his point about transparency. We support open-book accounting, but I accept that that means opening the books to the councils themselves rather than a wider agenda. Freedom of information is often not applied to every aspect of a contractor’s dealings. We urged councils to consider making that so, but did not direct them to do so because ultimately this is a local matter and they should be free to make that decision. As for whistleblowing, we concluded that a clear system that contractors would be required to adopt should be written into the contracts. There should be no effect on a whistleblower. They should be protected as part of the contract. If any whistleblower raises concerns with a contractor, the information must be passed on to the council. We also considered ways of enabling whistleblowers to draw attention to problems anonymously, which would probably involve a role for the National Audit Office.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his statement. He rightly referred to a move from lowest cost to best value. He will, of course, be aware of legislation passed by the last Labour Government, which stipulated that all public bodies should procure only legal and sustainable timber. Did the Committee carry out any investigations of the progress that local authorities are making in that respect?
Mr Betts
I am afraid that I cannot provide a great deal of further enlightenment. We did not receive much evidence relating to the environmental elements of local government commissioning. What was clear to us, however, was that, although cost is obviously very important to councils at this time, other important issues, such as the quality of service, economic and social added value, and indeed environmental impacts and implications, should be considered by councils as part of their procurement strategies.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I welcome my hon. Friend’s statement. As the report makes clear, procurement is inextricably linked with local government aspirations relating to the pursuit of social value and community benefit, collaboration to obtain best value for money, greater transparency and a better understanding of risk. I particularly welcome the suggestion that there should be more guidance on best practice in procurement to increase the number of local apprenticeships and trainee opportunities. Does he agree that central Government should support that work, so that much more can be done locally to strengthen our economy and deliver good outcomes for local people?
Mr Betts
Absolutely. We believe that that is now a matter for central Government—the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Cabinet Office, whose commissioning academy could be used to increase skills in local authorities—and for the Local Government Association. Many examples of good practice will be sector-led. A number of councils are doing excellent work across the political spectrum in encouraging contractors to take on apprentices as part of an overall council policy, but the practice would be a great deal more effective and beneficial if it were adopted by other councils. That aim is at the heart of our report.
I thank all members of the Committee for their work. I believe that the report makes many good recommendations that will enable us to make progress. It was approved by the whole Committee, and that is the basis on which we always try to work.
Barry Gardiner
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Before the statement, you were good enough to explain the procedures—which are rather novel for the House—that would govern its delivery and the subsequent questions. Can you tell me whether it is in order, when such a statement is made by the Chair of a Select Committee, for no Minister from the relevant Department to be present?
Mr Betts
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. A local government Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams)—was asked to attend, but he thought that the statement would be made earlier, and he had a ministerial commitment outside the House. He rang my office to apologise and I accepted his apology. The Deputy Chief Whip is representing him on the Front Bench, but obviously the Deputy Chief Whip could not speak.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
I thank the Chairman of the Select Committee for explaining the background.
It is so refreshing to hear a point of order that is a point of order! I can respond to the genuine point of order raised by the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) by saying that a Minister—albeit a Whip—was present throughout the proceedings. It is not necessary for Front Benchers to take part in statements of that kind. It is of course desirable for the relevant Minister to pay attention to what is happening in the Chamber as a result of a Select Committee’s deliberations, but the Select Committee Chairman has explained very well what happened this morning. I am glad to have had an opportunity to explain further how the new procedure will work, and I therefore thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order.
Burma
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Sir Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
Following the point of order from the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), I am pleased to see the Minister of State, Department for International Development, the right hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr Duncan) sitting on the Front Bench.
I welcome the opportunity to make a statement on the International Development Committee’s report on democracy and development in Burma, which is also known as Myanmar. There is a little item in the report about the issue of its name. I had the privilege of visiting Burma last July as part of a delegation led by Mr Speaker and including my fellow Committee member the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), as well as the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz). The Committee also visited the country last November. We spent time in and around Yangon, and in the capital, Naypyidaw. From Naypyidaw we drove down to Mandalay, stopping en route, and then made visits in and around Mandalay.
We concluded that Burma presents unique challenges in comparison with any of the United Kingdom’s other bilateral aid partners. As most people know, the country has endured 60 years of conflict and decades of military dictatorship, during which development and progress have regressed. Per capita GDP is $800, while the per capita income of its neighbour Thailand is $4,800. Although the UK has remained engaged and has provided support, the circumstances have been difficult, as the Committee observed in its last report in 2007. At that time, we could only visit refugee camps on the Thai border; we could not visit the country itself.
Since cyclone Nargis devastated the country, it has become apparent internally that if the country is to develop, it needs to change. The military Government have transferred some powers to the Parliament, and after by-elections last year, Aung San Suu Kyi was elected to Parliament along with 42 of her National League for Democracy colleagues. Full elections are promised for next year.
While a host of problems remain, a key opportunity exists for UK development programmes to help deliver transformational change. We must seize the moment. The Committee’s main conclusions are: that the Department for International Development should be more engaged with the political nature of Burma’s development—this is not just about development; it is about politics, too—and that the UK should continue to press for constitutional reform for the development of a federal structure inside Burma, which is being talked about widely there, and for the removal of the block on Aung Sa Suu Kyi standing for president. That is not because she has to be the president, but because it would be somewhat strange if a clearly popular elected opposition party candidate were not at least eligible to be a presidential candidate. As part of this, the UK Government should work to help the armed ethnic groups and the Burmese military to make the transition to delivering civilian Government. That is a huge challenge.
DFID has given a substantial chunk of its budget to health programmes and we saw, and heard, how radical and transformational they were, but the Department should place even more emphasis on addressing drug-resistant malaria in Burma as it is a problem that threatens to spread to the rest of the world with potentially devastating consequences.
One specific issue, which an exchange with the Minister shows he understands, is that DFID’s education budget in Burma is currently too small to be effective. We are not saying it is of no value, but we do think it should increase, with a major focus on teacher training. We have, effectively, a lost generation in Burma that desperately needs education.
We also think that DFID’s work to assist the peace process, to improve public financial management, to encourage the inclusion of women and to reform the Burmese military should continue, with additional funding made available as opportunities to expand these programmes arise. These are all major challenges.
We welcome the UK support for the Burmese Parliament. It should be a long-term partnership and the UK will need to reform its approach to parliamentary strengthening to ensure that DFID and the Foreign Office can rely less on non-UK organisations—such as United Nations Development Programme and the National Democratic Institute—and draw more on UK organisations. The Westminster brand is valued, and we think it is strange that we are buying expertise from other models when people would like to hear more from ours.
The UK is doing a very good job in helping to co-ordinate the role of the development partners as chair of the working group, and we believe that that should continue. Smaller donors should be encouraged to be part of that process, rather than to try to operate independently.
We recognised when visiting the peace centre that there is a ceasefire across most of the country, but as yet there is no peace process. The situation in Rakhine is critical and could threaten the whole reform process if it is not addressed. DFID can help by doing more to promote inter-faith dialogue and inter-community understanding.
We accept that in the current situation progress will be unpredictable and uneven, but supporting the reform process by working to deliver public services and develop livelihoods offers unprecedented potential.
To achieve these transformational objectives we recommend that the bilateral budget for Burma be increased from its current level of over £60 million to around £100 million. We think that there is more than enough work in education, in parliamentary strengthening and in building Government institutions to justify the steady build-up of expenditure and we believe that DFID could, and should, find that resource.
I hope the House will accept that the UK has a crucial role to play in Burma. We have partners we can work with. We have an opportunity that may not come again and we should not miss it.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Like the right hon. Gentleman, I had the opportunity to visit Burma last summer, looking specifically at issues around maternal health. What struck the group that went out with Marie Stopes was that the budget for health in Burma is extraordinarily small. The right hon. Gentleman has mentioned the importance of developing the political process. Did the Committee look at the balance between UK funds helping to directly provide health services, for example, as opposed to working with the Government and Parliament and has it looked at the overall funding compared with international comparators?
Sir Malcolm Bruce
We recognise that Burma needs capacity right across the whole system. Frankly, its spending on health and education has been minimal and its capacity to do that at the moment is pretty limited. We have to work with the partners we can find, sometimes directly. Of course we want to build up capacity within the Government, provided that the partners within the Government will respond in the right way, but we did see very good co-operation and real evidence that we are making specific changes. So our view is that we can expand the development support and help build those institutions, but we also need to strengthen the political capacity. One particular step is to enable Parliament to raise the funds that will ultimately enable these developments to be taken forwards as the economy develops. That is crucial and it is something DFID does very well in many other countries.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement. I am the chair of the all-party group on malaria and neglected tropical diseases. I and my colleagues on that committee are extremely concerned about the growth of resistance to artemisinin-based drugs, which are our main hope for tackling malaria in Burma and the surrounding area. Does my right hon. Friend think the international community is giving enough weight to this issue?
Sir Malcolm Bruce
I commend my hon. Friend for his assiduous work on the all-party committee, which is extremely important. The answer to his question is that it has not been possible to do enough because of the problems of conflict and lack of access. Indeed, that is the very reason why it has become an endemic threat to the whole world. We hope that, with a ceasefire in place and hopefully the beginnings of a peace process, the opportunity to engage will increase. That is why we have made a specific recommendation that greater priority within the health budget should be given to tackling that problem, and I am certain that my hon. Friend will ensure we focus on that.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
The report refers to DFID’s main contribution to peace-building having been in funding Jonathan Powell’s non-governmental organisation Inter Mediate, with strong experience being drawn from what happened in the Northern Ireland peace process. Has the Committee made any assessment of the work of Inter Mediate and the way in which the experience in Northern Ireland has helped to develop peace-building in Burma?
Sir Malcolm Bruce
We did not make a specific engagement within that process, but we learned from DFID that the Northern Ireland experience was seen to be of some value and relevance. We obviously have to be careful not to assume that what happened in Northern Ireland is automatically transferable, but some kind of understanding of how we get beyond entrenched conflict to a situation where communities can start to work together is clearly useful, and the justification for supporting Jonathan Powell’s organisation was that he had some experience of doing that. The right hon. Gentleman may have a subjective view on how valid that is, but it seemed to us that this was well-received by the Burmese who felt it helped them to think about how to stop hating people and start working with those who were enemies, and that seems to be of some value.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for the report. Bearing in mind the situation in Egypt where the military have had real problems in giving up power, will he give us his candid assessment of the chances of the Burmese military ceding power to a democratic Government in the near future?
Sir Malcolm Bruce
That is a very good and fair question and we took a lot of evidence, ranging from people who felt the military would never let go to others who felt the pressures on Burma to open up were so intense that the reforms that have been started could not be reversed, although their progress will, I think, be uneven and bumpy. All I can say is that the authorities representing the military who we met looked to the Indonesian model as the way forward—in other words, a gradual move away from military control through the building of civilian capacity. But I guess that the day when the military is subservient to Parliament is a long way off.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) and I visited Burma in 2012. One of the Government Ministers there had been given the task of mediating between the various ethnic minority groups. I have a suspicion, however, that the disputes between some of the groups have got worse since then. Will my right hon. Friend tell us what he found in that respect?
Sir Malcolm Bruce
The Committee did not have the opportunity to visit some of the more disputed territories, either for security reasons or because access was not granted or there was insufficient time. We understood, however, that there was at least a ceasefire in place across the whole country, except in the north. That is good news. The bad news is that the process of turning that ceasefire into a proper process of moving towards civilian government and letting go from the centre has not begun. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence that the army has consolidated its position in exactly those provinces. That does not bode well, unless it starts to accommodate the other armed ethnic groups as part of the process of change. That is something that we think the UK Government could contribute to, so long as we have partners to work with.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
We welcome this thoughtful and comprehensive report, which reflects upon the progress being made in this troubled Commonwealth nation. The Chair of the Committee referred to the role of DFID in helping to build democratic capacity and strengthen Parliament in Burma. Of course, DFID is not just the charitable arm of the UK Government; it is a major force for soft power. What work is the Committee planning to do to examine DFID’s wider work on building democracy, particularly in the light of recent examples such as Bangladesh, where those processes have had mixed results?
Sir Malcolm Bruce
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments; I completely agree with him. Incidentally, we thought that the co-operation between DFID and the Foreign Office in Burma was particularly successful. Indeed, our visit would not have been the success that it was without the full co-operation that we had from the Foreign Office and from the ambassador and his team, although that is not in any way to suggest that the DFID team was not also extraordinarily important. That is the kind of working that matters, because this is a political process as well as a development process.
We actually had a much fuller section on parliamentary strengthening in the draft report, and we concluded that that was an issue to which we should return separately. The Committee has not yet agreed on that, but I think that we have unofficially agreed that we should produce a short report on how DFID could expand its role of parliamentary strengthening in all the partner countries. If we are concentrating on post-conflict countries and fragile states, building democratic institutions and making them work are surely central to that task. We have a unique capacity to do this work, and our view is that we need to put a lot more investment into it to ensure that our engagements are sustained and continuous, and that the contacts are maintained. These processes need to develop full, long-term relationships, rather than ending up with the odd seminar here and there or the odd secondment. I hope that we will be able to come up with a report that will develop that theme.
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Alan Duncan)
I rise briefly to thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce) and all his Committee for this report, and for the thoroughness of their inquiries. It is refreshing to be broadly commended in a Select Committee report, and to be asked to spend more. The request to raise our budget from £66 million to £100 million a year is an ambitious one, particularly as our funding increases have plateaued over the past few years, and there are further demands on our resources for the likes of humanitarian efforts in Syria. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman and the House, however, that we will study all 39 recommendations and take them all into consideration when deploying our resources and focusing our efforts in the future.
Sir Malcolm Bruce
I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention, which we very much appreciate. We would not have expected him to accede to our requests immediately, but we think that he is up to the challenge. This is not just a question of our saying, “Let’s spend more money.” We have identified specific sectors in which we think that would be useful. We took out of the report a section dealing with where we thought the money should come from, because it is the job of Ministers to prioritise such matters, but if they want to talk to us informally about that, we have some ideas.
royal assent
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that Her Majesty has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:
Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) Act 2014
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International Development (Gender Equality) Act 2014
Leasehold Reform (Amendment) Act 2014
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Backbench Business
Badger Cull
(10 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
16:58 - The House divided: - Ayes: 219 / Noes: 1 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Before I call the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) to propose the motion, I would like to draw the attention of the House to the fact that the hon. Lady will deliver her speech from a sedentary position. I commend her for coming to the House today; we appreciate that she is recovering from surgery. Given that she is speaking from an unaccustomed position and without the usual aid of an ability to bob up and down or otherwise gesticulate, the delivery of her speech will be more difficult than it would be if she were in her customary position. I am sure that the House will bear that in mind and give her all the support she deserves.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House believes that the pilot badger culls in Gloucestershire and Somerset have decisively failed against the criteria set out by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in guidance to Natural England for licensing of the culls, which stipulated that 70 per cent of the badger population should be culled within a six-week period; notes that the costs of policing, additional implementation and monitoring, and the resort to more expensive cage-and-trap methods over an extended period have substantially increased the cost of the culls, and strengthened the financial case for vaccination; regrets that the decision to extend the original culls has not been subject to any debate or vote in Parliament; further regrets that the Independent Expert Panel will only assess the humaneness, safety and effectiveness of the original six-week period and not the extended cull period; and urges the Government to halt the existing culls and granting of any further licences, pending development of alternative strategies to eradicate bovine TB and promote a healthy badger population.
I thank you for your gracious comments, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sure that the debate will be very well attended and, bearing that in mind, I hope that colleagues will accept that I will not be taking any interventions during my opening remarks. I know that the many right hon. and hon. Members here today will make this a lively and impassioned debate.
This is a timely debate, coming before any further roll-out of the culls, and particularly in the light of concerns being raised from many quarters about the culls. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting a full day’s debate and vote on the Floor of the House. I have received a large amount of cross-party support for this debate. It is important to note that this is not a matter of one side of the House versus the other. The House wants a chance to vote on this issue and I have made repeated calls for it to be brought back before the House. I tabled my first early-day motion on 25 June last year calling for the matter to return, and 149 Members from both sides of the House supported it. I then tabled another on 31 October asking for a return, which attracted 107 Members. In a well-attended Westminster Hall debate on 11 Dec, I pleaded with the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), to bring the matter back before the House. Well, I have brought it back, with the support of many colleagues of all political parties. I hope that colleagues today will examine their consciences and try to do the right thing. I know that this is not an easy subject, and that feelings are running high on both sides, but we must not be seen just to be doing something, if we are now convinced that the facts and evidence indicate that we might have taken the wrong approach.
Mrs Main
I am sorry, but I have indicated that I will not be taking interventions.
The public might be surprised to learn that the Minister can instigate a cull without having to get the consent of the House. Consequently, there has been no substantive vote in Parliament proactively to adopt a culling strategy. Instead, we have merely had two votes not to adopt one. The two votes on the subject took place in Opposition day debates on 25 October 2012 and 5 June 2013. The most recent vote in the House of Commons, on 5 June, was 299 to 250 against the motion:
“That this House believes the badger cull should not go ahead.”
As the House can see, even in an Opposition day debate, the vote was a close one—and that was before we had gleaned all the information about the underperformance of the culls.
We all accept that the House has had an uneasy relationship with this topic, but we should not be here today to score political points or to try to rehash history. We should be here to examine our current position in a cross-party fashion and to give a strong steer to the Minister as to the next steps we believe he should take. I believe, as I am sure many other hon. Members do, that we should halt the culls and not issue any more licences until a full examination of the failings has been taken into account. That is what the debate is for; it is not a blame game. It is a recognition that hon. Members might wish to change their minds based on the change in facts.
There is great sympathy with farmers who have experienced heartache and hardship over losing cattle and precious stock to bovine TB. There is also regard for how we as a society treat all animals, but in particular a protected species. This tension has divided the House. I believe that many lent their support to the concept of tackling bovine TB with this strategy, but they did not give their Government permission to carry on regardless—regardless of humaneness, effectiveness or cost.
Performance criteria for the pilot culls were set by the Government, and they were not arbitrary, but intended to reassure hon. Members and the public that what was being done was an effective way of tackling bovine TB infections and was, crucially, humane. The reason for the 70% kill target within a six-week period was specifically drawn so that sufficient badgers would be killed to ensure that they did not simply go elsewhere, thus spreading the TB more widely.
This approach reflected extensive research carried out by Professor Woodroffe in trials in the 1990s, which showed that a failure to kill this percentage in a narrow window of time could worsen matters as disturbed diseased animals took TB to new areas. Analysis commissioned by the Government found that the number of badgers killed according to the criteria fell well short of the target deemed necessary, despite the cull being extended and cage shooting being used. We must face up to the fact that this House, if we persist and simply roll out more free-shooting culls, may be contributing to an increase in TB in cattle.
The humaneness test set by Ministers was to ensure that no animal suffered needlessly a protracted, agonising death. Badgers were supposed to be free-shot quickly, efficiently and, importantly, cost-effectively. It is now understood, however, that between 6.4% and 18% of shot animals took more than five minutes to die, and sometimes even as long as 10 minutes or longer. In order to avoid suffering, the standard to be met was that no more than 5% of shot badgers should take more than five minutes to die. An independent expert panel was appointed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to help Ministers to evaluate, against the Government’s own criteria, the effectiveness, humaneness and safety of pilots, and its conclusions are damning.
Mr Harper
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.] Will Opposition Members listen to my point of order? I have been listening carefully to my hon. Friend quoting figures from an independent report. Are you aware, Madam Deputy Speaker, whether that independent report has been placed in the Library of the House or on the Table, so that hon. Members taking part in the debate may reference it? I was not aware that the report had been published.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I may be able to help the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) and the House. Today, I received a response from the Minister who is present, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), which clarifies that the report has just arrived on the Secretary of State’s desk. The pursuant question is why, when it was due to be published in February, it has not been published in time for today’s debate.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
I thank the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) for his point of order. It is not in fact a point of order for the Chair, but it is a point that the House has noted. The hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) has been helpful in providing information to the House.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I always understood it to be a convention of this House that if any Member quoted from a document in the public domain, the document should be tabled before the debate, to be available to every hon. Member so that they, too, may quote from it. I do not believe that the document is yet in the public domain—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. That rule applies to Ministers; it does not apply to a Back Bencher addressing the House.
The matter is now at an end. The hon. Member for St Albans is referring to the report, which may come up and be debated for the rest of the afternoon; it is not for the Chair to rule on where the report ought to be. The hon. Lady is quoting from it, and I am sure that Members will listen carefully to what she is saying. They will then be able to deal with her points, with or without the report before them.
Mrs Main
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I know that passions are running high in this matter.
My hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) must be psychic, because my next words were to be that no one appears to be disputing the comprehensive but leaked report. Whatever the detail, the dispute is about whether we pursue a failed policy, or adopt a new one.
As Professor Rosie Woodroffe, a scientist at the Zoological Society of London, said, the
“findings show unequivocally that the culls were not effective”.
I know that hon. Members say, “We haven’t seen the reports”, but that is not in dispute, unless the Minister whose desk the report has landed on says that it is not in the report. If so, I look forward to hearing it, but I believe what has been widely reported in the media after being leaked comprehensively.
I hope that the Secretary of State will now focus on other ways of eradicating TB in cattle. If predictions of the findings in the report are borne out, the cull
“has cost a fortune and probably contributed nothing in terms of disease control, which is really unfortunate.”
Those are the words of Rosie Woodroffe.
I am personally disappointed that a DEFRA spokesman has recently said:
“We knew there’d be lessons to be learned from the first year of the pilot culls which is why we’re looking forward to receiving the panel’s recommendations for improving the way they are carried out.”
If the House notes those comments carefully, it cannot hear the sound of any culls being stopped, but simply of them being improved. In other words, we are committed to finding a better killing strategy—[Interruption.] I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker, that is my phone—someone who obviously does not respect the—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. In these unusual circumstances, this incident will be overlooked. As I said at the beginning of the debate, these are unusual circumstances; no other Member may take this as a precedent.
Mrs Main
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Perhaps it was a badger ringing me up and willing me on.
If the House notes the comments, it will hear talk not of culls being stopped but of their being improved. The Government do not have carte blanche to carry on regardless. Hon. Members may dispute the report and whether it has been leaked, but the Government do not have unconditional support to continue with a failed approach, in particular one that causes suffering to a protected species. As Robin Hargreaves, President of the British Veterinary Association said:
“We have always stated that if the pilots were to fail on humaneness then BVA could not support the wider roll out of the method of controlled shooting”.
There are colleagues who share those views.
The pilot culls were supposed to demonstrate a minimum of 70% of badgers killed within six weeks. Despite the badger population estimates being sharply cut and the culls being extended, both pilots failed to meet the minimum 70%. When both trials duly failed to kill sufficient badgers within the specified period, they were extended on the advice of the chief veterinary officer, Nigel Gibbens. The panel’s widely leaked report, although still disputed today, concerns itself with the initial six weeks. This extended the misery, the cost and, if we accept the time scales based on the original pilot criteria, the range of TB spread due to perturbation.
Do we continue with cruel practices licensed by the Government in order to be seen to be doing something? DEFRA agreed with an expert group the criteria for how the trials could be deemed humane. It was DEFRA’s rules, not some arbitrary figures plucked out of the air. Mark Jones, vet and executive director of the Humane Society International of the UK, said:
“The government’s boast that all badgers were killed cleanly and killed instantly is clearly not true. We fear many badgers may have suffered significant pain and distress.”
Andrew Guest, from the National Farmers Union, said of the revelations: “It doesn't sound good”, but added that it was important that a significant number of badgers had been removed.
Simply getting rid of lots of badgers, regardless of cost, pain or effectiveness, was not the criterion set down by the Government. That is not a good enough reason for this House to support ongoing culls. This House wishes to tackle bovine TB efficiently, effectively and humanely. That is why we need to stop the failed cull policy, not grant any further licences and come up with a better method to tackle TB without inflicting pain and misery on an endangered species. The badger culls were condemned as “mindless” in 2012 by Lord Krebs, who commissioned the 10-year study. The extensions to the culls were criticised by Natural England’s lead scientific director, Sir David Attenborough, and the National Trust.
We acknowledge the devastation inflicted on farmers and cattle by the scourge of bovine TB. This should not be about the House abandoning their plight, but neither can we ignore the plight of the badgers. Monitoring reports from England’s wildlife watchdog, Natural England, apparently seen by The Guardian and perhaps hotly disputed by some hon. Members, show that a third of the badgers were shot in the wrong part of the body. Apparently, badgers are very hard to shoot, although I would not know as I am not a marksman. Two out of nine badgers had to be shot twice, having not died instantly.
Professor Woodroffe, who worked on a landmark 10-year study of badger culling, said the conclusion to be drawn was simple:
“The pilot culls have not been effective.”
She questioned the multi-million pound cost of the culls and argued that badger vaccination would be cheaper and more effective. So our argument today is probably leading us towards vaccination of badgers and/or cattle. The current available vaccine for badgers, which is injectable, has been shown to reduce the burden of disease in badger populations. An oral badger vaccine is not expected until 2015. I know there is some concern that vaccines may not be as effective as we would hope, or be licensed and come on line quickly enough, but if the current shoot-to-kill approach is also deeply flawed we should endeavour to strengthen and prioritise all the non-lethal methods in order to find a humane solution.
Many hon. Members and wildlife lovers believe that is the only way forward, unless we are to decide to keep slaughtering badgers in perpetuity to eliminate a reservoir of TB in badgers, many of which will have been infected by other species or cattle. The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth told the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) in DEFRA questions that the Government
“'accepts that there is a range of measures we should pursue, including developing vaccines, and we are doing some work to develop an oral vaccine for badgers as well as on cattle vaccines. We are considering other measures such as contraception for badgers and increased cattle movement controls, so we are covering a range of issues as we try to solve this difficult problem.”—[Official Report, 13 February 2014; Vol. 575, c. 998.]
That answer shows that the Minister recognises the value of these other strands of TB control, and I hope that he will commit today to redoubling his efforts on those fronts. Today, we need to urge the Government not only to speed up their work on vaccines, particularly of the oral kind, and redouble their efforts on enforcing biosecurity and cattle movements, but, most importantly, to stop this inhumane slaughter of badgers.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. Before I call speakers from the Back Benches, may I say that it will be obvious to the House that a large number of Members wish to speak this afternoon and so, as a courtesy to other Members, it would be helpful if Members limited their speeches to about eight or nine minutes? If they do so, everyone will have the chance to be heard.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I will bear those comments in mind. Let me start by paying tribute to the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), whom I have the privilege of following. She has shown astounding bravery and dedication in turning up for this debate so quickly after major surgery.
This debate is important not just for wildlife, but for the cattle industry, the dairy industry and the farming industry more generally. We need to acknowledge that and put it on the table at the very beginning. We all acknowledge the importance of tackling bovine TB. The debate on this issue so far has, to some extent, been polarised, so today’s debate is an opportunity to bring the House together to forge a new consensus on how to tackle this difficult problem.
I wish to focus on three aspects of the debate. First, I wish to deal with how the outcomes of the recently completed pilot culls differ from and deviate from those of the randomised badger culling trial, which took place a few years ago. Secondly, given the time limits, I wish briefly to refer to the alternatives. Thirdly, I wish to refer to the Bow Group recommendations on how to proceed in the future, which are incredibly interesting and constructive.
Angela Smith
Very briefly, because I am aware of the need to keep my contribution short.
Mr Heath
I appreciate that, and I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. Given that a lot of people wish to find a degree of consensus on this issue, I am genuinely curious as to why the motion makes no mention of the comprehensive strategy developed by the Government last year, which includes things such as polymerase chain reactor recognition of infected setts; an edge of disease strategy; greater biosecurity; and the routes to infected vaccines. Why is none of that mentioned in a debate that is supposed to be bringing the House together?
Angela Smith
The hon. Gentleman has anticipated much of what I am going to say about the constructive way forward.
The first and most important point to make about the pilot culls relates to the meeting of the scientific experts convened by DEFRA in April 2011, which drew two key conclusions about the pilot culls. The first was that the culls needed to be
“conducted in a co-ordinated, sustained and simultaneous manner”
over a short time period in order to minimise potential impacts of perturbation. The second key point was that
“the more that a future culling policy deviates from the conditions of the RBCT…the more likely it is that the effects of that policy will differ”.
Those two important points are at the heart of today’s debate. They explain why a target was set of a 70% reduction in badger density in the cull areas in six weeks, but we find—this is not because of the independent expert panel report—that Natural England withdrew licences after 11 weeks of culling in both zones because it was evident that there was no hope of reaching the target number of badgers.
I wish briefly to address why the targets of 70% and six weeks were chosen. The six-week target was set by DEFRA in the context of the lessons learned by the RBCT, which found that the proactive culls that were completed across entire areas in eight to 11 nights had a much higher likelihood of delivering a positive impact than the prolonged culls—the reactive culls that took place—over more than 12 nights. The risk of the latter is that TB in badgers is further elevated and thus it is expected that any benefits in relation to reducing cattle TB are undermined.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
The number of badgers in the area was one of the issues raised in previous debates. Obviously, the 70% target is dependent on having a reasonable estimate of the number of badgers in a particular area, and I understood that not to be available.
Angela Smith
This is the “badgers moving the goalposts” argument, which repeatedly comes back to haunt this debate. The important thing is to have accurate numbers, not least because we do not want to break the Bern convention, and therefore the law, in terms of taking the risk of eradicating an entire species.
On four occasions, the RBCT conducted non-simultaneous culls—this comes back to the point about the short period of time, as they went on over a prolonged period. It was found—the evidence is there—that there was an increase in the proportion of badgers infected, over and above the background norm of the increase in numbers infected by the proactive culling.
In 2010, DEFRA’s science advisory council said:
“There is little useful data on the issue of what time period should be considered as ‘simultaneous’. The Group advised that if culling was carried out in a period of up to 6 weeks (although preferably less), that is likely to reduce the adverse effects of non-simultaneous culling; this advice is based on opinion and not on evidence. The longer the period that culling is carried out in, the less confident one can be that the deleterious effects seen with non-simultaneous culling as carried out in the RBCT will be minimized.”
That is from DEFRA’s own science advisory council. It is absolutely clear that the pilot culls took a fairly significant risk in planning to meet the six-week target. The fact that they failed comprehensively to meet that target supports the claim in the independent expert panel report that the pilot culls were ineffective; they took 63 and 77 nights respectively. Remember that the randomised badger culling trial found that to maximise impact, a cull should take place over eight to 11 nights.
Angela Smith
I will give way just one more time, because a lot of people want to speak.
Roger Williams
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. She said that the randomised badger culling trials occurred over 10 to 11 days, but of course they failed miserably to reduce the number of badgers in a way that met their objective.
Angela Smith
The reactive culling in the RBCT did fail. That is not the point. I am talking about proactive culling, which is best carried out over eight to 11 days. Reactive culling is when one kills the badgers in a small area—a hot spot—and does not go back again. The proactive culling is done over a bigger area—that is the important point—annually. It is a much more scientific approach to culling. Reactive culling does not work at all; in fact, it makes the problem a lot worse.
The 70% figure, which is an average, is based on proactive culling. It was demonstrated in the RBCT that it did deliver reductions in cattle TB incidence in the culling zone on a gradual basis. There was, however, a rapid but diminishing increase outside the zone. That is where the 16% figure in the RBCT report comes from. It is often not reported, however, that the 16% figure was based on a scenario that was more optimistic about the potential beneficial impact of culling overall. In fact, the average reduction over nine years was 12%. That is why the Independent Study Group on Cattle TB said that culling could not deliver any meaningful reduction in bovine TB. That is the key point.
Reactive culling reduced badger density by 30% and elevated cattle TB; that is the point that I was making earlier. The problem is that it is not known scientifically where between 30% and 70% removal an effect on TB is achieved, hence the importance of the 70% target. Scientifically, it is the only target that one can use to measure effectiveness.
In summary, the requirement to kill at least 70% of local badgers within six weeks was not an arbitrary target. It was a scientifically driven target. As I have said, the six-week target was set because prolonged culling over more than 12 nights further elevates TB in badgers and is expected to undermine any benefits for cattle TB control. In terms of both the length of the culling period and the targets for numbers killed, the pilot culls failed comprehensively. That prompts questions about the future of culling. If we are to go ahead with more culling, Ministers have to answer this key point: killing effectively, over less than six weeks, will require far more marksmen and far greater resources, so that we can do the work simultaneously. One of the key lessons to be learned from the pilot culls is that we would need much greater resources to do the job, and I am not convinced that taxpayers are prepared to pay for that kind of resource.
It was found in the end that the pilot culling had to make use of cage trapping in addition to free-shooting. That points to the need for much greater resources. If we include policing in the costs, we are looking at more than £4,000 per badger shot in the pilot culls. On the alternative, vaccination costs £2,250 per square kilometre covered. When looking at cage trapping, and whether to vaccinate or cull, we have to remember that vaccination is much cheaper, partly because policing costs are removed from the equation, but also because with vaccination there is no need to dispose of the carcases of badgers culled. We all know that there is a massive army of volunteers ready to help the Government conduct the vaccination. In fact, there is already an initiative to deliver vaccination on a wider scale.
I quickly want to refer to the other important part of the alternative.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. I am sure that the hon. Lady will very soon draw her remarks to a close.
Angela Smith
Of course I will, Madam Deputy Speaker.
It must be remembered that cattle testing and movement is an important part of all this. Vaccination, cattle movement and testing, and biosecurity make up the package of measures that we need in order to move forward. I am sure that other Members will refer to some of the details.
In concluding, I want to refer to the Bow Group report, an excellent piece of work from the right of the political spectrum. We have the spectacle of a Labour MP recommending a Tory report, but it is an excellent report—thorough, sensible, and evidence-based. It has a number of recommendations, all of which are sensible. I want to focus quickly on three key recommendations. The report recommends that farmers no longer be allowed to move their herds from one of their farms to another without pre-movement testing. That is an important point, because currently they are allowed to do so. They should not be allowed to move their herds to agricultural shows or common land without pre-movement testing.
The report recommends more testing and increased use of the gamma interferon test, alongside the currently used test. I understand that the Government have moved on all this, but the report makes it clear that more needs to be done. Importantly, it recommends field trials of cattle vaccine, as recommended by the European Commissioner only last November, but so far we have heard nothing from DEFRA on when it will move ahead with that.
The Commons has an opportunity today to move on the issue and forge a new consensus. We should build on initiatives already taken by DEFRA on cattle movement and testing, and on biosecurity; and we should carry out vaccination on a comprehensive scale, and drop the culling.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith).
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) on securing the debate, on leading it with her sterling contribution, and on showing such strength in such difficult circumstances. I absolutely agree with her that we have to learn to treat all animals, whether farm or wild, the same. We need to consider the implications of the economics of the case. I am sure that others will give more detail, but we have to recognise that the number of new cases of bovine TB is on the rise; it is doubling every nine years. In the 10 years to last November, 310,000 cattle across Great Britain were slaughtered, and last year, between January and November alone, 30,377 otherwise healthy cattle were slaughtered—an average of over 90 a day. In the last 10 years, bovine TB has cost the taxpayer £500 million, and there is an expectation that that will rise to £1 billion over the next decade.
Stephen Lloyd
I appreciate that the figures are still high, but does my hon. Friend agree that a recent report shows that in 2013 there was a significant drop of 14% in the incidence of TB in cattle, and the rate that the disease is spreading also declined by 7% in 2013? The figures are going down.
Mark Pritchard
Does my hon. Friend agree that animal welfare campaigners and farmers want to see healthy cattle and badgers, and that is why I welcome her preamble? Does she also agree that this Government should focus on vaccines, as the last Government should have?
Miss McIntosh
I will come on to vaccines.
I listened carefully to what my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans and the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge said. The House is very short of alternatives. If we are to have a mature, intelligent debate, the House and the public need to consider what the realistic alternatives are. The badger population was in decline and was given protection in the 1970s, for very good reason, but when we see the extent to which the population has grown and the implications for the spread of bovine TB, the position is very serious. I have two auction marts in my constituency, one in Thirsk and one in Malton, and the implications of the cattle restrictions generally are difficult for them.
I want to make a general point about the six-day rule. I understand the position with regard to the cattle restrictions relating to bovine TB that are in place in the south-west, and the need for a swift response to any potential animal disease. But, particularly at red cattle marts such as Thirsk, the operation of the six-day rule, as intensive and as regulated as it is, is having a negative impact. Many livestock producers will not take their cattle or sheep to mart—it is true that there are fewer pigs now—on the basis that they may not be able to obtain the price that they need and they will have to go to slaughter anyway. I hope that the Minister will look favourably at reviewing the six-day rule. It could be brought back swiftly if need be.
The sad fact, which has been demonstrated in today’s debate, is that not many of us living in Britain today have close rural roots. When a pilot cull was introduced in Ireland, it proceeded smoothly, effectively, clinically, and virtually without disruption. Do the Government have anything to learn from the conduct of the Irish cull? The fact that many of us now live metropolitan lifestyles leads, regrettably, to an increasing misunderstanding of animal husbandry and welfare issues.
In the few moments that I have left I want to commend to the House the work of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on vaccination against bovine TB and the Government’s response. I am delighted to record that both Front-Bench teams were well represented on the Committee when it took evidence. We looked carefully at injectable vaccine for badgers, oral vaccine for badgers and oral vaccine for cattle. There are difficulties with each that we can rehearse this afternoon, but will the Minister update the House today on where we are, particularly with regard to reaching agreement in Brussels with our European partners and at home on each of those matters?
I pay tribute to the work of the Food and Environment Research Agency in Sand Hutton in Thirsk and Malton—
Miss McIntosh
I am reaching a conclusion.
FERA is doing work on sterilisation. Oral contraception has been referred to, and the sterilisation of the badger population would be welcome, but it will inevitably have a cost implication. There are also questions about its practicality. It would make sense for the Minister to update us today on that work and to review its cost implications and practicality. That could be a real alternative. I was not aware of it until the Select Committee had the opportunity to visit FERA. Today’s debate is particularly timely as we consider the alternatives to produce a healthy cattle and a healthy badger population.
Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)
I rise in support of the motion. I congratulate colleagues on both sides of the House who tabled the motion and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for enabling the debate to take place. It has become clear over recent weeks and months that some colleagues who initially supported a cull are now beginning seriously to question that position. I thank the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), who, I appreciate, has now left the Chamber, because she was one of the first people to draw to my attention some serious reservations about what the Government had done.
The starting point on this issue and the common ground we are probably all on is that we do have a serious problem in England with bovine TB. So how do we reach agreement on reducing the scale of the problem, leading hopefully to its eradication? Both sides need to be honest. Under the previous Government we spent 10 years and some £50 million on trialling culls, and the outcome was no real meaningful contribution to eradicating TB in cattle. With the recent pilot culls we have witnessed an abject failure for farmers, taxpayers and wildlife.
The two pilot culls failed to achieve their own success criterion of culling 70% of badgers in six weeks. Against sound science, they were extended and spectacularly failed again to cull target numbers. The leaked IEP report shows that DEFRA failed to meet its main test for humaneness, as we have already heard this afternoon and will no doubt hear again—
Mr Harper
I take a particular interest because one of the cull areas covered a significant part of my constituency, and I am interested in the humaneness of the tests. I think that today’s debate, in asking the House to take a view, is premature. I meant what I said. I was disappointed that my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) did not take my intervention, which was why I raised a point of order. I want to see that report in its entirety to be able to make a judgment about the cull as carried out and also, if the culls continue, whether there need to be any changes. Does the hon. Gentleman think that the House needs to see that report before it can reach a proper decision?
Mr Brown
I respect the hon. Gentleman, but his own Government, Ministers and the Secretary of State have done nothing to give anyone any confidence in what was going on. Perhaps we will hear from the Minister later, but the constant delay has done nothing more than make people extremely suspicious about what was going on. It was almost as if there was an attempt to find reasons why what was done was correct. So he and I will have to part company there because I am not convinced that what he is saying is correct.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that that shows the danger of Governments trying to be seen to be doing something when they have no idea what to do? In this case, it has resulted in great cruelty and a failure.
Mr Brown
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Let us be honest: from time to time, we in this Chamber should realise that no one side has a monopoly on the answers to the problems, whether those problems are in our rural communities or our cities, although we must recognise that certain views sometimes need to be more respected on certain occasions.
I was referring to the leaked report and to the issue of humaneness. It has been suggested that no more than 5% of the badgers should take more than five minutes to die, but the IEP found that the actual figure was between 6.4% and 18%. Over time, the Opposition have made a series of reasonable, rational and, importantly, cross-party requests of the Government, none of which has been met to date.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend not agree that the Government entered into this with a preconceived idea about their approach and with a closed mind, particularly the Secretary of State? As anybody who has watched any of the television interviews knows, he would not consider anything else, but his methods have led to abject failure.
Mr Brown
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, which takes me back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). It is about making it look as if something is being done, but, all too often, it results in even more damage.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the badger cull was the wrong thing to do and that we should have followed Scotland’s example, as it achieved BTB-free status in 2009 without culling anything. However, he must acknowledge the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), which he also announced when he was a Minister: the Government have also done the right thing by restricting cattle movement, which is probably a contributory factor in the fact that bovine TB incidence is now falling in England.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Mr Brown, you are being very generous in giving way to other Members, but may I gently remind you that we have agreed to keep our remarks to eight or nine minutes, including interventions? I hope that will mean that those intervening will eventually be able to speak.
Mr Brown
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I must say that I have been known to be generous to a fault on many an occasion.
All I can say to the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) is that I had not realised that my writing was that large, as he has obviously seen what I am about to say. The story is totally different in other parts of the UK. In Wales, there has been a significant and substantial reduction in the disease, with decline at twice the rate of that in England. That has been achieved without culling but with badger vaccination and stringent measures on cattle that have been handled properly. In Northern Ireland, bovine TB is declining at a faster rate than in the south, where culling is taking place. As the hon. Gentleman has said, in Scotland we are fortunate—I shall put it no more strongly than that—to be clear of bovine TB, but we are not complacent and tight biosecurity is in place.
My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) is absolutely correct that this is about biosecurity and vaccination. Whether Members will accept it or not, there is a small army of volunteers who want to engage with farmers and others to try to eradicate the disease through a vaccination scheme.
Professor Rosie Woodroffe, a leading badger ecologist, questioned the licence extensions and their potential to increase the spread of TB through perturbation. She said that going from six to 14 weeks, as happened in the Gloucestershire cull area, was uncharted territory—so it is about things being seen to be done rather than about grappling with the issue. In November, she said:
“It is not unreasonable to expect that as you prolong the cull and you prolong increased badger movement, you increase the detrimental effects.”
In December, she said:
“It’s very likely that so far this cull will have increased the TB risk for cattle inside the Gloucestershire cull zone rather than reducing it…Culling low numbers of badgers, over a prolonged period, during these winter months, are all associated with increased TB.”
I hope that those who are now thinking seriously about what has happened will realise that it is an issue not of crying over spilt milk but of seeing that we have it wrong and asking about the scale on which we have it wrong. I hope that Members will support the consideration of vaccination and tight biosecurity so that we can make some moves towards eradicating this terrible disease from our countryside.
Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)
Unlike those of the previous speakers, my constituents have cattle. They also have experience of TB and are wrestling with the problem.
I am sorry that the debate is taking place at all. I have a great deal of respect for the Backbench Business Committee, but it would have been considerably more helpful if it had waited to hold the debate until after the report had been published. If we have a scientific report, it is worth reading it before having the debate.
Huw Irranca-Davies
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman has mentioned once again the IEP report and it might help the House to know that we now know, as I have had a response today, that the report is available and on the desk of the Secretary of State. May I ask through you whether the Minister and officials, through their good offices, could produce that immediately and put it in the Library? We still have time to look at it and consider it in the debate. That would help all Members.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
That is clearly not a matter for the Chair, but the Minister will have heard the hon. Gentleman’s point and, as he has said, there is plenty of time left in the debate at the moment.
Bill Wiggin
I am grateful to you for your judgment, Madam Deputy Speaker. Unlike the shadow Minister, I do not have access to the Secretary of State’s desk. Even if he has the report, I have not seen it and neither have my hon. Friends. Even if it is available today, we should have read it before we had the debate.
Let me return to the core of the debate, which is science and whether the Government have paid sufficient attention to the scientific detail and acted accordingly. It is wrong in every way to base an argument on a leaked report before its conclusions are in the public domain. Whatever our view, particularly if we are unsure about badger culling, we should take some comfort in knowing that before the Government roll out the policy across the country they test it with pilot schemes. Further comfort should be taken from the fact that they ensure that effectiveness and humaneness are the key factors that are tested.
We might find it hard to know without references from scientists whether a badger dies quickly or slowly when hit by a bullet. We might want to know whether the number of badgers culled is sufficient to prevent the spread of bovine TB. We cannot know these things unless the experts have published their reports, yet we are discussing the issue without the report. I can see the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies), waving bits of paper at me, but I want the constituents we all represent to have the same information as everybody in this House when we comment on this.
Mr Harper
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for giving way. Given that we are talking about the pilot cull and the House is being asked to make a decision about whether the cull should be rolled out, the point is not just about the report. If the report makes recommendations, we will want to know the Government response to them. We want the considered view of the Secretary of State and if he has only just received the report, he needs time to digest it and make some decisions.
Angela Smith
Even if we do not have the IEP report, we know that the pilot culls took 11 weeks rather than the RBCT’s recommended maximum of 11 nights. That means that the pilot culls have failed, does it not?
Bill Wiggin
I hope that the hon. Lady agrees that I have been generous in giving way to her, because she had quite a long time to have her say. I regret bitterly that in her speech she did not condemn the activities of people protesting that might have meant that the tests took longer. She should have done that, because whatever the report concludes about the trials, it is indisputable that what applies to one species should apply to the others. If we cull cattle, we should cull badgers. If we vaccinate badgers, we should vaccinate cattle. It is inconsistent treatment of one species or the other that damages disease control. That is proven by the spread of the disease and the inconsistent record of the previous Government.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Caroline Lucas
The words that the hon. Gentleman has just spoken are scientifically so wrong. All the evidence that we have seen demonstrates precisely that the strategy taken should depend on what species we are talking about and on the ecology. Just because culling makes sense in one context with one species at one time, it makes no sense to say that that means it is okay to do it in a different environment. The circumstances matter, not the general principle.
Bill Wiggin
I am delighted that the hon. Lady is so completely and utterly wrong. The joy of that is that the evidence is before us all. We have seen the disease spread by the policies of people like her. She does not have cattle, she has never done a pre-movement test and she does not know what she is talking about. Unfortunately, this is too serious a subject for her to pontificate on. If she was right, the disease would not have spread in the way that it has.
I would like to see far better skin tests. The old skin test is extremely iffy. It gave my bull, Jackeroo, a false Johne’s disease result. Happily, he subsequently proved to be free of the disease. I would like to see gamma interferon more readily available to any farmer who gets a skin test reactor. It would also be helpful if the Government were to publish the facts and figures proving that when a gamma interferon test is used, more TB reactors are detected earlier and the chance of getting a future clear test is significantly increased. If that is not possible, DEFRA needs to get us a better test.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Very briefly, what does the chief veterinary officer for the Government suggest should happen?
Bill Wiggin
We would love to know. We would love to know what the Government think of the report, but we have not seen it yet.
I have always preferred vaccination, and I believe that it should be targeted at healthy badger populations where the chance of a badger being infected is low but likely to increase due to their proximity to infected populations. This means vaccinating healthy badgers working inwards, geographically, towards the centre of infection. Professor Woodruff gives an excellent speech on the benefits of an immune population and how we can achieve that. This should also apply to cattle, and I am more than willing to do everything possible to help the Government achieve cattle vaccination.
There are endless arguments to suggest that vaccination is better than culling. I am more than willing to accept those arguments, but they cannot apply unless they apply to both species. We need to redouble our efforts to prevent damage to our export markets from vaccinating cattle. It is not widely known that meat from infected cows showing less than one lesion already makes its way into the food chain. It is also the case that milk from an infected cow is safe to drink after it has been pasteurised. Therefore, there is no reason why pasteurised milk and vet-inspected meat should not be available for export from vaccinated cattle. I think the House may find that it already is.
After the pathetic European response to the horsemeat scandal, I do not believe that the European Union has a strong case to ban our exports. The response from the European Commission is unhelpful and is another reason why, if for no other, we should leave the EU. I hope the Secretary of State will join me in campaigning to leave the European Union and one of the benefits will be that we can vaccinate our cattle.
If we are going to base our decisions on science, we should ensure that the scientists have been heard.
Bill Wiggin
No.
Today’s debate is unworthy of a Division and I hope that the House will not divide until it has had time to read and digest the report.
Bill Wiggin
No.
If the EU is going to ban our exports if we vaccinate, it should do so on proper health grounds. It will not be able to achieve that. If the Opposition object to scientific pilot schemes, they must apply the same science to badgers and to cattle equally. For 14 miserable years they did not do that. If the Government want to beat this disease scientifically, they will have to analyse what the scientists say and allow us to act within the law.
It is worth pointing out that there are many who believe that if the pilot culls are a failure, we should revisit gassing. I hope I am not alone in saying that I would hate to see that. Ultimately the House should unite in wanting to see healthy badgers, healthy cattle and healthy people. Unless we are consistent, scientific and determined, we shall be beaten by a minuscule bacteria, and this is not a fight we can afford to lose.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I shall be brief as I am the least expert person trying to catch Madam Deputy Speaker’s eye and I am lucky to have done so so early in the debate. As a sponsor of the debate, my credentials are possibly the fact that I have a history of taking up relatively unpopular views. I do not win over many friends, certainly not on the Opposition Benches.
Members who have been in the House for some time remember that I was passionately against the hunting with dogs Bill—one of the few Labour Members to take that view. I remember trying to make that case. As someone who once had a smallholding and lost chickens and ducks to a fox, I never saw a more effective way of getting a fox than when some people turned up with hounds and on horse. I made myself very unpopular because I did not believe in gassing, lamping and so on; I wanted an evaluation of the best possible method. I made many enemies on the Labour Benches, but I do not mind taking an unpopular view on occasion.
This should be a cross-party debate conducted in harmony. For 10 years I chaired a Select Committee, and my watchword was always that we should be guided by evidence-based policy, where we can get it. I have read as much as I can from the House of Commons Library and every document that I have found as the badger culling debate goes on, and I have come to the conclusion that the evidence shows that bovine TB is a calamity. I have many farming friends who are desperate because friends of theirs have had it on their farms. It drives farmers to desperation and in some tragic cases to suicide when they get bovine TB and lose a cherished herd that they have bred.
My heart goes out to the farming community when they do not understand why DEFRA and the Government cannot grapple with the problem and get it sorted. This debate should be about how we get it sorted. I did not agree with all the characteristically robust remarks of the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin). He is toeing the party line a bit today, but I agreed with him about the science. All the science shows that the cull has not worked. The pilot has not worked and has probably made the situation much worse.
There are some amusing aspects to the process. At the time of the flooding I found myself ringing round the House of Commons Library and all sorts of technical friends to find out whether badgers can swim. I found out, to my surprise, that when they have to, badgers can swim. That made quite a hole in some of the boundaries that DEFRA was drawing, thinking that badgers would not cross water. I believe in evidence. I believe that the issue must be sorted. I cannot see any way forward, apart from vaccination. I believe that we must vaccinate both cows and badgers in order to sort the problem out. Let us do it.
There has been some argy-bargy today about whether we have seen the final report. We are all grown up men and women and we know there is a reason why the report has only reached the desk of the Secretary of State today and we do not have it for this debate, which everyone knew was coming up because we applied for it weeks ago. We know that games are being played.
I am chair of the John Clare Trust. If anybody wants to see the finest poem about badgers ever written by a human being, they should look up John Clare’s poem “The Badger”. For hundreds of years human beings have treated badgers appallingly, baiting them for pleasure, and I do not want to be associated with that in the modern form of culling them. They are a form of animal life that we should respect and love, and I do, as I love and respect the fox and cattle. Indeed, as some Members of the House will know, I have been involved in another long-running campaign, which is related to the distaste for veal. Due to some bad publicity 30 years ago, almost every little boy calf born in this country is shot at birth and incinerated. That is dreadfully wrong. Now, at long last, we are getting rose veal coming back. I have respect for all sorts of animals.
Today is the chance to stop the silly disagreements over this matter. Every one in this House and in this country wants an end to them. We do not want the politics of “let’s have a cull to keep the farmers happy”. There is a bit of Government policy—I am talking about this Government and the previous one—that smacks of that. Let us today agree that there are scientific answers. We need a serious discussion with the European Union, and among ourselves, on how we evaluate the evidence and get this dreadful disease sorted. That is what farmers and lovers of wildlife want and what every Member of this House should want.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
I am delighted, Madam Deputy Speaker, to catch your eye in this debate. I draw Members’ attention to my declaration of interests. However, although I am a farmer, I do not have any cattle and therefore do not have any financially beneficial interests to declare.
I take no pleasure in talking about this dreadful disease. I am sure that everyone here today can at least agree that we have a serious problem. Given that the UK has the third largest dairy production and the fourth largest beef production in the EU in an industry worth about £8.4 billion, I want to ensure that that industry is not in any way jeopardised. We should all agree that badgers are at least part of the problem. Professor Donnelly has stated that nearly 50% of bovine TB incidents can be attributed to infectious badgers.
I think that this should be a cross-party issue. I hope that Members on both Front Benches can agree on a TB eradication policy, because whoever wins the next election will want to continue with it. I think that this debate is premature, and that it is impossible to come to some of the conclusions mentioned in the motion until the full copy of the report is available. I gather that the Government are about to publish a TB strategy, and until it is available and the Secretary of State has had a realistic chance to consider the report and the way the Government will go forward, we should not have this debate. Indeed, the timing now is unfortunate.
On 2 April, the Royal Society is to hold a high-powered seminar on the subject, to which I intend to go to learn the very latest scientific opinion. I agree with the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) that we should proceed on the basis of sound science—that obviously makes sense—and of cross-party agreement.
I stress to the House that we are talking only about trials. Let us try to learn the lesson from the trials. The lesson may be that we do not continue with them, that we do continue with them or that we continue with them in a different way. Let us at least try to learn it, and do it sensibly and maturely and in a low-key manner.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend also agree that we should learn lessons from other countries? The fact is there is no country in the world that has got on top of bovine TB without addressing its presence in the wildlife population. Ireland, which has culls, has reduced bovine TB by a third in recent years.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
My hon. Friend brings me to the very last paragraph of my speech. In the Republic of Ireland, from 2008 to 2013, there has been a 50% reduction in the number of reactors—from 29,900 down to 15,612. For the first time ever, the Government of the Republic of Ireland think that they may well be able to reach TB-free status, which is what we should be aiming for in this country. What we want to see is healthy cattle and healthy badgers.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
Is my hon. Friend also aware that Northern Ireland, which has never culled badgers and has no badger intervention in any place, has achieved a reduction of 12%, compared with only 8.9% in the Irish Republic?
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
Common sense and logic should say to my hon. Friend that a 50% reduction in the south must have an effect on the north because there are fewer badgers. Without the culling in the south, there would not have been the reduction in the north.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
I give way to the hon. Gentleman, but it will be the last intervention I take as we have been asked to be brief.
Albert Owen
The hon. Gentleman talked about countries. Wales is a country within the United Kingdom, and in February the Minister said that, between December 2012 and November 2013, 33% fewer cattle have been slaughtered because of TB. That is evidence from an area within the United Kingdom where no culling has taken place.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
I am not an expert on Wales, and I am sure that others who are situated in Wales will wish to speak in this debate and to refute that point. I simply note that there have been only three expressions of interests to extend the injectable trial in Wales. I suggest that that is because it is proving more difficult to carry out than the Welsh Government expected.
I wish to address my final few remarks to the culls and the lessons that are available to us. Although peaceful demonstration is perfectly acceptable, deliberate obstruction is not. Even less acceptable is the destruction of several hundred traps, which are private property and expensive items. That is what happened in Gloucestershire, and it was unacceptable. On learning the lessons, I concede—this is contrary to my former opinion—that the free-shooting of badgers is proving more difficult than was originally intended. In future trials, I expect that we will move towards the cage trapping of badgers and humane dispatch, which seems to be a more satisfactory method than free-shooting. None the less, we will always need free-shooting to back up that system, because some badgers will never go into a trap; they are trap shy.
Much has been said about the one leaked sentence from the report that stated that a number of badgers took five minutes to die. I understand that that was how long it took the person who shot the badger to reach the badger and verify that it was dead. If there are a lot of obstructions in their way, it could well take more than five minutes to get from the place where the shot has been fired to retrieving the badger and proving that it is dead. However, those are all matters of speculation. We simply do not know, because we have not seen the report. When we get the report, we will be much better informed.
Many people seem to be concerned about the number of badgers that are being culled—roughly a few thousand in both trials. They should contrast that with the 30,000 cattle that have to be slaughtered each year under the TB regulations. I understand that many Members in this House are deeply concerned about animal welfare, as indeed am I having had a parent who owned stock all their life, but they should think of this. When a cow is slaughtered under the unacceptable halal regime, it routinely takes more than five minutes to die. If the anti-cull brigade would focus its attention on that, it really would be doing some good.
Much has been said in this debate about vaccination. I understand that the Secretary of State, in a recent conversation with the EU Commissioner, was told that it is likely to be at least 10 years before a licensed cattle vaccine is available. We simply cannot leave our farmers in limbo for that long. Even when a licensed cattle vaccine becomes available, we need an acceptable skin test—a DIVA test—that will distinguish between vaccinated cattle and cattle that have the disease. Under the current BCG—Bacille de Calmette et Guérin—test, if an animal is vaccinated it will show up as having the disease. Members seems to think that a cattle vaccine is an easy thing to achieve, but the real question we must ask ourselves is whether countries around the world, let alone in the EU, will take our cattle exports if they have been vaccinated. That is a really big matter.
I am clear that culling on its own is not the answer, but neither is vaccination on its own. It would be if we had an oral vaccine that we could deliver to badgers, just as we did to foxes when we got rid of rabies on the continent. An oral vaccine has been just around the corner for the entire 22 years I have been a Member of Parliament, yet we still do not know when it is likely to appear.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) said, all around the world it has not been possible to eliminate a disease in cattle where there is a large wildlife vector. Whether it is white-tailed deer in Michigan, badgers in the Republic of Ireland or possums in New Zealand, in order to eradicate the disease in cattle we have to eradicate it in wildlife. I want to see a cold, sober debate in which the scientific evidence is fully evaluated, and I want the Government, hopefully on a cross-party basis if the Opposition will agree, to introduce a policy that will work. Let us ensure that we eliminate this dreadful disease once and for all.
Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)
I speak in this debate very much as a layman. I am not a farmer or an expert on the scientific issues, and I do not think that we have the disease in Coventry, so I cannot even claim a constituency interest, but I have a deep hatred of unnecessary suffering in animals, and so much of it goes on, with vivisection and all the rest of it. Where there is no compelling evidence that such suffering is necessary, we must seriously question our consciences and our policies.
I am also aware, as I am sure is every Back Bencher—I heard the speech that my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) made at a party meeting last night and again today—that this horrid and hideous disease is hated right across the country. We feel deeply for the farmers who are wrestling with it on their farms. The worst thing we can do when we cannot see a way forward is grasp at the nearest solution that might do some good. The Government will then say, “We have no confidence that this will work, but if you want to pay for it, we’ll license it,” and that is when we know that we are at a dead loss. That is shown by the figures, because there has been a catastrophic failure—it cannot be considered anything else. It is not scientific evidence, but empirical evidence of people not being able to shoot enough badgers. It is as simple as that.
Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)
I met farmers in my constituency to discuss the cull, and they did not believe that it would be effective. I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to the remarks about suffering made by Professor David Macdonald, who chairs Natural England’s science advisory committee:
“I fear there will be two tragic losers, the farmers who are paying the crippling bill for extending this trial and the badgers whose lives may be lost for little purpose.”
Is that not the case?
Mr Robinson
I thoroughly agree and thank my hon. Friend for that apposite intervention.
The hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), who represents a farming constituency, and who indeed is a farmer himself, was right when he said that vaccination would not have been an absolute solution for mad cow disease and that it is not yet a science-based solution to this problem. I will mention in passing something I read in the March edition of a scientific journal—I do not suppose many colleagues will have heard of it. It talked about novel particulate vaccines utilising polyester nanoparticles, or bio-beads, which I assume would be ingested orally, that work rather counter-intuitively with the animals and could be a way forward. I do not know about that, but it is clear to me that much less research is now being done. Could not all the money that is being spent—wasted, frankly—on the culls be put into vaccine research? Ultimately, that is the only solution. A vaccine will not be a silver bullet, but it could be effective alongside all the measures the Government are considering, as part of a shared policy.
I will end my remarks by joining Members on both sides of the Chamber in saying how great it is that this debate has been arranged by the Backbench Business Committee. It is absolutely perfect. The hon. Member for The Cotswolds is perhaps lucky that the report is not yet out. If it had been, he might have had much less to say. He must accept that there is never a perfect time for these things. I congratulate the Committee, because I think that this has been one of the best debates.
Mr Jim Cunningham
Does my hon. Friend not think that there is sufficient evidence from Scotland showing how the vaccine worked there?
Mr Robinson
To be honest, I do not know. I have read as much as I can. But I do know from the evidence so far that a vaccine would be much more humane and, if we put the resources into getting it, much more likely to succeed, taken with other measures, than the culls. The culls are counter-productive, because they are spreading the disease. They are miles off their targets. I cannot imagine why farmers would want to waste more money on them. I hope that the Government and the Opposition will now get together to find a way forward, because it is urgently needed. It is a challenge, but there is no better time to get a cross-party policy on the matter.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
It is a pleasure to contribute to a debate on this subject, as I have done on a number of occasions. It is important to commence my remarks, following those of the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), by saying that, coming from a rural constituency, and indeed a farming background, I think that the important point needs to be repeated once again: what we are talking about is the impact of a disease on the lives and livelihoods of farmers and their families. The impact of this terrible disease is, I believe, the biggest issue the farming industry currently faces, certainly south of the border.
Given all that, I think that we need to be reminded why we are here. Sadly, this is not about the welfare of the badger—of course, it should be—but about the future of the farming industry. It was on that basis that I first engaged with this issue, at the beginning of the randomised badger culling trials some 15 years ago. I was a member of the then Agriculture Select Committee that was looking at the issue and I strongly supported the roll-out of what was effectively evidence-based policy making introduced by the previous Government, and indeed proposed by Professor Krebs as a result of some earlier work under the previous Conservative Government. It was about building up an evidence base on which to go forward with a policy to bear down on this terrible disease, which is having a devastating effect on livestock farmers, especially in some parts of the country, such as west Cornwall.
Bob Stewart
Is this debate not about the welfare of cattle, the welfare of badgers and the fact that this horrid disease is spreading across the country more and more? We have to do something to find a solution.
Andrew George
Absolutely. This is, of course, about the impact the disease has on a whole range of wildlife, including badgers, but the primary focus, and the reason this is being driven, is the economic, emotional and social impact it has on the farming community and the viability of many marginal livestock farmers, particularly in my part of the world.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman talks about evidence, and I think that we all agree totally that that is the right way forward. Does he not accept that the Government ignored the evidence and just went ahead with the culls? Everything that they were warned would happen has indeed come to pass.
Andrew George
I am on the record as having cautioned the Government about the roll-out of the two pilot cull projects.
I want to ground my comments on the evidence from the randomised badger culling trial. Some 15 years ago my constituency was selected as one of the triplets, so we had a proactive cull in part of the Penwith moors. I backed the cull because it was on the basis of evidence-based policy making. I followed with great interest the outcome of that research and its conclusions, which found that reactive culling had no part to play in the management of bovine TB in the livestock industry, and that proactive culling could have a meaningful impact only if carried out in a thorough manner that achieved a high level of cull consistently over a long period, which meant that it had to achieve a 70% cull rate within the hot spot areas and across a wide enough area. If the Government chose to adopt this policy, it was important that they did so in such a robust manner that it would have a real and demonstrable impact. My concern about their approach is that they wanted to do it in a manner that would not be at great expense to the public purse and therefore at the cost of the farmer, although of course the state had to step in to provide the support with policing costs, at great expense in the case of both the pilot culls. The outcome of this work ran the high risk of making the situation significantly worse.
That is why, as a result of looking at the Government’s proposal, I proposed in my constituency the introduction of a community-led badger vaccination programme across a wide area—200 sq km. We are going to roll this out significantly later this year on the Penwith peninsula, working closely with the Zoological Society of London, which has now decided to take on a management role in it. Professor Rosie Woodroffe, who has been mentioned several times already, will be taking the lead on the project having originally been involved in the independent scientific group overseeing the randomised badger culling trials.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
Whatever our views on this subject, one need only remember what the Secretary of State himself said in this Chamber in October 2012:
“It would have been quite wrong to go ahead when it was not confident of reaching the 70% target and could have made the position worse.”—[Official Report, 23 October 2012; Vol. 551, c. 847.]
Those are the Secretary of State’s own words. I wonder whether we are now getting from certain Government Members mere bluster to defend an absolutely abhorrent policy that is not helping the farming industry and certainly not doing anything for animal welfare either.
Andrew George
I think those who called for this debate were anticipating, or hoping, that the IEP report would be out by now, as it should have been. That would at least have ensured that the information was already in the public domain and had not been disputed by the many people who will have seen it. I think we can make a number of reasonable assumptions about the figures in the report regarding the lack of effectiveness of the two pilot culls. We have a significant amount of evidence to go on—and it will be found to be sound—that those projects failed to achieve even a 50% cull of badgers, even in the Somerset area where it is considered to have gone slightly better than in Gloucestershire. In these unfortunate circumstances, we have to move forward on the basis of the information that is currently in the public domain.
I wish to conclude my remarks with a couple of straightforward points. First, a number of people have alighted on a report from DEFRA this week that has highlighted the fairly significant fall in TB reactors in the herd across the country—down from 37,734 in the period until December 2012 to 32,620 last year. That has happened before the impact of the pilot culls or anything else can be taken into account, which might mean that a lot of the other measures that this Government and the previous Government have engaged in are beginning to show some effects. That cannot be ignored.
Secondly, I want to refer to the collective research that was brought together by Professor James Wood at Cambridge about a year ago. I do not have the document with me, but it showed that even in the herds that had been given the all-clear after a reactor, up to 25% continued to have latent TB within them. In this debate we are concentrating significantly on vaccinating rather than killing the badger population, but we should be concentrating a great deal more on biosecurity measures and ways in which we can bear down on the latent disease that still remains in the United Kingdom livestock industry. Even though it has been given the all-clear—
Roger Williams
I respect my hon. Friend’s views on these matters, but does he agree that however poor the tuberculin skin test is, it has been effective in reducing TB in previous times?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Mr George, it is not my patience you will be testing; it is that of your colleagues who are patiently waiting to speak. For the third time, I remind Members that they must speak for eight to nine minutes, including interventions. Mr George, you have been speaking for 11 minutes.
Andrew George
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I will bring my remarks to a close by reminding people that I believe that vaccination is the way forward. It is the cheaper alternative for the Government, it is likely to be more effective, and it never runs the risk of making the situation worse.
Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)
While I have the Floor, I am sure that colleagues across the House would like to congratulate pupils from West Lakes academy in my constituency on sending a balloon into space this morning—quite an achievement. It is called Project Space Eye if anyone would like to look it up.
As the Member of Parliament for England’s most remotely accessible constituency from Westminster, I am proud to represent many dozens of farmers. As I have said previously when debating this issue, I married into a dairy farming family and, as such, I have some understanding of the wide impact that bovine tuberculosis can have. We have not seen much of this so far, but I hope that when the House discusses these issues we can prevent ourselves from descending into some of the crude, crass misunderstandings, clichés and characterisations about urban England and rural England that do nobody any good whatsoever.
Communities throughout my constituency were devastated by the outbreaks of foot and mouth over the past decade and, as a result, we are all acutely aware of the impact that losing a significant number of livestock can have, not only on the economic viability of farms, but also with regard to emotional distress caused by enforced slaughter. Bovine TB is extremely serious, and effective measures should be taken to minimise the spread of the disease. However, as more and more results of the badger cull are brought to light, the less and less effective it is shown to be. The badger cull has been a failure by whichever yardstick we choose to measure it, whether by its efficacy in reducing bovine TB, by the cost to the taxpayer, or by the humaneness of the implementation.
Before the pilot culls took place, the number of cattle slaughtered from January to November 2013 was 30,220. That means that more than 4,600 fewer cattle were slaughtered because of bovine TB compared with the same period in 2012. The widely disputed effectiveness of the cull notwithstanding, other measures such as restrictions on cattle movement, tighter biosecurity and rigorous testing regimes have clearly had a great impact on reducing the need for compulsory slaughter. The pilot schemes were conducted on the basis that over six weeks, 70% of badgers would be culled. The original two pilot schemes failed in this regard. A freedom of information request in January revealed that in west Somerset just 360 badgers were killed by controlled shooting out of a population of more than 1,450, and in west Gloucestershire, 543 of about 2,350 badgers were killed. These numbers fall significantly below the 70% threshold. This has led to extensions of the culls, flying in the face of all sound scientific advice.
Professor Rosie Woodroffe, who was involved in the original randomised badger culling trials between 1998 and 2005, has said:
“It is not unreasonable to expect that as you prolong the cull and you prolong increased badger movement, you increase the detrimental effects.”
Those detrimental effects were incredibly serious and the result was that TB infections in badgers increased as movement increased, and the increase was exacerbated in areas where culling was prolonged. The badger cull was designed specifically to lower instances of bovine TB, but I am afraid that it is only this Government who could press ahead with a cull that is infecting more badgers.
Not only is this cull ineffective; it is cruel. The independent expert panel set up by the Government to assess the culls has confirmed that those carried out in Somerset and Gloucestershire were ineffective and failed on humanness. To be judged humane, no more than 5% of badgers would take longer than five minutes to die, but instead of meeting that one in 20 target, as many as one in five took longer than five minutes to die. With all that in mind, it is clear that controlled shooting badger culls are simply ineffective and it is appalling that the Government seek to carry on regardless.
The Government said the cull was needed to prevent bovine TB, which fell dramatically before the cull had even started. They said the cull would reduce TB infection rates, but more badgers are being infected owing to the prolonging of an ineffective cull. They said the cull would be humane, but significant numbers of badgers are being put through slow and painful deaths.
The contents of my postbag are a clear demonstration of how strongly my constituents feel about this badly implemented cull. The sheer amount of correspondence I have received so far on this issue has surpassed that received on many other issues, with the exception of the national health service, and not one constituent has expressed support for the cull. I am afraid it is time for the Government to go back to the drawing board and reflect the will of Members on both sides of the House.
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)
It will be with a heavy heart that I will not vote on this motion, if there is a Division. I really want to support the livestock industry and to demonstrate my commitment to eradicating this disease, but I am not prepared to vote on the basis of a partially leaked document—it was not even fully leaked—reported on the BBC news a couple of weeks ago.
I agree with and share the view of the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed) that we should not seek to highlight an urban-rural divide, but it is disappointing that he referred to a number of alleged statistics from a report that none of us has had the benefit of seeing. How we can make a reasoned judgement on that, I do not know.
Simon Hart
I have a huge amount of respect for the shadow Minister, as he knows. It is all very well for him to point at the Minister and say that he has it, but we cannot just look through a lengthy report in one morning or during a debate and reach a solid conclusion.
Simon Hart
Not at the moment, but I will in a short while.
This is a matter of great sensitivity. Although I have a long and well-known track record on this particular issue, I fully accept that not everybody shares my view and that there are some passionate contrary views. I respect them as much as I possibly can and I will—as I always have—study the alternative view.
We are talking not about a percentage reduction in bovine TB, but about how we best deal with eradication. I want to touch on two subjects: humaneness and the comparisons with the policy in Wales, which is being used as a nice, easy solution whereby people say, “Why don’t we just do what the Welsh are doing, because it seems to be working there?”
On humaneness, we have to take a view on whether culling is necessary. I accept entirely that not everybody takes that view, but if we accept that culling will play not the sole part, but a part in eradicating bovine TB, we have to look at the comparative measures available and the comparative suffering associated with each of them. There is no method of control or culling—none—that is without its welfare consequences. If anybody can highlight one, I will take an intervention. Even cage trapping comes with a welfare consequence—about which there is very little research—because animals may be trapped in those devices for a significant time before anybody deals with them. We have to make comparisons and reach a view. We have not done so and we are avoiding that particular aspect of the argument.
Only when we have looked at the comparative measures will we be able to address the whole subject in context. It is important to consider the suffering of cattle and badgers with TB, bearing in mind that a lot of cubs get infected while in the sett and are already carrying the disease by the time they emerge from it. Any vaccination after that is pointless, because they have already contracted the disease. We have to look at this practically. We also need to consider the suffering of farmers and the impact on their livelihood, which has been mentioned by pretty much every speaker. We also need to consider the suffering—I use that word carefully—of taxpayers who are, year in, year out, forking out substantial sums of money while we continue to dither over this subject.
On the comparison with Wales, I want to read out two quotes. The first is from the veterinary advice to the Welsh Government in 2011:
“A proactive, non-selective badger cull is expected to reduce the level of confirmed herd breakdowns within the culling area for year 1.”
The second is from the veterinary advice to the Welsh Government in 2012:
“In so far as the results of RBCT can be extrapolated to the IAA”—
the intensive action area—
“it is possible to conclude that the outcome of an effectively managed cull of badgers (in the IAA) should be an overall reduction in the number of breakdowns.”
It is important to bear in mind that the only thing that has changed in Wales is the colour of the Government—the veterinary advice has not changed. It is essential that the House and others realise that the idea that some magic cure is being applied to the badger population in Wales is a myth. Anybody who suggests—as the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), who is not in his place, did—that there is a substantial decline in the number of herd breakdowns in Wales as a result of vaccination needs to take a wee bit of care, because in fact the statistics demonstrate that the reduction is exactly the same across the whole of Wales: there is no material difference between the reduction outside the vaccination area and that inside the vaccination area. The advice from the Welsh Government Minister, whom I spoke to personally, is that it would be dangerous to reach conclusions about the impact of vaccination based on the results so far. I just want to put that on the record.
As the Minister himself said:
“I am delighted that overall the figures have come down, however we cannot be certain that this is a long term trend and there may still be more fluctuation in the figures.”
Those who think that the answer lies in Wales should look again. We are a long way off being able to bring to the House news of a silver bullet having been invented and deployed in our part of the country.
It is important to allow other speakers to have their say. I mentioned at the beginning of my speech that the objective is eradication, not reduction. All the experts to whom I have spoken, including those in Cardiff representing Government and agricultural interests, recognise that a floor will be reached as a result of all the other measures that will be put in place, such as the measures on cattle movements and more rigorous annual testing. If we are to break through that floor and reach eradication rather than reduction, culling will be back on the agenda. Nobody of any political colour or persuasion when it comes to culling has not confirmed the fact that, if we are going to deal with the matter once and for all, we are going to have to address the reservoir of the disease in the wildlife population.
If one encouraging thing has come from today’s debate—I share the view of those Members who say that it is somewhat premature—it is the fact that at last one or two people are talking about a collaborative approach between parties, rather than simply using the issue as a means of political point scoring. If we can take an intelligent view and look at the best practice of the policy in Cardiff as well as some of the measures in England, I think we will make some progress. However, the idea that we can simply dismiss one important part of the strategy of reducing TB simply because we find it distasteful does not do badgers, cattle, farmers or taxpayers any favours.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
I think we should judge the contribution of the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) by recalling his previous employment. He was employed by the Countryside Alliance and has long been an advocate of the tormenting of small mammals for fun—for sport. He was known in Wales for many years before he entered the House as a main advocate of killing small animals for fun. We should bear that in mind and consider the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) about our historic relationship with animals, particularly badgers. I hope to be able to quote part of John Clare’s poem.
The figures in Wales, which the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire did not cite, are impressive. There were reductions in the incidence of bovine TB as measured both by the number of cattle slaughtered, which fell by 33%, and the number of herds affected, which fell by 23%, but does he understand that enormous decrease was without any culling and without shooting badgers?
A wholly dishonest picture has been presented about Ireland. The Secretary of State compared reductions, but he compared last year with 1998. That was a strange year to pick, but the reason for it was the sudden very big rise in the number of incidents of bovine TB. It had been about half that level a year earlier, and it was reduced in following years. The significant point about Ireland, as has been suggested by the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), is clear when we look at what has happened to the graph for Northern Ireland. The figures for reductions and increases in levels of bovine TB in the north and the south are virtually identical. There was a wholesale cull in the south—lots of animals were killed—but it made no difference in comparison with the figures for the north.
The report before us makes a very thin case. The Government and some Government Members say that we need another piece of paper or another report. We had 10 years of the Krebs study—it went on and on, with many millions of pounds spent and 10,000 animals slaughtered—which concluded that there was no advantage in culling in the United Kingdom. He said that as a result of the evidence. The Government praise themselves on believing in evidence-based policy, but when they do not have the evidence, they invent it, as they have today.
There is no evidence for a cull. When it was announced by the previous Secretary of State in 2011, the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), I made the point that it was a bad science policy, and that there would be a big badger killing spree because of the indifference shown by people in the countryside to some animal suffering. An hon. Member made a plea for our treating cattle the same, but we should not give a picture of cattle having a blissful life—born in fields, running around in lovely surroundings, growing old, turning grey and geriatric, and going off to some nice residential home for ancient cows somewhere. Farming is brutal and cruel, and cattle have a brief life.
We must say to the overwhelming majority of people in this country who oppose the cull that there is a sensible solution, which is vaccination. It will not work perfectly, and we will have to look at it again and see how it works in other areas for a number of years. Let us not delude ourselves that those who support culling have anything except a wish to please the farmers whom they represent. That is fine, but DEFRA has become known by the name Do Everything Farmers’ Representatives Ask, and I am afraid that there is a lot in that.
That is the reason why we have ended up paying £3 billion—someone has said, “Let’s leave the common market. Let’s leave the EU”—of welfare into farmers’ pockets. If there is any dependency culture in this country, it is in farming. When there are problems in other industries, such as steel or heavy industries, they are not supported with unlimited subsidies. However, when there is a problem in the farming industry, it is given compensation for its losses. As someone has said about the floods, when the effluent hit the affluent there was a great reaction, and I am sure that the compensation will be a great deal more generous in the fields of Somerset than in the working-class areas and terraced streets that have been flooded for years. That is what we are up against today.
I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I will now finish. I believe that Opposition Members have compassion against cruelty, and we have practical alternatives to the Government’s instant solution, which does not work. John Clare’s great poem, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield, described what was acceptable in Britain at that time, with a badger dragged out of its area, paraded through the town, and beaten and kicked to death. That was regarded as a great sport, and some people in the Chamber still regard animals as suitable targets for sport or entertainment, but that is not what the majority of people want. If there is action to get rid of this disease, it must be based on science as well as what is compassionate and acceptable to the nation, which culling is not.
Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
I do not want to provoke my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), but as a member of the Backbench Business Committee, I must tell him that I am delighted that we chose this subject for debate. I have enjoyed the debate, particularly its passion. It is such a shame that the passion demonstrated on animal welfare today has not been demonstrated on all such issues during the years that I have been in Parliament. If it had been, we would have had a much better outcome for God’s creatures than we now have. If I had been told when I spoke from the Back Benches on Third Reading of the Protection of Badgers Bill, which was piloted through by the noble Lord Waldegrave in 1992, that I would now be here to support the motion tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) about badger culling, I simply would not have believed it.
I do not want to antagonise any hon. Friends who represent farming communities—I am well aware of the pressures I face from my hon. Friends—but I am only too well aware that badgers are not warm cuddly creatures and that they can be dangerous when cornered. Some people claim that there are too many badgers and foxes, but that is a completely different matter and is not an argument for today’s debate. I represent the urban area of Southend West. When I made that speech about protecting badgers many years ago, I had no idea how difficult it was to move a sett from an urban area to somewhere else.
Daniel Kawczynski
My hon. Friend mentioned that he represents an urban area. Will he agree to come to Shropshire to meet our dairy farmers, because he will see that we have slaughtered more cows this year than last year—up to 2,125—and that the misery for our farmers is absolutely palpable?
Mr Amess
I am trying to keep within my eight or nine minutes, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is like when I expressed my views on the city of culture and had offers to visit constituencies all over the country. If I can, I may at some time visit my hon. Friend’s constituency. When I represented Basildon, which had 32 farms, I gained some understanding of the pressures that farmers are under.
All hon. Members probably have the same briefings—depending on which side of the debate we are on—and many of the arguments have already been made. There have been two culls, and we now face a decision about the way forward. I will not get into the argument about the expert panel’s report, but it has apparently found that pilot culls have failed in the two tests set by the Government, namely effectiveness and humaneness. Many hon. Members have made points about that, so I will not repeat them.
Different parts of the world have been mentioned, so I will say that badgers are a unique species. When comparisons are made with possum culls in New Zealand, or with culls in north America, they do not take into account the unique culture of the species. It is like comparing a dog with a whale. I just do not think that those comparisons are real.
The pilot culls, as well as seemingly being ineffective, were very costly. The costs of conducting and monitoring the target culls soared, especially when the policing costs are taken into account. That was big expense. The preliminary calculations put the cost of the pilot cull at more than £4,000 per badger killed. That is absolutely crazy. It has been estimated that £10 million has been spent on the cull so far. We live in challenging economic times and that is a lot of money.
The evidence suggests that the adoption of free-shooting as a means of culling badgers did not meet the necessary guidelines on humaneness. DEFRA set the standard of 95% of badgers dying within five minutes. However, as we have heard, the independent experts found that up to 18% of the badgers exceeded that limit. According to Natural England, badgers were often shot in the wrong area of the body, necessitating a second shot to kill them. The monitoring of the culls has been deemed “woefully inadequate”. On the 41 visits made by Natural England’s monitors, they witnessed only nine badgers being killed by controlled shooting.
It would be wrong to highlight the concerns without putting forward a solution, which is what all hon. Members want. I think that badger vaccination should be treated seriously. Using an already licensed injectable vaccine represents a more cost-effective, compassionate and less divisive way of managing infection in badger populations. The House is saying that it would be good if we could agree on this matter. That solution could be implemented by using the data that have been provided by Natural England, which has recorded accurate information on the location of badger setts. I argue that badger setts could be successfully inoculated by using that information.
The speed of vaccination is an important consideration. It would be disingenuous to suggest that vaccination is a quick process. Admittedly, the process would be gradual. However, vaccinating badgers is a long-term and sustainable way of reducing the prevalence of bovine TB. That is what the House is coming together to say. It wants to see the prevalence of bovine TB reduced.
Obviously, inoculation will not eradicate badgers that carry the disease. It will just prevent the disease from spreading to other badgers. Therefore, those who are in favour of the badger cull may well argue that, on the face of it, the cull brings a quicker resolution to the problem. However, the evidence suggests that if we want a long-term, sustainable resolution to the problem, culling is not the answer. There is no doubt that badgers contribute to the problem of TB in cattle. My hon. Friends who have represented the concerns of their constituents have been right to do so. However, the only way to manage the problem is to vaccinate badgers. I will not comment on matters in Wales.
I want to make one or two remarks to the Minister. I commend the Government’s investment of £250,000 a year to support and encourage badger vaccination using the existing injectable BCG vaccine. I also commend the Department for continuing to invest in further research into cattle vaccination and for pressing our European partners to reform EU legislation, which will be a tough task.
Finally, it is important to note that the fact that they oppose the method that was adopted in the recent culls does not mean that those who champion vaccination as an alternative are not on the side of farmers or that they do not empathise with the emotional and financial implications of losing cattle to TB. The evidence is that we can make a serious attempt to reduce the levels of TB in farmers’ livestock, while upholding the welfare of these unique animals. I urge the Minister to seriously review the evidence from the IEP and to consider a more effective, compassionate and less costly alternative that serves the interests of farmers, as well as meeting ethical standards. Today, hon. Members have clearly demonstrated their general concern about animal welfare.
Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) on securing this debate and the Backbench Business Committee on allowing it to proceed.
It is important that we acknowledge that the badger cull has been a catastrophic failure. It has failed farmers, it has failed taxpayers and it has failed the wildlife in our countryside. It failed to reach the 70% target that it needed to reach to be effective. As Members have said, the experts say that for a randomised badger cull to be successful, it should take about two weeks. The Government set a timescale of six weeks, but they did not even manage it in that period and had to extend it. It certainly failed on that score.
The cull failed DEFRA’s own perverse humaneness test. The test says that it is humane if it takes an animal only five minutes to die. I do not think that that is humane, but the Government failed that test as well. As other Members have pointed out, according to leaked reports, one in five badgers took considerably longer than five minutes to die. Of the 1,861 badgers that were killed in the cull, 335 took considerably longer than five minutes to die. The Government therefore failed the humaneness test.
The Government failed to stop the spread of the disease because of perturbation. All the expert evidence says that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) said in her intervention, the Secretary of State himself acknowledged that the 70% target must be met, otherwise the cull would be a failure because of the problem of perturbation. The Government did not manage that, so on that basis, they have made the situation worse and spread TB even wider.
The Government have failed the value-for-money test as well. The Conservative think-tank, the Bow Group, has said that it cost £4,121 to kill each badger.
The Government have failed to acknowledge that vaccination works. They have failed to acknowledge what has happened in Wales. They have failed to accept that in Northern Ireland, where there has been no badger cull, the level of bovine TB has been reduced. We know that it is cattle movements and biosecurity measures, alongside vaccination, that will make the biggest contribution.
The Government have also failed to meet their commitments. Government Members have talked today about seeking cross-party consensus. The Government have failed to seek that consensus. The Opposition have offered an open hand to find a consensus. Hopefully, after today, we will find one, but the Government have so far failed to deliver on that.
The Government have certainly failed to listen to the public. Some 304,202 people signed the e-petition against the badger cull. The Government have failed to listen to scientific opinion, as I have pointed out. The hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), who is not in his place, spoke about the importance of proceeding on the basis of scientific evidence and said that we needed to wait for the report to be available. The overwhelming scientific consensus before the cull was that it would not work, but the Government felt that it was satisfactory to ignore scientific opinion. When it suits them they ignore scientific opinion, and when it does not they call for more scientific evidence to be made available.
Ministers cannot say that they were not made aware that the badger cull would be a disaster: hon. Members lined up to point out the folly of proceeding with it; the scientific world told them not to cull and that there was no scientific basis for proceeding with it; and the public were overwhelmingly opposed to it. The Government’s own former scientific adviser said it was a fiasco, and many other choice words have been used by scientists to describe it.
It is important that from today we move forward with some sort of unity and consensus. I am delighted that some Members who previously voted for the cull have now changed their minds in the light of the catastrophe that has befallen us in the randomised badger culling areas. My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) talked about the importance of reaching a consensus, which is what the overwhelming majority of the British public want. We know that the current situation is putting the police in an impossible position. I have heard numerous reports—even while I have been sitting here listening to the debate, people have been e-mailing me—of those monitoring badger culls being harassed and even having shots fired at them. We cannot allow that to happen. We have to find an alternative way forward.
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
Would the hon. Gentleman mind looking at whether there is a difference in the policing costs for Gloucestershire and Somerset?
Chris Williamson
Policing costs are a significant contributory factor to the overall cost of the badger cull, but we live in a democracy and people have a right to monitor the badger cull and protest against it. We do not live in a dictatorship and those costs have to be factored in.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
Is it not important to acknowledge the distress the cull has caused to the wider community overall?
Chris Williamson
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. That distress is not confined to people living in towns and cities; it is felt by rural communities and by many farmers. Dairy farmers have approached me to say that they are extremely distressed by the badger cull and do not feel that there is any justification for it. I see the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) shaking his head, but I can assure him that that is a fact. They are fearful that this folly will make matters worse for them. They want to proceed on a scientific basis and see this disease eradicated. They do not want to see badgers suffering and they certainly do not want to see the situation made worse as a consequence of the folly we have seen so far.
I hope that there can be a rapprochement between those on the Government Front Bench and Opposition Members, and that we can find consensus. To achieve that, the Government must abandon this cull.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
For the avoidance of doubt, I declare an interest. I am responsible for some cattle in Wales and although this debate refers to England it is appropriate that I declare that interest.
In a few months I will no longer have an interest to declare because we have decided not to keep cattle any more, partly as a result of the problems we face with TB in cattle. More grassland will be therefore ploughed up and the countryside will be less attractive. With the loss of biodiversity, the countryside will be able to support fewer species. That is a shame, and is just one effect of this country not being able to get a grip and reduce, then eliminate, this disease.
I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee on allowing this debate and the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) on securing it. It is vital that, in our shared determination to beat this terrible disease, we constantly scrutinise the work of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the development of policy. I am sure the House shares my determination to bring down the incidence of TB in our national beef and dairy herds. It is a great burden on our cattle farmers, and an avoidable expense to the Government and the taxpayer. It is also a possible risk to human health, but I do no think I will have time to go into that this afternoon.
The tragedy is that bovine TB was virtually eliminated in the United Kingdom during the 1950s and 1960s, although there were persistent outbreaks in the south-west. That success was due to the tuberculin skin test. When the disease began to increase and spread from the south-west, it was reasonably believed that it could again be controlled by means of the skin test, perhaps used more frequently. Unfortunately, that was not the case. There is now a wildlife reservoir that did not exist in the 1950s and 1960s. The scenario is different, and therefore different policies are needed to prevent the ever-increasing spread of the disease.
Although the epidemiology of TB, whether in cattle or in human beings, is not readily understandable—for instance, infected cattle kept in sheds throughout the winter have not passed on the infection to other cattle with which they have been in close contact—it is sometimes useful to draw parallels between different species. Bronllys hospital, in my constituency, is now a community hospital that is much valued by the people whom it serves, but originally it was the TB sanatorium for the people of south Wales. It was built in my constituency because we have a sunny and healthy climate. The treatment in the hospital of TB before antibiotics consisted of radical surgery, fresh air, sunshine and good food. The success of the eradication, or near-eradication, of TB in humans has been due to the use of antibiotics, the use of a vaccine, the pasteurisation of milk—which often carried the organism—improvements in housing and diet, and, nowadays, health checks for people entering the country,
Mr Jim Cunningham
What the hon. Gentleman is saying is very interesting. Is he going to say anything about the effects of the vaccine when it was used in Wales? I referred to Scotland earlier, but I meant to say Wales.
Roger Williams
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that correction. I shall come to the issue he has raised in a moment.
We would not have eradicated TB in human beings if we had relied on the vaccine alone, and indeed we will not eradicate it in cattle if we rely on the vaccine alone. A range of tools must be used if we are to be successful. There is the tuberculin skin test, there is biosecurity, there is the restriction of cattle movements, and now there is vaccination. There is also badger culling in specific, focused areas where the incidence of the disease is high. I do not underestimate the contribution that a badger vaccine could make to the control of TB in cattle, but it cannot be relied on to achieve it on its own.
The problem is that we have no scientific evidence that the Bacille de Calmette et Guérin, or BCG—which was developed in the 1920s, and has not been developed further—can prevent TB in cattle. We know that it is 70% effective in providing immunity in badgers, although of course it is not effective if the badgers are already infected, but no scientific evidence has been produced to demonstrate that it reduces infection in cattle in the field.
The pilot culls are planned to continue for four years. I believe that they should continue, and that lessons should be learnt from the report that we expect to be published in the next few weeks. We should bear it in mind that the randomised badger cull trials failed to meet the cull targets—which is the point I was trying to make to the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), for whom I have high regard—but the cull trials did result in a reduced incidence of TB in cattle herds, so there is some good news.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman not share my concern that whatever we think about the issue of culling, there has to be huge concern about the failure to meet DEFRA’s own targets on humaneness? Surely we cannot continue to extend this culling regime while this inhumaneness continues?
Roger Williams
We await the report on that. We have had only leaked evidence and I have heard less critical interpretation of the statistics.
Roger Williams
I will not give way as I have almost used up my time allowance.
Continuing results from the RBCTs show continuing benefits from proactive culling many years after the conclusion of the trials. The TB situation continues to improve in New Zealand and Australia. Improvements are also evident in southern Ireland where, the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge might like to note, a reactive cull has been used. Surprisingly, those areas that used reactive culling in the RBCTs now show improvements compared with the survey areas. Perhaps we should re-examine the use of reactive culling.
More support for culling could be generated if we had a better test for TB in live badgers. The good news is that the polymerase chain reaction test is making progress and hopefully by next year we will have a conclusive test. I am sure that the culling of infected setts, as identified by PCR tests, and the protecting of healthy setts would be supported. I ask the Minister whether there is any advance on those tests.
I am told that badgers culled in the pilots vary in weight from 6.5 kg to 22 kg. Evidence of disease in the lightest badgers probably implies that they would not survive the winter and would die in considerable distress of starvation, hyperthermia and disease. I have not heard anything today that would lead me to believe that the BCG vaccine alone will lead to an elimination of disease in the wildlife reservoir. I believe a cull is also needed as part of a wide-ranging policy, and for that reason I cannot support this motion.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
I apologise for not being here at the start of the debate.
Along with a number of colleagues on both sides of the House, I am not an expert on this subject, but I was Minister of State at DEFRA between 2009 and 2010. Some might say that that disqualifies me as an expert, but, as everybody in the House knows, having no skill, qualifications or even talent has never been an obstacle to being a Minister—I am sure we all have our own favourites. However, I did have the experience of being at DEFRA the last time the Labour Government looked at another cull—we did cull between 1997 and 2010—and, as many colleagues on both sides of the House have said, the Krebs report demonstrated that the science was brought into question.
When I was appointed as Minister the Daily Mail attacked me. It said, “He’s a veggie and he’s a townie; what does he know about farming?”, which was a very fair observation, but I thought just a little bit too critical, because, as I have said, lack of qualifications has never been an obstacle before. The National Farmers Union was very generous, however. It said, “We don’t care where he comes from or what he eats; we will judge him on what he does for farming”, and I think I established a good relationship with the NFU. In its defence, in response to a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) about subsidies, if there were not subsidies for agriculture across Europe there would be a lot more people visiting food banks. Those subsidies are not going to line farmers’ pockets exclusively, which I think is the interpretation of what was said that people outside the Chamber might have drawn.
The hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), who is not in his place at present, was very critical of the previous Labour Government. His comments might have been fair if he had said the Labour Government were inconsistent, but that inconsistency arose because we tried to do everything we could: we tried culling; we tried restrictions; we tried extra biosecurity; and we tried vaccination—with all the problems the Government have in getting the vaccination validated by Europe and so forth. Progress was made, however.
I attended the NFU conference in Birmingham only two weeks ago, as did other members of the EFRA Select Committee. The Minister was also there, representing the Government on behalf of the Secretary of State. I have the highest regard for the outgoing NFU president, Peter Kendall, and I wish his successor, Meurig Raymond, every success during his tenure as president. I heard Peter Kendall say to the Minister that the NFU was grateful for the Government’s efforts to deal with TB.
When I was a Minister, from 2009 to 2010, we were presented with evidence to secure a cull. Some Labour colleagues have suggested today that the evidence is overwhelming, but it was not overwhelming in 2009. At that time, I took the view, on a balance of 55:45, not to recommend culling to the then Secretary of State. He looked at the evidence, and my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies), who was also in the Department at the time, was privy to some of our discussions. The Secretary of State listened to the experts, read the briefings, looked at my recommendations and talked to the NFU. He also concluded that culling was not the way forward.
Angela Smith
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I was named in the previous speech, but the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) would not give way to me. He said in his speech that targets had been set for the randomised badger culling trial. Can my hon. Friend confirm that such targets were not set for the RBCT, and that the trials were in fact designed to establish what targets would be necessary for culling to be effective?
Jim Fitzpatrick
My hon. Friend has set the record straight following the hon. Gentleman’s comments. I also congratulate her and others on securing the debate today, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing it. Although it is taking place in advance of the report’s release, it represents another step forward in our attempt to address the problem of TB. I hope that we will get an oral statement from the Secretary of State when the report is published, and that we will be able to have a full debate on the Floor of the House in Government time.
Clive Efford
Many Members prayed in aid the fact that the report was delivered to the Secretary of State only today, and suggested that the debate was therefore premature. Does my hon. Friend agree that debates in the House can often focus the attention of those outside the House? Perhaps it is no coincidence that the report was produced on the same day that we are holding this debate. That is testimony to the work of the Backbench Business Committee in arranging the debate for today.
Jim Fitzpatrick
My hon. Friend makes a valid point. One of the successes of the Backbench Business Committee’s procedures is that they have allowed Parliament to chivvy the Government along. For DEFRA, that has happened in relation to dangerous dogs, wild animals in circuses and bovine TB. The debates keep these matters alive in the eyes of the media, of the public and of those on all sides who are concerned about the issues. It is certainly not a waste of time to hold this debate today. It might be premature to do so before we have seen the report, but I hope that the Government will hold a debate in their own time when it is published, or that we will at least have an oral statement so that we can question the Secretary of State about its findings.
The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire has suggested that the report has been quoted selectively. He even quoted some statistics from it himself. Some of it is in the public domain. As soon as all of it is there, it will provide more evidence and give us more opportunities to make judgments. We have heard about the conflicting interpretations of what is happening in Wales, Ireland and Northern Ireland. I have not heard anything so far to persuade me that we arrived at the wrong conclusion in 2009-10.
I understand the total frustration and anger among those in the farming community. They want to see something being done about bovine TB, and the cull at least provided evidence that something was being done. I still think that it was the wrong thing to do, however, and I hope that the Government will not extend the culls in due course. In the speeches from both sides of the House today, no one has said anything other than that they want TB to be eradicated. We want it to be done as efficiently, professionally and quickly as possible. I have the utmost respect for the Minister; we have dealt with each other on many occasions, and I know that he is committed to this subject as a result of his own farming and family interests. We want bovine TB to be beaten as quickly as possible, and I hope that this debate will bring us closer to achieving that as soon as possible.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick). I start by paying my own tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) for making it to the debate today. She is incredibly brave to do so. I am also grateful to her for doing so because she had asked me to open the debate on her behalf, had she been unable to be here. I thank the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), not only for her contribution today, but for all her work on the issue over a number of months now. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing us to have the debate. As the hon. Gentleman said, it is a timely one and a good opportunity for us to focus our minds on the issue.
We need to take the debate back to basics. There has been much criticism from those who have been pro the cull that those of us who are anti the cull do not understand, because we do not have bovine TB in our constituencies. I am one of those MPs: we have very little BTB in Kent—but I want to keep it that why, which is why I am against the cull. I fear that the pilot culls will show that they spread the disease wider. I have spoken to my own farmers, who initially expressed disappointment with my position, but I said to them, “I don’t want to see this nasty disease in Kent. My fear is that if we continue to go down this route, that is exactly what will happen.”
The subject is emotive, as we have seen today. Everyone has spoken passionately, but it is important to stick to the facts. The debate is about how the current situation stands and about how we best move forward to eradicate bovine TB from our cattle.
Daniel Kawczynski
My hon. Friend says that she has been talking to her farmers in Kent. How much time has she spent talking to farmers in places such as Shropshire, who have been badly affected by bovine TB, to listen to their perspective?
Tracey Crouch
I have not come to this conclusion lightly. My hon. Friend might recall that when I first spoke on the issue in this House I had initially been in favour of the cull, because I thought that it was the right way to support farmers. Having looked at the facts and read the science, I completely changed my mind. I do not come to this on an emotional basis; I decided about it after reading the initial scientific reports that have been published.
I am enormously sympathetic, as is everyone in the House, to the farmers who have lost otherwise healthy cattle, because they have been compulsorily slaughtered as a consequence of bovine TB. The impact on farmers can be devastating financially and mentally. In England alone, the disease has cost the taxpayer £500 million in the past decade. I wholeheartedly support the Government’s belief that it must be tackled, for the benefit of farmers and for the animals that contract this awful disease. Today, however, we are here specifically to discuss the badger cull and whether it is the correct method of tackling the disease.
We need to remember that badgers are not the only transmitters of bovine TB. Cattle and other animals spread the disease as much, if not more, than badgers. Yet, despite strong opposition in this House, two pilot badger culls have taken place, one in Somerset and one in Gloucestershire. The purpose of the pilots was simply to test controlled shooting as a method for culling. The Government decided that it must be tested against three criteria—effectiveness, humaneness and safety—in order to determine whether the method would be successful and whether it should be rolled out more widely and implemented as the policy to eradicate bovine TB.
It took a leak from the IEP for people to find out precisely what the Government’s measure of humaneness was. It was defined as whether a badger died within five minutes of being shot. The leaked IEP findings outlined that up to 18% of culled badgers took longer than five minutes to die, failing the test for humaneness. I am interested to know whether the published report will have those same figures in it, but we will wait and see. In addition, Natural England released a set of compliance reports that show some badgers were shot in the wrong body area, or were wounded and had to be shot a second time. Other badgers have been found outside the cull area with atrocious fatal injuries, but, to be fair, we do not know if they were shot by licensed marksmen or by those taking matters into their own hands. We have to be careful about some of the details suggested by some groups, which are nevertheless rightly concerned about the cull. On the first of the Government’s own criteria, however, the cull has failed. Those with genuine concerns about animal welfare are right to be upset by the findings in the leaked report.
I must stress that this is not only an animal welfare issue, however, and that leads me to the second of the criteria—effectiveness. Even after significant downward revision of estimated badger population numbers and the pilot culling periods being extended, the target of a minimum 70% reduction in badger numbers—needed to slow the forecasted rise of bovine TB by a mere 12% to 16%—was not achieved in either pilot area. In Somerset, the central population estimate was revised down from 2,490 to 1,450 badgers and the six-week maximum period was extended to nine weeks. In Gloucestershire, the population estimates were revised down from 3,400 to 2,350 badgers and the six-week maximum period was extended to just over 11 weeks. Initial estimates suggested that in Somerset 59% of the revised estimate of badger population were shot, a total of 940 badgers. In Gloucestershire, a lower figure of 30% was initially suggested, totalling 921 badgers. The leaked IEP report has revised the Somerset figure down further to 50%,
By removing fewer than the target number of badgers over an extended period, the pilot culls have deviated widely from the conditions of the RBCT, which determined the minimum percentage that needed to be culled to ensure it would be effective. That does not even take into consideration the effects of perturbation. The social structure of badgers means that when disturbed in this way, they are likely to flee outside the areas they would otherwise stay within, thus increasing the number of animals at risk of infection. It is likely that the pilot culls will have seriously perturbed the remaining badger populations in the two cull zones, which in turn could lead to an increase in the prevalence of bovine TB among the remaining badgers and a subsequent increase in the risk to cattle. The lower the percentage reached, the larger the effects of that. So not only have the Government failed to achieve the second part of their criteria, but they have quite possibly worsened the problem through perturbation.
Leaving aside the additional policing costs incurred, which appear to be substantial, I believe that although there are minor concerns about the safety, there is, on the whole, no issue with that criterion being met. However, despite the Secretary of State’s premature declaration to the House last year that the pilots were a success and that all three criteria have been met, it appears that that is not the case and that only one was.
There is a viable alternative that has been proved to be effective, that is humane and costs less, with no unforeseen astronomical policing costs to be incurred: a vaccination programme combined with better biosecurity, and stricter testing and movements of cattle, as is currently being undertaken in Wales, with great results. In further support of that method, I looked back to our previous successes with tackling bovine TB. The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) made the point that in the 1960s TB in cattle was brought under control using a strict and very high level of cattle testing, movement restrictions and biosecurity measures. Only when those measures were relaxed and then abandoned altogether did incidences increase again. Surely that is the appropriate way to bring cattle TB under control while we await a useable cattle vaccine.
A licensed injectable vaccine for badgers presents practical challenges in its administration, but it has been shown to be extremely effective, reducing the risk of becoming infected with bovine TB by 76%. Additionally, and importantly, it has a herding effect, which means that when more than a third of the social group has been vaccinated, the risk to unvaccinated cubs was reduced by 79%, as a 2012 study shows. Vaccinations not only have the potential to reduce the risk of vaccinated animals and their unvaccinated cubs becoming infected, but they eliminate the problem of perturbation and animal welfare concerns.
In conclusion, the pilots were an experiment to find an effective method for dealing with bovine TB. What is the point of doing an experiment if we are going to continue regardless of the results? The test has shown culling to be inhumane and ineffective, so I urge the Minister to reconsider the policy of culling and move forward with a more effective method, as has been done in Wales. However, if he intends to go ahead with the cull, he must prove he has the support of the House by bringing forward a motion in the name of the Government and giving Members the opportunity to vote for or against his policy, based not on emotion but on evidence, which he knows shows the culls to be the shower that many of us warned they would be.
Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)
I do not intend to use up all the time available to me, as I have contributed to the previous two debates on these pilot culls and I fear that I would just be repeating some of the points I raised before the pilots started and while they were taking place.
I know the Minister to be an honourable gentleman, and I have served with him on the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I hope and expect that he is listening intently, and that he will take to his colleagues in government the consensus of the House that these culls have to stop permanently, and that we must look in another direction to solve the problem, particularly as the badger cull is now recognised as a pretty shambolic failure by the public and everyone concerned with it.
We have heard from colleagues about the pilots’ failings as regards humaneness and effectiveness. Two thousand badgers have been killed and millions of pounds have been spent. We have heard of the division in communities and the public over the issue. I welcomed the announcement that badger culls had been stopped after it was evidenced that marksmen had failed to meet the 70% kill mark, but unbelievably the Government are still considering rolling out the policy of culling badgers in 10 new areas of England next year. The Government need to cancel these killing plans once and for all, and to focus on improving cattle welfare, controlling cattle movements, increasing biosecurity, and developing, as hon. Members have said, a badger and cattle vaccine.
It has been rumoured that the Government are considering even cheaper methods of dealing with badgers, such as gassing them. I hope that the Minister can confirm that that is just a rumour and is not being considered. We need a science-led policy to manage cattle movements better, and a vaccine to tackle TB in cattle. Opposition Members have warned the Government for two years that the badger cull was bad for farmers, bad for taxpayers and bad for wildlife. We recognise that bovine TB is a terrible disease and, hopefully, those of us who do not come from a farming community understand the frustration of famers in those communities that feel the devastating impacts of bovine TB. However, the cull has not helped to resolve this problem. Farmers and the public have been falsely presented with the impression that without the large-scale killing of badgers, bovine tuberculosis in cattle cannot be effectively controlled. As we have heard, that is not the case, if we accept evidence from Wales: in 2013, a programme involving badger vaccination, stricter cattle testing and movement restrictions showed that we can get a very significant reduction in bovine TB incidence in cattle without the need for a cull.
Culling just does not work. It risks spreading the disease further and costs far more than it saves. The Government claim that any badger culling policy will be proceeded with only if it can be demonstrated that it is humane. However, as I have said, it has been well and truly evidenced that the culling has not been humane. It did not even meet the target that the Government set. Unfortunately, DEFRA has hidden behind the Environmental Information Regulations 2004, claiming that the disclosure of information would risk the safety of personnel involved in the pilots and compromise its ability to protect the environment. It continues to do that in spite of the Information Commissioner’s ruling that there should be disclosure, and the fact that the pilot culls have been completed.
If the Minister truly wishes to pursue a cross-party approach to this issue, why has he not agreed to any of Labour’s key asks, put forward in the Westminster Hall debate of 11 December last year, in which I took part? All of them were reasonable, rational, and had cross-party support, unlike the cull. We have heard from Members on both sides of the House that we need to move with urgency on getting a vaccine solution. Badger vaccination represents a less risky and potentially more successful method of reducing the prevalence of bovine TB among badger populations. Labour is committed to implementing a science-led strategy in the fight to reduce bovine TB; that includes the use of vaccination. DEFRA is working with the EU to change legislation so as to allow TB vaccination of cattle, and the use of a trade test to differentiate infected from vaccinated animals.
The Government have continually said that a vaccine is not ready. Could that be the result of one of the Government’s first acts in 2010—cancelling five of the six vaccine field trials commissioned by Labour? DEFRA is cutting funding for the research and development of a badger vaccine from £3 million to just over £300,000 by next year. It has also cut funding for developing a cattle vaccine by over £1.5 million. We have had a cut in vaccine development and a farce of a cull, both of which have been bad for farmers, bad for taxpayers and bad for wildlife.
Mr Adrian Sanders (Torbay) (LD)
As a Member of Parliament for a constituency in Devon, I am well aware of just how devastating bovine tuberculosis is in cattle. It is the area of the country that has been most affected by this terrible scourge over a number of years. I do not represent many farmers, but I have had farmers come to my advice surgery telling me about the devastation of their herd. I am acutely aware of the devastation that that causes to their families and to farming communities, and we are all united in wanting to do something about it.
The IEP report, much of which is on the web for hon. Members to see, clearly states that culling is not suitable for preventing the spread of bovine TB. Instead, we should stick to the agreement, made at the beginning of the coalition, to fully consider the scientific evidence available before deciding on the best way forward.
The IEP reported that the pilot cull has not met two of the three criteria. The culls have failed to be humane, as up to 18% of the badgers killed took longer than five minutes to die, and have failed to be effective, as less than 50% of the badgers were killed in either pilot area, far less than the target of 70% for the trial. The report shows that the recent badger culls did not work and suggests that they have had a negative effect by encouraging the spread of the disease through movement of badgers as badger populations are disrupted.
As the randomised badger culling trial, managed by the independent scientific group between 1998 and 2006, witnessed, after killing more than 12,000 badgers there was an initial decrease in the level of disease by approximately 23% in the centre of culled areas, but an increase of 29% on neighbouring land. By continuing with a badger cull we are in danger of worsening levels of infection, and therefore we must carefully consider the viable alternatives to a cull.
Evidence from Wales, as highlighted by other hon. Members, shows that in 2013 a programme of badger vaccination, stricter cattle testing and movement restrictions, resulted in a 24% fall in the number of herds with bovine TB, compared with England where they fell by only 3%. Those options are realistic alternatives to a badger cull to prevent the spread of bovine TB.
Testing regimes in England need to be improved. Currently, a significant proportion of infected cattle are missed, so there is still a great threat that the disease will spread whether or not we continue to cull badgers. As DEFRA has recognised, the single intradermal comparative cervical tuberculin test can miss up to approximately 20% of infected animals that are either in the early or late stages of the disease. By using this means of testing, it is possible that infected animals can be present in a herd when movement restrictions are lifted and the officially tuberculosis-free status regained, even though herds may be infected.
Between the late 1980s and 2005, various changes to the testing regime led to a re-establishment of the disease due to major reductions in testing intensity, relaxation in movement controls, and a move to two, three and four-yearly testing, which fails effectively to identify and isolate cases of the disease. The testing regime can have an important effect on the level of bovine TB in cattle. For instance, after moving to annual testing in 2008, Wales has nearly halved the number of cattle slaughtered per annum since 2009. Without such a regime we run the risk of jeopardising any further work to reduce bovine TB. Beyond this, a better testing regime can be supplemented by improving methods of biosecurity, which includes area-to-area cattle movement controls and annual checks, as well as preventive vaccinations.
Attempts in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s to reduce the levels of the disease through a process of rigorous area-by-area cattle movement controls and annual testing decreased levels of bovine TB to 0.01%. Those alternatives had a dramatic effect on the number of livestock slaughtered, which decreased from 25,000 in 1950 to 2,081 in 1970, without resorting to the slaughter of wildlife. The research of the Central Science Laboratory further concluded that suggested biosecurity exclusion methods could be up to 100% effective if used by farmers to prevent the transmission of bovine TB from badgers to cattle.
It seems peculiar that we could be paying to cull badgers, which causes an increase in the spread of bovine TB, before we have ensured that the biosecurity resources, which could only have a positive effect, are sufficient. That option is particularly appealing as DEFRA data suggest that the average cost of improving biosecurity for farmers is about £4,000. Considering the fact that the average cost of dealing with a TB herd breakdown in Great Britain is about £27,000, such measures would appear cost-effective when compared with the cost of a cull, which DEFRA estimates at £4.56 million a cull with an extra policing cost of £500,000 per area per year.
The cull is not the financially viable option and although it has been argued that vaccination options are too expensive to be efficient, that is not true. In fact, DEFRA has estimated the cost of vaccinating badgers at £2,250 per sq km a year whereas the cost of policing the first two badger culls was roughly £4,400 per sq km. Vaccination is cheaper because there is no need to dispose of carcases, it is unlikely to require as much policing and wildlife organisations have hundreds of volunteers who can be used as a resource to help with its administration.
Over the past 10 years, DEFRA has spent £10 million on research into badger vaccines and it appears a great waste of taxpayers’ money for the Government to drop that potential alternative. More than 1,200 badgers have so far been vaccinated in Gloucester and the Welsh Assembly Government continue to pursue a vaccination policy for their intensive action area in and around Pembrokeshire, the cost of which is estimated at £662 a badger. Although that cost is high, it is considerably lower than the estimates for the cost of the pilot culls on a per badger basis, so the UK Government should be considering the option seriously. The alternatives exist and are a realistic option to prevent the transmission of bovine TB.
In conclusion, as the IEP report has shown, culling is ineffective and inhumane. It appears completely wrong to jeopardise the welfare of badgers and taxpayers’ money when cheaper options are available to prevent this terrible TB infection in cattle.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for the debate and the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) for her work in securing it. Like others, I appreciate her courage in leading it this afternoon.
Let me start by echoing the words of the hon. Member for Southend West (Mr Amess), who is no longer in his place. The debate is not about people who love badgers versus people who love cattle. It is not about those who find a cull distasteful, to use the words of the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart), versus those who do not. It is about how we can most effectively address the scourge of bovine TB.
The science points us towards the fact that culling badgers in England is not an effective policy. I wish that the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) were still in his place, because I would say to him that it is him, not me, who has his science wrong. I might also be tempted to point out to him that although I know I am guilty of many sins, I am not aware that I have been guilty of spreading bovine TB myself. That was among the many things he accused me of earlier this afternoon.
Let me be serious. It is important that we address the clichés. Even though I represent an urban constituency, I have spent a lot of time with farmers. I was a member of a European Parliament special committee on foot and mouth disease and I visited many farms and sat with many farmers in their kitchens. I am under no illusion about the enormous distress they experience at the thought of the destruction of their animals. I have cried as they have cried facing the loss both of their livelihoods and of animals that they love. This is not a competition about who loves animals most; it is a debate about the evidence for what works. There is no monopoly on either side of the House on caring for animals. What there is, I think, is a determination among some of us to try to look at the evidence with a bit more rigour.
I welcome this debate, because it is important that MPs are properly involved in any future decisions about the control of bovine TB, and that those decisions are subject to a vote in this House. As other hon. Members have indicated, the pilot badger cull can only be judged a spectacular failure, including against the Government’s own terms of reference.
The leaked IEP report makes it clear that the pilot failed two of the Government’s tests. It failed on humaneness, as more than 5% of badgers took longer than five minutes to die, and it failed on effectiveness, as fewer than 50% of badgers have been killed in either pilot area. Yes, those are only leaks, but we know that they echo the empirical evidence of so many people who have been monitoring the culls. We know, for example, that one of those culls took more than 11 weeks and that people involved in those culls stopped free shooting quite early on because it was not effective. We know as well from the people who were following those culls that many of the animals were not shot in a clean way.
It is not the case that, because this report has not been published, we cannot make statements about it. I wish, as others do, that the Minister had brought it forward earlier. As one of the co-sponsors of the debate, I can say that, when we went to the Backbench Business Committee, we fully expected the report to be out. The reason we wanted it out fairly swiftly was that we know that this Government have a habit of moving fast without consulting Parliament. They did that when they extended the culls in the first place—the extended period did not come back to Parliament for a decision—so it was right to ensure that the Government heard the views of the constituents whom we represent.
The leaked IEP report makes it clear not only that the pilots failed some of the tests that the Government set, but that costs have soared, particularly when policing costs are taken into account. Preliminary estimates put the pilot costs at an eye-watering £4,000 per badger killed. Shockingly, despite that, the Government have refused to rule out the extension of culling in up to 40 additional large areas in the west and south-west of England in the coming years.
Much has been said about the importance of evidence-based policy making. Let us remind ourselves about what some of these scientific experts have said about culling. Others have already quoted Lord John Krebs, who called the cull policy “mindless”. He was one of the architects of the landmark 10-year culling trials that ended in 2007. He said:
“The scientific case is as clear as it can be: this cull is not the answer to TB in cattle. The government is cherry-picking bits of data to support its case.”
Lord Robert May, a former Government chief scientist and president of the Royal Society, said:
“It is very clear to me that the Government's policy does not make sense.”
He added:
“I have no sympathy with the decision. They are transmuting evidence-based policy into policy-based evidence.”
I want to highlight some of the myths associated with the culling strategy and to suggest some alternatives. Before I do that, let me state again that I absolutely accept that bovine TB is a serious problem that needs to be tackled. However, the evidence shows that badger culling makes the problem even worse for some farmers, and risks making it worse for all of them. Today’s debate is not about whether we want to protect cattle or badgers; it is about the most effective way to protect cattle, which, as the evidence shows, is not by killing badgers. That is not because badgers do not necessarily contribute to the cattle TB problem, but because badger culling tends to increase the proportion of badgers infected and to spread the disease to new areas. That is because of the perturbation effect, as fleeing badgers spread the disease further afield while the vacuum caused by culling attracts new badgers into newly vacated territory.
Charles Hendry (Wealden) (Con)
The hon. Lady will be aware that there is a high-risk area in Sussex, which spreads broadly from her constituency to mine. It is a fairly ring-fenced area. We understand the nature of the problem there, and it is causing real difficulties. Does she recognise that that is an ideal example of where vaccination could be made to work? As the disease is geographically confined, we could see the effects of perturbation and whether, with vaccination, there were different issues that could be managed more effectively.
Caroline Lucas
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s intervention and completely agree. I know that in previous debates, he has raised, as I have, the work of the Sussex badger vaccination project, a volunteer-run service that offers landowners and farmers in east Sussex the chance to have badgers vaccinated at very low cost, thereby providing a humane and less controversial method of tackling the disease. I hope that as many farmers as possible in the area will take up that offer.
I want to talk about some of the myths about culling. One that even DEFRA is promoting—we have heard it several times already today from Government Members—is that results from places such as New Zealand support the strategy of badger culling in the UK. Let us be clear that there are no badgers in New Zealand. The wildlife host there is the brushtail possum, an invasive species introduced from Australia. Possum ecology is completely different from badger ecology. Although culling reduces TB in possums, rather than increasing it, that result cannot simply be transposed to a different species with a different ecology in a different country. Professor Charles Godfray of the Royal Society of Biological Sciences puts it clearly:
“Differences in the regulatory and social structure of farming, the countryside, and the ecology of the different reservoirs all mean that lessons from other countries have to be taken with great caution.”
The bottom line is that bovine TB is too important for us to be cherry-picking the evidence. As we reflect on the pilot culls, it is essential that we put science at the heart of future policy.
Similarly, evidence from the Republic of Ireland has been cited to support claims that culling badgers will help to control TB in England. As with New Zealand, the evidence shows that TB reductions cannot be attributed solely to culling. Crucially, Ireland has much lower badger densities than England, so the badgers respond differently to culling. In England, culling has consistently increased the proportion of badgers with TB. The evidence most applicable to the TB problem in England is information collected in England.
We have heard that during the pilot culls, when the Government’s policy on badger control was in place, the conditions deviated massively from the conditions of the randomised badger culling trial, so any reliance on the results of the RBCT in predicting the likely outcome of culling is completely invalid. Let us not forget that even in the best case scenario the RBCT only reduced the incidence of bovine TB by between 12% and 16%. In other words, even if we were to take Herculean measures and do absolutely everything in the right amount of time and as cleanly as possible, we would still not be tackling at least 84% of TB in cattle. That is what makes me feel that it is even more important to look at alternative strategies, and chief among them, as many other Members have said, is badger vaccination.
Badger vaccination makes sense for a number of reasons, but I want to mention just two. The first reason is that it works. It reduces the probability of infection by between 70% and 75%. Even allowing for the fact that not all badgers will be reached and vaccination needs to be repeated year on year to include new cubs, it is still more effective and more cost-effective than shooting, not least because vaccination allows the badgers’ population structure to remain in place, granting considerable benefits for disease limitation.
Vaccination does not remove infected badgers, but it makes it more difficult for those animals to pass infection to other badgers. Over time, the infected animals die off, and the proportion of infected badgers is expected to decline. That contrasts with culling, which increases the proportion of infected badgers and spreads infection in space.
The second reason is on grounds of cost. Vaccinating badgers is cheaper than culling them, for at least three reasons: First, the poor performance of free shooting suggests that both culling and vaccination would entail cage trapping, with vaccination slightly cheaper because there is no need to dispose of carcases. Secondly, vaccination is unlikely to require policing. As other members have said, DEFRA estimates the cost of vaccinating badgers to be £2,250 per sq km per year, while policing the first two pilot culls alone cost roughly £4,400 per sq km. Thirdly, as with the example of the Sussex badger vaccination project, many wildlife organisations can draw upon hundreds of volunteers to help with badger vaccination, markedly reducing the costs.
As I have said in all the other parliamentary debates on the subject, we also need to devote more resources and political capital to overcoming the challenges with cattle vaccination, as well as to addressing the role that modern husbandry practices can play in placing chronic stress on intensively farmed animals. Professor John Bourne, chair of the independent scientific group that oversaw the RBCT, stated in his final report that
“implementation of cattle control measures outlined in this report are, in the absence of badger culling, likely to reverse the increasing trend in cattle disease incidence.”
Improving biosecurity must also take priority, as well as stricter testing and movement restrictions. We can see that measures are already playing a part in bringing down the incidence of bovine TB. Others have mentioned the figures recently released by DEFRA showing that during 2013 there was a 14% reduction in the number of cattle slaughtered as TB reactors or direct contacts. We have also seen the evidence from Wales, where a combination of biosecurity, cattle movement restrictions and vaccination is being used to reduce bovine TB, and where the number of cattle herds with the disease fell by 23.6% last year.
This is a complex topic, but my asks of the Minister are simple. First, he should look at the evidence and stop the badger culls for good. He should grant no more licences to shoot badgers, and stop wasting time, money and energy on an approach that is making matters worse. As others have said, bovine TB is too important for us to cherry-pick the evidence. As we reflect on the culls, let us make sure that we put science at the centre of future policy. If the Government were minded to continue with any kind of culling programme, they absolutely must come back to this House first and subject that decision to a vote, because I am convinced that we would win it.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
Of course, one comes across a lot of emotional issues with constituents, but in the nine years for which I have been the Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury, one of the most emotional experiences I have faced was meeting a dairy farmer in the village of Snailbeach in the southernmost part of my constituency. I went to see him and spent the day on his farm, where I saw at first hand the terrible suffering that he had been through with all his cattle being taken away for slaughter. We sat at his kitchen table afterwards, and over tea he started to cry, and I joined in. It was such an emotional experience seeing a grown man cry and seeing the constant emotional, psychological impact that this was having on him—as on many children. Let us not forget that on many of our Shropshire farms there is not just the farmer but his family, and when the children see these cows being taken away for slaughter, it has a terrible emotional impact on them.
That is why in the previous Parliament I set up the all-party group for dairy farmers. Over 170 Members of Parliament from all political parties joined that campaigning group, and we had an excellent secretariat in the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers. We did not have many resources at our disposal, but we met many organisations from around the country that came to speak to us at the House of Commons—not just from this country but from France and Ireland, as well as other parts of the United Kingdom. After taking evidence for a year, we came to two conclusions: first, that there needed to be a limited cull of badgers; and secondly, that there ought to be a grocery adjudicator to support farmers and deal with some of the more pernicious ways in which the supermarkets were treating them. I am very pleased that there has been movement on those two important suggestions, because when I brought them to the attention of the then Secretary of State for DEFRA, David Miliband, he was completely derisory about both of them.
In Shropshire last year, 2,125 cows were killed as a result of bovine tuberculosis. Although the figures have come down in certain parts of the United Kingdom, as we have heard, that is an increase on the previous year’s figure of 1,976. The problem is continuing to increase for all our farmers. At the end of last year, 401 herds in the county were subject to Government movement restrictions. I would like to read to the Minister in the strongest possible way a statement from the vice-chairman of Shropshire NFU, Mr Richard Yates, as reported in today’s Shropshire Star:
“A vet said to me that there’s two types of farmer in Shropshire—those that have TB and those that are going to get it, and that was like a knife in the back to me.”
He went on to say that he goes to market a lot, where he speaks to many Shropshire farmers and is staggered by just how many of them are affected by this terrible disease. He has identified correctly that we are spending more than £100 million a year in compensation to farmers. That is a staggering amount of money and I do not think that anybody present would want £100 million to be spent needlessly. Clearly, there are much greater priorities for funding to be spent in the health service, education and all the other things that we want to provide for our constituents.
That is why it is so important that we reach a consensus. Let us try to get it. I am encouraged that there has been talk about some sort of compromise or consensus, because we have been discussing this issue for many years and we do not appear to be any closer today than we have been in years gone by to finally grappling with this terrible disease.
Mr Yates says that he wants the preservation order to be taken off badgers and for farmers and gamekeepers to be allowed to deal with the problem. He says:
“I have a sett in nearly every field. Badgers are out of control. You never see hedgehogs any more, or ground nesting birds, because the badgers are killing them.”
I have met the Shropshire Wildlife Trust on many occasions. It is the largest organisation in Shropshire, with more than 6,000 members, and, of course, its symbol is a badger. It has taken me on several occasions to see badgers and wildlife and to look at setts. I understand the passion on both sides of the argument, but I say to the Minister that if he and his officials believe that badger culls are necessary in order to grapple with this appalling disease, he must show the courage to continue with that policy. All I care about is stopping this ghastly disease destroying Shropshire’s very important cattle and dairy industries, on which we are so dependent and which I will do everything I can to protect.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
I agree with the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) that we need to stop this ghastly disease. That is the theme of this debate. One of the benefits of speaking this late in a debate is that everything has already been said. I hope I will not repeat much of it.
As an aside, one thing that has not been mentioned is the number of cows killed as a result of the devastating floods in the west country and whether or not their impact on biodiversity has been beneficial to this problem. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that.
The briefing distributed by the National Farmers Union is very helpful. It reminds us:
“213,799 cattle have been slaughtered due to Bovine Tuberculosis since 2008. The disease imposes a significant burden on taxpayers, with control and testing measures costing the taxpayer around £100m per year, which will rise if TB spread continues unchecked.”
It is a massive problem in every way and it provokes strong emotional responses. The hon. Gentleman described the farmer whose livelihood has been destroyed and with whom one sympathises hugely. I understand why people in the farming industry feel desperate. Likewise, one empathises with those who have been e-mailing us in their hundreds of thousands to voice their concern about the unnecessary, as they see it, destruction of badgers. We as policy makers need to navigate a way through those emotional responses and arrive at the right answer to make things better. If we come up with the wrong answer and make things worse, we will have difficulties.
There is no doubt whatsoever that TB is a huge problem and we need to tackle it. From listening to this debate and the information provided outside as well as inside this Chamber, the weight of evidence seems to show that badger culling is making things wore rather than better. We would therefore be very unwise to continue an approach that worsens the situation, rather than seeking one that will improve it.
The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) has already covered the fact that it is not terribly helpful to use possums in New Zealand and badgers in Ireland as reference points for dealing with badgers in England. The best evidence for dealing with badgers in England is the huge trial in England over many years—the randomised badger culling trial from 1998 to 2006—which has given us massive evidence about what works and what does not work.
To be fair to the pilot culls, they set out to work to that evidence base in trying to reach the 70% target within six weeks. The shame appears to be that, as the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) clearly pointed out, the pilots failed to meet two out of the three tests that were set. All the evidence is that culling to less than 70% or certainly for more than six weeks causes more problems than it solves. Despite the chorus of voices expressing concern, there is no doubt that the Government set out with the best of intentions, but with those best of intentions, they have produced the worst of outcomes. We therefore need to think very carefully about what we do now.
Badger vaccination works. The evidence demonstrates that it is an alternative that works: once infected badgers are vaccinated, the hosts are prevented from being transmitted to other badgers and the disease is not passed on. There is an evidence base on the impact of the vaccination of red foxes against rabies, indeed, of human beings against measles. Vaccination works and, on the basis of figures presented to us from the evidence, seems to be more cost-effective and better value for money.
The problem with vaccination is that it takes a bit longer and we have to be a bit more patient. I fully understand the frustration and impatience about the need to do something about this dreadful disease, but if we made matters worse through our impatience, hurry and urgency, that would be the height of foolishness. Sadly, despite everything that has been said, it appears that continuing down this route will create more difficulties not only for badgers, but for cattle and the people whose livelihoods depend on them, as well as for the taxpayer, whose best interests we are all here to represent.
Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
I very much welcome this debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) on taking the initiative in calling it, and the Backbench Business Committee on selecting it and providing time for it. Now is the right time for this debate.
The hon. Lady is certainly not responsible for ensuring that we have all the facts from a report at the Government’s disposal. By the end of the debate, I hope that it will be clear to the Minister that hon. Members on both sides of the House want to see the report, and that he should at least indicate the timetable for its publication. However, several hon. Members have shared much of the material from the leaked report, and we should be cognisant of what it tells us about culling’s lack of effectiveness and its inhumane nature, which is why I certainly support the motion.
From listening to this debate, which has been a great education, it is clear that there is no silver bullet—no one single thing that we or the Government can do to bring easily within our grasp our shared goal of eradicating bovine TB. It is a complex, multi-faceted problem and, as such, it requires a comprehensive strategy. I therefore welcome the comments of the former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), in which he said that there is a comprehensive strategy. Unfortunately, the strategy is all too often obscured by the need to be concerned about and to debate the inadequate evidence base. Indeed, the evidence demonstrates that culling is not the right strategy. We need to get that debate out of the way so that we can have the necessary focus on delivering all the welcome aspects of the strategy.
The hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) made an excellent speech and an excellent demand of the Government. It is great that the Backbench Business Committee has provided us with time to debate this issue. However, given that it does not divide us along party lines, but is of serious concern to Members across the House, I think that the Government should test the opinion of the House on a motion if they are minded to make the case for further culling.
We have heard some compelling evidence in this debate, not least from the leaks of the report. I cannot ignore the evidence that the Government’s own test for the humaneness of killing has been breached in so many cases. The guidelines say that it is sufficiently humane if a creature dies within five minutes, but 18% of the badgers did not do so. That raises questions about whether we are travelling in the right direction by maintaining support for the cull. Several colleagues have also mentioned the flight risk that exists with such operations, which can make matters worse, not better.
Several hon. Members have referred to what Wales is doing. If we are to have an informed debate, we need to have all the evidence of the successes and failures in Wales, and to know what lessons can be learned. As my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Mr Sanders) said, we know that trapping and vaccinating is cheaper than culling, and that it has led to a 33% reduction in the number of cattle that have been slaughtered. He also said that having tighter biosecurity is a way of securing what we all want at a lower cost.
I have a question for the Minister about the vaccination of cattle. Every 10 years, we are told that it will be another 10 years before we get a vaccine. One of the issues is that the tests are not sufficiently refined to distinguish between those that have the infection and those that have had the vaccine. Will the Minister indicate when we might see progress on the testing, so that the vaccine can be used more effectively?
This is a serious matter to which the House keeps returning. I hope that the Government realise that Members across parties and across the House do not believe that the evidence is compelling and clear enough to support the use of culling.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
Tuberculosis infection is of major concern to our farming community. The distress that is caused by having to slaughter cattle is immense. Labour Members are fully committed to making progress towards eradicating bovine TB, but we do not believe that culling is the answer.
We know that 94% of TB infection is caused by cattle-to-cattle transmission and only 6% by badger-to-cattle transmission. It therefore makes sense to focus significant efforts on biosecurity, animal husbandry and cattle vaccination. Cattle vaccination puts the farmer firmly in control. I therefore urge the Government, first and foremost, to redouble their efforts to develop an effective vaccine that can be used and tests that can distinguish between vaccinated and sick animals, and to sort out the obstacles to effective trade. In the meantime, as hon. Members have pointed out, a great deal can be done through greater insistence on vigilance, biosecurity and pre-movement testing.
In calling for an end to the Government’s costly and cruel culling programme, I will focus on alternative strategies. I will therefore draw hon. Members’ attention to the measures that my colleague, Alun Davies AM, who is the Minister for Natural Resources and Food in the Welsh Government, is implementing to tackle TB in cattle.
In Wales, a whole range of measures are being used to strengthen biosecurity. It is early days to evaluate the effectiveness of the measures, but there are some encouraging signs. From December 2012 to November 2013, there was a reduction of 23% in the incidence in new herds and a 33% reduction in the number of animals slaughtered. Since 2010, pre-movement testing has applied to all herds. From 30 September this year, sole occupancy authorities will not automatically be exempted from pre-movement testing. The Welsh Government have also intensified enforcement of cross-compliance penalties for late bovine TB tests. The majority of farmers already comply with the requirements, but this will improve consistency.
In April 2013, the Welsh Government set up a specialist study to look at the regional factors affecting the pattern of disease in Wales to ensure the very best use of resources. Last October, they launched the Cymorth TB programme, or the TB support programme. Its purpose is to give farmers extra help in dealing with a bovine TB breakdown, including help from local vets, and to help farmers to remain TB-free in future.
The Welsh Government have also implemented a badger vaccination programme. In the intensive action area in north Pembrokeshire, 1,400 badgers were vaccinated in 2010, the first year, with another 1,350 badgers vaccinated in 2013. Participation is voluntary and there has been very good co-operation from landowners. The Welsh Government are also providing a badger vaccination grant, which will meet 50% of the costs of badger vaccination for five years. In June, Wales will host the world mycobacterium bovis conference. This will be an opportunity to share expertise and the experience of implementing measures to eradicate TB.
One of the most depressing truths about the recent cull by this Government is that it was not based on the strongest scientific evidence available in the first place. It need never have taken place. Under the previous Labour Government, we commissioned the randomised badger cull trials, the largest scientific project on the effectiveness of culling, which reported in 2007. The report of the independent scientific group on cattle TB stated:
“After careful consideration of all the RBCT and other data presented in this report, including an economic assessment, we conclude that badger culling cannot meaningfully contribute to the future control of cattle TB in Britain.”
As other hon. Members have graphically described, we have witnessed the spectacular failure of the cull. That failure, sadly, was predictable. In conclusion, I call on the Government to work closely with the Welsh Government to look at alternatives to the discredited cull programme for the benefit of farmers across England and Wales.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate.
It is far too early to draw conclusions from the report. The House has not yet seen the report properly, and all we are acting on are leaks from it. I have full confidence in the Secretary of State and the other DEFRA Ministers to analyse the report properly and to come to this House with their conclusions. Where we need to cull badgers and it can be done humanely, we must carry on doing so.
Many Members have referred to their own constituencies. It is very likely that vaccinating badgers in a rural constituency with very little TB in cattle, and hardly any TB in the badger population, will be effective—badgers must be vaccinated annually, but that will do a very good job. However, in a constituency such as mine, where some 25% of herds are restricted and are testing positive for TB, and there is a huge amount of TB in the badger population, any amount of vaccination will not cure the infected badger.
The British Veterinary Association has said:
“Scientific evidence proves that badgers and cattle spread bTB to cattle and that the targeted culling of badgers does reduce the levels of infection in cattle herds. Cattle vaccination will be an essential part of the long term strategy to eradicate bTB but will not be available in the UK until at least 2023.”
Will we really be able to wait until 2023, and continue to destroy some 35,000 cattle a year—some 5,600 a year in Devon alone? We cannot go on doing that.
This mythical vaccine was offered to farmers throughout the 13 years of the last Labour Government. Is it any wonder that those poor farmers are pulling their hair out and are almost suicidal because they cannot cure their herds of TB? They are testing their cattle every six weeks. Anyone who tries to organise such tests time and time again, running all those cattle through cattle crushes, will find that it is a huge effort, not just physical but emotional.
When the farmers have tested the cattle and established that they no longer have TB, and when the reactors have been taken away, what do the farmers do? In the spring and summer they turn their cattle out on to the edges of Exmoor and the Blackdown hills, where there are huge grasslands that are very good for the production of dairy and beef. When the cattle are out in those fields, it is almost impossible to prevent them from mixing with an infected badger population.
We need cross-party support in this place for action in those areas in particular. It will not be possible to eradicate TB by means of vaccination alone; it will be necessary to remove the infected badgers. The point of carrying out pilots rather than randomised badger culling trials was to establish hard boundaries in order to ensure that there had been no perturbation that would spread the disease to surrounding areas. I hope that the report will provide evidence of that. What the randomised cull did do was reduce the amount of TB in those areas by some 28% or 29%, which shows that the controlling and culling of badgers does work.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) that we need to look at the report. I would be the first to say, as many other Members have, that if we are going to cull, we must be certain that we can cull humanely. If we have to trap more badgers in order to cull them, let us do so.
Neil Parish
I had to wait all afternoon to speak, so I do not think that I will give way.
We have tried for 30 years to control bovine TB In this country, and all that we have seen is increase after increase. We cannot go on doing this for ever, because in the end we will not have a viable cattle herd, and we will not have the food security that we all seek. We must get to grips with this disease.
Finally, let me deal with the myth about what is and is not supposed to be happening in the Republic of Ireland. This is the point on which I really disagree with other Members. It is possible to argue that opossums may be slightly different from badgers in Ireland, but the differences between badgers in Ireland and badgers in Devon are very few. [Interruption.] I have listened throughout the afternoon to speeches from the Members who are interrupting, and I have remained very quiet. Perhaps the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) will now listen to what I have to say.
Recent figures from Ireland show that TB infection levels have fallen by more than 45% since 2000. They are now slaughtering fewer than half the cattle they needed to some 10 years ago. This is a substantial reduction that the Irish Government believe their badger culling programme has significantly contributed to. The culling of badgers is the only significant difference between the current approaches taken in England and Ireland; the cattle restrictions and cattle movement orders are virtually the same. Last year 15,612 cattle tested positive in Ireland which represents a 15% reduction on the 2012 levels. The Irish Government have said TB eradication is now a practical proposition in Ireland after the latest figures show a substantial drop in reactor numbers in 2013.
I now quote from the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine:
“We believe that, while it is difficult to quantify the precise impact of badger culling on the reduction in the incidence of TB, much of the improvement in the TB situation is due to the badger removal programme.”
Therefore, the Irish believe culling badgers has worked to reduce TB in the Republic of Ireland.
In a county such as the one I represent in Devon where over a quarter of the herds are restricted, where we are slaughtering 5,500 cattle a year and where probably about 40% of our badger population are infected with bovine TB, we have to take action not only in cleaning the cattle and having stricter cattle movements, but in making sure those badgers are clean so there is no TB in them If we do that, when we turn our cattle out, it will be safe to do so, and when we drink our milk it will be safe to do so. When our tourists come to Devon and Cornwall and the west country, they will come to see the beautiful herds of beef cattle, such as Devon reds grazing there, that are not infected by TB.
Sir Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)
Hazel Grove is in the northern part of Cheshire or the southern part of Greater Manchester, and Cheshire is on the frontier zone of the northern spread of bovine TB. We are officially an edge risk area. In Cheshire there were 143 outbreaks in 2013 and 829 animals were destroyed as a result. Based on DEFRA’s figures for the average costs, dealing with bovine TB in Cheshire therefore cost something over £4 million, and more than £1 million—more likely £1.5 million—of that cost fell on farmers. The House will therefore understand that I share a lot of the concerns that have been expressed by those representing agricultural areas, albeit mine is a suburban one, but of course I also get a very large number of e-mails and letters from those who are concerned about the culling of badgers.
I want to focus on the efforts I believe it is right to put into preventing the spread of the disease northwards. I have asked the Minister questions about this and I am working with Cheshire Wildlife Trust and the Cheshire NFU on how we might do that. It is feasible to have a vaccinated zone across Cheshire that acts as a barrier to the spread of infected badgers to the north and hence causes a reduction in the transmission of the disease to cattle.
At the end of last year I visited a badger vaccination project being carried out by Cheshire Wildlife Trust with the full support of the NFU, and with a 50% contribution to the cost by the Department, and I want to thank the Minister for the £250,000 fund that is in place for similar projects around the country. One of my questions to him will be whether he can do more on that front, because having a vaccinated zone in Cheshire is a pretty good guarantee of preventing the spread of the disease further north.
I also want to thank the Minister for the support that the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency, which is funded by the Department, is giving to the road-kill testing of badgers in Cheshire. That project is being run by the university of Liverpool, and I hope that it will provide us with more evidence on the prevalence of the disease among badgers, as well as assisting us in reducing that prevalence.
I thank the Minister and his predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), for the steps that they have taken to improve data sharing. One of the absurdities of the situation up to about 18 months ago was that data protection legislation was being used to prevent adjacent farmers from finding out about outbreaks. In Cheshire, where herds are frequently moved from one farm to another to exploit grazing opportunities, farmers were at risk of moving animals into an area adjacent to one in which infection had been detected. I am pleased to say that a little more data sharing is now in place, but I ask the Minister whether he is satisfied that data transmission is now at an appropriate level. I am meeting representatives of Cheshire NFU tomorrow morning, and I expect them to tell me how it is on the ground, so he might want to make sure that he has got his story straight.
I am very keen to ensure that we succeed in stopping the spread of bovine TB further north into Cheshire and beyond. That is why I very much encouraged the Cheshire Wildlife Trust and the NFU to work together on vaccination. I want to point out that vaccination is not quite as simple as we in the House sometimes make it sound. There is a narrow calendar window during which the badgers can be vaccinated. They spend the winter months in their setts and are inaccessible. There is a narrow period of time during the day, too, when vaccination can take place. It has to be early in the day and they have to be trapped as they come out overnight.
The trapping is not simple: we do not want to catch rabbits or foxes; we want to catch badgers. The trap has to be laid in a particular way, and the bait has to be under a suitably heavy stone that neither rabbits nor foxes can move, but that badgers can, in order to shut the trap. I am impressed by the care and thought that goes into the capture of the animals, and by the professionalism that is needed to do it.
The day I visited a farm in the south of Cheshire, eight or nine traps had been laid, and they yielded four badgers. One professional gentleman had spent a whole day setting the traps, vaccinating the animals, releasing them and clearing the traps, and he got just four badgers. It is slow, complicated work, and of course that process has to be repeated each year. I am not decrying the process; I am simply saying that there is not a solution to this problem that can be achieved by waving a magic wand.
Will the Minister give the House an undertaking that those of us who live in edge risk areas—the frontier zones, as I call them—will have all the support that is needed for an intensive vaccination programme to prevent the spread of the disease northwards? Will he ensure that the data sharing relating to outbreaks is at a level that will really prevent the possibility of herds being unwittingly moved back into infected areas?
I also want to raise a point that was put to me by the Cheshire Wildlife Trust. In carrying out the vaccination programme in south Cheshire, the trust discovered more or less the same thing that had been discovered in the culling areas—namely, that there did not seem to be as many badgers as people were expecting. Does the Minister think that the assessment of the density of the badger population, on which the whole culling exercise seems to have been based, is a realistic one? Is he satisfied that the calculations that spring from that assessment have been made on a sound basis? If, when we get to the capture of animals—or in the case of culling, the destruction of animals—the animals simply are not there, the whole calculation becomes different. For those of us in the edge zone—the high risk zone—the solution on offer is not culling but the creation of a cordon sanitaire. The problem is not easy to resolve anywhere, but we believe that there is a specific solution that will do exactly that, at least in our area, and I would like the support of the Minister in achieving it.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for choosing the debate and the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) for introducing it—with great fortitude, I might add, and I commend her for that. I also thank the cross-party group of MPs who secured the debate, which is hugely significant and timely, because the Minister is considering wider roll-outs. We have seen cross-party support for a new way forward and a new consensus based on vaccination and cattle measures.
I thank all Members who have spoken, even those whose opinions I respect but disagree with. There were many good contributions, including by the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), who has great experience, and the hon. Members for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart), for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams)—we go back a long way—for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) and for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). I may not agree with many of the points that they made, but they spoke with passion for their constituents.
Those who have spoken for the motion today and for a considered, cross-party and scientific consensus on the way forward include the hon. Member for St Albans, who made the point that this is not a case of one side against another; my hon. Friends the Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown), for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), for Copeland (Mr Reed), for Newport West (Paul Flynn), for Derby North (Chris Williamson), for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie), for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) and for Llanelli (Nia Griffith); the hon. Members for St Ives (Andrew George), for Southend West (Mr Amess), for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), for Torbay (Mr Sanders) and for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas); and the right hon. Members for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow) and, lately, for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell). In every part of the Chamber, on every Bench, there have been calm, rational and methodical arguments on why we should have a different way forward.
A number of questions face Ministers today. Why continue to pursue a policy of eradicating bovine TB in cattle involving mass culling of badgers? It proved hugely costly to taxpayers and farmers and was critically flawed, from the first principles, through the methodology to the application in the field. It failed to meet the Government’s own limited tests of effectiveness and humaneness. In short, not enough badgers were culled, and too many were not killed cleanly, but suffered before dying. Culls have diverted stretched police resources from front-line duties to deal with protesters and to ensure public safety, prompting police and crime commissioners to speak out in opposition. Culls are deeply unpopular with the public throughout the country, in town and country alike. Culls are scientifically controversial to the point of flying in the face of mainstream, expert advice, from which, as we have seen today, increasing numbers of Government MPs are making the right and intelligent choice to seek alternative, workable strategies for TB eradication.
Why pursue such a policy when it is so clearly contested scientifically, so deeply flawed methodologically and so evidently failing, and when there are proven alternatives, which are more humane, more effective, cheaper and more publicly acceptable? Why do that when scientists, many farmers, MPs from all parties and Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition are willing to work with the Government on an alternative strategy that will be enduring and effective and garner widespread stakeholder and public support? In all sincerity, despite—in fact because of—those flawed and failed culls in Gloucester and Somerset, it is not too late for Ministers to think again and for us to work together on a better way forward.
Before addressing what has gone wrong with the culls and what can now be done, let me make it clear that Labour agrees entirely and unequivocally that the scourge of bovine TB must be eradicated. It must be eradicated because of the terrible waste of productive cattle, the destruction of pedigree herds, the cash-flow and wider economic impacts on family farms, the psychological trauma for farmers and their families, and the unsustainable cost of compensation payments. Some have pointed out that many more tens of thousands of cattle are slaughtered each year for many other reasons—mastitis, lameness, old age, inability to calve and so on. That is true, but 1% of the total cattle herd, dairy and non-dairy, in the UK is slaughtered because of bovine TB, and that is unacceptable. What also distinguishes that from other reasons for slaughter is that it is a notifiable disease. We have a public and legal duty to bear down on it, and pressing trade reasons to do so, too. On that, we are at one with the Government.
We support the UK and the Welsh Governments for their increasingly stringent efforts, working with farmers, to clamp down on the disease by use of cattle measures. As this is a disease in cattle, the primary resolution will be in cattle measures. Some Ministers give the impression that badgers are the main culprits, yet we know from exhaustive in-field studies that although there is some direct transmission of TB from infected badgers to cattle—it is about 6% of the total—and that that may indeed play a role in subsequent onward transmission, cattle-to-cattle transmission is the major element.
We know also that the most significant spike in TB was linked to the rapid spread of the disease in the immediate aftermath of foot and mouth disease, when the restocking of cattle took place northwards and westwards, often from areas further south where TB was present. In addition, there have been sporadic occurrences in parts of the country and farms where there has been no history of TB, and we must note the presence of TB-free farms in the midst of hotspot areas. All that reinforces the scientific conclusion that stringent cattle measures are key to a successful strategy of eradication. Movement restrictions, risk-based trading, rigorous biosecurity and other measures will play the most substantial part in eradicating the disease.
However, we also need fully to recognise the need to tackle reservoirs of the disease in wildlife, where appropriate. Our disagreement with the Government—it is a profound disagreement—is over the best means of addressing the wildlife reservoir. We believe, as do many farmers and leading scientific opinion, backed by mounting evidence of success, which has been set out before the Minister today, that there is another way to tackle badger TB which has greater certainty of success and avoids the significant risks of a mass-culling programme.
Before I expand on an alternative approach, we have to examine what went wrong with the Government’s culls last year. There was a sequence of dire policy miscalculations, each of which compounded the other and led to wholesale failure. The crucial baseline population of badgers was first overestimated, then underestimated; a risky and wholly untested “free-shoot” approach was adopted, which promptly but predictably failed; more costly cage-trap-shoot methods were rapidly then introduced, yet still too few badgers were culled in the time frame allowed, posing an increased risk of spreading TB; the six-week time-frame was then controversially extended and, again, still too few badgers were killed; and, meanwhile, police patrolled the country trying to maintain order for deeply unpopular culls, and running up bills for the taxpayer.
We now understand from a delayed but leaked Government report that too many badgers died inhumanely, enduring suffering before death. As an aside, I note that the British Veterinary Association, of which I am proud to be an honorary member, predicated its support on these culls being humane—watch this space.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
Between 1998 and 2010, the number of herd breakdowns tripled from 1,226 to 3,334, and the number of cattle slaughtered rose sixfold, from 4,102 to 24,000. Given what I am hearing from the Labour Front-Bench team today, can our farmers, who are suffering so terribly from this disease, expect more of the same?
Huw Irranca-Davies
No, and I refer the hon. Gentleman, who makes a valid point, to the figures for the past three years, which have shown a downward trend.
I say to the Minister that the two key tests for the Government of effectiveness and humaneness have been failed. So let us not keep inflicting this costly policy failure and public relations disaster on farmers, taxpayers and wildlife. Let us learn the lessons from these two failed and costly culls, stop them now and look at the alternative way forward, which can be cheaper, more humane and more effective.
Look instead to Wales, where there has been a significant and substantial reduction in TB, at twice the rate of the decline in England. That happened without culling, but with vaccination and stringent cattle measures. Look to Northern Ireland, where BTB is declining faster, without culling, than in the Republic, where culling is taking place. Look closer to home, in England, where the incidence of BTB began to decline even before the culls started. We repeatedly pointed out that trend to Ministers, who either ignored or denied it. The trend is even more apparent now that Ministers have admitted that the figures incorrectly overstated BTB.
More and more MPs from across the parties, including independent-minded Government MPs, are calling on Ministers to pause and think again. There is a different approach to tackling TB in cattle and wildlife, if only Ministers would listen to the evidence, and to the increasing numbers of MPs of their own party who have lost faith in these deeply flawed culls. We want the Government to work with the science and across political parties to seek a new, lasting consensus on the way forward. Labour, scientists, and many farmers want to do that, so I repeat the offer that I made to the Secretary of State in writing in December: work with us, with farmers, and with the evidence to agree a new, better way forward.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)
I begin by picking up on a point made by the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick): this is an incredibly difficult disease to fight, and there are no easy answers in the war against TB. There are several reasons for that. First, it is a very slow-growing, insidious disease, which makes it incredibly difficult to detect. It has been hard to get a reliable means of diagnosis. Secondly, the disease lives within the cell wall of blood cells, and that makes it very difficult to get a vaccine to work. That is why the BCG vaccine, which is the only thing that we have, is only partially effective and provides no cure. That is why the Government have been very clear that we need to pursue a range of options to roll back the disease. We are clear that no one measure on its own will work; instead, we need to pursue a range of strategies to bear down on the disease. We set those out clearly in our draft TB eradication strategy, the final version of which will be published shortly. It sets out a range of options; I want to come back to that, because this is an area in which I think there will be consensus across the House.
There is one area where, clearly, we take a different view from the Opposition. Our view is that nowhere in the world has managed successfully to tackle TB without also dealing with the reservoir of the disease in the wildlife population. A couple of hon. Members have attempted to cast doubt on that—they have mentioned possums in New Zealand and asked whether the case is the same—but in Ireland and France, cull strategies have been successfully pursued.
George Eustice
I will not give way. I want to carry on and make this point, because there were lots of issues raised. If Members do not accept that international comparisons are relevant, I say: look at the historical comparisons. We got on top of TB in the 1960s and ’70s by pursuing a badger cull strategy. Early attempts through measures such as the clean ring strategy pursued by Dunnet in the late ’80s had some success. The RBCTs that the previous Government ran also showed a 16% reduction in the disease.
I want to say a little about vaccination, because we recognise that it can provide some benefits. It can pass on some immunity to cubs, and can cause less disturbance to the badger population, but there are difficulties with it. The badgers have to be successfully trapped and vaccinated; St Ives—the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) has talked to me about this—has managed to catch only seven in the past year. We should recognise that no vaccine is 100% effective; the evidence is that it is roughly 60% effective.
Bill Wiggin
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. As DEFRA has not released its report, it would be demeaning to the House to have a Division on this issue. Is it your view that Mr Speaker’s ruling should be maintained—that is, that if a Member shouts, he should vote in the way that he shouts?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
You know very well, as I do, that if a Member shouts one way, they should not vote the other way, but they could abstain.
George Eustice
I want to say a little about what we have done to progress an oral vaccine. We are spending £1.6 million a year—
Andrew George
The Minister referred to the trials that were about to commence in the Penwith area with the support of DEFRA, which is providing the vaccine ampoules, which is much appreciated. He said it was only seven. It was only a small trial of the methodology, not of the numbers.
George Eustice
I expect my hon. Friend will do better next year.
As I said, we are spending £1.6 million a year developing an oral vaccine. We have made some progress on the dose required for that vaccine, and it is around 10 times more than would be needed for an injectable vaccine. We have also made some progress towards identifying a bait that would be successful, and we have made some progress towards linking the vaccine to fats that can help get it through the digestive system. But there are drawbacks even to an oral vaccine. Not all badgers will take it, and some badgers may eat more of it than others, so it will never be 100%. But we accept that nothing in this challenge is 100% and that is why we are pursuing it.
On injectable vaccines, I have had representations from my hon. Friends the Members for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) and for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby) to look again at whether we could refocus some of our vaccination efforts, either in the edge area, as the right hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell) suggested, or around the east Sussex area. I have said that we will look closely at that. As several hon. Members have pointed out, we are doing some work in that area now, and we would be willing to develop that further.
On cattle vaccines, the Secretary of State met the commissioner on this just last week. We are continuing to do some work to develop a DIVA test. Field trials will take three to five years, so as a number of hon. Members have pointed out, it will be eight or nine years before we can get export clearance for the use of such a cattle vaccine. However, we are committed to taking this forward.
I agree with hon. Members that improving the control of cattle movements is an important tool in the fight against TB, but I simply point out that we have done a lot already. We now have annual testing in the high-risk area, and four-yearly testing across the whole country. We have banned practices such as approved quarantine units. We now have radial testing in the low-risk areas where we get an outbreak. We have stopped cattle going to major shows since July 2012. We have introduced risk-based trading to help farmers manage the risks. We have an ongoing consultation about restricting movements and introducing pre-movement and post-movement tests to common land. We are introducing deductions for farmers who are late in having their TB test, and we have reduced the pre-movement testing window from 60 to 30 days. So we are doing a huge amount, but I accept that we should be constantly looking to improve and do more, and we are looking, as the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr Sanders) suggested, at whether more could be done, for instance, on biosecurity measures.
George Eustice
I am going to run out of time and I want to leave time for the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main).
On effectiveness, we have already published the numbers of badgers that were culled in both Somerset, where it was 940, and Gloucester, where it was 921. The hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) invited me to speculate on what the effect on the population might have been from the recent flooding. One lesson that we have learnt is that it is difficult precisely to estimate badger populations. The RBCT did not use head trapping of the sophistication that we did, rather it used things like sett surveys, and there is a huge amount of doubt about whether it had a clear understanding of the badger population.
A number of hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) have highlighted that the RBCT concluded that the aim should be to remove 70% of the badger population. We accept that and that is why we had that as a target. However, it is wrong to say that if that target is not hit in the first year, the disease will be made worse. The RBCT clearly showed that three of the 10 test areas where there was a proactive cull got between 30% and 40% in year one, but provided that was sustained in subsequent years, it went on to have a significant impact in reducing the disease.
Finally, on the humaneness issue, I know that this is a sentimental matter for many people. In fact, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) highlighted the poem “The Badger”. All I will say is that I hope that hon. Members can develop some perspective, because shooting is used as a means of controlling foxes and all sorts of other wildlife. If hon. Members were to go to Bushy park or Richmond park in September and October, they would find signs up saying that a cull of deer was going on and so the park was closed. No one would bat an eyelid. I hope that we can develop some perspective—
George Eustice
I am not going to give way, but I know what the hon. Lady is going to say.
We recognise that there are challenges with shooting badgers. That is why we issued best practice guidance that specified a range of less than 70 metres using a rifle, that they should target the chest, the type of rifle that could be used and that the animal must be stationary and over a bait point. It might be that lessons can be learnt from that to improve the proficiency of marksmen and we can obviously consider that.
I want to pick up a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Mr Amess) about monitoring. He said that it was insufficient and we do not accept that. We were required to monitor 60 of the culls but monitored 88 and we were required to carry out 120 post-mortems but carried out 150. We did more monitoring than was required.
As the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) and my hon. Friends the Members for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) and for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) said, this is a devastating disease having a devastating impact on cattle farmers. When I visited one of the Gloucester culls I met a Gloucestershire farmer who had been under restriction for 12 years. He was not moving cattle on or off; it was being caused not by cattle but by a large badger sett on his farm that was infected by TB. I saw another farmer who had lost an entire pedigree herd as a result of the disease. We know that if we do nothing it will cost us £1 billion over the next 10 years and, as I said at the start, although we are pursuing a range of options, no single measure on its own is the solution to the problem. There is no example anywhere in the world of a country that has successfully tackled TB without also tackling the reservoir of disease in the wildlife population.
Mrs Main
I thank hon. Members on both sides of the House for their compassionate remarks in this important debate. Although I have not been in the Chamber for all of it, I have watched it all and I recognise the passion on both sides.
I stress again that the debate is not about one side against another. It is about whether we are pursuing the right strategy. I would like the House to express its wish today, but I recognise that the motion does not bind the Minister. Whatever the result of the vote today, if there is a vote, I hope that the Minister will take the issue away and reflect on it, read the report and come back before the House with a statement and a votable motion of his own. I recognise that, without that, we will get no further on this difficult subject, which gives rise to a lot of passion but on which we should not just be being seen to be doing something. I thank all hon. Members for taking the time to come here on a Thursday for this important debate.
Question put.
Huw Irranca-Davies
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Parliament has today expressed a very clear view that the mass culling of badgers is not appropriate as part of a bovine TB eradication strategy. I also learnt today, from a response to my named day question, that the Secretary of State has now received, and is now considering, the delayed independent expert report, which will likely condemn the culls as ineffective and inhumane. May I therefore ask the Minister, through you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to confirm that a full debate and vote in Government time will now take place before any decision to proceed with an existing or new cull takes place?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
That is not a matter for me, as the hon. Gentleman is well aware, but I am sure that his point will have been heard. [Interruption.] If the Minister wishes to respond, I am happy for him to do so.
George Eustice
I will respond, Mr Deputy Speaker, because obviously the shadow Minister has an issue with the fact that we have received the report. We have indeed received it, and we are considering it. It was not our decision when the report was delivered to us; an independent expert panel decided that. It was not our decision to have this debate, nor did we get involved in the decision of the Backbench Business Committee to have the debate today, and nor is it the role of Labour Members to dictate when the Government should publish the report. Let me be very clear: we have always been clear that we will publish the report and then, when we have made a decision—we have not made any decisions yet—[Interruption.] No, I am not going to confirm that there will be a vote. I have discussed and debated this many times, and I am sure we will have many opportunities to do so again in the future.
Miss McIntosh
Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. We have had a very well-mannered, even-handed and good-tempered debate, and I regret that we have had what the record may prove to be a vote on very erroneous grounds indeed. I would like to refer to this point of order when we have the record of the vote.
Mr Deputy Speaker
I will be quite honest: I do not treat what you have said as a point of order. There is no record of the vote as yet, and we will have to wait and see.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. This is now the second time the House has debated this issue on a Back-Bench motion, with overwhelming votes to stop the cull. What good is it having debates in Parliament if the Government are wilfully staying out of the Lobby, not involving themselves in voting for the policy that they are pursuing in the country, and taking no notice whatsoever of votes of this House. Is not this making this House an irrelevance?
Mr Deputy Speaker
I can understand that frustration is being shown at this time, but I am not in a position to offer any more advice.
Paul Flynn
Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. You will be aware that this debate was followed by many thousands of people throughout the country who have shown great interest in it through their tweets and responses. Will they not regard it as an outrage when there is a vote of 219 to one and the Government decide to ignore it? Are they out to prove themselves to be the really nasty party?
Mr Deputy Speaker
That is also not a point of order. It is a matter for the Government when and if they wish to have a vote.
Public Bodies (Diversity)
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this topic, which is a key issue not just for equality but for ensuring the best decision making possible for our public services—an area in which I worked in 2009. Civic engagement and the opportunity to play a part in public life are vital for building and sustaining links between all parts of society and our public institutions.
It is nearly 40 years since the Race Relations Act 1976 and the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 were first passed into law to end discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity or gender in Britain. Since then, notable milestones have been achieved. We have had the first woman Prime Minister, the first black woman in the Cabinet, and the first Asian and Muslim to attend Cabinet in the shape of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan).
However, we have not seen commensurate attainment in the public sector as a whole. The most recent “Public Bodies” report published in June 2013 by the Cabinet Office shows a worrying trend of reversal in progress. We all agree that public appointments must be made on merit; the question is whether the processes we have in place are really delivering that. Last year, 1,087 appointments were made to the boards of bodies in the UK, but of those only 56 were ethnic minority individuals. In just one year, black and minority ethnic representation went down from 7.2% in 2011-12 to 5.5% in 2012-13—the lowest level in more than a decade. It is positive that the number of female appointments went up from 33.9% to 35.6% in the same period, but diversity strategies must go wider than gender.
The drop is of particular concern because diversity on public boards has been seemingly high on the agenda for the Government Equalities Office, the Cabinet Office and the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. The 2011 review of the public appointments system addressed the core principles of fairness, openness and merit, and the Public Appointments Order in Council 2013 refers to a duty for the commissioner to promote equality of opportunity and diversity in public appointments. When the commissioner published the diversity strategy last March it was acknowledged that, although progress had been made, the pace of change was too slow.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and on being the first ethnic minority woman to represent a seat in west London. This issue has arisen under successive Governments and it has been a real cause of concern over a number of years. Does my hon. Friend think that perhaps the problem is that, when Ministers handed over to an independent body the decision to make these appointments, the politics went out of the appointment system, and that those who currently sit on the appointments board are not as attuned to these issues as Ministers would have been?
Seema Malhotra
My right hon. Friend makes a very important point. There is a separate debate to be had about the effectiveness of creating of an independent body. Ministers, however, can still take responsibility and I will come on to discuss how the previous Government had targets for public appointments, which I think made a big and important difference at the very highest levels of every Department.
As I was saying, it was acknowledged last year that the pace of change was too slow, yet a year on it is slower still. Last year, the inclusion think tank Diversity UK, led by Dilip Joshi, Lopa Patel and Sushila Khoot—long-standing campaigners for equality of opportunity—undertook a survey to investigate what was happening behind the statistics and launched the findings at an event that I attended and at which there was cross-party representation.
The survey collected the views of ethnic minority individuals and found that the majority of respondents had not applied for a public appointment despite being aware of such appointments and despite 60% of them expressing a wish to apply in the future. When people were asked why they had not applied, their reasons were varied. They did not feel that they were qualified enough or that they had the right skills, which are common responses to surveys looking at people who are under-represented in different organisations and bodies. Other reasons cited for detracting 68% of respondents from applying for a public appointment included the requirement for sector-specific and previous board-level experience and—this is a very important point—little or no feedback from the process and a lack of cultural awareness from executive recruitment consultants. However, respondents also saw the positive opportunity that public appointments can provide with regard to benefiting society and playing a part in our community and national life.
The survey was circulated to approximately 1,500 senior- director level individuals, and the findings suggest a widening “aspiration gap” between the leaders in business and society and the leaders of our public institutions.
In 2003, Trevor Phillips, the then head of the Commission for Racial Equality, coined the phrase “snowy peaks syndrome” to help explain a phenomenon in the civil service. He said we should think of Whitehall as a mountain range: at the base of each mountain, we might find large numbers of women and ethnic minorities, whereas at the summit we will find a small amount of white, middle class men.
Today, more than a decade later, snowy peaks can still be found in many parts of our society, including the public sector. We see it in the NHS, where only 1% of chief executives are from BME groups even though BMEs make up more than 15% of the health service work force.
The Government have done some important work on improving the representation of women on boards in the private sector, but diversity, as I have said, goes wider than gender, and the public sector remains vital, too. Fourteen per cent. of the UK population is made up of ethnic minority individuals and it is time that the Government demonstrated greater leadership on the issue.
Just last month, new research on the corporate sector revealed the widening aspiration gap, with two thirds of FTSE 100 companies still having an all-white executive leadership. Only 10 ethnic minority individuals hold the post of chairman, chief executive or finance director, which is equivalent to 3.5% of roles at that level. A diversity deficit clearly exists in the corporate sector, as it does in the public sector. That deficit also contributes to the lack of growth in developing economies across the world, where our diaspora communities and diversity at board level make a huge difference in building relationships.
The disappointment is that we are still discussing this issue today, when we would have hoped that many of the barriers to the progress of ethnic minority individuals in Britain had been removed. What are the solutions? Lopa Patel of Diversity UK has stated:
“To have declining BME representation at senior levels in the corporate and public sector at a time when BME numbers are increasing in the general population is indicative of failings in the process.”
I agree with the sentiment that the Government must do more to identify and remove what might be institutional discrimination.
It is precisely because of the need to address both demand and supply side issues in the appointments process that the previous Labour Government brought in important reforms and set targets for 50% of new appointments to be women by 2015, and for appointments of BME people and those with disabilities to be in line with their representation in the population. The targets may have been ambitious, but they made a statement and gave a sense of urgency about the need for reform.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that not only has the number of people in the BME population gone up, but their level of education and their role among the professions are unrecognisable from when I was a child, which makes it even worse that the number of such people at senior levels is dropping?
Seema Malhotra
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. It goes back to the heart of the issue, which is that, as we all believe, appointments should be made on merit. It is about whether there is a gap between those with the talent, expertise and desire to be able to reach those appointments and their actually achieving that through the appointments process. The very heart of the issue is whether our system and processes are fair and bring in talent fairly in the way that we need.
Since this Government came to power, targets for those with disabilities or those from ethnic minorities have been removed. The gender target has been kept in the Cabinet Office diversity strategy, but it is now described as an aspiration.
Diversity UK sent its survey findings to all major Departments and requested meetings with Ministers to discuss the issues, but the response was mixed. Imagine its surprise at receiving rejection letter after rejection letter, with Ministers citing lack of time as the reason for not agreeing to meetings. The Home Office, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Cabinet Office welcomed meetings to discuss the findings, but meetings were declined by, among others, the Prime Minister’s office, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Treasury, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and the Department for Education. Increasing representation is a complex issue, with no easy answers, but one thing is clear: it requires leadership from the top, particularly to give candidates the confidence to put themselves forward and the belief that it is worth the time and effort to do so.
May I ask the Minister to answer the following questions? Will he confirm which diversity targets for new public appointments are in place, and whether they are for increasing representation by gender, ethnicity and disability? What guidance is given to Departments on their recruitment processes, and on how to increase the diversity of suitable candidates at the application stage? What reviews are being undertaken of how effectively Departments recruit, and what powers does OCPA have to challenge those that do not perform well? What message is given to the head-hunters or search agencies selected to assist in recruitment, and to what extent is producing a more diverse range of suitable candidates stipulated in any contract? How are permanent secretaries held to account for their progress on diversity in public appointments? Are public appointment opportunities promoted at every level in our communities in order to reach a more diverse segment of the British public?
Finally, does he think that public bodies are using executive recruitment agencies effectively, and do those agencies have more knowledge of BME communities and how to reach them than public bodies and Departments have through their networks?
The Diversity UK report showed that respondents simply want a level playing field and a strong referee on this issue. The survey supported the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments and its independent assessors in providing those tools.
Our country is admired the world over for its openness, its sense of liberty and the opportunity that it offers all people. I look forward to the Minister’s response and to hearing how he sees us achieving greater diversity in public appointments, which is vital in ensuring that we deliver the public services that all parts of our communities need and in providing a greater sense of opportunity for all the British public.
The Minister for Civil Society (Mr Nick Hurd)
This issue is very important. I congratulate the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) on bringing it forward for debate today. She is well supported by her colleagues and has a credible track record of interest in this matter. Her well-informed speech has raised a number of interesting points.
I agreed 100% with the hon. Lady’s opening statement that this issue is not just about equality. As she knows well from her background in the private sector, businesses that reflect their customers are much better able to understand their needs and can offer them better services as a result. The same must be true of the public sector. There are about 8,500 people on the boards of our public bodies, which range from large public bodies to small advisory committees. All human life is here, from those who monitor the well-being of prisoners to those who govern great national museums. Board members exert significant influence over our lives. They deal with issues that affect a lot of people and shape the public services that we use.
Public services are there to serve the public—the clue is in the name. They can do that only if they understand the needs and priorities of those they serve and those they lead. The hon. Lady’s point about the NHS was a valid one. It leads to the obvious question of how on earth they can serve the public effectively if they fail adequately to represent the population. That has been a long-standing challenge, as she recognises. I will try to address her points and to set out that, although we are not where we need to be, we are making some progress.
I agree with the hon. Lady totally that it is extremely disappointing that the figures show a recent decrease in the representation of people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. I hope that the work that the Government have done recently to encourage diversity in public appointments, which I shall explain, will reap the rewards and be reflected in the next set of published figures. However, I share her disappointment on this important matter.
As the hon. Lady suggested, it looks like the Government are making progress on the representation of women on public boards, after years of stagnation. Our challenging aspiration that 50% of new appointments to public bodies should be women is proof of how seriously we take the issue. In the last financial year, only 37% of public board members were women. However, we have seen a positive improvement. In the first six months of this financial year—from April 2013 to September 2013—the figure was 45%. The Government continue to focus on this issue by reaching out to talented women and making it clear that a range of fascinating roles are on offer, and by ensuring that those roles are as accessible as possible to all. I will go into more detail on that.
The hon. Lady did not mention disability, but I would like to say a little about it. The Government’s general approach is that the public appointments process should be open to all, regardless of who they are, and should be designed in a way that ensures that we get the best applicants. For the record, the picture is encouraging. Last year, 5.3% of the appointments and reappointments in which the disability status was known were made to candidates with disabilities. That is part of a consistent upward trend, which I hope she will welcome.
I will make some general points about the Government’s approach before moving on to the specifics. The Government have taken unprecedented steps to open up the public appointments process to new talent. My right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General has placed this matter at the top of the Government’s agenda, as the hon. Lady acknowledged, and rightly challenges all Departments and public bodies to ensure that their boards have the mix of skills and experience that will make them as effective as possible. The presumption against automatic reappointment of incumbents supports that. We have made the process more transparent to improve access to vacancies. Alongside this, we have placed a new emphasis on ability and skills, rather than prior experience, to ensure that key roles in public bodies are open to the widest field, instead of a narrow merry-go-round of the same old candidates that has been a feature of the system to date.
Seema Malhotra
Will the Minister confirm that there is a way for permanent secretaries to be held to account for their progress? Do they need to report progress, and is that part of any performance review process?
Mr Hurd
The system is independently regulated and I will come on to that. There is more transparency in the process and that is an issue my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General has placed at the top of the Government’s agenda. My experience is that this is more actively monitored and more transparent than it has been in the past.
There was a debate on whether the process benefits from independent regulation, overseen by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. I think it does. It is key in supporting the merit principle, rather than other factors that might determine appointments. All panels have an independent member, who for chair appointments will be nominated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. That is a welcome initiative. The Centre for Public Appointments, which is part of the Cabinet Office, is working across Whitehall, and with the executive search industry, to make practical steps that will help us to open up public appointments to the widest possible pool. I will provide three examples.
First, we are modernising the recruitment process to ensure that adverts are effective and non-exclusive, and that interview panels are diverse and reappointments are made only in cases of utmost necessity. No one seriously disagrees that appointments should not be made on the basis of merit, but talented people often do not apply for public appointments either because they do not know about them, or because they do not recognise what they have to offer. We are placing greater emphasis on ability rather than experience, because we do not want to exclude those who may not yet have acquired board experience but could nevertheless potentially be good board members.
Secondly, there is nothing more off-putting than an unnecessarily long application process, so Departments are increasingly switching to using a straightforward CV and covering letter. We are working to simplify job adverts and are cutting out jargon to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.
Thirdly, we are maximising the use of online and targeted advertising, and social media. Two years ago, the CPA did not even have a website, let alone a Twitter account. Now the former has more than 20,000 visits a month and the latter has 1,600 followers. These are sensible measures and independent regulation is important.
On the representation of women and BME communities, progress has been made, particularly in relation to women. The rise of women in the public sector during the 20th-century was agonisingly slow. We should not forget that until 1947, women in the civil service were still expected to resign when they married. They earned less than men into the 1950s. Indeed, when Dame Mary Smieton was appointed as permanent under-secretary at the Department for Education in 1953—only the second woman to reach this grade—she was paid the same as a man. It would be nice to think that that was because her Department was an early advocate of equal pay—it was not—but the Treasury had not worked out a women’s rate of pay at that grade because it did not think that it would ever need to. This is where we have come from. Thankfully, much has changed and continues to improve, both in the civil service, where 47% of employees are currently women, and across the wider public sector, where women continue to shatter glass ceilings. For example, the RAF has recently appointed its second female Air Vice-Marshal.
Significant areas for improvement remain. As the hon. Lady acknowledged, perhaps foremost among them is the number of women on public sector boards. Women remaining a minority in the boardroom—or worse, where all-male boards persist—becomes more and more of an anachronism every year that passes. In the last financial year, only 37% of public board members were women. I believe that transparency is one of the best ways to raise performance. This was the first year that the Government published their own statistics on the general diversity of appointments, something I hope the hon. Lady welcomes.
Ms Abbott
The Minister is of course the second generation of Hurd to serve in this House, but we know he is there on merit alone and we all believe in merit. However, does he not believe that, in 21st-century Britain, it is very important for public boards and the top of the public sector to look like Britain?
Mr Hurd
I hesitate to correct the hon. Lady, because the correction will not help my case, but I am actually the fourth successive generation of my family to serve in the House. However, I am increasingly, and thankfully, an anachronism. The hon. Lady’s point is entirely valid.
The issue of transparency is particularly important. The message that I am trying to convey to the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston, and to other Members, is that we are making some progress. In the first six months of the current financial year, the number of women on boards rose to 45%. That constitutes real progress.
Seema Malhotra
I can inform the House that I am the first generation of my family to enter politics.
May I ask the Minister to return to the specific point about aspirations and targets? The last Government had targets relating to gender, ethnicity and disability for new appointments, whereas under the present Government only gender seems to remain, albeit as an aspiration. Was there a reason for the removal of the other two targets? Can the Minister shed any light on that?
Mr Hurd
I sincerely hope that the hon. Lady will not be the last generation of her family in this place. I would not wish her to carry the burden that I carry.
As the hon. Lady probably knows, the present Administration are not particularly keen on targets. I shall provide a more detailed response to her question at a later stage, but I will say in response to what she said about the aspiration relating to women that I think that aspiration is fine as long as progress is made towards the aim of the aspiration, which is what I have argued that we are doing. I hope that the hon. Lady welcomes that. We are certainly not resting on our laurels. The public sector is doing better than the private sector, but I do not think that anyone considers the current figures to be satisfactory. We maintain our aspiration that 50% of new public appointees should be women, and we will continue to publish the figures every six months. We want them to continue to rise. Transparency is a new element. As we know, it is a great driver of behaviour and keeps people’s feet to the fire.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
Does the Minister agree that one of the things that targets, and indeed aspirations, do is make people take action to meet them? Advertising in certain places often is not enough. This is about actively training people, educating people, and seeking people to fill those roles, rather than passively waiting for them to come forward.
Mr Hurd
I have some sympathy with that view, but I would not underestimate the strength of the new dynamics that we have introduced. There is a clear message from the top that this matters, and there is independent regulation of the competitive process. I have already described some of the things that we have done which we think will make it easier to reach out to people, and to remove barriers and obstacles. We have also made the process more transparent. In my experience as a Minister, the transparency factor is much more powerful than some arbitrary target with no transparency in regard to progress towards it The system knows that this matters and that it is being scrutinised—debates such as this are helpful in that respect—and we will be judged against progress towards the number for which we are aiming, whether it is set as an aspiration or a target.
I do not want to ignore the important issue of BME representation. I will be frank, and say that we are disappointed by the slip-back in the numbers. In their public appointments diversity strategy, published this year, the Government said:
“This is not just about gender; diversity is about encouraging applications from candidates with the widest range of backgrounds.”
It is regrettable that last year the number of successful BME candidates fell from an average of about 7.9% of appointments and reappointments since 2001-02 to 5.5% last year. We are disappointed about that, because it matters to us. We are hopeful that this will prove to be an anomalous year, and that the work that the Cabinet Office and the Commissioner for Public Appointments have been doing to increase diversity in public appointments will reap rewards in the next set of published figures, which will be transparent and will be monitored by the House and outside.
The Commissioner for Public Appointments regulates the competition for many of these posts. He also has a statutory responsibility to promote diversity and equality of opportunity in the procedures for making public appointments. He is actively concerned about the issues that have been raised today and he has already engaged in activity to try to improve the position. For example, he has run a series of workshops for different under-represented groups to identify the challenges to increasing diversity in appointments and will be coming up with practical suggestions to help Departments break down these barriers in the future. I am looking forward to the outcomes of this work and undertake to share them, as far as I can, with the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston, knowing and respecting, as I do, her strong interest in this area.
The public sector needs world-class leadership if it is to continue delivering the services that people rely on, and that means having diversity on the boards of public bodies—people with clarity of vision, who can make decisions, and rise above process to get things done. It needs innovators and people who understand the communities we are trying to serve. It needs people who can open up the system to new ways of doing things, who are prepared to take risks without being reckless, and who are willing to take responsibility and to learn and grow.
I do not think there has ever been a time in the public sector when this need to open up the doors to fresh thinking and people who bring different perspectives and insights and different knowledge has been more important. There are already great examples of diverse leaders making a significant contribution on public boards, but we are very aware that there is much more we can do and that is why diversity is genuinely at the heart of our public appointments strategy.
Question put and agreed to.
Westminster Hall
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Backbench Business
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Commonwealth Day
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Sir Alan Haselhurst (Saffron Walden) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley, and more so because of your deep knowledge and experience of Commonwealth matters, on which we have occasionally been conjoined. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allowing this debate because I have been trying to press the idea that, on or around Commonwealth day, all members of the Commonwealth should be encouraged to hold a debate on either general or particular matters affecting it. Such debates are an occasion to celebrate the anniversary of the Commonwealth on the designated Commonwealth day and to raise the Commonwealth’s profile by highlighting why it is a body to be nurtured and encouraged as a forum for frank discussion.
It is too easy for the Commonwealth to be taken for granted. We recently celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, but I suspect that if we went out on to the streets of London, and possibly the streets of many other parts of the country, and asked the first 10 people we met what they understood of the Commonwealth, the answers would be rather meagre.
Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)
I suspect it depends on the street. The response on Earls Court road might be different.
Sir Alan Haselhurst
I take my hon. Friend’s point. The British would probably have to fight for recognition in that part of London.
I ask myself how we should respond to the public’s general lack of recognition of what the Commonwealth is and does. I tend to think of the Commonwealth as a work in progress: developing networks, exchanging information, exploring potential, making friends and doing business. The word “family” is often used in connection with the Commonwealth, and I do not think that is entirely inappropriate because the occasional quarrel is not unknown in families. The fact that we do not all think alike on every subject all the time is not a reason for abandoning or decrying the project. I make a risky comparison with the European Union, which is also a work in progress. For all those who may despair of where the EU is going, how fast it is going and what it is doing, we can look back now and realise how much the situation in Europe has changed. We are commemorating a great war of terrible privations, and we have moved on a long way from that after 2,000 years of strife. One does not expect countries from five or six continents, however they are described, suddenly to find accord on every single subject and to find themselves walking in step on economic matters at all times.
My point is that continuing to strive to achieve common objectives within the Commonwealth is emphatically worth while, even if sometimes progress seems imperceptible. The Commonwealth is a voluntary body. Countries do not have to be a member, yet it is significant and encouraging that more countries are prepared to join, including countries that were not part of the former British empire. That is a good indicator that the Commonwealth has moved on and still has meaning for many other countries. The Commonwealth would be a strange body, however, if it did not contain members or possess friends willing it to improve its functioning, raise its standards and develop its potential. The weighty report two years ago from the eminent persons group was brimming with ideas, but not all of those ideas received universal acclaim from those for whom the report was intended. There is no lack of advice on what one might try to do to give the Commonwealth greater focus and meaning.
The Commonwealth’s anchor in the political sphere is probably our charter of fundamental values, which was endorsed and launched by Her Majesty the Queen a year ago. It would be idle to pretend that all those fundamental values are burning bright in every member country, yet any perceived deficiency is not necessarily of one kind or in one place. None of us is perfect in the eyes of some of our friends and colleagues. Without a degree of caution and moderation of language, we can all find ourselves submerging in a sea of recrimination, but we also cannot simply push to one side the challenging issues that undoubtedly exist within our ranks.
Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the way he is introducing this debate. What is his view of the two countries that are no longer members of the Commonwealth—Gambia and Zimbabwe? How can we ensure that they are able to come back in at some stage in the future? What is his up-to-date view on that?
Sir Alan Haselhurst
We have to develop our contacts below the parapet. We should be stretching out the hand of friendship to work on contacts and to persuade people so that we can bring those countries to closer assimilation with the Commonwealth’s standards. That will take time, and we cannot plot an exact timetable, but, once gone, countries should not be abandoned and forgotten.
Sir Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that Gambia left voluntarily precisely because it was moving in a direction incompatible with the Commonwealth’s ideals? In one sense, that shows an understanding that we stand for ideals, but leaving the Commonwealth is a pretty cynical annunciation of a country’s unwillingness to conform with those ideals. I agree that we have to find ways of engaging so that, at some time in the future, Gambia can come back and be a better place than it is now.
Sir Alan Haselhurst
There are examples of countries that exited the Commonwealth voluntarily and happily returned some years later, so I do not despair of the possibilities.
The high-profile difficulties, of which we are all too aware, are likely to be besetting our politicians and statesmen. When, as parliamentarians, we understandably dwell on such things, we should balance the picture and remember that there are many organisations in civil society that span the Commonwealth and bind people together in many constructive ways. There are between 90 and 100 such organisations spanning many professions and interests, so it is an ever-intensifying network that, in its own way, vividly illustrates the “team Commonwealth” theme of this year.
We should also acknowledge the work done by other Parliaments and other countries to mark and celebrate the Commonwealth anniversary every March. I have been reminded by the City Remembrancer of what the lord mayor and the City of London corporation, for example, do to involve young people in recognising the Commonwealth and the flying of the flag.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend comment on the failure this year to fly the flags of the Commonwealth nations in Parliament square on Commonwealth day at the time of Her Majesty the Queen’s arrival for the observance service at Westminster abbey? Is it not a retrograde step that, for the first time ever, the flags were not flown?
Sir Alan Haselhurst
I have to say that it was a disappointment, but I am unaware of the particular reason why that happened—whether it was carelessness or deliberate policy. It has always been a feature that Parliament square is decorated with those flags, and I am puzzled and disappointed that it did not happen this time.
The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
I apologise for interrupting my right hon. Friend, but it might help the House if I say that there was a particular reason for not having the flags, which was that pavement works were taking place and they restricted access to Parliament square. It was not a shift of policy; there was a particular practical problem this year, and the Commonwealth flags were flown in Horse Guards road.
Sir Alan Haselhurst
I am grateful to the Minister for making it clear that it was a mundane reason, rather than one of high policy. It covers my blushes in being unable to answer my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell).
I draw attention to the stand-out event in 2014 of the Commonwealth games in Glasgow. They are often described as “the friendly games”. While sport may be about rivalries, these gatherings can help to spread friendship and understanding in their own way.
Sir Paul Beresford
On a similar theme of friendliness, does my right hon. Friend recognise from his visits to Commonwealth countries and from talking to people from the Commonwealth that there is a feeling over the past few years, and under the previous Labour Government in particular, that there has been a tightening in the visas and opportunities for people from Commonwealth countries, including young people, to come to this country to work and to contribute? That is particularly felt as they arrive at Gatwick or such places and see that they are aliens.
Sir Alan Haselhurst
Sometimes when I arrive at terminal 5, I feel like an alien, but that is to do with whether we have sufficient capacity arrangements at our airports. I had a discussion recently with the high commissioner for India, where there are particular feelings that our attempts to clamp down on bogus students are starting to deter legitimate students from coming here. There has also been some retrenchment on Commonwealth scholarships. I have also discussed that subject with the high commissioner for Canada, because Canada has taken a more restrictive attitude. It is terribly important that we find ways of encouraging people from Commonwealth countries to visit here. Young people are, on the whole, more mobile than they have perhaps ever been, and that is an encouraging factor. My hon. Friend makes an important point.
Having said that an awful lot of good things are going on—some below the radar. We still cannot ignore the family difficulties and they cannot just be somehow wished away. I suspect that if we locked the Heads of Government in a room for a month and left them to talk in private, they would not be able to overcome some of the difficulties that are very much known to us all. That brings me to the role of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, on which I intend to focus this afternoon. If the Commonwealth charter, in Her Majesty’s words,
“sets out the values and principles which guide and motivate us”,
the establishment of good governance throughout Commonwealth countries surely provides the essential foundation for the practical implementation of those values and principles. The major aim of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association is parliamentary strengthening. That is done in a number of ways, such as election observance missions and post-election seminars.
We have to take note of the churn rate of elected politicians—it should send a chill down all our spines—which is pretty big. Electorates of various places, small and large, have been known to sweep out large numbers of the incumbents. Consequently, there is a flow of new people to Parliaments and they can benefit from the type of courses put on by the CPA. Specialist courses have been developed in the field of public accounts and on the encouragement of women parliamentarians. Name the parliamentary activity and it is possible to provide an instructional seminar that can help with it and with which Members and Clerks are ready to engage. There is a constant cross-fertilisation of ideas and expertise. We can assemble in this Chamber because of an idea first developed in the Australian Parliament to enable us to provide parallel opportunities for debates to take place and to improve the possibilities of Back-Bench participation in particular, as well as increasing scrutiny of Select Committee reports and the like.
The kind of activities that I mentioned require not only financial resources, but time. Elected Members well know that taking so much as one step out of their own jurisdiction is likely to bring the coals of press criticism descending on their heads. It is important to recognise that MPs across the Commonwealth—and not just young people in a different context—can inform one another. That amounts to what we might describe as soft diplomacy: creating understanding by constant discussion in a friendly and informal way, which enables some of the differences to be worn away over time.
Stronger Parliaments lead to better governance and build confidence in the validity of democratic systems. While the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association has the potential to bolster parliamentary democracy and underpin human rights, it lacks the capacity to do so as well as it might. The CPA has not achieved the extent of Commonwealth-wide recognition that it should have. Also, there is a blurred understanding of the exact role of the Commonwealth secretariat. Those positions have not been as well defined as it would be helpful for them to be. The situation is complicated by other organisations in the landscape, such as the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, the Commonwealth Foundation, the Royal Commonwealth Society and the Commonwealth Local Government Forum. Many of us are nibbling at the same apple, and there is insufficient co-ordination to ensure—if we believe that we have a purpose to fulfil—that we do it on a much greater and more effective scale.
For the reasons I have given, I believe that parliamentarians should be to the fore, together with their local government equivalents. The CPA has not taken the helm, or, possibly, has not been helped to take the helm. Sometimes Speakers or Presiding Officers in particular Parliaments do not engage to ensure that the CPA branches in their country and the provinces of their country are actively engaged in a beneficial way. The special value of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association is that it is not just about 53 countries.
Andrew Rosindell
My right hon. Friend might be coming on to commend the CPA for including the British overseas territories and Crown dependencies, but does he agree that it is time the Commonwealth gave some recognition to territories and dependencies that are not necessarily nation states, but are, by extension, British territories and so should be accommodated, even as associate members of the Commonwealth? They are currently excluded from main membership of the Commonwealth.
Sir Alan Haselhurst
I was confident, by his presence, that my hon. Friend would raise that matter. Indeed, recognition should be under favourable consideration to find a way around the problem. I was about to say that beyond the 53 countries, the CPA has a lot of dependent territories, smaller jurisdictions, provinces and states as members, and that is what makes us different. That is why we do not neatly fit into some international organisation straitjacket, as some colleagues across the Commonwealth might desire.
The CPA’s system of governance is cumbersome. It is difficult to accommodate the nine regions in a coherent committee that meets twice a year only. Collegiality cannot be achieved in that time, and, because of the need to try to spread the net as far as possible, rotational membership means that the committee has less collective memory than may be desirable. The CPA’s whole international structure needs examining. I want more engagement and encouragement from mother Parliaments. I am saddened by the fact that there is still, after all these years, an uneven level of activity across the regions. Some are extremely busy on the purposes that I have described, but others are less active. We need better co-ordination with the like-minded bodies that I have mentioned. I am now coming to the view that it would be better to acknowledge that good things are being done in many of the regions, so there should be more devolution of resources and governance into those regions in order that they can work effectively. I will not do so today, but I could sketch out a structure that might increase the quantum of activity and offer better value for money as a result. The CPA’s system of funding could be improved by having a separate foundation that looks after its reserve funds and can perhaps get them more easily replenished, whether by the Department for International Development, by people of good will or by the like-minded organisations who say, “We can do things more effectively hand in hand with the CPA.”
Above all, as in so many things, communication must be improved. It is sometimes difficult to communicate to all Members of this House to make them aware of what is going on, but it is so much more difficult across the Commonwealth. A letter can be sent to 175 branches, but it is still a struggle to get a reasonable number of replies on time—if at all. That is just a consequence of the pressure of correspondence and whether letters actually get through to the person who can action things, all of which does not make it easy to achieve good governance within the organisation.
There is so much to be done. There is the issue of the representation of women in our Parliaments across the Commonwealth, but even more challenging is how we engage young people. Such a huge proportion of the Commonwealth is under 25 years of age. For how long—particularly in developing countries, but it applies across the board—will young people be patient with a system of parliamentary government that does not appear to be delivering fast enough or satisfying their aspirations? We must ensure that young people believe that the process of democracy is valid and will allow them to express their views and have them properly considered.
Mr Bellingham
Does my right hon. Friend agree that a main priority for many young people in the Commonwealth is getting a job and achieving prosperity? Does he share my vision that the Commonwealth must do more on the commercial diplomacy and trade agenda? We want more trade between Commonwealth countries, which share advantages around common language, contract law and legal systems, so that young people can have brighter hopes for the future in terms of trade picking up. Does he agree that the Commonwealth must give that agenda more priority?
Sir Alan Haselhurst
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will not venture too far down that road, but I am sure that if he catches your eye, Mr Bayley, he will be able to expand on that theme. The Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary raised the matter in a speech in Sydney a couple of years ago when he said that this side of the Commonwealth has not been given the attention it deserves. I appreciate that I have already been speaking for sufficiently long that I must not develop into other areas.
I want a Commonwealth youth Parliament established on an annual basis. I want representatives of that organisation to be at the top level when we have our annual conference of the CPA, and I want them to have access to Foreign Ministers when it comes to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting.
I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Romford will pay attention here, because special attention must be given to smaller states. We should try to have a figurehead representative chosen from the small states to be on the executive committee of the CPA, for which there is great enthusiasm. I hope that the executive committee can be persuaded to accept that idea at its next meeting.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
The right hon. Gentleman has set out clearly and eloquently the challenges and several changes that he would make to the CPA. What is his assessment of the likely degree of support among member states of the Commonwealth for his suggestions about the CPA? Is there a groundswell of opinion in his favour?
Sir Alan Haselhurst
The answer is mixed. There is a groundswell of support for doing more for women parliamentarians in the Commonwealth and for an annual youth Parliament, and the matter of the small states will be put to the test soon. The reactions may be mixed to my suggestion about the devolution of power, but I am merely floating the idea based on my experience of the past two and half years as the chairperson of the executive committee. Having seen what is happening across the piece, there is a case for considering that proposal, but it has not yet been examined in any great detail.
The powerbrokers at ministerial level in the Commonwealth and in national Parliaments should take much more seriously the Commonwealth’s parliamentary and local government arms and its associated organisations. By the time of the next CHOGM in two years’ time, I hope for some progress on what was said in Colombo in the hurried half-hour that was granted to the associated organisations. There was a feeling among Foreign Ministers that something more had to be done to engage, and I am willing to suggest ways in which that could be done. I envisage an event at the next CHOGM that highlights the civil society aspects of the Commonwealth, but which would also make clear the role that can be played by the elected partners among the associated organisations. That ought to be seen as a win-win within the Commonwealth family and would help the CPA, in particular, to aspire to a stronger sense of purpose and a sharper definition of its priorities. I hope that moves in that general direction will be encouraged by Her Majesty’s Government.
Hugh Bayley (in the Chair)
Order. We have plenty of time for the debate. The wind-ups must start by 4 pm, but may come before then.
Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Bayley. I was pleased that this debate was selected and congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) on organising it, recognising his deep knowledge and participation in Commonwealth matters.
I was pleased just the other day to be asked by Huntingdonshire district council to speak to local residents at a flag-raising ceremony in my constituency on the meaning of the Commonwealth. Being in my constituency, my thoughts focused on what the Commonwealth might mean to my constituents. First, we need to appreciate that, as my right hon. Friend intimated, memories of the British empire are very distant for most people in the UK—if people have any knowledge of it at all. I would therefore contend that most young people—anyone under the age of 60 for this purpose—may have little idea of empire or its end. So why, I contended with my constituents, should the Commonwealth have any relevance to our lives today? With 54 independent countries and 2 billion people—a third of the world’s population—the scale of the Commonwealth is significant, but size in itself does not bring its relevance to life.
The principles of the Commonwealth, offering through its charter mutual support for more inclusive and equitable social progress for member states, are also to be applauded. In themselves, however, they sound somewhat abstract. The objectives of upholding democracy, human rights, peace and security, respect and understanding, freedom of expression, separation of powers, the rule of law, good governance and so on are ideals that we should all aim for. Again, however, that sounds like motherhood and apple pie when read out as a long list, such that some might consider the Commonwealth to be more of a talking shop than a body for action.
It must be said that the measures of successful membership are not being upheld consistently—or in some cases at all—by certain members. The royal family has done a magnificent job in unifying the institution, but their future leadership will be at the members’ discretion. Many member states would, until recently, have struggled to describe themselves as capitalist economies, but, with the fall of communism, that is no longer the case. An understanding of the need for vibrant, and let me also say uncorrupt, market economies generally exists.
Trade between member countries is increasing for the benefit of all. One may have thought that that would be a key area of engagement for the UK, but even here the situation is more complicated and there is little evidence in many Commonwealth member states that our membership gives us a significant trading advantage. Indeed, despite some 250 years of trading with India, I was surprised to hear that Switzerland, for instance, does more trade with India than the UK does. Having said that, I acknowledge the strenuous efforts being made to increase our trade with India and the significant investment by the Foreign Office and UK Trade & Investment to that end.
I wanted to learn more about the Commonwealth, so, about a year ago, I was pleased to be invited on my first visit with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association UK branch to India. I subsequently visited Sri Lanka. I went to India with an open mind, keen to play my very small part in encouraging good relations and trade between our two nations, but, for the reasons I have given, I was not wholly convinced at that time of the value of the Commonwealth per se. However, I can now say that I have changed my mind. I now believe that the Commonwealth is not a talking shop but a real and vibrant platform for upholding good governance, improving democratic institutions, respecting human rights and extending trade opportunities.
Mr Henry Bellingham
My hon. Friend and I both have a passion for the export of UK legal services. We agree that one of the stumbling blocks for the export drive has been the attitude of both the Indian Government and the regional governments in India. On his visit, did he detect any discernible movement away from that attitude, which was previously quite negative?
Mr Djanogly
My hon. Friend will not be surprised to hear that I did indeed bring that up on our visit to India. I am sorry to say that, when we were there, there was little movement in that direction. However, I recognise the significant efforts since made by the Foreign Secretary, and indeed the Lord Chancellor, with India. They are not giving up the ghost on this; they are working hard to reverse that position. India is currently undergoing a difficult time, thinking about elections rather than policy, but, hopefully after the elections it will look more carefully at this issue and change its mind. That would be, as I am sure my hon. Friend would agree, for the benefit of India and Britain.
Many Commonwealth countries have political institutions whose administrations and standing orders are not as efficient as they could be. We can—and do—do much to assist them. By engaging with member countries, we also create ties and good will in different areas that provide much greater depth to our international relationships than fleeting ministerial visits—as important as those are, I say with respect to the Minister.
I saw the value of engagement again when I joined a CPA UK delegation to Sri Lanka to review post-conflict reconciliation and human rights issues. Sitting in a very hot hut, which Tamil MPs used as a headquarters, we heard their grievances, which included alleged human rights complaints. They appreciated our making the effort to go to the north of the country, which still shows clear signs of the terrible war. We also met with army, police and other national representatives who explained their security concerns. Everyone seemed pleased to see us and keen to put forward their cases. That certainly gave me the impression that everyone wanted reconciliation even if, unfortunately, not at the same pace.
Importantly, we engaged with Sri Lankans from the north and south, and those of different religions and races, not as the old imperial power coming to dictate but as equals; as friends and colleagues with a shared history, and with a will to share the benefit of our experience and learn from each other. We also met with shared expectations of maintaining shared values—in effect, the values contained in the Commonwealth charter, which, at that point, came alive to me as a living and relevant document. More than that, being a member of the Commonwealth meant that I felt that I could be open and frank in setting out, for instance to the Sri Lankan human rights commission or Ministers, where we felt that improvements to conduct were required.
Let me add that the discussions were not one way. For instance, a number of our hosts raised complicated questions arising from the colonisation of their countries. The fact that they wished to discuss such issues on an open and friendly basis was, for me, proof of the worth of connecting through membership. I agree, therefore, with my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden about the importance of the CPA.
The further question, therefore, as I think my right hon. Friend said, is: how do we explain the benefits of our membership to the wider population? As well as feeding into the youth parliament concept, greater engagement by schools would be a good idea. Many areas of British engagement in environmental, social, empowerment of women and other civil projects across the Commonwealth would be fascinating for children to learn about. Given what I have seen and the value I now attach to the Commonwealth, I do see the benefit of having a Commonwealth day in order to provide a focus for the explanation of its relevance to our constituents and their children at school.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
I passionately support the Commonwealth as I was born in Pakistan in 1978. On my hon. Friend’s point about focusing on the Commonwealth’s values and principles, does he agree that more work needs to be done on basic human rights across all members of the Commonwealth? I was in Pakistan in 2012, where I met members of the Christian community who, along with many other minority communities, felt persecuted by the blasphemy laws. We need to work here and in other Parliaments with Pakistan to get them to reform those laws so that people can aspire to the basic freedoms of faith and belief.
Mr Djanogly
I very much support my hon. Friend’s comments. The Commonwealth provides a platform for that to be done; the question is the extent to which we use that platform. He makes the important point that we should use that platform. I have said what I wanted to say. We should all support Commonwealth day and I am happy to support the motion.
Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Bayley. I congratulate the chair of the CPA, the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst), on securing today’s important debate. I belatedly wish all of my colleagues a happy Commonwealth day.
I start on the right hon. Gentleman’s idea for a Commonwealth youth parliament, which is a fantastic idea. As a former MSYP—that is a member of the Scottish Youth Parliament for those colleagues from south of the as-yet-non-existent border—I think that that could be a crucial tool in a group of countries with so many under-25s. In some of the recent news from our partner countries in the Commonwealth, we have heard the voices of the past coming forward in their legislation. I cannot think of a better tool to get the voices of young people heard actively across the Commonwealth than what he suggested.
As a Scot, I am proud that we are hosting the Commonwealth games. It is an exciting time for Scotland and for those of us who live around Glasgow. I am looking forward to welcoming friends and athletes from all over the world. It is an exciting opportunity for Brits and Scots not only to make new friends and hear from different cultures but to make our own voices heard and to speak out about the concerns we have. I will concentrate my remarks today on one such issue.
One reason I have been involved in the CPA since I was elected four years ago is the strength of the Commonwealth, as I see it, as laid out in the charter. Although it has had some criticism, it is an extremely worthwhile document. It will help to champion human rights throughout the Commonwealth and we should be wielding it as a weapon at the moment. I want to talk about what has been happening in Uganda recently. In recent meetings I have had with them as chair of the all-party group on HIV and AIDS, Ugandan activists have all had the same war cry, which has been to ask us to cleanse ourselves of our imperial guilt. All Commonwealth member countries should use the charter as much as they can, and all parliamentarians who can use the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association to get their views heard should do so.
I include British Members of Parliament in that. Sometimes we have been too quiet about saying what we think when something has gone wrong. The anti-homosexuality law that has recently been passed in Uganda and the anti-pornography law that was passed just before it are good examples of just that situation. We should be calling on the strength of the Commonwealth to stand up to the human rights infringement in Uganda.
Uganda is a country that means a great deal to me. I have spoken often in the House about the fact that I have friends and family there. I have visited Uganda often, as a tourist, as a student worker and as a CPA member. It is very close to my heart and I have been deeply upset by what has happened there recently. I want to use the opportunity that today’s debate offers to speak about that. I hope we can use the CPA to stand up and have our voices counted.
The law in Uganda now threatens life sentences for homosexual behaviour and “aggravated homosexuality”—that is what the law says. It is also a criminal offence for anyone to know that someone is homosexual. The law will therefore divide families and ensure that men who have sex with men are frightened to seek health care. It will cause friction where there should be none. Uganda’s Health Minister has already declared that the law will not breach human rights on access to health care for men who have sex with men, but I cannot see why that will be the case. Men who have sex with men will not seek health care if they think that they might be turned in to the authorities for homosexual behaviour. The law also contains a provision on the promotion of homosexuality, which means that some of the clinics and non-governmental organisations that we as a country support will not be able to operate in Uganda without risk of criminal conviction and jail. All that is happening in the only country in Africa that has rising rates of HIV. For me, the law is simply a violation of human rights.
The issue does not simply concern Uganda, however, and the reason I have raised it in a debate about the Commonwealth is that I have real fears that it will spread throughout other Commonwealth countries. We have already seen evidence of that happening in the two and a half weeks since the Act was signed into law by President Museveni. Just before that, a new anti-gay law was signed in Nigeria. A copycat Bill has been introduced in the Kenyan Parliament and Bills have been introduced in Liberia and Malawi as well.
Mr Bellingham
I share the hon. Lady’s concern that since the private Member’s Bill was passed in the Ugandan Parliament other initiatives have been triggered in the countries she has mentioned and in others, including non-Commonwealth countries. Does she agree that aid is a key part of our bilateral relationship with most of those countries and there is therefore a role for the Department for International Development? DFID should have very firm conversations on the matter, probably in private—I have certainly found that speaking to President Museveni in private on the matter was a great deal more effective than doing so publicly. Does she agree that DFID has to look at how it finesses those conversations in the very near future?
Pamela Nash
The hon. Gentleman has made two good points. He mentioned private conversations. My work through the CPA has allowed me to have such conversations with Members of Parliament and Government Ministers and officials from some of the countries I mentioned, including Uganda. At the time, I found those private conversations to be most helpful in gaining a better understanding of where the movements are coming from. However, with all due respect, in Uganda it has not worked. We have been hearing all the right things—other Members here today will have had those conversations, particularly with Ugandan parliamentarians, and the President and the Speaker of the Ugandan Parliament—but we are now in the situation we are in. Although my fears are mainly about Uganda at the moment, I am incredibly concerned about what will happen across the rest of the Commonwealth.
In terms of the possible knock-on effect, it is not always clear what is happening in those countries. I found it difficult to research exactly what the legislation was in some countries and what the changes were. I will use Malawi as an example. President Joyce Banda, who has been a guest of mine in this House, announced in November that she had suspended all laws criminalising homosexuality, but the Malawian Government have recently denied issuing that statement, and the laws criminalising same-sex acts remain in place. We are stuck in a position where we are hearing one thing in private conversations with legislators, but the reality for people on the ground is something very different.
The hon. Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham) also raised the role of DFID as a lever to encourage or discourage partner countries on the ground. Although that is possible, in the case of Uganda we do not, as far as I know, provide any direct Government support, as all our money is directed through NGOs and other projects. There is therefore the difficulty of what levers we can use to influence Uganda. I hope that the Minister will enlighten us about what more the Foreign and Commonwealth Office can do in our conversations with Uganda.
Sir Malcolm Bruce
The hon. Lady is making an important and powerful case. Does she accept that gay rights are not our only area of concern? In a number of countries there are also concerns about the rights of women and the right of access to family planning, and the fundamental issue of unsafe abortions. We do not have the right to impose our view on people. We have to find partners within the country with whom we can engage at all levels. She is right to say that the situation is tricky, because if we start trying to use the DFID budget as a lever, the danger is that those countries will turn round and say, “We do not want your aid.” We have to be careful to find a partner we can work with inside the community and give them the support they need.
Pamela Nash
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman, who has a lot of experience in international development. It is a tricky balance to strike. We should not be frightened of saying what we think, but we must use the correct levers. We should not wield the DFID budget as a weapon but instead should use it to promote the values and beliefs that we have as a nation, the fundamental one of which is universal human rights.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
My point is similar to that made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce). I was at the Commonwealth parliamentary conference with the hon. Lady and my right hon. Friend in South Africa in September 2013 and spoke several times on this issue. I urge caution in using the Department for International Development budget because a big challenge for us when Canada, Australia and Gibraltar raise concerns is that our actions can be seen as an attempt to recreate the empire or to preach from our imperialistic past. Perhaps it is better if other nations, such as South Africa, advocate on such issues. We heard a wonderful speech at that conference from the Deputy Speaker of the South African Parliament, and because of history it may be better if South Africa advocates on such issues instead of us, sadly.
Pamela Nash
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He made the great point that we should remember that we are not the only advocates in the Commonwealth for LGBT rights, women’s rights and equality for all. We have strong partners in the Commonwealth, and this is the time when we should come together to ensure that their voices are heard. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point that South Africa may be a better advocate at the moment, and I hope that we can work with it on that.
I would like some clarity on the Foreign Office’s position. Has the Minister spoken about the matter to Uganda’s high commissioner in London recently? Are there other diplomatic engagements with Uganda and other Commonwealth Governments, such as Malawi and Nigeria, and countries such as Liberia, about LGBT rights and the recent proposed changes to legislation?
I want to pick up some points that hon. Members have made about DFID’s role and ask the Minister to comment on his Department’s discussions with it on Uganda and the emergency reaction. We have not touched on the fact that the problem is not just the legislation and the threat of arrest but violence. There have been outbreaks of violence over the past few years at every stage of the Bill’s progress in Uganda. Since it was enacted on 24 February, there have been several reports of people being murdered after being outed.
I was horrified to see that the Red Pepper, a tabloid in Uganda, had published the names of 200 people, including photographs and including the name of a dear friend of mine, Frank Mugisha, who runs Sexual Minorities Uganda. His name has probably appeared in Hansard more than mine over the last few years, and it is often taken in vain when this important issue is discussed. I am glad to say that he has rightly been nominated for a Nobel peace prize. He is the successor to David Kato, who was murdered three years ago after his name was published in another tabloid in Uganda. He successfully took the paper to court, but the price he paid was to be murdered. My blood ran cold when I saw that history was repeating itself in the tabloids.
What conversations has the Minister had with DFID about what the Government can do to provide support to those on the ground? I do not ask for protection from a law in another country, but what can we do to protect vulnerable Ugandans who are at increased risk of violence and violation of their human rights? An emergency security funding pool has been established, and I ask the Government to contribute to it quickly.
I have raised this issue today because it is fundamentally a human rights one. The Commonwealth charter, which was signed last year, includes articles on tolerance, respect and understanding, freedom of expression and human rights. I cannot think of a more valuable current issue to address than LGBT rights in Uganda and beyond in the Commonwealth. We should use our position in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the Commonwealth to ensure that our voice is heard.
Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)
I am delighted to serve under your surveillance, Mr Bayley. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) on securing this debate and setting the broad scene. That enables me to be a little more focused on what is called the old Commonwealth, which is the backbone of the Commonwealth with the United Kingdom at the head. There is a feeling among the old Commonwealth nations that the door that was open is slowly closing, and that that was happening particularly under the last Government.
I have been speaking for about 10 seconds, and everyone is aware from my accent that I come from one of the Commonwealth countries. I cannot get away from that, but my accent is not Australian. I have dual nationality and I carry a British passport and a New Zealand one, which creates difficulties sometimes when there is a small battle at Twickenham. I assure all hon. Members that I cheer for England, although I put my money on the All Blacks.
As I said during an intervention, when I arrive at Gatwick, having dual nationality gives me the opportunity to survey which is the longest queue and which has more people serving it. I sometimes join the alien queue because it is quicker.
Andrew Percy
Does my hon. Friend share my opinion that it is terrible that Canadian, Australian and New Zealand nationals, who share the same monarch as us, are treated as complete foreigners when people from 26 other foreign countries can just walk through as though they were British citizens? That is completely unacceptable.
Sir Paul Beresford
I thank my hon. Friend, who fired the shot for me without my accent, which was helpful.
The Commonwealth is a unique organisation. It is a worldwide family with a mixture of races, religions, languages and creeds based around the United Kingdom and the Queen. As I said, I come from New Zealand, which is a huge supporter of the Commonwealth and the Queen. If the New Zealand magazine, Women’s Weekly, does not have six pictures of the Queen and the royal family, there has been a misprint along the line.
New Zealand has slight republican moments, and I understand that it is considering a slight variation of the flag, but we will see. It will be amusing because Women’s Weekly will battle to keep the flag and I suspect that elderly New Zealand ladies will rally to the cause.
Next door to New Zealand is another Commonwealth nation—a little island called Australia. It has a few republican problems and, if asked, any New Zealander would explain that being Australian is in itself a difficulty, but it seems to overcome that, particularly in the cricket field.
Those two old Commonwealth nations have a huge rivalry, which can be seen on the rugby field. The insults and jokes between them are phenomenal and racist, but every joke can be turned round the other way, so anything a New Zealander says about Australia can be returned the other way round. However, they work extremely closely with the British Commonwealth, particularly when the United Kingdom is under deep threat. With Canada and South Africa, they are the old Commonwealth. They have a Commonwealth link, reinforced by kith and kin, and a two-way flow of tourism and migration going back two centuries, although that is being stemmed now.
My direct knowledge is obviously predominately of New Zealand, although I have lived in the UK longer than I lived there. I occasionally return there for a refresher course in the accent and attitudes. A touch of history may be helpful. New Zealand’s biggest influx of immigration over the past couple of centuries involved people who went there by choice—I am sure I will receive letters from Australians about this—and were not transported there. That can be seen when wandering around New Zealand, because the place names are a mixture of Maori, English, Scottish and Irish, and there are even a few Welsh names. The people there drive on the left. They predominantly speak English or a version of it, and the parliamentary system, although it has only one House, is much the same as that here. In fact, it mimics it even to the building. It is not quite as spectacular and not anywhere near as old, but it does mimic it.
My parents’ and grandparents’ generations talked of the United Kingdom as home and of “going back”. They still do. What intrigued me was that many of them had never been here, but they still talked about going back. They all have close links with this country and they display that in their houses. My parents’ and grandparents’ generations in particular would have on the coffee table in the sitting room—it was a sitting room, not a withdrawing room or drawing room—a fantastic book or two. Those fantastic books are full of photographs, which are dramatic for two reasons. First, they feature the United Kingdom and its beautiful scenery. The second and even more amazing thing is that the photographs were taken on sunny days. How the photographers managed to get 50, 60 or a couple of hundred sunny days to take fantastic photos beggars belief, especially after the last few months.
The close rapport between the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia is perhaps emphasised most in the farming communities. There are very close links, including educational links, both ways between the farmers, but perhaps it is more educational for the farmers from this country. One of my colleagues in this place asked me whether I could find a farm—he was thinking of a farm in this country, as I belong to the National Farmers Union—for his daughter to spend her gap year on before going to veterinary school. She needed a very good and unusual entry—a star entry—on farming on her CV to get into vet school. I ignored the thought that the farm would be here and rang New Zealand. I spoke to one of the high-country farmers I know there. They said, “Yes, we’d love to take her here—kith and kin etc.” She was over the moon, until she arrived and suddenly realised what she had taken on. The farm has barley, lucerne hay and so on, 1,000 head of cattle, 1,000 head of deer and 23,000 lambing ewes, so when they have lambed—this is the farm I came from—there are 50,000 woolly beasts running around the place. That my colleague’s daughter went there was an example of kith and kin. She had a hard time for the first couple of weeks and then settled into it and came back really educated. She staggered the people who interviewed her for veterinary school, and walked straight in.
Of course, the biggest example of kith and kin is seen at times of conflict. We have the first world war commemoration coming up. In that war, there was the battle of Gallipoli, which led to Anzac day. Here, Remembrance day is important. It is covered on television. Anzac day in Australia and New Zealand is the same. Interestingly, the young people in Australia and New Zealand now go to the remembrance celebration there. They used not to do that in the past. The people of those countries remember the soldiers, sailors and airmen who fought for the United Kingdom as part of the Commonwealth.
I found this hard to understand as a child. My little village—it was a little village, in the north of the south island—had a war memorial. In typical New Zealand style, people were pragmatic about it. It was a superb memorial, but of course they had public toilets underneath it, because they had to use the space there for something useful. The walls of the memorial—one can see this at any of the memorials in Australia and New Zealand, but particularly at the war memorial in Canberra—were covered with the names of the soldiers who had died, and there were hundreds upon hundreds from that little village.
On Remembrance day in this country, I go to the villages in my area, and they read out the names. That is desperately important—it is desperately important that the names are remembered—but people cannot read out the names in the little village that I come from, because that would take up the whole time for the service.
Sir Malcolm Bruce
The hon. Gentleman is making a very powerful point. May I share this with him? Recently, my daughter did a first world war project, which involved researching the names on the war memorial in our village. We found that a significant number of them were people who had emigrated before the first world war to New Zealand and who came back to fight for their country and die for their country, their country being both New Zealand and the UK.
Sir Paul Beresford
I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention.
This is one of the latest examples of what I am discussing. Some of us will remember that in Afghanistan there was a Mumbai-style attack on the Intercontinental hotel in Kabul. Two vehicles rolled up. Six guys got out, charged in, dealt with the terrorists and came out unscathed. They did look as though they had come out of a Rambo movie, but they were the New Zealand SAS, who had just been called up on spec to go in and deal with the situation. They did that, calmly, and got out. They are dangerous people, those New Zealand SAS.
Some years ago, I visited Monte Cassino, the scene of the battle for Rome in world war two. Between 17 January and 18 May 1944, four battles were fought there. The soldiers involved on our side were called allied troops. There were Polish troops, but the only others were from Commonwealth countries. A total of 54,000 men from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India and Canada were lost, as well as a number of Gurkhas.
The horrible reality of what happened came home to me during my visit. There were separate cemeteries for the various nations, with thousands and thousands of tombstones, but what really struck me was the ages of the troops buried there. Most of them—these are troops from the Commonwealth countries—were in their late 20s or in their 30s or 40s. Almost all of them would have been married and had families. Those families had no father, because they were over here, fighting for a United Kingdom war. That explains why, when I was a kid, I noticed that in my village there were a lot of single-parent families and a lot of ladies who remained single. That was simply because there were no men.
After the war, shoals of people from New Zealand and Australia came to the United Kingdom on six-week boat trips. Nowadays they fly. Many if not all are skilled. They are doctors, dentists, nurses, farmers, accountants, lawyers and experts in banking, finance or construction. Some stay; others move on to other parts of the world; and some go back. But they all contribute to this country. For decades, university graduates have been among New Zealand’s biggest exports. In the main, they used to come here. However, the United Kingdom has become progressively less receptive in the past few years. Entry is becoming more difficult, and to stay to contribute is becoming more difficult. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will look at that.
People from New Zealand, Australia, Canada and South Africa are exactly the type of immigrants this country needs. In general, they have high skills, earn high net incomes and pay a lot of tax. They are almost invisible to social services, because they never use them. They integrate well into British society. After all, most of them have parents, grandparents or even great-grandparents who came, either directly or indirectly, from the UK. They share the culture. They share the language, mostly. They share the heritage. And they tend to play slightly better rugby, but they blend in and add value to the United Kingdom. Their ability to blend in was recognised at one of the recent grand slam games—I am talking about rugby, ladies. The coach of one of the most successful Welsh national rugby teams has a very strong New Zealand accent.
Distressingly, the United Kingdom, as I have said, seems to be closing the door on Commonwealth immigration. It is losing expertise in medicine, dentistry, accounting, physiotherapy, the law and so on. I find that extraordinary. Highly trained professional people who come to the United Kingdom are being required to sit extra exams so that they can work here, whereas they are welcome in some other nations. The quality of their degrees is every bit as good as—and, dare I say it in hushed tones, perhaps sometimes better than—what is achieved here. If degrees from the United Kingdom are acceptable in those countries—and they are—that should be reciprocated, especially as a disproportionate number of the medical, dental and legal teaching staff in universities here are from those old Commonwealth nations. The same applies to the United States and Canada, but without the same difficulties.
Lord Rutherford began the process. It has continued; and I hope that, with a bit of freedom and a bit of relaxation, it will still continue. I receive many complaints from United Kingdom businesses and from Australians and New Zealanders that they are able to work here for only a very few years—generally two. Perhaps the Government could positively review that aspect of immigration policy.
The Commonwealth is very special for its people. In these difficult days, the United Kingdom needs to build on that family of nations and not destroy the willingness and desire to be in harmony with the United Kingdom in the Commonwealth.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
I am delighted to have the opportunity to address the Chamber on the international importance of the Commonwealth of nations in the wake of the Commonwealth day celebrations in the UK and throughout the Commonwealth. I was proud to have been invited to attend the observance day service at Westminster Abbey in the presence of Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, together with representatives from all the nations and territories in the Commonwealth family.
I was also proud to have played a part in the campaign to fly the flag of the Commonwealth, which ensured that most town halls across the country were sent the Commonwealth flag to fly for the first time. I pay tribute to Bruno Peak, who led that campaign and organised the sending out of flags. I hope that many of us were at our town halls on Monday to see the raising of that important symbol of the Commonwealth family.
Andrew Percy
I would like to put on the record the fact that I was at North Lincolnshire council civic centre on Monday, where the Commonwealth flag was duly raised.
Andrew Rosindell
I would not have expected my hon. Friend to have been anywhere else, because he is such a committed supporter of the Commonwealth. The tradition that we have established this week in our country—that the flag of the Commonwealth should be flown at civic offices, town halls and, I hope, schools—will continue. I am proud to say that the flag of the Commonwealth was raised on the flagpole outside the Romford Conservative association’s Margaret Thatcher house in my constituency.
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) for his magnificent work as international chairman of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and of its UK branch in Westminster. I know that you, Mr Bayley, also play a significant role in the work of the CPA. When I was elected to Parliament in 2001, one of the first things I did was to join the CPA. I commend it on its magnificent work and the way in which it has evolved over my 13 years as a Member.
On my first CPA visit in 2002, I accompanied my right hon. and noble Friend the then Member for Folkestone and Hythe—now Lord Howard—to Mauritius. Since then, I have participated in many CPA activities. I am delighted that the CPA is no longer simply about parliamentary friendship—although that is important—but about helping others to develop important things such as credentials and good governance. The CPA does magnificent work in those areas.
I put on the record my thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden and his team for all the work that they do to promote the CPA. There are issues about CPA internationally, and I hope that all nations in the Commonwealth understand and appreciate that we must work together because we have important common goals, values and objectives, which we must cherish.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), who has made powerful remarks today about his visit to Sri Lanka and the deep importance of the Commonwealth. Not enough people understand that. I am glad that he is part of the CPA and that he has been to Sri Lanka and seen what is going on. I was pleased to have the opportunity to visit Sri Lanka myself three years ago, where I saw the terrible things that have gone on in that country and the awful divisions that have occurred. Sadly, many of those divisions have been made far worse by the Sri Lankan Government’s decision many years ago that English would no longer be the country’s common language. Surely, one of the most powerful aspects of the Commonwealth is the fact that all its members are bound together by the common language of English. Ending the use of English as a common language for all peoples of the Commonwealth will create divisions as one regional language takes precedence over another. The common English language does more than anything else to bind us together.
The other thing that Sri Lanka did was to become a republic, taking away a Head of State who was neutral and above politics. Countries that have gone down the republic road have not necessarily had the great success for which they had hoped. Those that have kept Her Majesty the Queen as their head of state—Australia, New Zealand, Canada, most of the Caribbean countries and many others—have not suffered from the internal divisions that countries such as Sri Lanka have, sadly, experienced. That is a great lesson for countries thinking about going down that route. The monarchy is a glue that binds together people of all political backgrounds and all ethnic origins despite divisions within countries.
I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) for her powerful speech about human rights in many Commonwealth countries. I agree entirely with her. We are not doing enough to deal with the atrocious things going on today in some Commonwealth countries—she mentioned Uganda, and there are many others—where the standards and values of the Commonwealth should be enshrined. Those countries must understand that being part of the Commonwealth means that certain values, including, crucially, human rights, must be upheld. I commend her for speaking so strongly about that. It is a message that we must spread.
Rehman Chishti
On that point about human rights around the Commonwealth, two weeks ago students from Indian-administered Kashmir were charged with sedition and expelled from university for supporting Pakistan in a cricket match. That runs completely contrary to people’s basic human right to support whomever they like, however, wherever and whenever they like. Does my hon. Friend agree that those basic rights must be respected around the world, and that where they are flouted, we, as members of the Commonwealth, should say that that is totally unacceptable?
Andrew Rosindell
Of course, I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. The fact of the matter is that the Commonwealth is a Commonwealth of nations, and we are all proud of our national heritage. We are proud of being British, and people of Pakistani origin are proud of their origins, as are people from New Zealand or any other country. Tolerance, understanding, kindness and friendship are values that should bind us together, and intolerance against people for whatever reason is wrong. I am sure we all agree that the Commonwealth must uphold that principle.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) gave a moving, powerful and thought-provoking speech about the huge sacrifice made by the people of New Zealand, Australia and other Commonwealth countries in the service of King or Queen and country over so long. That is particularly true of New Zealand, which has done more than probably any other country when it comes to sacrificing its own people in the service of freedom, the defence of the Crown and all the values that we hold dear.
I have been to New Zealand five times and I chair the all-party parliamentary group on Australia and New Zealand, having been an officer of that group during my 13 years in the House. I believe that there is no country in the world with which we have more in common than New Zealand, although perhaps I might include Australia and Canada in that. We are cousins. We are kith and kin, as my hon. Friend rightly said, and I find it utterly shameful that a New Zealander arriving at Heathrow is treated as an alien. I have raised the matter repeatedly with this Government and the previous one. Two years ago, I put forward a ten-minute rule Bill, the United Kingdom Borders Bill, on that subject. In the final year before the general election, I hope that the Minister will take back to the Government the message that it is time we did something to address that.
It is completely wrong that someone from New Zealand, Australia or Canada is treated as an alien when they arrive at Heathrow, but someone from a country that happens to have joined the European Union, for better or for worse, is treated as though they are British and comes through the same channel as we do. How can that be right? How did we get into a situation where we treat countries with which we have most in common—countries with which we share a Head of State, a language and a style of parliamentary and legal system—as alien, while we give preferential treatment to countries that happen to have signed up to the European Union?
I urge the Minister to speak to the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister and do something about the situation. If we want to value the Commonwealth, and particularly the realms, which remain under the Crown—if we want to cement them as part of the great Commonwealth family—let us try to affect that issue. Nothing offends New Zealanders, Australians and Canadians more than being treated in that way when they arrive at Heathrow airport.
Andrew Percy
My hon. Friend is a powerful advocate, as we know from previous occasions. I entirely concur with what he says. Does he agree that a simple approach would be to start with Commonwealth realms, allowing their citizens to enter through the same channel as UK and EU citizens? I should have thought that that would be very simple.
Andrew Rosindell
I think that my hon. Friend was probably a sponsor of my Bill, because he has hit on exactly the point that I made about the Commonwealth and the realms. Realms, where the Queen is still the sovereign Head of State, have a special, deep constitutional link with the people of the British isles—of the United Kingdom. If we cannot immediately act in relation to the entire Commonwealth, let us at least work with the realms, of which there are 15 apart from our own. I shall not list them; I know that the Minister knows them by heart. They are deeply committed to their links with the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, and we should do something to enhance and cement that special relationship.
I went to Jamaica two years ago with the Foreign Affairs Committee. That is another country with which we have strong bonds. Many Jamaicans live in the UK, particularly around London, and they, too, feel aggrieved when they are treated as aliens. They are also aggrieved at the air passenger duty that has done so much damage to our relations with the Caribbean.
I commend my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary for saying that we would put the “C” back into the FCO. He has done that; but in the final year of the present Government’s term of office, we need to show that we mean it. We can do a great deal more on all the issues I am outlining. I know that the Minister, who is also deeply committed to the Commonwealth and the things that we have been discussing, will champion my suggestion when he next sees the Foreign Secretary. It would unite both sides of the House if we took the opportunity.
Hon. Members will know that in my 13 years as a Member of the House of Commons I have been a fervent champion of the Commonwealth, which we cherish and hold dear—its aims, objectives and successes, and all that those things stand for. It is a symbol of unity and demonstrates friendship between old friends and allies in all corners of the world, far and wide.
I am proud that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland takes a leading role in flying the flag of the world’s oldest and truest international grouping of nations, honouring centuries of partnership in the modern world. However, the Commonwealth of nations could be much stronger than it is, and a great deal more needs to be done to realise its full potential. Successive Governments of all parties have failed to grasp the potential that it represents.
We have, unfortunately, spent decades focusing on relations with the European Union—the Common Market, as it once was—building bridges with countries on the continent. That is right; we should trade and have friendship with the continent. However, that should not mean focusing purely on our relations with Europe and ignoring the Commonwealth. I fear that the Commonwealth has been damaged because for decades we have not realised its potential. We should have been building bridges in the past few years with Commonwealth countries in Africa, Oceania, Asia and of course the Caribbean. Yet all Governments have, sadly, focused on Europe. I think the history of our country has come to a turning point. That is not to say we should not continue to work closely with our friends and allies in Europe; of course we should, but we should now focus on the Commonwealth. We should help its countries and work with them, more deeply than in the past few decades, on building for trade and co-operation.
The Commonwealth cannot be defined in one sweeping statement. It has a number of unique and compelling attributes, all of which are weathered by time and change. It is steeped in tradition; shared culture, heritage and history; an intrinsic love of democracy and freedom; and shared legal and parliamentary systems. Above all the members of the Commonwealth are united in our love of our countries and our patriotism, rather than nationalism. There is a shared affection for Her Majesty the Queen and for historic links to the British Isles and what the Commonwealth represents. Her Majesty the Queen put it accurately:
“The Commonwealth of societies old and new; of lands and races different in history and origins but all, by God’s Will, united in spirit and in aim.”
There are 53 nations in the Commonwealth. Sadly, Zimbabwe and the Gambia are no longer members, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham), who has now left the Chamber, said, it is to be hoped that at an appropriate time they will rejoin and that we shall work with them on that.
The member countries range from the old dominions of Canada, New Zealand and Australia, of which we have spoken extensively in the debate, to the newest member, Rwanda, which joined in 2009. The Commonwealth spans every time zone and yields a combined GDP of more than £5.2 trillion. Commonwealth countries are the emerging markets of the future, so we no longer talk of the Commonwealth just in terms of a traditional, albeit important, friendship. Our intention should be to make it relevant to the long-term future.
I am brought back to my earlier point that we should work on trade with the Commonwealth. If that means changing our relationship with the European Union so that we can be the leading bridge between the English-speaking world and the Commonwealth countries, to build trade globally, so be it. Any Government bold enough to grasp that, and think long term—to utilise the Commonwealth as the foundation for that approach—will do a great service to the people of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.
The Commonwealth draws much of its uniqueness and individuality from its sprawl and its vast global network of nations. It boasts many of the world’s strongest economies, and its membership includes many emerging democracies. It is by no definition a western club; it includes countries from all corners of the earth, from the south Pacific islands to the Caribbean, from all corners of Africa to the north of Canada, and from the south Atlantic to the highest tip of the British isles. It is an amazing collection of nations, territories and dependencies: countries with a shared foundation of values and common interests, that we should make much more of than we have in recent decades.
[Mr Graham Brady (in the Chair)]
I touched briefly earlier on our trade with our partners in the Commonwealth of nations. That is among the most prevalent and topical economic discussion points of modern times. The tides of global trade are turning and we must adjust, to ensure that HMS Britain stays afloat and does not sink, lashed to the anchor of the eurozone, while we yet have the Commonwealth, which we could harness for trade and co-operation in so many areas. The time has come to be bold, and for us to be a global nation again. However, it will be necessary to change our relations with the EU to make that possible. Much is being made at the moment of the trading arrangements between the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States of America. Those agreements could have been made years ago, if we had chosen. We did not need to wait for Brussels to negotiate trading agreements; we could have agreed them many years ago, but we chose not to.
We not only chose not to but were prevented from making agreements because we are tied to an organisation that prevents us from doing what we have done throughout the history of these islands: traded globally, sailed the world and fostered relationships with countries far and wide. We can only do so again if we remove the chains that are shackled around our feet through being members of a political union. We can then use the Commonwealth as the basis of our global co-operation.
I welcome you to the debate, Mr Brady, and it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I have heard it suggested by many people that Commonwealth free trade is not practical. I disagree profoundly. With boldness and vision, we can lead on that idea so that Commonwealth trade is a way forward in future. It is backward-thinking to believe that our future rests only with the EU. We can trade with Europe as well as with the Commonwealth, and be a bridge between both parts of the globe that are important to us.
I would like to tell the Minister that a Government are strongest when they are boldest. I hope that most of us present agree that our boldest Prime Ministers, such as Lady Thatcher—some might not agree with everything she did, but she was bold and always stood up for what she believed was right—and the strongest Governments, often those who are re-elected, do radical things rather than pandering to the politically correct or acceptable views of the day. We must have bold vision, and I urge the Minister to raise that idea with the Prime Minister.
Look at the boldness that Lady Thatcher showed against adversity and in difficult situations; she risked everything to do what she truly believed to be right. What better example is there than when she sent a taskforce to the south Atlantic to rescue the people of the Falkland Islands? She could have given in and said that it was too difficult—that it was not practical and too expensive—but she knew what was right and fought for it, and thereby ensured that the people of the Falklands were liberated. We need the same attitude in government today on a range of issues, but particularly on embracing the Commonwealth nations for trade and co-operation, and to ensure that the values that we hold dear, which have lasted for generations, are protected and cherished for future generations.
I believe that all of us present could do more in our constituencies to promote the Commonwealth and the importance of our heritage. I would like to commend members of my local Conservative association who have formed a Conservative Commonwealth group. On Sunday, we held the first Romford service of thanksgiving for the Commonwealth at St Alban Protomartyr church in my constituency, presided over by Rev. Father Roderick Hingley. The chairman of my constituency Conservative Commonwealth association is Gloria Adagbon, who originates from Nigeria, and the president is Lloyd Thomas, who is from Montserrat.
People of all Commonwealth origins in my constituency are being brought together, celebrating their shared heritage—love of country; love of Queen; love of everything we hold dear in these islands. Many members have come to live in Britain and they cherish their Commonwealth links. I find it offensive and patronising when I hear talk of people being BME—black and minority ethnic. I do not think that that is a relevant term today. The term “Commonwealth origins” is a far more respectful way of discussing people who have come from different parts of the world. It does not matter whether someone is of a particular religion or colour; it is important that we have shared values, and the Commonwealth represents that.
The Conservative Commonwealth group in my constituency is doing amazing work in bring everyone together. I urge all MPs present, from all parties, to enhance the Commonwealth through their respective parties by bringing people together in their constituencies. We should visit schools and talk about the Commonwealth to children at assemblies and in classrooms more often. The diamond jubilee in 2012 was a great opportunity to do that. I visited every school in my constituency to talk about the importance of the United Kingdom, the overseas territories and dependencies, and, of course, the Commonwealth.
We all see in our local schools young children with Commonwealth ancestry—I certainly do in my constituency. At the service we held in Romford on Sunday we had a Commonwealth choir from the Frances Bardsley academy for girls. They sang Commonwealth hymns, and it was an amazingly uplifting occasion. High commissioners and representatives from all over the Commonwealth came to celebrate. I hope that colleagues from all parties can do more in their constituencies to promote the importance of the Commonwealth.
Earlier, I asked the Minister about the failure to fly flags in Parliament square this week for Commonwealth day. I must say that it was sad to see Her Majesty arrive to an empty Parliament square, completely devoid of flags. I know that health and safety is important and that work on repairing the pavements prevented the flags from being flown, but I really think that we can do better. I remember that the state opening of Parliament last year happened to fall on Europe day. The flags of the European Union were flown in Parliament square for the arrival of Her Majesty the Queen, yet this year, on Commonwealth day, she arrived at Westminster abbey and the square was blank, with no Commonwealth flags. We really should do better.
Her Majesty’s Government must look at the issue of flags, the failure to fly them on appropriate occasions, and the importance and significance of flying them in Parliament square. Parliament square is the centre of our democracy. Nearby is Parliament, the Supreme Court, the Foreign Office, the Treasury, parliamentary buildings and Westminster abbey, where coronations take place—yet in terms of which flags to fly and when, Parliament square is a muddle.
I wrote to the Prime Minister last year about the unbelievable events prior to Remembrance Sunday, when all the flags of the overseas territories and Crown dependencies were removed on the Saturday. It is bad enough that the overseas territories and Crown dependencies are not permitted to lay a wreath on Remembrance Sunday, but to remove their flags literally the day before—I witnessed it from my office in Portcullis House—was quite disgraceful; yet there has been no change.
We need a complete review of when flags are flown, and we should look at erecting permanent flagpoles in Parliament square. I am always told that it costs so much to put the flagpoles up and down; well, let us come up with a proper plan so that whenever we are in Parliament square we can see appropriate flags that show pride in our nation. I would have no problem at all with permanently flying in Parliament square the flags of the four countries of the UK, of the overseas territories and of the Crown dependencies. On special occasions, we can perhaps fly the Commonwealth and European Union flags, if they are considered appropriate, as well as other flags.
However, there is currently a complete muddle about when flags are flown and for what purpose. Departments are arguing with one another and blaming contractors for the muddles. I urge the Minister to take the issue back to his Department, because it would do great service to our nation, promoting pride and confidence in it, if we saw flags flying every time we went to the centre of our democracy, Parliament square. There could be no better advertisement for our country than if we were to get that right—currently, we are not.
I have mentioned the overseas territories and Crown dependencies, as I do on many occasions, and I would now like to discuss them further. We talk about the Commonwealth, but the overseas territories and Crown dependencies are not members. That is another strange muddle that we have allowed to occur over many years.
Mr Brady, as the chairman of the all-party group on the Cayman Islands, you will know how proud the people of the Cayman Islands are of their link to Britain. When I went to the Assembly of the Cayman Islands several years ago, I saw a map of the Commonwealth and I pointed out to the chief Minister of the Cayman Islands that the Cayman Islands was not coloured in as part of it. He looked at the map and said, “Actually, you’re right”; he had not noticed before. Ever since then, I have been astounded to see maps of the Commonwealth that do not include Crown dependencies and overseas territories. Why is that? Why are we not fighting for the loyal subjects of our 21 territories and dependencies? Why are we not allowing them to have at least associate status within the Commonwealth? Why do we not give them some recognition on maps of the Commonwealth? When the Commonwealth publishes lists of member states and their flags, the Crown dependencies and overseas territories are always missed out. I will refer to that matter further in a moment, because the British Council has just published a document that highlights precisely why it needs to be addressed.
We have this issue of the Crown dependencies and the overseas territories not being members of the Commonwealth and their flags not being flown accordingly. Despite cross-party support for their inclusion, the people of the Crown dependencies and overseas territories are still not permitted to lay a wreath on Remembrance Sunday alongside the other countries of the Commonwealth. I know that the Minister will say that the Foreign Secretary lays the wreath on their behalf, but the Foreign Secretary represents Britain to foreign countries. These are British territories and their people served and died for Britain—for King, or Queen, and country. Why is it that the people of the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar and Bermuda, our oldest territory, are not allowed to have their representatives at the Cenotaph to lay a wreath on Remembrance Sunday? Is it not time that we addressed this issue once and for all? Of course the Foreign Secretary should continue to lay a wreath on Remembrance Sunday for British citizens all around the world, but let the territories and dependencies lay their own wreaths.
I have yet to hear from the Government who actually lays the wreaths on behalf of the Crown dependencies. It is not the Foreign Secretary, because the dependencies do not come under the Foreign Office; they come under the Ministry of Justice, but the Lord Chancellor does not lay a wreath. Once again, it is another muddle that the Government need to address, but I have yet to hear them deal with this argument, take it seriously and sort the matter out. I hope that the Minister will deal with it before the next election; we have one year to resolve it and I have no doubt that he will make it one of his priorities in the months ahead.
Let me give an example of how things are going so badly wrong. The British Council has published a superb booklet entitled “British Council’s Programme for Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.” We are all proud that the Commonwealth games are taking place in Scotland this year. The booklet is splendid and I have read it from cover to cover. It has a splendid message from Sir Martin Davidson, the chief executive of the British Council. Flicking through it, I came to the back and once again saw the map of the Commonwealth. Sadly, Gibraltar looks as if it is part of the Kingdom of Spain; it is not really highlighted at all and looks as if it is part of Spain. The Falkland Islands are the same colour as Argentina; they are not highlighted on this map at all. According to this map, there are no parts of the Commonwealth within the Caribbean. The British territories of the Caribbean—Montserrat, Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Bermuda, which is the oldest British colony—are completely wiped off this map. And yet every single one of those territories that I have just mentioned is a participant in the Commonwealth games, even though they are all excluded from this quite costly booklet produced by the British Council. If the British Council cannot get this matter right, what hope is there? We need to sort these issues out. I say to the Minister that it is so important that Her Majesty’s Government recognise all Her Majesty’s territories.
If all that was not bad enough, according to this map, the Isle of Man is part of England. The people of the island will not be happy to have their status as a Crown dependency taken away. The Channel Islands do not exist on this map either. So, Jersey and Guernsey, both of which are participating in the Commonwealth games, are excluded from this map; Sark and Alderney are also excluded. Once again, it is a muddle. We need to sort these issues out if we are serious about taking this matter forward.
There is another issue I wish to draw to the attention of the House today. There is one huge gap in the Commonwealth today. We are more connected to the Republic of Ireland than to any other country in the world and yet the Republic of Ireland is, sadly, no longer part of the Commonwealth family. It is time that we said to our friends, our cousins and our extended family in Ireland that they, too, should join the Commonwealth and come home to the family of Commonwealth nations. It was the people of Ireland, together with the people of England, Scotland and Wales, who built the Commonwealth—the original British Empire that evolved into a Commonwealth of nations. I believe that the people of Ireland belong in the Commonwealth.
The other evening, I was very pleased to welcome the Irish Taoiseach, Enda Kenny TD, to Parliament. He was at a St Patrick’s day reception on the Terrace of the House of Commons, and I had the opportunity to speak to him briefly about the importance of Ireland and why it was important that it joined the Commonwealth. He was receptive to that possibility when I spoke to him. In his speech at that reception, he also commended Irish citizens who had served in the British armed forces, and I also pay tribute today to those who, despite being citizens of Ireland, died in the British armed forces. There are still many Irish citizens in the British armed forces.
Ireland belongs as part of the Commonwealth family, and I urge Her Majesty’s Government to do everything they can to work with the Taoiseach and those in Ireland who share this vision to bring Ireland closer to the Commonwealth and give its people the opportunity to be part of this great family. We are all part of the British isles; we share that common heritage, language and history. Together we built the Commonwealth, and I hope that the people of the wonderful country of Ireland will join with us as part of the Commonwealth. As we approach St Patrick’s day next Monday, which also happens to be my birthday, I look forward to the day that we can celebrate Ireland coming back within the family of Commonwealth nations.
For me, the Commonwealth is deeply important. It is not just an organisation that we happen to be a member of; it is an organisation that we founded. It is an organisation of peoples, nations and territories, with a common heritage, the same language and similar constitutions, with Parliaments based on the Westminster model of a constitutional Parliament. Commonwealth countries share a legal system, and so many other values and ideas that we have in common. I believe that we need to harness all those things more strongly for the years to come. The Commonwealth is vital to our future, and any future Government should look long term to consider how we can develop the Commonwealth to make it even more important, not only for the people of this country but for the developing world, which so many Commonwealth countries are a part of.
I will close by quoting a poem that was read out on Sunday at the Commonwealth service in Romford. It was written by Rebecca Hawkins, aged 13, who is in year 9 at the Frances Bardsley academy for girls in Romford. I will not read the entire poem, even though it is magnificent, but I will ensure that the Minister sees a copy of the entire poem. I will read the final verse, in which Rebecca perfectly describes the different parts of the Commonwealth:
“From the red rock far down under
To Botswana with its dust and thunder
From Bangladesh’s rivers wide
To Britain where our Queen resides
From djembe drums in Ghana
To the West Indian sugar farmer
From lives hectic and lives peaceful
To green island gems and waters crystal
From skyscrapers to mauve moors bleak
To deserts and forests and snow-capped peaks.
We are the Commonwealth.”
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), who—for 39 minutes—regaled us with his love of the Commonwealth. I know that he is a passionate advocate of the Commonwealth, and that came out in every one of those minutes. I agree entirely with an awful lot of what he had to say, particularly with regard to Commonwealth access to the United Kingdom and the importance of the relationship between the UK and the EU not being to the exclusion of that between the UK and the Commonwealth. Although I am a passionate advocate of withdrawal from the European Union, I am keen that the debate should never become about choosing between the Commonwealth and the European Union, because that would pull people into opposing camps.
I will be brief because I want to hear from the two Front-Bench spokespeople, who have to respond to the many good points made in this debate. I was going to say a few words about the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference, but I mentioned it in an intervention and have spoken about it previously. Given where we are in the debate, I will not mention the CPA.
I broadly state my support for the Commonwealth and where it comes from, and I share that support with many of my generation. Some people tend to dismiss our relationship with the Commonwealth as something that people in their 60s and 70s are interested in because they remember empire and grew up learning history through the amount of red on the map in their classroom. That might be the case for some of that generation, who may look back on that period with rose-tinted glasses, but for people of my generation the issue is much more practical. There is a tendency to perceive that, because we have become so much more European, the Commonwealth is now less important to us. For my generation, in many ways, the opposite is true because we have been able to travel much more widely than our parents and grandparents.
For many of my generation, the Commonwealth is where we visit. It is a place we know better than perhaps our grandparents did. I previously worked in the US and Canada, with which I have a great affinity and attachment. Whenever I travelled in Canada, I could not help but realise that I was not in a foreign country. Canada feels far less foreign than popping 30 miles across the English channel to Belgium or France, which means that many of us in this country have a strong emotional attachment to the Commonwealth that was created not only in war but through practical interaction, exchange and family ties. Many of my generation feel a strong affinity and attachment to other Commonwealth nations.
When we talk about the Commonwealth, the issue is not about looking back with rose-tinted glasses to the lost days of empire. Many of my friends have emigrated. Where do they go? Some go to Europe for short periods, but in many cases they do not go there to start a new life. They tend to be drawn to Australia, New Zealand and Canada because of the similarities, shared values and in some cases, depending on their career, the shared legal systems and educational systems. They are drawn to the Commonwealth even now, after more than 30 years of EU integration and membership. For all that we have been forced down that route, many of us still feel committed to the Commonwealth.
I do not want to say much more. There is a lot that the Commonwealth could do a lot better, particularly on human rights. We should hold some of our Commonwealth partners’ feet to the fire, which is a point the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) and I made when we were in South Africa, but I will not say any more on that as I have previously spoken about it here.
The Commonwealth is not about the past; it is about the present and the future. I hope the Minister recognises that many people of my generation strongly support links with our Commonwealth partners and would like to see a relationship in which those links are deepened and strengthened further. This is not about the past; it is about the future.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Brady. I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee on providing this opportunity, and I thank the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) for leading the debate in his capacity as chairperson of the CPA international executive committee.
As the other speakers have all done, I begin by emphasising the value of the Commonwealth and underlining the importance of Commonwealth day as an occasion to celebrate both the unity and diversity of our 53 independent countries. Other speakers said they feel the closest connection with Commonwealth citizens from Australia, New Zealand and Canada. I grew up in an ethnically diverse area and have had most contact with, and feel the strongest connection to, members of the diaspora communities from countries such as Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. When I worked in the City there seemed to be an awful lot of New Zealanders employed on temporary contracts, so I have had a fair bit of contact with New Zealanders. Our connection with the Commonwealth is not just about people in other countries; it is about people from those countries who have chosen to make Britain their home.
This has been an eventful year for the Commonwealth, marked of course by the birth of Prince George and our move even closer towards agreeing the new laws of succession. Fifteen of the 16 Commonwealth realms have agreed a new law to end male primogeniture and the bar on marrying Roman Catholics, which is a welcome step forward. Less positively, Gambia has withdrawn from the association. The Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Sri Lanka last November created some division, to which I will return, and led to Mauritius withdrawing as host of CHOGM 2015.
The theme of this year’s Commonwealth day, “Team Commonwealth,” indicates the association’s strong bonds, and it is particularly apt as we look forward to the Commonwealth games in Glasgow this summer. A team is a good analogy for the Commonwealth; it signifies our collaboration and indicates how each and every member is important and has its own role to play. It means that we can celebrate our successes together and that we pull together when times are tough. It also means that we speak frankly and offer our support when a team member could do better. Like the Commonwealth, every team needs rules, which is why I make no apology for concentrating on what I see as scope for improvement. Teams ought to push each other to achieve more, which is what the Commonwealth must do for each member state.
Some of these points were addressed in our debate on human rights in the Commonwealth towards the end of last year, but it is important that they are placed on the record again, given that the situation has not improved. It is now a year since the Commonwealth charter was launched, which was a significant achievement. It was the first time in 64 years that the Commonwealth’s shared values have been set out in writing.
Those shared values attempt to balance the autonomy and differing cultures of many sovereign states. As I said in the debate on human rights in the Commonwealth, agreeing to the charter was not enough and cannot be enough; it was a blueprint for action, not a statement of the status quo. The charter was the start of a process to promote democracy, equality and human rights within the Commonwealth.
There is progress to be made across a range of areas, including gender equality—which was mentioned by the right hon. Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce)—sexual violence and the death penalty. At 10 pm British time tonight, 6 am on Friday in Malaysia, a Nigerian national with schizophrenia is due to be executed for a murder committed 18 years ago. I flagged that up with the Minister when I arrived in the Chamber, and I hope he can update us on whether the British Government have made representations to the Malaysian Government on preventing that execution. We should all oppose the death penalty in any circumstance, but a mentally ill man is due to be executed, so it is a particularly important case.
There are many important human rights issues, but I make no apologies for focusing today on what was described as the “elephant in the room” by Dr Purna Sen, the former head of human rights at the Commonwealth secretariat, in the recent Kaleidoscope Trust report, “Speaking Out: The rights of LGBTI citizens from across the Commonwealth.” Globally, more than half the countries that criminalise homosexuality are in the Commonwealth, and they make up 41 of the 53 Commonwealth nations—that is nearly 80% of the association. We should not be afraid to stand up and say categorically that that is wrong. The issue was debated when I spoke about the charter at the CPA conference in Johannesburg in September, and it was discussed in the Westminster Hall debate, too.
I know there is a concern about being seen to go in and preach to other countries, particularly those countries where we instilled certain values. There has been some interesting research in Uganda on how homosexuality was accepted until the British came in, told people that it was not acceptable and introduced laws against it during the period of colonial rule. When I raised that point at the CPA conference in South Africa in September, it was not well received by all delegates. As the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) said in an intervention, the point was supported by my co-speaker, the Deputy Speaker of the South African Parliament. She spoke eloquently about her country’s rainbow constitution and opposition to all forms of discrimination. She said that, in South Africa, LGBT discrimination was seen as akin to apartheid, which was once seen as acceptable by many and is now viewed as abhorrent by all but a few. That does not necessarily translate into perfection on the ground, however. There have been instances of corrective rape and discrimination against LGBT people, but the law sets a strong framework.
Other countries are not making such good progress, however. The Australian High Court recently overturned legislation in Parliament allowing for same-sex marriages. India has recriminalised homosexuality following its Supreme Court reinstating in December a ban on same-sex relationships—a decision refused review earlier this year despite applications from campaigners and the Indian Government. Nigeria has passed a same-sex marriage prohibition law, meaning not only that same-sex marriage is punishable by 14 years in prison, but also that same-sex relationships or participation in gay clubs or organisations are also subject to 10-year prison terms. There are reports that men arrested since the new law was passed have been publicly whipped and there have been claims that confessions have been forced by physical interrogation. The Kaleidoscope Trust quotes a human rights lawyer in Cameroon who explains that LGBT people
“are generally considered as animals or devils… so they are in permanent danger. They can be injured, they can be killed, and they can be discriminated against. They can be rejected from healthcare and justice”.
Most notorious, as we heard in a good speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash), is Uganda, which has now passed the long-feared Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Homosexuality was already illegal in Uganda, but the penalties have now been increased to life imprisonment. Indeed, it was mooted at one point that the punishment ought to be the death penalty. I have also had the privilege of meeting Dr Frank Mugisha of Sexual Minorities Uganda on a couple of occasions, and I understand that he met Baroness Warsi yesterday. I hope that it proved a productive meeting, because, although I know that the Foreign Secretary noted his sadness and disappointment that the Bill was signed into law by President Museveni, some concerns have been expressed to me that the UK’s response has been relatively muted. As my hon. Friend said, serious concerns exist that the law represents a public health threat as NGOs, including international organisations that provide health promotion and HIV/AIDS prevention, may be forced to close to avoid criminal sanctions.
In its 2011 report, “Time for Urgent Reform”, the Commonwealth eminent persons group encouraged
“the repeal of discriminatory laws that impede the effective response of Commonwealth countries to the HIV/AIDS epidemic”
and cited United Nations Development Programme evidence that the Commonwealth is home to
“over 60% of people living with HIV”.
The issue should therefore be a priority for the Commonwealth. Several other countries, not least the US, have made it clear that they are undertaking a wholesale review of their relationship with Uganda, and the World Bank has postponed a $90 million loan to the country. Some have called for all aid for Uganda to be reviewed, but only a small proportion of UK aid actually goes into direct budget support for the Ugandan Government and it is linked to trying to improve parliamentary democracy. If aid is reviewed as part of the lobbying on the issue, it is imperative that it should not hurt the people that UK assistance aims to help and that the Government continue their support for LGBT groups and human rights defenders in Uganda, to which they have recently committed.
To conclude on Uganda, there have been calls for travel bans, in particular for the members of the Ugandan Government and Parliament who championed the new law. What measures or sanctions does the Minister think could be effective in trying to turn Uganda’s position around? What action could the ministerial action group take? What penalties would he like for countries that violate the values of the Commonwealth charter—if, indeed, he sees the charter as something that should be enforced?
As I mentioned, there were concerns that last year’s CHOGM risked undermining the Commonwealth’s commitment to human rights, given the ongoing abuses in Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan Government’s failure to deliver truth, justice and accountability. Can the Minister update us on the Prime Minister’s efforts to secure an international inquiry for the people of Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council this month? What efforts have the Government made to secure action from the Commonwealth on that? I have spoken several times in this place about Sri Lanka, and the issue is ongoing, so I will leave it there, rather than outline my concerns.
The final issue that I want to flag up is the need for collective action on climate change. The Commonwealth is an appropriate forum for that, although we should be doing it on a wider scale, too. Bangladesh tops the climate risk index as the country most affected by climate change. India is in the top 10 as well. In the Maldives in 2009, as people might remember, then President Nasheed held his Cabinet meeting underwater with scuba gear to try to focus the world’s attention on the grim reality of climate change. Countries such as the Maldives could be entirely submerged underwater within just a few generations with just a 1 metre rise in sea levels. The Maldives are the lowest lying country in the world, with an average height of less than 1.3 metres above sea level.
The challenge of climate change is not something that any state can overcome alone. The Commonwealth must renew efforts to press for multilateral co-operation and concerted collective action to reduce carbon emissions, to limit rises in sea levels and to safeguard habitats. At CHOGM, Australia and Canada disappointingly declined to support a green capital fund. Last month, GLOBE International published a report on 66 countries’ climate change laws and highlighted that only the Australian Government sought to repeal national legislation in the past year. Australia and Canada are the only nations to have reversed significant climate laws since GLOBE International began its monitoring four years ago. Will the Minister tell us whether he agrees with Lord Deben, the former Conservative Secretary of State for the Environment, who said that Australia’s move was
“so unintellectual as to be unacceptable”?
By contrast, the report noted Kenya’s new climate change plan. Kenya, along with Mozambique and Nigeria, was included among the eight countries to have passed flagship legislation. Tanzania passed a national strategy and Rwanda was noted for including climate change and the environment as a cross-cutting issue in its economic development and poverty reduction strategy. The report concluded that the momentum for climate change legislation is moving from the wealthier, industrialised nations to emerging economies. I hope that the Minister agrees that all Commonwealth nations need to work together, as set out in the Commonwealth charter, to protect the environment through
“multilateral cooperation, sustained commitment and collective action…and facilitating the development, diffusion and deployment of affordable environmentally friendly technologies and renewable energy”.
Will the Minister update us on how the Government are pushing for more action from the Commonwealth on climate change? To what extent is there is a consensus on the scientific facts of climate change and concerted action? I am particularly worried by reports that Prime Minister Tony Abbott is seeking to abolish Australia’s independent Climate Change Authority. Its chairman has reportedly said that the “bad guys” are winning the climate change debate with “brazen falsehoods”, “untruths” and “misinformation”. It is essential that the UK plays a global role in challenging the misinformation and efforts to dismiss climate change science, not least within our own country.
I realise that I have perhaps focused on the negative to too great an extent, but if we value the Commonwealth and want it to have a respected voice on the world stage and a continued purpose in the 21st century, we have to ensure that it remains relevant. To do that, we must continually ask more of it and ourselves. I welcome the Commonwealth charter as a mechanism for raising the Commonwealth’s expectations, but if we do not meet the high standards that it sets, it risks being used to conceal abuses. When we come back to this issue next year to celebrate Commonwealth day, as I am sure we will, I hope we will be discussing how those standards are not only being met, but surpassed.
The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
First, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) on securing this timely debate on the Commonwealth. I am sure I have the support of the whole House when I pay tribute to his tireless work in his three-year tenure as chairman of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association executive committee. I hope that he will take it in the right spirit when I say that that is one of the great achievements and services he has given Parliament in what I believe is his 35th year of service in the House.
The CPA, as my right hon. Friend has described, makes a valuable and concrete contribution to promoting democratic values throughout the Commonwealth and we should applaud its achievements. I would also like to thank all my hon. Friends and the Opposition Members who have spoken today and outlined eloquently their views on the Commonwealth: both its strengths and the challenges and difficulties it faces.
I should add that the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr Swire), who is the Minister with responsibility for the Commonwealth, regrets that he cannot respond to the debate. He is on a very long-planned ministerial visit elsewhere in the world. As Minister for Europe, however, I am delighted to deal regularly with two members of the Commonwealth as fellow members of the European Union, and—before my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) intervenes to remind me—with Gibraltar, a British overseas territory that is part of the EU and whose position in EU negotiations is something that I and the Foreign Secretary are always on the alert to safeguard.
In talking about the Commonwealth, we understandably focus on Governments and the incredible variety of countries, large and small, represented in this network of 53 nations spread across six continents and oceans. As has come through in the debate, we always need to bear in mind that those countries are home to no fewer than 2 billion citizens. The Commonwealth’s strength lies not solely in the relationships between the Governments of its member states, but in that web of around 100 different Commonwealth civil society organisations: professional, scientific and academic bodies that continue, month after month, usually unremarked and far from the national press headlines in any country, doing their important, constructive work for the good of the people of all those 53 countries.
This week, we marked Commonwealth day. This year’s celebrations have a special significance as we remember those soldiers from across the Commonwealth who fought and died for freedom and democracy during the first world war. Also, in September, we will mark the 75th anniversary of world war two, when we shall have occasion to reflect on the sacrifice of so many people during that conflict from Commonwealth countries and territories throughout the world.
Coincidentally, I was in a meeting earlier today with the Belgian Foreign Minister and one of the subjects we discussed was the work that the United Kingdom and Belgium are doing to commemorate the centenary of the first world war. The place of Commonwealth servicemen and women will be an important part of the British Government’s planning for that. I address this comment in particular to my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford): one of the very important events in the Government’s planning for those commemorations over the next four years will be the centenary of the Gallipoli landings next year, which is hugely significant in the collective memory of the people of New Zealand and Australia.
This summer, Glasgow will host the Commonwealth games. Scotland is no stranger to the games, having hosted them in 1970 and 1986. I know that the games organising committee, Glasgow city council, the Scottish Government and the United Kingdom Government are all working hard to make Glasgow 2014 a triumphant success. The“Team Commonwealth” theme of the 2014 games, is particularly appropriate. One reason the games will be a success is that the whole of the UK is working together at all levels as a team to achieve that.
Sport has a unique power to promote some of the Commonwealth values we cherish: teamwork, fairness, respect and equal treatment. This time last year, Her Majesty the Queen signed the Commonwealth charter, to which every Commonwealth nation has agreed and which sets out the Commonwealth’s core values for the first time in a single document. Those values are important in their own right, as respect for human rights and strong institutions are fundamental building blocks of development and prosperity.
However, as hon. Members have highlighted today, respect for the values set out in the charter is not yet consistent across the Commonwealth. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden said, not every Commonwealth member observes those values fully. During our debate, a number of hon. Members have drawn attention to particular problems in different Commonwealth member states.
I say to my right hon. Friend that member states have agreed to take forward all but 17 of the 106 recommendations that the eminent persons group made at CHOGM. Those include agreement on the Commonwealth charter and a strengthened Commonwealth ministerial action group, known as CMAG. The secretariat is now working on a new strategic plan to take it through to 2016-17. The key is the swift implementation of the recommendations of the eminent persons group, and this country will continue to work closely on that with the secretariat and with other member states.
We must be honest about the fact that the Commonwealth is an organisation that has always proceeded by consensus. There is no provision for majority voting or for a majority of the Commonwealth to mandate any one member to change its practices. It is more a question of the informal influence that can come from peer group pressure, or the advice of candid friends—perhaps it is best put that way. That is what we should rely upon to try to secure the change we want in line with the Commonwealth charter, which every Commonwealth member has undertaken to uphold.
I will respond now to some of the specific issues raised by hon. Members. I will take first the case raised by the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy). I am grateful to her for alerting me to the matter before the start of the debate. We are urgently investigating reports that a British national is facing execution in Malaysia. It is not yet certain that the man in question has kept British citizenship. Some media reports have suggested that he has joint Nigerian and UK citizenship, but we have also heard a suggestion from Amnesty today that the person in question no longer has United Kingdom citizenship. We are investigating that urgently, given what has happened.
Uganda has been mentioned in several speeches, particularly in that of the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash). As the House knows, on 24 February this year, the President of Uganda signed into law the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which increases sanctions against homosexuality. Ugandan civil society and human rights institutions have objected to that Bill in the strongest terms. They believe that it is incompatible with Uganda’s constitution and international obligations, and that it will harm human rights in Uganda. We share the concerns expressed by those Ugandan institutions. We have consistently raised, and will continue to raise, our concerns about the Bill with the Ugandan Government at the most senior levels.
The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds), raised this issue with the Foreign Minister of Uganda on 28 December and again on 28 January and, most recently, with the deputy Foreign Minister of Uganda on 13 February.
As the hon. Member for Bristol East rightly said, both the Foreign Secretary and Baroness Warsi met Frank Mugisha, a leading Ugandan LGBT activist, yesterday to discuss the latest developments and to take his advice on how the international community might best support individuals and organisations in Uganda.
Our high commissioner in Kampala met the Ugandan Minister of Justice earlier this week. The high commissioner has also received assurances recently from the inspector general of police on the protection of individuals. I assure the House and the hon. Member for Bristol East in particular that we will continue to follow this issue closely and actively make representations at all appropriate levels of the Ugandan Government and Administration.
Pamela Nash
I thank the Minister for his comprehensive answer. I shall ask just one specific question, which I asked in my speech. Have the Government called in the Ugandan high commissioner here in London and if not, why not?
Mr Lidington
I will draw the hon. Lady’s question to the attention of my hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for Africa, who is travelling on ministerial duties this week. If we judged that to be the best way of making effective representations, we would not hesitate to do that.
The hon. Lady mentioned various options for action that might be taken. There is a judgment to be made about the right balance in these circumstances, between the megaphone and the candid words in conversation. We try to judge these issues so that we end up with a set of actions that are most likely to help those people who are under threat in Uganda. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and Baroness Warsi met Mr Mugisha yesterday so that they could hear first hand from somebody living in Uganda who feels that his position is at risk, and find out what he thinks are the most effective ways to try to seek a change in policy in Uganda.
The hon. Lady also mentioned Nigeria. We are disappointed that President Jonathan has given his assent to a Bill that would further criminalise same-sex relationships in Nigeria and infringe on the human rights of LGBT people. The Foreign Secretary made a statement on 15 January that highlighted our concerns and my hon. Friend the Minister for Africa raised these concerns directly with President Jonathan in Abuja, when he visited Nigeria on 27 February. Again, we will continue to lobby at the highest levels on this issue.
I was also asked about the persecution of Christians and other minorities in Pakistan. We continue to urge the Government of Pakistan to guarantee fully the human rights of all people in Pakistan, particularly the most vulnerable: women, minorities and children. These principles are, after all, laid down in the constitution of Pakistan and are in accordance with international standards, to which Pakistan has subscribed.
We regularly raise the issue of Christians and religious freedom more generally at senior level with the authorities in Pakistan, and did so during the Foreign Secretary’s visit to Pakistan in July 2013 and Baroness Warsi’s visit in September 2013. In fairness, the Pakistani authorities have publicly recognised the problems that their countries’ minorities face and the need to bring an end to religious persecution. The British Government remain fully committed to working in partnership with the Government of Pakistan to achieve that, and to tackle both terrorism and violent extremism in all its forms.
We cannot as one country impose change, particularly in public attitudes, which may in some Commonwealth nations be very different from public attitudes in this country, but we can and we will continue to speak out when basic human rights—life, liberty and personal safety—are violated. There can be no justification for infringing such fundamental human rights, which are central to a strong and prosperous society. The consequences of failing to respect human rights are apparent in Sri Lanka. I will give the Chamber the update for which the hon. Member for Bristol East asked.
The Prime Minister used his presence at CHOGM in Colombo in November 2013 to emphasise the United Kingdom’s and indeed the international community’s serious concerns about human rights in Sri Lanka. He made it clear that the Sri Lankan Government should begin a credible independent investigation into violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by both sides during the war by March, when the UN Human Rights Council meets to discuss Sri Lanka. No credible domestic process has yet begun.
Establishing the truth plays an important role in reconciliation. As a result, the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon made it clear at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on 3 March that we would now call for an international investigation. I draw the attention of the Chamber to a written ministerial statement that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary published today on Sri Lanka. It is available in the Library and will be printed in tomorrow’s Hansard. That statement says, among other things, that a draft resolution was jointly tabled by the UN Human Rights Council on Monday 3 March by the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Mauritius, Macedonia and Montenegro. The draft resolution calls for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to lead the international investigation and to report back by March 2015. Further discussions on the text will take place this month.
The adoption of the resolution is not a foregone conclusion. Ahead of the vote, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, I, other Foreign Office Ministers and other Ministers across the Government have been in contact with a wide range of UN Human Rights Council member states to encourage them to support a strong resolution that calls for an international investigation. In doing so, we have drawn attention to the assessment of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who points to the need for such an investigation as progress on accountability in Sri Lanka has been, in her words, “limited and piecemeal”. In the days remaining before the vote takes place, we will continue to urge UNHRC members to support this action, and we will maintain our close contact with non-governmental organisations and civil society throughout.
Kerry McCarthy
I thank the Minister. I have seen the written statement. My concern is that Sri Lanka will not be happy to co-operate with this inquiry, and President Rajapaksa has more or less said so already. I will not put the Minister on the spot by asking a question about this, because his colleague, the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the right hon. Member for East Devon (Hugo Swire) is responsible for this policy area, but it is important that efforts are made to try to bring Sri Lanka on board and to convince it that it is in its best interests to co-operate with this inquiry rather than have it imposed from outside. It is in the interests of everyone in Sri Lanka, no matter what side of the conflict they are on, that a line can be drawn under past abuses and continuing abuses.
Mr Lidington
I agree with the hon. Lady. We will not for one moment stop trying to persuade the Government of Sri Lanka that it is in their interests on two counts—its effect on how Sri Lanka is seen internationally and the need for genuine reconciliation between different communities in that country. At the end of the day, the Government of Sri Lanka are sovereign and they will take their decision. We hope that they will eventually conclude that an independent inquiry of some kind is in the interests of Sri Lanka itself. That is why we are disappointed that they have not hitherto established an inquiry of their own. Had such an inquiry been set up in Sri Lanka, we would not need to call for one now at the UN Human Rights Council.
I should add that the Commonwealth ministerial action group has a key role to play in upholding the values to which all Commonwealth countries signed up when they agreed the charter. As CMAG meets for the first time since CHOGM here in London, we have a timely opportunity to restate our view that it is essential that CMAG lives up to the strengthened mandate that it received in Perth.
Our debate this afternoon is a reminder that democracy itself is a key Commonwealth value. The work that the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association does to support and extend democratic values across the Commonwealth should not be underestimated. The CPA rightly enjoys associate organisation status within the Commonwealth and is the one Commonwealth organisation that directly represents parliamentary democracy. The Government recognise the CPA’s importance, and we remain happy to discuss proposals to enhance further its work through such measures as a democracy forum. I welcome the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden about the wish to see greater recognition of the CPA’s role in strengthening contact between elected local government bodies across the Commonwealth.
I also welcome my right hon. Friend’s creative and imaginative proposal for a Commonwealth youth parliamentary assembly of some kind. I look forward to seeing how that idea develops further within the CPA. I welcome the decision of the House—it was not welcomed in all quarters—to allow the United Kingdom Youth Parliament to sit in the Chamber. The idea that one day we could look at a Commonwealth youth parliament visiting different Parliaments in different Commonwealth member states and in different continents is very attractive indeed.
In addition to Commonwealth values, hon. Members have referred today to the potential to increase prosperity across the Commonwealth for all its members. The Department for International Development contributes directly to member states that are developing countries, and allocated about £2 billion of aid to those countries in 2013-14—that figure ignores regional programmes and therefore masks a higher total.
Local sporting events also drive economic growth, as previous Commonwealth games have shown. According to the organising committee of the New Delhi games, Manchester benefited to the tune of more than £2 billion in 2002, Melbourne by £1 billion in 2006 and Delhi itself by £2.5 billion. The United Kingdom exceeded its four-year Olympic legacy target, adding £11 billion to the economy through trade and investment in just over one year. The Glasgow games of 2014, which will draw in more than 6,500 athletes and officials in 17 sports, with a global audience of approximately 1.5 billion people, offer a great opportunity for the United Kingdom to provide leadership in enhancing Commonwealth prosperity.
To that end, UKTI is working with Scottish Enterprise, in partnership with the Commonwealth Business Council, on behalf of the Scottish and United Kingdom Governments together to deliver the Commonwealth games business conference on 22 and 23 July. That conference will explore opportunities to strengthen trade and investment between Commonwealth partners and seek new, innovative solutions to deliver sustainable economic growth.
After that conference, UKTI will also host the British Business House, to highlight the UK’s position as a centre of trade and investment. Businesses and key decision makers from the UK and across the Commonwealth will participate in a series of high level round-table and seminar sessions to explore new opportunities to increase trade and investment in the Commonwealth.
Those are just two examples of how the Commonwealth can harness the potential in its membership to increase prosperity. We should be increasing trade and investment with all our partners globally, including the Commonwealth and the EU. I welcome the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), especially in the knowledge of his long-standing, honourably held position on our EU membership, that it is not a matter of trading with either the EU or the Commonwealth but one of trading with both. Indeed, in the case of Cyprus and Malta, we have an overlap on our Venn diagram.
The free trade agreements that the EU has concluded, or is negotiating with Commonwealth countries, will enhance further the conditions for trade. We expect, for example, the EU-Canada comprehensive economic and trade agreement to benefit the United Kingdom’s economy and businesses by more than £1.3 billion every year.
Andrew Percy
I wanted to say this, but I got my timings wrong, because I had not realised that the debate was running until 4.30 pm. That was why I cut myself off after four minutes. In terms of our relationship with Canada and the CETA, we will have a special position once that agreement is implemented. Does the Minister not agree that we need a particular strategy that utilises our unique relationship with Canada to ensure that, when the CETA is in place, we are the country in Europe that benefits most from it? We need a UK Government strategy.
Mr Lidington
With my Minister for Europe hat on, I would caution my hon. Friend slightly, because France would think that it has a particular relationship with Quebec, but he makes a good point. Actually, that strikes a chord, because when I last discussed EU-Canada negotiations with Lord Livingston, our new Minister for Trade and Investment, he was focused on the need for the UK to build up a greater market share in Canada. Canada is one of those countries where we have not yet taken sufficient advantage of the commercial opportunities open to us. I shall make a point of drawing my hon. Friend’s comments to his attention.
Andrew Rosindell
I take on board the Minister’s comments and commend the fact that we will have a trading agreement with Canada via the EU. Does he not, however, agree that, as Canada is one of our closest allies, we could have done that decades ago? Why have we had to wait all these years for Brussels to negotiate that on behalf of Britain?
Mr Lidington
When looking at any one bilateral free trade agreement, it is difficult to make an accurate judgment about what might have been had we not been members of the European Union: whether it would have been easier or more difficult. Actually, until the Doha round ran into the sand, the policy of successive British Governments was to focus less on bilateral trade negotiations than on multilateral trade negotiations, first through the general agreement on tariffs and trade and then through the World Trade Organisation. That would have been the best way in which to address this agenda. The failure of those global trade liberalisation talks has resulted in the European Union and individual countries around the world looking for opportunities for bilateral deals instead. My word of caution to my hon. Friend would be that when we come to look at how trade negotiations progress—this is particularly true of the negotiations with the United States—we see that the value of and the leverage provided by membership of a market of 500 million people is greater than that of a market of 60 million people.
In respect of Canada, I have no idea how things would have gone had the United Kingdom some time ago decided to try to negotiate a bilateral agreement. I just draw my hon. Friend’s attention to the fact that the European Free Trade Association-Canada free trade agreement, which preceded the EU one, leaves out a number of key sectors, such as financial services, that would be particularly important to this country. Sometimes that European Union leverage does enable us to get, in my judgment, further than we would be able to on our own. That is certainly true of the talks with the United States at the moment. However, as I have said, I do not think that this is an either/or situation. We should be looking to get the greatest advantage out of our membership of all the international organisations to which we are party.
My hon. Friends the Members for Romford and for Mole Valley both talked about airports, passport queues and visa arrangements. They will not be surprised if I start by saying that, as the House will know, those are primarily matters for the Home Office, rather than for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It has been the consistent policy of successive British Governments to say that citizens from all Commonwealth countries should be treated, for immigration purposes, as third country nationals. It is also the case that the citizens of some Commonwealth countries, including at least one of the realms—Jamaica—require visas before they come into the United Kingdom; entry clearance on its own is not deemed sufficient. The position is more complicated than it is sometimes made out to be, but again I promise to draw to the attention of my colleagues in the Home Office the points that were made very strongly by my hon. Friends.
Andrew Percy
I thank the Minister for giving way; I do think that this issue is important. I understand the specific situation with Jamaica, but of course the Jamaican Government have stated very clearly that they wish to remove the monarchy from their constitution and become a republic, so perhaps at that point the situation will become a great deal simpler. This is something that we should, at least from the Government side, express as a desire and an aim, given that these are citizens coming to the country where their Head of State resides and we treat them as foreigners, which of course in law they are not.
Mr Lidington
I will draw my hon. Friend’s comments to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. She has the policy lead on these matters.
I would have been astonished had my hon. Friend the Member for Romford not seized the opportunity to speak about the British overseas territories. He is renowned as their foremost champion in the House of Commons. I accept and sympathise with his wish to see greater recognition for the overseas territories in Commonwealth affairs. It is worth noting in passing that of course Australia and New Zealand, too, administer island territories as dependencies that, as I understand it, are not full members of the Commonwealth in their own right.
The constitutional issue is that the Commonwealth has always operated on the basis that there is just one category of membership, which is full membership, and that is available only to sovereign states. That position was most recently reaffirmed by the Commonwealth Heads of Government in 2007. It would be perfectly possible to create some new status of associate member, but that would, of course, require the unanimous agreement of every member of the Commonwealth. I will ensure that the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon, who has responsibility for the Commonwealth, learns of the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Romford and of his wish for this country to take more of a lead in pressing for such a change. I will ask my right hon. Friend to write to my hon. Friend, to set out his response to those ideas in greater detail.
Andrew Rosindell
I thank the Minister and welcome his remarks and his offer to take this matter up with the Minister with responsibility for the Commonwealth. Following on from what he said about Australia and New Zealand, will he also undertake to discuss this issue with the Governments of Australia and New Zealand, as New Zealand has four realm states and Australia has seven external territories, such as Norfolk Island? Many of those are participating in the Commonwealth games and must also be considered in this respect.
Mr Lidington
That must be a question for my right hon. Friend the Minister responsible for the Commonwealth to consider, but my hon. Friend makes a fair point. Clearly, if there were a move to put the question of associated status on the Commonwealth agenda to members more generally, it would be important for the UK, Australia and New Zealand to work out some commonly agreed position between them.
My hon. Friend the Member for Romford also spoke about flags. Several different questions arise in that regard. I tried to deal with the particular problem about Parliament square, which was outside the control of central Government, in an intervention. I do not know which layer of local government was dealing with the pavements at the time and I do not want to point the finger and find that I have mistaken my target. However, we all agree that it would have been preferable had there not been that unfortunate coincidence this year. I hope that all relevant authorities can avoid a repetition of that in future.
We will continue—certainly, during the term of this Government—to ensure that the flags of the British overseas territories are flown from Government buildings on the national days of those territories. My hon. Friend knows that the Foreign Office has been doing that.
Mr Lidington
The question of the Crown dependencies, as my hon. Friend knows, is a matter for the Ministry of Justice, but I am sure that the Lord Chancellor will be delighted to learn of my hon. Friend’s interest in the matter and I will draw his comments to my right hon. Friend’s attention.
The Government want to ensure that the Commonwealth remains as relevant to us in the 21st century as it was 65 years ago, when the London declaration of 1949 marked the birth of the modern Commonwealth. In this, our values and our drive to seize on the Commonwealth as an economic and diplomatic force multiplier will be vital.
The hon. Member for Bristol East drew the House’s attention to climate change, a contemporary challenge facing Commonwealth countries. As she hinted in her speech, Commonwealth island nations, particularly the Maldives under the former president, played a leading role in some of the global negotiations. Their sense of urgency and their ability to point out directly the threat faced by the islands and their citizens helped make it possible to build a bridge between some contrasting positions held by developed and emerging economy countries. This Government are continuing to press for ambitious European Union offers to global negotiations.
At CHOGM last year, Commonwealth leaders collectively renewed their commitment to achieving an international climate deal in 2015 and to making real progress through the UN climate negotiations. There was also agreement on the need to build the capacity of Commonwealth states to respond to climate challenges. We welcome such commitments and look to work closely with all our Commonwealth partners this year to strengthen ambition and capacity through the UN climate negotiations and other forums, such as the Secretary-General of the United Nations’ summit on climate scheduled for September.
Kerry McCarthy
Will it be possible to move forward with this action through the auspices of the Commonwealth if some countries, particularly Australia, but also Canada, are not on board?
Mr Lidington
A Commonwealth position, as I mentioned in a different context earlier, requires consensus, but the Commonwealth can provide a forum, unique among international organisations, in which developed countries, vigorous, fast-growing, emerging economies, poor, developing states, enormous countries, such as India, and tiny island nations can all sit down together to discuss common problems. Through its network of connections—not just at Government level, but at civil society level—the Commonwealth provides a means of facilitating dialogue aimed at reconciling different interests and positions on climate change. In so doing, I hope that it would be easier to get the sort of global agreement that the Government want.
Our taxpayers rightly expect to know why institutions exist and what they achieve. The EU is familiar with such scrutiny, and the Commonwealth needs to define its relevance in a world of competing international organisations that cover all areas of activity. That is why my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon, who has responsibility for the Commonwealth, recently brought together high commissioners from right across the Commonwealth and why he will shortly host a further discussion at Wilton Park on the future of the Commonwealth. In the wake of the CHOGM in Colombo and in preparation for the CHOGM in Malta, the work will provide leadership in identifying how we can adapt the Commonwealth to reflect better all our needs and to strengthen it as an association that endures into the next century.
The UK is one of 53 equal members within the Commonwealth, and the other 52 members’ voices carry as much weight as ours, so it is incumbent on all members to ensure that it remains as powerful and as effective as it has always been.
The network of parliamentary relationships provided by the CPA will be an important element in trying to secure agreement on reforms and the evolution of the Commonwealth in a way that demonstrates to citizens in all member states the organisation’s continuing relevance.
The Commonwealth is a vast network of Governments and civil society. We should strive to harness its economic clout for the mutual prosperity of all members. At its best, when it is true to its charter, the Commonwealth can be an effective advocate for democracy and for human rights. It can stand up for what the Foreign Secretary described in a speech in July 2011 as the values that “ultimately make us secure”. That is the Commonwealth at its best. That is the vision that the CPA embodies and exists to support and enhance. I hope—and believe—that its work will continue to grow in importance, and I wish success to my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden and Members from all parties in this House who serve in the CPA.
Sir Alan Haselhurst
I want to acknowledge the contributions made in today’s wide-ranging debate, which serves to provide a peg on which to hang the concerns, current and enduring, of those of us who are committed to the concept of the Commonwealth and the increasing harmony and sense of purpose of its members. I am encouraged by what the Minister had to say, particularly about the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, and I shall be pleased if we can harness similar good will throughout Commonwealth Parliaments to ensure that the CPA can be still more effective in the future.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Statements
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Higher Education (Student Support)
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)
I am today confirming the student support package for higher education students undertaking a course of study in the academic year beginning September 2015.
Tuition charges and loans
For all new full-time students and eligible continuing full-time students who started their courses on or after 1 September 2012, maximum tuition charges and maximum tuition loans will be maintained in 2015-16 at the £6,000 and £9,000 levels which apply in 2014-15.
For continuing full-time students who started their courses before September 2012, maximum tuition charges and maximum tuition loans will be maintained in 2015-16 at the £3,465 level which applies in 2014-15.
For all new part-time students in 2015-16, and eligible continuing part-time students who started their courses on or after 1 September 2012, maximum tuition charges and maximum tuition loans will also be maintained at the £4,500 and £6,750 levels which apply in 2014-15.
Maintenance Grant
The Government announced in the 2013 spending review in June 2013 that the maximum maintenance grant for students attending full-time courses in 2015-16 would be maintained at the same levels which apply in 2014-15. This means for new students and eligible continuing students who started their courses on or after 1 September 2012, the maximum grant in 2015-16 will remain at £3,387. For continuing students who started their courses before 1 September 2012, the maximum grant in 2015-16 will remain at £3,110.
Loans for living costs
Eligible students attending full-time courses will be entitled to more overall support for their living costs in 2015-16 than in 2014-15. Maximum loans for living costs for new and continuing full-time students will be increased by forecast inflation for 2015-16, 3.34%.
For new students and eligible continuing students who started attending their courses on or after 1 September 2012, who are living away from home and studying outside London, the maximum loan for living costs will be increased to £5,740. I can confirm that the equivalent loan rates for students living away from home and studying in London will be £8,009; for those living in the parental home during their studies, £4,565; and for those studying overseas as part of their UK course, £6,820.
For eligible full-time students who started attending their courses before 1 September 2012 and are living away from home while studying outside London, the maximum loan for living costs will be increased to £5,167. The equivalent loan rates for students living away from home and studying in London will be £7,230; for those living in the parental home during their studies, £4,005; and for those studying overseas as part of their UK course, £6,151.
Dependants’ grants
The Government are committed to supporting students with caring responsibilities. I am therefore announcing today that means-tested dependants’ grants for full-time students attending their courses will be increased by forecast inflation for 2015-16.
The maximum adult dependants’ grant will be increased by 3.34% to £2,757 in 2015-16.
The maximum childcare grant payable in 2015-16, which covers 85% of actual childcare costs, will be increased by 3.34% in 2015-16 to £155.24 per week for one child only and to £266.15 per week for two or more children.
The maximum parents’ learning allowance payable in 2015-16 will be increased by 3.34% to £1,573.
Part-time grants and loans
For those students who started part-time and full-time distance learning courses before 1 September 2012 and who are continuing their courses in 2015-16, maximum fee and course grants will be maintained at the levels that apply for 2014-15. Maximum fee grants will be maintained at £1,285, depending on the intensity of study of the course. Maximum course grants will be maintained at £280.
Income thresholds
Household income thresholds for grants for tuition and living costs, and loans for living costs, will be maintained at 2014-15 levels for 2015-16.
Disabled Students’ Allowances
Lastly today, I can confirm that maximum grants for full-time, part-time and postgraduate students with disabilities will be maintained at 2014-15 levels in 2015-16.
Regulations
I expect to lay regulations implementing changes to student support for 2015-16 later this year. More details of the 2015-16 student support package will be published by my Department in due course.
City Deal
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Greg Clark)
Following the successful completion of the first wave of city deals in July 2012 with the “core cities”, the Government committed to work with a further 20 cities and their wider areas to negotiate a second wave of city deals in October 2012.
I can today inform the House that the Government, local businesses, universities and civic leaders from Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire have reached agreement on a city deal.
The Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire city deal is built around a flagship proposal for the UK’s first at-scale, low-carbon, heat network system. This will support Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire’s world famous advanced manufacturing and applied materials sectors and the emerging energy and renewable growth sector.
The city deal will also provide local and incoming businesses with support to develop the next generation of products and materials; bring employers and education providers together to ensure residents have the skills and training they and local businesses need to drive the economy forward; and prioritise local sites for new and existing business to expand into, along with strengthened local planning and development policies.
Business and civic leaders in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire estimate that the city deal will generate 45 GWh of heat energy and achieve energy efficiency savings of 49,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum; make available over 100 hectares of employment land each with its own enabling energy project; deliver 3,900 additional apprenticeships and 1,100 traineeships for young people aged 16 to 23; provide support and advice to 1,300 businesses. Local authorities and businesses believe that these measures can help create up to 23,000 jobs over the next decade.
Public Service Pensions
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Danny Alexander)
The UK faces a substantial long-term challenge to ensure the public finances remain sustainable and the Government have therefore taken much needed action to address the pressures from an ageing population. This includes a package of reforms to public service pensions including a move to “career average” schemes, and changes to the normal pension age for public service workers. Reforms to public service pension schemes are forecast to save £430 billion by 2061-62, while also ensuring that the pensions offered to public service workers remain among the very best available.
The next stage in this programme of reform is to ensure that the costs of the public service schemes are properly measured and remain sustainable in the long term. To achieve this, the Treasury has this week made directions and laid regulations on valuations of public service pension schemes and the employer cost cap, in accordance with the provisions of the Public Service Pensions Act 2013.
These directions formalise the basis of the full actuarial valuations of the schemes that are currently being carried out to measure scheme costs. This is the first time valuations have been carried out for a number of years and the first time that schemes have been valued simultaneously and according to the same rigorous, principled and transparent approach.
The final results for the NHS, teachers and civil service schemes will be published later in the spring. But it is already clear that these will show the level of contributions paid by employers have not been sufficient to meet the full long-term costs of these schemes. If current rates were allowed to continue the shortfall would be nearly £1 billion a year across the teachers, civil service and NHS schemes.
The Government are therefore taking corrective action, and will introduce new higher employer contribution rates for these schemes from 2015. This will ensure that the contributions paid by public service employers reflect the full costs of the schemes, including the costs of the deficits that have arisen since previous valuations.
This will not have any impact on existing pensioners, on member benefits, or on the contributions paid by employees in those schemes. Instead it will ensure that pension costs are properly met by employers and do not fall as an additional cost to the taxpayer.
Actuarial reports published by these three schemes and the police pension scheme (E&W) will confirm the final contribution rates to be paid by each scheme. The remaining public service schemes are expected to complete their valuations later in the year.
Alongside this action to ensure that pension costs are properly accounted for in the short term, the Government are also determined to ensure that costs are controlled in the long term, and that there is a fair balance of risks between scheme members and the taxpayer. Accordingly, as required by the Public Service Pensions Act 2013, the Government will establish employer cost caps in the new public service pension schemes. This will provide backstop protection for the taxpayer, and ensure that the risks associated with pension provision are shared with scheme members. The Treasury directions and regulations provide the framework for the operation of the cost-cap mechanism.
The Treasury has published additional documentation on the valuations and the operation of the employer cost cap to provide additional guidance on the Government’s policy. It has also published the outcomes of consultation with the Government actuary. These are available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-service-pensions-actuarial-valuations-and-the-employer-cost-cap-mechanism and I will arrange for copies to be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
I am also today publishing directions which set out the requirements for the provision of benefit information statements in the new public service pension schemes. Under the Public Service Pensions Act all new schemes will be required to issue annual benefit statements to members setting out the pension rights they have accrued. The attached directions set the requirements for these statements. These short directions largely mirror requirements set by DWP for wider pension schemes.
Building Regulations
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)
New homes need to be high quality, accessible and sustainable. To achieve this, the Government are today setting out a road map delivering a radically simplified system for setting standards in the design and construction of new homes by the end of this Parliament. This represents the outcome of a significant and ambitious drive to reduce the regulatory burden on the housing industry, and will save money and time for industry and authorities. The road map will involve consolidating essential requirements in to a national framework centred on the building regulations, reducing substantially the number of technical standards applying to the construction of new homes.
These changes will hugely improve the situation for all involved in this sector, by rationalising and simplifying the many overlapping and confusing standards currently in operation. We are also able to do this while improving quality, safeguarding environmental protections, and protections for disabled people. We consulted on the housing standards review proposals in the second half of last year, which set out proposals to rationalise the proliferation of housing related standards, guidance and codes above those required by building regulations. The Government are today also publishing the summary analysis of the responses to the 2013 housing standards review consultation.
Taking account of the responses to the consultation, an outcome of the housing and construction red tape challenge, the Government have decided that the most sensible way forward is for any necessary technical standards as far as possible to be consolidated into the building regulations and the accompanying approved documents, and to make significant progress on this over the rest of this Parliament. A note is being placed in the Library of the House, setting out how the Government intend to proceed with each of the standards examined in the consultation
The Government recognise that it is not always possible or desirable to require a single national standard for all new development, and that local discretion is in some circumstances sensible. To facilitate this, the consultation proposed the introduction of new powers in the Building Act which would enable different levels of performance where these were necessary to meet certain local circumstances. These requirements would be triggered by conditions set in a local plan, subject to the normal plan-making process of evidencing need and testing viability. So today I can announce we are introducing measures to ensure that the system includes new flexibility to respond to local circumstances where needed.
There are significant benefits to this arrangement. Building regulations apply nationally across England and provide a clear and consistent set of requirements for home builders to meet, and for building control bodies to apply. Checking compliance will in the future be undertaken through building control, removing the current maze of compliance regimes and systems and reducing costs not only to developers but to local authorities. The Government will work with local authority building control bodies and approved inspectors on putting this approach into practice.
Setting requirements solely in building regulations will help to provide the certainty needed to ensure that home builders know what they need to do, and can deliver high quality new homes which meet local community’s needs. Implementing this approach will reduce over 100 standards to fewer than 10, and will provide significant cost savings for industry.
The Government will press ahead with the work to consolidate necessary standards into the regulations during this Parliament. Draft regulations and technical standards will be published in the summer, with necessary statutory regulations and supporting approved documents coming into force at the turn of the year. The Government have also today tabled amendments to the Deregulation Bill currently before the House, to make necessary changes to existing legislation to enable this approach.
The consultation made clear the Government’s intention that planning authorities should only use the standards emerging from the review process. The Government will issue a statement later this year when the new standards are published, which will explain how this policy will be implemented.
This means that many of the requirements of the code for sustainable homes will be consolidated into building regulations, which would require substantial changes to the content of the current code, as well as a reconsideration of its role. In the light of this, the Government think that the current code will need to be wound down to coincide with the changes incorporating the new standards coming into force. The Government will make further announcements on the transitional arrangements, and the handling of legacy developments being built out to current code requirements. The Government are also interested in hearing from industry as to the value of elements of the code being taken forward on a voluntary basis.
Armed Forces Pay Review Body
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Hammond)
The 2014 report of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body (AFPRB) has now been published. I wish to express my thanks to the chairman and members of the review body for their report.
In line with the Government’s 2011 autumn statement, which announced that public sector pay awards will average 1% for each of the two years following the public sector pay freeze, the AFPRB has recommended an increase of 1% to base armed forces salaries for 2014-15. In addition, the AFPRB has recommended a 1% increase to compensatory allowances and recruitment and retention payment categories, except for mountain leaders, parachute jumping instructor, aeromedical and escort duty where there is no increase, and the lowest rate for nursing, which is frozen this year prior to being phased out by April 2016. The AFPRB has also recommended an increase to food and accommodation charges, together with a number of targeted measures, including two additional levels of longer separation allowance.
The AFPRB’s recommendations are to be accepted in full and will become effective from 1 April 2014, except where the AFPRB report indicates otherwise.
Copies of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body report are available in the Vote Office.
Service Complaints System
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Hammond)
A fair, effective and efficient system for handling complaints is an important part of our delivery of the armed forces covenant, and it has rightly been the focus of considerable public debate. I am grateful to the Defence Select Committee for the close attention which they have given to this subject, and their constructive recommendations. I am particularly indebted to Dr Susan Atkins, the Service Complaints Commissioner (SCC), not only for her work in the context of the current system, but also for her advice and engagement on how we can do better. Many service complaints are dealt with promptly and successfully. However, it is generally recognised that the current system can only operate effectively across the armed forces by devoting a level of resources which is not sustainable in the longer term.
The then Minister for Defence Personnel, Welfare and Veterans, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), informed the Select Committee last year that my Department was engaged in discussions with Dr Atkins on alternative models for handling complaints, and on the reform of the role of the commissioner. I am pleased to tell the House that this work has produced the outline of a new model for the service complaints system which we believe offers important advantages over the system introduced by the Armed Forces Act 2006.
The central feature of the new model is that the Service Complaints Commissioner would, in the future, have the power to consider whether a service complaint has been handled properly, once it has completed its normal internal stages. This is in contrast to the current arrangements under which the SCC cannot become involved in the handling of an individual complaint, other than to monitor its progress through the system. In the new model, where the commissioner finds no evidence of maladministration, a complaint would remain closed. However, if the commissioner considers that there has been maladministration in the handling of a complaint, he or she would make recommendations, formally to the Defence Council, for the complaint to be reopened and reconsidered. The Defence Council would remain responsible for the decisions taken in response to the SCC’s recommendations, thus maintaining the authority of the chain of command, but the SCC would be informed of those decisions and the reasons for them.
This aspect of the new model should lead to a higher proportion of complaints being decided more quickly. Complainants will gain a new right to apply to the independent commissioner, if they believe that the handling of their complaint has been subject to maladministration, instead of having the right to pursue further appeals within the internal complaints process. The commissioner will, in turn, be able to concentrate his or her attention on the cases of potential maladministration, including those which may have systemic implications.
The commissioner would also have a new role at an earlier stage of the complaints procedure. Where a decision is made not to allow a complaint to be considered within the service complaints system, because is it out of time or excluded on other grounds, a service person could ask the SCC to determine whether that decision was correct. At the same time, the commissioner will maintain the vital role which Dr Atkins performs today, of offering an alternative route for a service man or women, who does not wish to approach the chain of command directly, to have their concerns fed into the system. This remains an important safeguard, especially where allegations of bullying or harassment are involved. Finally, the requirement for an annual report to be laid before Parliament would continue, taking account of the new functions of the SCC.
The proposals I have outlined above represent a significant change to the way that service complaints are handled, and in particular to the role of the commissioner. As a result, I have decided that this new role would be better reflected in a change in the title of the commissioner’s post to the “service complaints ombudsman”.
Changes of this nature will require amendment to the Armed Forces Act, and an early opportunity will be sought to introduce the necessary legislation once detailed work, in which the commissioner will again be engaged, is complete.
In today’s armed forces, there is a strong commitment to ensuring that complaints from service personnel are taken seriously and handled fairly. No service man or woman should lack confidence in seeking redress through the current system. However we can do better, and, in particular, I believe we can resolve complaints more quickly. I believe that the approach I have outlined will strengthen the chain of command, support the interests of complainants, and enhance the contribution of the future service complaints ombudsman.
European Environment Council
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Owen Paterson)
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and I represented the UK at the European Environment Council meeting in Brussels on 3 March. Paul Wheelhouse, Minister for Environment and Climate Change in the Scottish Government, and Alun Davies, Minister for Natural Resources and Food in the Welsh Government, also attended.
After adopting the agenda for the meeting, Environment Ministers discussed the framework for climate and energy in the period 2020 to 2030. The UK was joined by numerous member states, including Germany and France, in supporting a call for an agreement at the European Council in March. The majority of member states endorsed a greenhouse gas target of at least 40% with the UK and Sweden calling for a prospective target of 50% in the context of an ambitious agreement. The Secretary of State clarified that the UK could support a binding EU renewables target of 27% providing it could never become binding on member states nor be translated into national targets via EU-level action. Several member states welcomed the Commission’s proposal for reform of the emissions trading system, with the UK and Denmark calling for reform to be preceded by cancellation of allowances. Some Ministers called for more information and discussion on burden sharing.
Outside of Council, the Secretary of State joined the green growth group in co-signing a letter along with 12 other Ministers from the group, including those from France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The statement called for the European Council in March: to agree on the core elements of a climate and energy framework for 2030; to agree a domestic greenhouse gas target of at least 40%; an EU-level renewable energy target of at least 27% (which should not be translated into binding national targets); and asked the Council to consider the use of high-quality international carbon credits in the context of increasing climate ambition.
The Council considered a presidency compromise text on the proposal to allow member states to restrict or prohibit the cultivation of GMOs in all or part of their territory. Most member states, including the UK, supported reopening discussions on the basis of the presidency’s compromise although several noted they would like to see further technical revisions before possible agreement. I stressed that the EU was falling behind the rest of the world in terms of utilising GMOs. I recognised the difficulty for other member states and wanted to ensure there was legally-sound flexibility for countries or regions to opt-out of cultivating GM crops if they so wished. The presidency confirmed that a technical discussion of its compromise proposal would now be taken forward.
There was an exchange of views on greening the European semester. The UK, supported by Lithuania, favoured fostering greater green jobs and resource efficiency but underlined sensitivities around discussing taxation policy in Environment Council. The UK was clear that any decisions on tax should be taken by Finance Ministers in ECOFIN. Most member states supported greening the semester including a shift to “green taxation” and strengthening the role of Environment Ministers. Some advocated greater focus on resource efficiency and the need for indicators and targets. France underlined the costs of inaction while others pointed to the lack of access to finance as a barrier to the uptake of green technology which also had a disproportionate impact on innovative SMEs.
Under other business, the Commission emphasised the urgency of agreeing the ratification of the Kyoto protocol’s second commitment period before the 2015 conference of the parties. The Secretary of State highlighted that agreeing the amendment to the monitoring mechanism regulation under the European Parliament’s mandate risked making mistakes due to the lack of consideration.
The Commission presented its air quality package and noted that poor air quality was the main cause of early mortality in Europe’s urban areas and the economic damage caused through lost workdays and healthcare costs.
The Commission also introduced a communication on tackling illegal wildlife trafficking noting that the trade was a multi-billion euro business and the EU remained a transit point for wildlife products. The UK provided an update on the recent London conference including the launch of the elephant protection initiative. On shale gas, the Commission explained their aim to ensure extraction and exploitation would command support and confidence in all stakeholders. The UK, Poland and Romania stressed the current legislative framework was adequate and questioned the implication that the Commission would bring forward legislation in 18-months’ time. The Commission said the review clause allowed the Commission to take action if member states failed to fulfil their promises. A number of member states supported the establishment of a sub-group to deal with key problems in the review of the large combustion plant best available techniques reference document.
Over lunch, Ministers discussed the soil framework directive. The UK and a majority of member states supported the withdrawal of the current text preferring non-binding measures.
Foreign Affairs Council/General Affairs Council
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs will attend the Foreign Affairs Council on 17 March, and I will attend the General Affairs Council on 18 March. The Foreign Affairs Council will be chaired by the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, and the General Affairs Council will be chaired by the Greek presidency. The meetings will be held in Brussels.
Foreign Affairs Council (FAC)
Introduction—Iran
Baroness Ashton is expected to provide a short update in her introduction to the FAC on the Iran nuclear talks and on her visit to Tehran on 8-10 March. The first round of negotiations between the E3+3 and Iran on the comprehensive solution was on 18-20 February in Vienna, chaired by Baroness Ashton and Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif. The E3+3 and Iran will meet again on 18-20 March.
Ukraine
Ministers will discuss the latest developments in Ukraine. We expect the discussion to focus on the next steps to be taken following the Heads of State and Government meeting held on 6 March. The Prime Minister set out the UK’s position in his statement to the House of Commons on Monday 10 March 2014, Official Report, column 25.
Bosnia-Herzegovina
Ministers will discuss the latest developments in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), focusing on the EU’s response to the recent protests. Ministers will consider how the EU can encourage Bosnian leaders to address the socio-economic grievances of their population, and how best to offer support to BiH to implement the wide range of reforms needed to progress on its EU path. The UK will emphasise the right to peaceful protest, and the importance of BiH’s leadership responding rapidly and comprehensively to the population’s legitimate demands for change. The UK will underline that we remain committed to working in partnership with BiH’s leaders to deliver substantial reform.
Middle East Peace Process
Ministers will discuss the latest developments in the middle east peace process, and the prospects for the special privileged partnership as set out in the FAC conclusions in December 2013. The UK will encourage EU partners, in particular Baroness Ashton, to emphasise publicly the benefits that could be obtained from the special privileged partnership, supplying more detail on the proposed content of the package, and setting out a positive vision of a shared future with deep cultural, political and economic links.
Syria
The discussion at the Foreign Affairs Council will take place two days after the third anniversary of the uprising. The discussion will focus on the latest developments, including the agreement of the UN Security Council Resolution 2139 on humanitarian access. The UK will focus on the need to reinvigorate the political process, to implement the resolution, and to increase pressure on the Syrian regime, Russia and Iran to behave constructively.
EU-Africa Summit
Ministers will discuss preparations for the EU-Africa summit in Brussels on 2-3 April, in particular progress on proposed summit outcomes. The UK will reiterate our commitment to Africa, and underline the increasing importance of the EU-Africa relationship and welcome the opportunity that the summit presents to reinforce this.
Energy Diplomacy
Ministers are expected to discuss greater integration of energy security considerations in foreign policy objectives. The UK will note how events in Ukraine highlight the significance of energy issues and the need for an international approach to energy security. The discussion will explore areas in which the European External Action Service (EEAS) might support and complement action by member states and international energy organisations.
General Affairs Council (GAC)
The General Affairs Council on 18 March will focus on: the preparation of the 20 and 21 March European Council; and the European semester. A further possible agenda item is the presentation of a Commission communication on the rule of law mechanism.
The Preparation of the 20 and 21 March European Council
The GAC will prepare the 20 and 21 March European Council, which the Prime Minister will attend. The March European Council agenda is expected to include: the European semester; industrial policy; the energy and climate 2030 package; and EU-Africa relations including the preparations for the EU-Africa summit to be held on 2 and 3 April.
Following on from the 6 March Emergency European Council, there may also be further discussion of the EU’s response to events in Ukraine.
UK priorities for the European Council are likely to be: securing substantive conclusions on the climate and energy 2030 package; and agreeing firm actions to boost industrial growth, as highlighted in the Prime Minister’s speech in Davos.
The European Semester
The GAC will consider the synthesis report on the 2014 semester exercise. This is a policy discussion and there are no anticipated outputs at this stage. We welcome the focus of the annual growth survey on jobs and growth and emphasise that the semester should not be diluted by the inclusion of other agendas.
Sri Lanka: UN Human Rights Council
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
During the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting held in Sri Lanka last year, the Prime Minister called on the Sri Lankan Government to launch a credible domestic process to ensure accountability for alleged violations and abuses of international humanitarian and human rights law on both sides during the conflict. The Prime Minister said that if the Sri Lankan Government did not take this step, we would use our position on the UN Human Rights Council to seek an internal investigation.
In the intervening months, we have pressed the Sri Lankan Government to set up a domestic process to investigate these allegations and ensure accountability. However, no credible domestic accountability processes have been set up to date in Sri Lanka. As a result, the time has now come for international action on the human rights situation in Sri Lanka.
The UK is therefore working in support of a strong resolution which calls for an international investigation, which will be voted on by the end of this month at the UN Human Rights Council.
A draft resolution was jointly tabled at the UN HRC by the UK, US, Mauritius, Macedonia and Montenegro, on Monday 3 March. The draft resolution calls for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to lead the international investigation, and to report back by March 2015. Further discussions on the text will take place this month.
The adoption of the resolution is not a foregone conclusion. Ahead of the vote, the Prime Minister and I, and other Foreign and Commonwealth Office Ministers, have been in contact with a wide range of UN HRC member states to encourage them to support a strong resolution that calls for an international investigation. In doing so, we have drawn attention to the assessment of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights who points to the need for this investigation, as progress on accountability in Sri Lanka has been, in her words, “limited and piecemeal”. The Commissioner has also highlighted concerns on other human rights issues, including the undermining of independent institutions such as the judiciary in Sri Lanka, a “significant” surge in attacks on religious minorities and impunity for those committing serious human rights abuses. In the remaining days before the vote we will continue to urge UN HRC members to support this action, and maintain our close contact with NGOs and civil society.
We welcome the offer of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to assist in an international investigation, which would be a significant step forward in ensuring that the Sri Lankan people will know the truth behind events during the conflict. We are confident that the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, together with special procedures, can provide a full and comprehensive investigation.
It is important to recognise that, as a country and a people, Sri Lanka has enormous potential, with the opportunity to become a strong and prosperous nation, if the Sri Lankan Government addresses these vital issues. The UK has previously welcomed progress in Sri Lanka in areas including demining (on which the Prime Minister last year announced a further £2.1 million of UK funding), reconstruction of former conflict affected areas and the reintegration of child soldiers. Such progress should not be overlooked.
But it is also important that this progress is matched by substantive progress on reconciliation, human rights and accountability. It is clear that Sri Lanka still has a long way to go in this respect, in order to achieve lasting peace and reconciliation. Accountability plays an important part in the reconciliation process, and must not be ignored. This is intended to be a resolution which will help to address the legitimate concerns of all communities.
Pay Review Bodies
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
I am responding on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to the 28th report of the NHS Pay Review Body (NHSPRB) and to the 42nd report of the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration (DDRB). The reports have been laid before Parliament today (Cm 8831 and Cm 8832). Copies of the reports are available to hon. Members from the Vote Office and to noble Lords from the Printed Paper Office.
NHS Pay Review Body
We thank the NHS Pay Review Body for its 28th report and note its recommendations and observations.
We are clear that in the wake of the public inquiry into Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, our first priority must be to ensure that the NHS can afford to employ the right number of frontline staff needed to ensure the safe, effective and compassionate care that patients have a right to expect.
The NHSPRB’s recommendations for a 1% consolidated rise for all staff, on top of automatic increments, are unaffordable and would risk the quality of patient care. Without a pay rise, incremental pay increases already commit nearly £1 billion every year for all NHS employees and add 2% each year to the NHS pay bill for Agenda for Change staff. The PRB proposals suggest a pay rise that would risk reductions in front-line staff that could lead to unsafe patient care. It is not possible to maintain appropriate numbers of front-line staff, give a general pay rise of 1 % and pay for incremental progression.
The Government are therefore adopting an approach by which all staff will receive at least an additional 1% of their basic pay next year. All staff who are not eligible to receive incremental pay will be given a 1% non-consolidated payment in 2014-15. Other staff will receive an increase of at least 1% through incremental progression.
It is our intention that in 2015-16 the same approach will apply and staff who are not eligible to receive incremental pay will receive a non-consolidated payment of 2% of pay, while other staff receive incremental progression. As this will be a two-year pay award, the NHSPRB will not be asked to make recommendations on a pay award for Agenda for Change staff in the 2015 pay round.
NHS staff are dedicated and hard working and the Government would prefer all NHS staff to receive a consolidated 1% increase. This would be affordable if incremental progression was frozen for one year in 2015-16. If the NHS trade unions were prepared to agree to this then the Government would be prepared to reconsider the position and make a consolidated award as other public sector work forces are receiving.
The Government agree with NHSPRB’s observation that a thorough review is required of the Agenda for Change pay structure, including the operation of incremental scales, so that it might better support the challenges facing the NHS in terms of both patient care and affordability.
We note its offer to look into this, given an appropriate remit and evidence and we will consider whether to ask them to look at contract reform issues in next year’s report.
Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration
We thank the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration for its 42nd report, note its recommendations and observations, and:
in respect of general medical practitioners (GMPs), we accept its recommendation for an increase of 1% to general medical practitioners’ income after allowing for movement in their expenses, equating to an uplift of 0.28% to the overall value of general medical services contract payments for 2014-15; and
in respect of general dental practitioners (GDPs), we accept its recommendation for an increase of 1% to general dental practitioners’ income after allowing for movement in their expenses, but abate the increase in the general dental service contract for GDP staff costs from the recommended 2.5% to 1%. This results in an overall uplift of 1.6% to be applied to gross earnings for independent dental contractors for 2014-15.
In respect of employed doctors and dentists, we are clear that in the wake of the public inquiry into Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, our first priority must be to ensure that the NHS can afford to employ the right number of front-line staff needed to ensure the safe, effective and compassionate care that patients have a right to expect.
The DDRB’s recommendations for a 1% consolidated rise for all staff, on top of automatic increments, are unaffordable and would risk the quality of patient care. Without a pay rise, incremental pay increases already commit nearly £1 billion every year for all NHS employees and add 2% each year to the NHS pay bill for employed doctors and dentists. The DDRB proposals suggest a pay rise that would risk reductions in front-line staff that could lead to unsafe patient care. It is not possible to maintain appropriate numbers of front-line staff, give a general pay rise of 1% and pay for incremental progression.
The Government are therefore adopting an approach by which all staff will receive at least an additional 1% of their basic pay next year. All staff who are not eligible to receive incremental pay will be given a 1% non-consolidated payment in 2014-15. Other staff will receive an increase of at least 1% through incremental progression.
It is our intention that in 2015-16 the same approach will apply and staff who are not eligible to receive incremental pay will receive a non-consolidated payment of 2% of pay, while other staff receive incremental progression. As this will be a two-year pay award, the DDRB will not be asked to make recommendations on a pay award for employed doctors and dentists in the 2015 pay round.
NHS staff are dedicated and hard working and the Government would prefer all NHS staff to receive a consolidated 1% increase. This would be affordable if incremental progression was frozen for one year in 2015-16. If the NHS trade unions were prepared to agree to this then the Government would be prepared to reconsider the position and make a consolidated award as other public sector work forces are receiving.
We note that the DDRB would welcome a proactive and systematic approach to considering contractual issues at an appropriate stage of the consultant and doctors in training negotiations and we will consider whether to make this part of their remit for the 2015 pay round.
Passport Fees
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)
Her Majesty’s Passport Office is committed to delivering better value for money for our customers.
In keeping with this commitment, I am pleased to announce that from 7 April the passport fee for customers applying for a UK passport overseas will be reduced by £45 for adults and £28.50 for children. The new fees are as follows:
Adult 32 page passport £83.00.
Child 32 page passport £53.00.
Jumbo 48 page passport £91.00 (child and adult).
This reduction comes as a result of efficiency savings made over the last three years by bringing back the processing and issuing of overseas passports to the UK, while maintaining the highest levels of security and customer service.
This reduction follows the 2012 decrease in fee by £5 for all UK citizens applying within the UK.
FIFA World Cup 2014 (Licensing Hours)
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
Today I am publishing a consultation on whether to make a national order to relax licensing hours during the FIFA World cup in June and July 2014 or whether to leave this as a local decision using the existing temporary event notice system. Any relaxation of licensing hours nationally during the FIFA World cup would relate to the sale of alcohol for consumption on the premises and the provision of late night refreshment in licensed premises at specified dates and times only.
Section 172 of the Licensing Act 2003 allows the Secretary of State to make an order relaxing opening hours for licensed premises to mark occasions of,
“exceptional international, national or local significance”.
A “licensing hours order” can be used to relax licensing hours in licensed premises—any premises authorised by a premises licence or club premises certificate to carry on licensable activities—during a period of up to four days. An order may apply to all licensed premises in England and Wales, or only to premises in one or more specified areas. It is also possible to set different licensing hours on different days during the relaxation period.
The Government are mindful of the need to strike a balance between the risks that late night drinking can lead to increased crime and disorder and public nuisance and reducing the burden on those wishing to celebrate the FIFA World cup. The consultation is therefore considering a number of issues, including the principle of relaxing licensing hours nationally during the World cup, the dates and geographical extent that any licensing hours order might cover.
A copy of the consultation document will be placed in the Library of the House.
Immigration Rules
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is today laying before the House a statement of changes in immigration rules as set out below.
The Government are making a package of changes to points-based system work routes to improve flexibility for applicants and help to boost economic growth.
This includes expanding the tier 1 (exceptional talent) category to include leading talent in the digital technology sector, who are endorsed by Tech City UK, as well as making it easier for applicants in this category to apply from overseas, and to count time spent in other immigration categories towards qualifying for settlement.
I am responding to feedback from higher education institutions (HEIs) participating in the tier 1 (graduate entrepreneur) scheme by removing the ring-fencing of places for MBA graduates and the current restrictions on participants’ graduation dates. This will make the scheme more flexible and simpler to operate.
In tier 2, the main work route for those with a skilled job offer, I am improving flexibility for employers and migrants by allowing applications to be granted for up to five years at a time, rather than a maximum of three years at a time as at present. I am also today laying amending regulations which will ensure that changes to tier 2 requirements are also applied to Croatian nationals.
I am adding Oman, Qatar and United Arab Emirates to the list of countries whose nationals benefit from different documentary requirements and ending the exemption from the genuineness test that applies to nationals on this list when applying for a tier 4 visa.
I am also making scheduled updates to salary and maintenance fund requirements, as well as a number of other minor changes to points-based system categories. The maintenance fund changes will take effect for applications made from 1 July.
I am creating a new category for overseas Government-sponsored language teachers under the tier 5 Government authorised exchange route. This will enable Government sponsored teachers to share knowledge and awareness of foreign languages and cultures in the UK. The first of these schemes will support a Mandarin teaching scheme designed to foster good cultural relations between the UK and China.
I am making changes to the curtailment provisions in part 9 of the immigration rules (general grounds for refusal) to support the Home Office in its work to take robust action against those who attempt to abuse the immigration system and ensure that migrants do not retain leave to which they are no longer entitled. In particular, I will:
incorporate the grounds in section 10(l)(b) and (c) of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 in preparation for the changes made by the Immigration Bill;
enable leave to be curtailed where a points-based system sponsor notifies the Home Office that a migrant’s period of study or work is due to end earlier than had been originally planned when leave to enter or remain was granted;
make further minor changes to ensure that the wording and the intentions of the rules are clear and consistent.
I am making changes to the visit visa requirement for Bahraini nationals. Bahraini nationals who hold diplomatic and special passports issued by Bahrain when travelling to the UK for the purpose of a general visit will no longer have to obtain a visit visa to travel to the UK.
The Government keep visa regimes under constant review to ensure that the UK has the right visa requirements set in the right places, aligned to risk. Today, I am laying changes to the immigration rules to require all Venezuelan nationals to obtain a visa before visiting the UK. UK visas and immigration continues to be focused on delivering an excellent customer service and ensuring that the UK maintains a competitive visa system that can innovate in order to ensure that Britain succeeds in the global race.
In order to comply with the Supreme Court’s judgment in Munir, we are incorporating into the immigration rules discretionary policies for civilian employees of NATO and the Australian Department of Defence, and employees of firms under contract to NATO.
I am making minor changes and clarifications to the immigration rules relating to family life. These mainly reflect feedback from caseworkers and legal practitioners on the operation of the rules.
I am also clarifying the knowledge of language and life provisions which apply for settlement applications by partners and children of members of HM Forces.
Prison Service Pay Review Body
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)
The 13th report of the Prison Service Pay Review Body (PSPRB) (Cm 8825) has been laid before Parliament today. The report makes recommendations on the pay for governing governors and other operational managers, prison officers and related support grades in England and Wales in 2014-5. Copies are available in the Vote Office and the Printed Paper Office.
I am grateful to the chair and members of the PSPRB for their hard work in producing these recommendations.
The recommendations for 2014-15 will be implemented in full. The cost of the award will be met from within the delegated budget allocation for the National Offender Management Service and will progress important pay reforms previously endorsed by HM Treasury and the PSPRB.
Senior Salaries Review Body
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)
The 36th report of the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB) is being published today. This makes recommendations about the pay of the senior civil service (SCS), senior military officers, the judiciary, very senior NHS managers and police and crime commissioners. Copies have been laid in the Vote Office, the Printed Paper Office and the Libraries of both Houses. I am grateful to the chairman and members of the review body for their work on this year’s report.
While we are mindful of the need to ensure that we are able to recruit, retain and motivate staff with the right skills and experience, it is important that senior public servants continue to show leadership in the exercise of pay restraint.
Senior Civil Service
The Government have accepted the PRB’s recommendations to introduce a new reward principle and to take a more mandatory approach towards exit interviews which will provide valuable information to inform reward and wider work force strategy. The Government have also accepted the recommendations on raising minimum salaries for SCS pay bands 1, 2 and 3 which will reduce overlaps between delegated grades and SCSI and across SCS pay bands.
The Government have not accepted the recommendation to give SCS a uniform pay increase to all staff (except the bottom 10% of performers) and the recommendation to restore the previous caps on the size of individual non-consolidated performance awards. These recommendations do not give Departments the flexibility they require to tailor reward arrangements that meet their own business needs.
This package of proposals for 2014-15 strikes the right balance between necessary pay restraint and the need to recruit and retain people of the right calibre. It gives Departments flexibility to target pay increases within the 1% average award, enable them to reward outstanding performance and help them to recruit and retain people in business critical roles.
Ministers will consider the PRB’s recommendations for raising the minima of the permanent secretary pay tiers taking account of the views of the Permanent Secretary Remuneration Committee as part of its consideration of the 2014-15 pay award for permanent secretaries.
Senior Military Officers
The Government have accepted the recommendation of a 1% increase to base military salaries for all 2, 3 and 4 star officers with effect from 1 April 2014.
The Government have accepted the recommendation that there is no change to current pay arrangements for medical and dental officers.
The Government have accepted the recommendation that for future pay rounds the MOD further develops its database on Army officers with the potential to serve in the senior ranks and expands it to cover each of the services.
Judiciary
The Government have accepted the review body’s recommendation that the salaries of the judiciary should be increased by 1%.
Due to the continuing fiscal challenge and broader public sector pay policy it has not been appropriate to respond to the SSRB’s latest recommendations about the major review. The Government note the proposals and while they will not be able to respond at this time, the proposals will be considered in partnership with the judiciary as we develop a broader judicial strategy.
Very Senior NHS Managers
The SSRB has recommended that the pay of very senior managers be increased by 1%. The Government are not able to accept this recommendation. We believe that as system leaders, very senior managers must set an example of pay restraint and also that their pay should be subject to greater restraint than that of staff delivering front-line NHS services. In the view of the Government, this can be achieved only by a zero pay award in 2014-15.
I am also grateful to the SSRB for their other observations on the pay system for very senior managers and in particular welcome their support for the review of the VSM pay framework the Department of Health will undertake in 2014 in partnership with its arm’s-length bodies.
Police and Crime Commissioners
The Government have accepted the recommendation that the rates of pay for police and crime commissioners (PCCs) should remain unchanged for 2014-15.
The Government have not accepted the recommendation that the Home Office should review the rules and guidance relating to PCC expenses. However, we will continue to work with the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners to ensure PCC expense arrangements are clear.
Other Review Body Reports for 2013-14
Separate statements from the Secretaries of State for Justice, Health and Defence will also be laid today on the reports of the Prison Service Pay Review Body, the Doctors’ and Dentists’ Review Body, the NHS Pay Review Body and the Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body in respect of pay for the relevant work forces for 2014-15. The Government’s response to those reports are consistent with the need for senior public servants to show leadership in the exercise of pay restraint.
EU Transport Council
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)
I will attend the first Transport Council under the Greek presidency (the presidency) taking place in Brussels on Friday 14 March.
The presidency is aiming for a general approach on a proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the European Union Agency for Railways and repealing regulation (EC) No. 881/2004—part of the fourth railway package. This is an important piece of legislation that will serve to further enhance the operation of the single European rail area. The UK’s position on the recast regulation is to ensure that it reflects the agreements reached in the general approach texts on the recast railway interoperability and railway safety directives. The European Railway Agency must have the necessary powers to ensure that the framework created by these proposals can operate effectively. All UK interests and objectives are maintained by the presidency’s text. I therefore fully support this proposal and the adoption of a general approach by the Council.
I anticipate that the Council will adopt its position on a proposal for a Council regulation establishing the Shift2Rail joint undertaking. The UK welcomes the Shift2Rail proposal as we share the vision of reducing costs and increasing capacity and reliability through research and innovation. We fully support the close involvement of the rail industry in this new joint undertaking and the increased emphasis on the needs of passengers and freight customers.
There will be a policy debate on the Commission communication entitled “Together towards a competitive and resource-efficient urban mobility”. This communication provides a helpful framework to support and promote competitive and resource-efficient urban mobility at a national and regional level. The key issue is to retain flexibility in this matter, not prescription. Most of the aims and measures are already being delivered in the UK through devolved local measures and national initiatives. It is important, therefore, that this communication is limited to a non-regulatory framework.
Under any other business, the presidency will provide information on several legislative proposals. Firstly, a proposal for a regulation on the establishment of rules and procedures with regard to the introduction of noise-related operating restrictions at Union airports. Secondly, a proposal for a regulation on community fleet capacity policy to promote inland waterway transport. Finally, a proposal for a directive on the deployment of alternative fuels infrastructure—clean power. The French delegation will provide information on the modernised aviation navigation system based on a combined use of GPS and Galileo. The Commission will provide information on the outcome of the EU-ASEAN aviation summit held in Singapore on 11-12 February and the Estonian delegation will provide information on state aid provisions for air carriers.
Vehicle Registration and Licensing (Northern Ireland)
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)
Motorists in Northern Ireland have not had access to the same range and level of vehicle registration and licensing services as their counterparts in the rest of the UK. In previous statements we have announced the Department’s intention to address this issue. This led to a consultation on the future of vehicle registration and licensing services in Northern Ireland being carried out between July and September 2013.
I am today announcing that following a review of the responses to the consultation, I have decided in consultation with my ministerial colleagues that the full range of vehicle registration and licensing services will be available to motorists in Northern Ireland from July 2014. This will entail the centralisation of transactions at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) in Swansea. The changes will for the first time allow motorists in Northern Ireland to take advantage of automated vehicle licensing, either online or by telephone. Northern Ireland motorists will also have access to additional face-to-face services at around 175 Post Office branches. The changes will also ensure that Northern Ireland motorists can immediately access new services, including direct debits for vehicle excise duty and enhanced online services, which will be introduced later this year. As well as improving services to Northern Ireland motorists, the changes will save £12 million every year.
These changes mean that the Driver and Vehicle Agency (DVA) will no longer deliver vehicle registration and licensing services to Northern Ireland motorists. We recognise the potential impact of this change. We have considered carefully the responses we received as a result of consultation and this proposal includes additional support both for customers and for staff. The DVA’s local offices will now remain open to support vehicle registration and licensing services until the end of 2014 while the new services bed in. The DVA’s office in Coleraine will provide a similar service. While I recognise that the Department of the Environment in Northern Ireland has said that it will try to avoid redundancies and where these are unavoidable, to aim to minimise the amount of compulsory redundancies as a result of this decision, my Department will work with officials there to support any staff who need to learn new skills to secure alternative employment.
I am publishing a package of documents to accompany this statement which assess the impacts of the changes being made and summarise the responses to the consultation. These documents provide more detail of the future services that will be available to Northern Ireland motorists and will be published on gov.uk and in the Libraries of both Houses.
I am committed to improving the services motorists in Northern Ireland receive, and supporting customers and staff through these changes. The DVLA will work with customers, stakeholders and staff to support the transition to the new service channels. Finally, I would like to place on record my thanks to DVA staff for their hard work in delivering vehicle registration and licensing services to Northern Ireland motorists over the years.
House of Lords
Royal Assent
Social Tenancies: Home-working
Baroness Grender
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made to encourage social landlords to amend new and existing tenancies to make it easier to work from home under schemes such as the new enterprise allowance.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, this Government are helping entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized enterprises to start and to grow by ensuring that the business support provided is simpler, more joined-up and accessible. The department has also alerted social landlords to guidance issued by the Chartered Institute of Housing which advises them on how to support and encourage their tenants to work from home, including information on how to amend existing tenancies if necessary.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, I recently met a lady who is setting up her own business at home. However, because she is a council tenant she has to get permission. While the best councils and housing associations have already removed this restriction, many others have not. Does the Minister agree that this can be very constraining and is a bureaucratic and old-fashioned practice that should go? What can he do to urge all landlords to encourage rather than constrain their own tenants?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, as I have indicated, we have put out advice to all social landlords on the need to seriously consider allowing their tenants to set up businesses. There is a misconception among social tenants that they cannot run a business from a council flat. They can, but they need to apply for permission from the landlord. This process is necessary because the landlord needs to be able to accept sensible web-based businesses while not allowing industrial processes to be carried out from the flat.
Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)
My Lords, should a social landlord acknowledge a room as being available for home-working, would that preclude it being a spare bedroom for the purposes of the bedroom tax?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the noble Lord has not disappointed me one little bit: I was certain that he would not be able to resist this opportunity. The spare room subsidy encourages people to make full use of their property and to consider running a small business—which I think is highly desirable.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that under planning law you are entitled to carry out any sort of business if it is your own property, provided that it is subsidiary to the residential use? I had a dental surgery in a house we lived in and that was permitted. Has the law changed, or is a restriction in the lease imposed by the landlord preventing tenants having this right?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the matter we are discussing is a restriction in the lease which can appear to discourage tenants from carrying on their business. Some leases are drafted in a way that makes it clear that the landlord is likely to agree to sensible variations, while other leases appear not to be so helpful. A properly educated person will realise that there is a distinct possibility, whereas others could be discouraged. I think that that is one of the issues that my noble friend Lady Grender raised with me.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, further to the question put by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, can the Minister advise the House whether it is now the case that planning regulations no longer constrain the scope for people to nurture fledgling businesses—and, indeed, more substantial businesses—in their own home, because that used not to be the case?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, that is a detailed question about the planning rules and I shall have to write to the noble Lord.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (LD)
My Lords, in 2008, in the rural housing review that I conducted for the previous Government, I precisely recommended that no social landlord should require a tenant to seek permission to run a business from their home if doing so would cause no nuisance. I am glad to say, as chair of the National Housing Federation, that that is the recommendation that we make to all our housing association members and that most of them agree. However, does my noble friend agree that in order to access the opportunities that running your own business from home can provide, it is almost universally necessary these days that you have internet access, but that whereas 90% of those in the private sector have access to the internet, fully 30% of those in social housing do not? Is there anything that Ministers can do to help social tenants get access to the internet—and to do so as a matter of right in the modern world, not as a matter of whether they can afford it?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, we are acutely aware of the need for internet access. I am sure that my noble friend is right about the percentages, but I do not think that it is that difficult to secure an internet connection. He suggested that landlords should not have the right to restrict people from starting up businesses. It is right that landlords should be involved in such decisions on behalf of other tenants in order to make sure that undesirable businesses are not started up in residential accommodation.
Alcohol: Calorie Labelling
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the answer by Earl Howe on 11 February (HL Deb, col. 535), whether they will publish a list of the alcohol producers and retailers who have pledged themselves voluntarily in the Responsibility Deal to display the calories and sugar content of the drink on the labels of their alcohol products.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, we welcome companies such as Sainsbury’s, which have taken action in this area. While there is no responsibility deal pledge to voluntarily display energy and sugar content on the labels of alcohol products, we will continue to consider what more can be done through the responsibility deal to improve public health, including through consumer information.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
I am truly grateful to the noble Earl for the efforts he has been making to try to persuade the drinks industry and the supermarkets that they have to accept some responsibility for the damage to health that alcohol causes. From the pledges he has been given by the producers and the supermarkets, can he say how many have as yet actually displayed calories and sugar on the labels of their lagers and beers? While I acknowledge that progress is happily now being made with wine, will he say what he intends to do, given that Tesco and Morrisons have now publicly stated that in no way will they go down this route?
Earl Howe
My Lords, I mentioned Sainsbury’s, which is setting a very good example in this area, but I can tell the noble Lord that Waitrose and the Co-op have also taken steps to display calories on their own-brand alcohol labelling. Naturally, we hope that others will follow their lead. As yet, none has, and it is a pity that Tesco has said that it will not, but we will continue to work on this issue. Work is also going on at a European level, and the noble Lord may like to know that the UK pressed for mandatory energy declarations during negotiations on the EU Food Information for Consumers Regulation. It met with significant resistance, and we did not succeed, but we are still pressing for that.
Baroness Sharples (Con)
Does my noble friend have any estimate of the number of shoppers who actually read the labels?
Earl Howe
No, I do not, but it is worth noting that 49 businesses have signed up to the voluntary responsibility deal pledge on awareness of alcohol units, calories and other information. Those organisations have published calorie information on their websites about every single alcohol product. If one is buying online, it is possible to compare one product with another.
Lord Turnberg (Lab)
My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that alcopops are rearing their heads again? These sweetened drinks have sugar added to them to make them attractive, in a cynical attempt to bring the young on board to alcohol. They contain more than 170 calories a bottle—about the same as a sweetened chocolate milk drink—as well as the alcohol. Is there anything we can do to bring this to the attention of the supermarkets? I believe Sainsbury’s has alcopops on its shelves now.
Earl Howe
My Lords, in fact, sales of alcopops are in marked decline, to such an extent that the market for these products looks like disappearing in the next few years. Nevertheless, I take the noble Lord’s point. It is always a concern if people are putting their health at risk by drinking too much alcohol or consuming too much sugar. At the same time, one should not always assume that an alcopop is a high-calorie drink. For example, ready-mixed gin and tonic is technically an alcopop, but very often low-calorie tonic goes into it.
Lord Taverne (LD)
My Lords, there is an unfavourable contrast in the behaviour of the UK alcohol industry as compared with the French when it comes to social responsibility. The UK alcohol industry strongly markets super-strong beers and lagers as the cheapest way of getting alcohol, whereas the French industry has suppressed access to low-quality wines and other cheap drinks through pricing. Would my noble friend urge the industry in the UK, as part of the social responsibility deal, to follow the French example?
Earl Howe
My noble friend may like to know that, in fact, 125 companies have pledged, under the responsibility deal, to help people drink within the guidelines. Perhaps the most significant pledge that has been made is the one by more than 30 alcohol retailers and producers to remove 1 billion units of alcohol from the market—around 2%—by the end of 2015. Companies, pub chains and retailers have also made a whole range of other pledges. We are making significant progress in this area.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Earl is aware of quite how much this costs the NHS. Abuse of alcohol is very damaging to families and to individuals but also costs the NHS a fortune. Is it not about time that we, and the Government, took responsibility by backing the consumer, the patient and the taxpayer rather than siding with the drinks companies? Is it not about time not only for labelling, as my noble friend has called for, but for a minimum pricing policy?
Earl Howe
The noble Baroness raises a number of areas. We believe that this issue can benefit from action on a number of fronts. One of them is the responsibility deal to persuade the industry to take voluntary action. We are making significant progress in this area. Of course, the other is behaviour change by individuals and the choices that people make. Ultimately, people need to take control of their own behaviour, and the Chief Medical Officer is currently overseeing a review of the alcohol guidelines so that people can make informed choices about their drinking at all stages of their life.
Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Taverne asked my noble friend the Minister to commend the French for their high-price wine policy. I commend them for their low-price wine policy. At home in France, I buy a very good everyday drinking wine from my local wine grower for €8 for a five-litre box.
Lord Harrison (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister may recall that last September I shared with him my concern at the ever-rising alcoholic content of wines that are on sale in supermarkets and the need for greater provision of lower percentage wines so that the consumer can indeed make a choice. What progress has he made in that area?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Earl mentioned the Chief Medical Officer. Did he see her comment last week that the Government ought to consider a sugar tax? What response have the Government made to their own Chief Medical Officer?
Earl Howe
My Lords, as I have just indicated to the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, taxation is always an instrument that Governments consider. We continue to keep the international evidence on that under review, but we think that for now the voluntary action we have put in place is delivering results. We will keep a close eye on progress but taxation is always an instrument that Governments can deploy.
Railways: High Speed 2 Review
Lord Truscott
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will reconsider their decision not to publish the November 2011 Major Projects Authority review into HS2.
Lord Popat (Con)
My Lords, the Government do not intend to reconsider their decision not to release the November 2011 MPA report. The decision to exercise the power of veto to override the decision of the Information Commissioner to release the report was not taken lightly and carefully took into account the views of the Cabinet and the Information Commissioner, and the wider public interest.
Lord Truscott (Non-Afl)
I thank the Minister for that reply, but if HS2 is such a good project, I still cannot see what the Government have got to hide. However, does the Minister agree with that group of dangerous left-wing environmentalists—the Institute of Directors—that:
“Across the country, there simply is not the level of business support to justify blowing Britain’s infrastructure budget on a project with such potential to turn into a white elephant”?
Lord Popat
My Lords, there has been widespread discussion in this House and the other place and there is widespread acceptance by all the political parties of the benefits of HS2. HS2 is about not just speed but capacity, regeneration, job creation and growth. It will connect nine major cities. It is one of the largest infrastructure projects we have and we should welcome it.
Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister confirm that there is no business case whatever for HS2 north of Manchester? Will he further confirm that the decision not to have tilting trains inevitably means that all the stations north of Wigan will in fact have an inferior service?
Lord Popat
My Lords, I do not have in my brief details of the line north of Manchester. I will be happy to write to the noble Lord.
Lord Bradshaw (LD)
Does the Minister agree that a lot of the demands that we have just heard for the publication of out-of-date information are really mischief-making by opponents of HS2, who wish to use the information only to pick further holes in the case? Last weekend, I was handed a leaflet by people who are against HS2 which referred to the “ultra high-speed line”. That is absolute nonsense, because the trains will run at the same speed as they do now on the Great Western and north-eastern lines and have done for 40 years. Does the Minister agree that it is right to leave the matter in the hands of the extremely competent chairman of HS2, who will come forward shortly with his proposals to cheapen and extend the project?
Lord Popat
I agree with the noble Lord that we have in Mr Higgins the best of chairmen for HS2. The Major Projects Authority, which was set up by this Government, monitors all major projects in the UK such as HS2 and gives us an annual report on whether we are on time, within cost and how well the project is doing.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, how can my noble friend justify not releasing the report? He says that we want a widespread discussion. How can we have that discussion if we are kept in the dark on certain vital pieces of information? Those who are opposed are going to suspect the worst. If the report presents an absolutely clinching argument for HS2, let us have it.
Lord Popat
My noble friend makes a very important observation here. I again stress that the decision not to publish this report was not taken lightly. It was decided not to publish because it was not in the public interest to do so. The Secretary of State’s reasoning has been laid before the House. He focused on three specific reasons as to why the report was an exceptional case: first, the exceptional importance of the HS2 project; secondly, the extremely strong public interest in showing that expenditure on HS2 is properly and robustly overseen and controlled; and, finally, the short timeframe between the production of the project assessment review and the request for information, and the timing of the request at this particular stage of policy development within the HS2 project.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, is it not in the public interest to have transparency and access, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has just said, to all the details? How can we have a well informed public debate? Will the Minister at least tell the House the Government’s current estimate of what HS2 will actually cost?
Lord Popat
On the noble Lord’s first point, this Government have a strong record on transparency.
Lord Popat
Yes, they do, my Lords. Last year, they published the first ever Major Projects Authority report, covering transparency on all our major projects. The HS2 project is already subject to extensive scrutiny, including 10 public consultations in the first three years, lasting a combined total of more than 12 months. In addition, it has been scrutinised by the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee, the Transport Select Committee, the Treasury Select Committee and the courts—most recently, the Supreme Court.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
In the further interests of transparency, will the Minister make available and easily accessible in the Lords Library the debates in the Lords on the original line of the London to Birmingham railway in the early part of the 19th century? Noble Lords can read there of the ferocious opposition there was from all quarters of this House, explaining that the line would destroy wildlife, wreck communities and be a white elephant. I congratulate the Government on standing firm on this issue. Why look in the crystal ball when we can all read the history books?
Lord Popat
I take the point that the noble Lord has made. I will ask the department to make sure that something is placed in the Library from the public records.
Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)
My Lords, might this be a more popular project if we stopped referring to HS2 and referred to North-South 2?
Lord Popat
My Lords, we have HS1 and this is HS2. It is in a “Y” shape, so it will go to both the east and the west from the south.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord said that this Government are interested in transparency. Is he aware that we are still waiting for the publication of the risk register about the nonsensical Health and Social Care Act 2012? As to the public interest, does the noble Lord agree that in addition to the issue of speed, the key issue is capacity? The fact is that trains on the current lines going through the Midlands to the north are very full indeed, and capacity has to be dealt with.
Lord Popat
My Lords, since privatisation, capacity has doubled in the past 20 years and hence we have HS2 coming. In the mean time, we are addressing capacity as the number one issue and the whole purpose of HS2.
Crimea
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Renwick of Clifton
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what further measures they intend to discuss with their European Union and NATO partners concerning the prospect of Russia proceeding to a formal annexation of Crimea.
The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi) (Con)
My Lords, the European Council agreed on 6 March that if Russia does not co-operate in de-escalating tension in Crimea, a second phase of measures, including asset freezes and travel bans, will be implemented. If further unacceptable Russian steps are taken, there will be additional far-reaching consequences. NATO has put the entire range of NATO-Russian co-operation under review and suspended working-level meetings. NATO will continue to make strong political statements if Russian behaviour warrants it.
Lord Renwick of Clifton (CB)
I thank the Minister for that reply. Clearly, the formal annexation of Crimea by Russia will require an additional western response. Otherwise, if Russia were emboldened to seek to intervene also in eastern Ukraine, that would lead to a shooting war and an uncontrollable situation. I feel sure that Members of this House will wish to see a clear warning given to Russia and effective assistance to Ukraine.
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, the Government’s position, supported by the Opposition, has always been to try to de-escalate the situation and ensure that diplomatic contact is the way that this matter is resolved. The matter is continuously changing. My noble friend Lord Hill of Oareford updated the House by repeating the Prime Minister’s Statement earlier this week. I can inform the noble Lord that further meetings are planned for tomorrow and we are doing all we can to persuade Russia that the annexation of Crimea and, indeed, the referendum, which we see as illegal and illegitimate, should not go ahead.
Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)
My Lords, I ask for clarification of the Government’s approach to this crisis. The UK is a signatory to the 1994 Budapest memorandum, which protects Ukraine’s territorial integrity. What is the Government’s legal understanding of what action that commits the UK Government to in the event that another signatory, such as Russia, violates its terms? Is the UK Government’s position that the aim of talks between Ukraine and Russia, which we all hope will take place in the near future, is to reaffirm the commitment to the Budapest memorandum or to supersede it with a new agreement?
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, the Budapest agreement is very clear. It basically lays out Russia’s obligations in relation to respecting the territorial integrity and independence of the state of Ukraine. We believe that Russia’s actions are in breach of that. That is why we have made it clear that it is important that we try to resolve the matter by de-escalating what military activity is happening on Ukrainian soil and through talks.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that evidence has come to light in the past 48 hours that Russia is now directly interfering in the domestic affairs of Bosnia-Herzegovina in a way that can only have the effect of encouraging Serb secessionism in that country? Given the fragility of Bosnia and its history, both recent and long past, is not an attempt to draw Bosnia-Herzegovina into the wider Ukrainian crisis an act of breathtaking irresponsibility, and what will the Government do to encourage the European Union to take the strongest moves on this matter?
Baroness Warsi
My noble friend is a huge expert in this area. Part of our diplomatic efforts in the current crisis have been to avoid this spreading much wider. There have been real concerns about comparisons that the Russians have been drawing between other disputes, past and present, and Crimea. My view is that of my noble friend, which is that Europe must continue to concentrate on trying to resolve the challenges that we have in the Balkans and not allow the two issues to be mixed.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, 213 years ago today, Lord Nelson, en route to the Battle of Copenhagen, wrote to Lady Hamilton:
“I hate your pen and ink men; a fleet of British ships of war are the best negotiators in Europe”.
I am not suggesting for a moment that there should be a military solution to this, but does the Minister not agree that the abysmal spending on defence across the EU means that we have no hard power as an adjunct to soft power and that, in a world inhabited by people like President Putin, you need both?
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, I hear what the noble Lord has to say but the Government’s clear view, and indeed the view of the EU and the US, is that this matter needs to be resolved through political and diplomatic means.
Lord Bowness (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the actions of the Russian Federation are clearly contrary to the provisions of the Helsinki Final Act? Therefore, what role does she see for the OSCE in this matter? What discussions are we having within that organisation? Are any actions proposed? I ask these questions as a member of the OSCE parliamentary delegation.
Baroness Warsi
I agree with my noble friend’s assessment of the situation. He may be aware that OSCE observers are on the ground at the moment in Ukraine. They have not been given access to Crimea. They are there at the request of the Ukrainian Government. We feel that further access should be given so that we can get a better assessment of the situation on the ground.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, President Putin appears to assume that the western response will be weak, relying on the precedents of Georgia, Litvinenko and Magnitsky, and of course the clash of interests. Building on what the noble Lord said about the OSCE, does the Minister agree that there are implications for Russian membership of the Council of Europe, the senior human rights organisation in Europe? Should the Government consider taking the initiative in the Council of Ministers in response to the Russian invasion?
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, there are implications for Russia’s membership of all sorts of multilateral organisations as a result of its actions. The G8 preparations and talks have been suspended and the OECD has now suspended accession negotiations, which will have a real impact on Russia’s standing regarding trade and investment. I can inform the House that there will now be a Secretary Kerry/Lavrov meeting in London tomorrow and we hope that some progress will come out of that.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, although I appreciate the call from the noble Lord, Lord West, for more frigates to meet the situation, does my noble friend recognise that in today’s world the most powerful means of persuasion lie as much in the area of electronic communication, cyber operations and financial and electronic operations as they do in the classical 20th-century ideas of more dreadnoughts and more troops on the ground?
Baroness Warsi
They do, and of course trade and investment are a huge part of that. The losses suffered on MICEX a few days ago have had an impact and it has not completely recovered. There is clear evidence that this is having an impact on the Russian economy and we hope that these are factors that the Foreign Minister will bear in mind when he has discussions tomorrow.
Education: Social Mobility
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for the opportunity to debate the role of primary and secondary schools in improving social mobility. We believe in higher standards for all, no matter what a child’s background, and we are committed to getting every child’s education right. From early years education and curriculum reforms through to more freedom for teachers and better vocational education, improving social mobility underpins absolutely everything that we are doing. Our reforms can be summarised in a few words: raising the bar and closing the gap.
It is possible to look at the education sector in this country with the benefit of hindsight and conclude that successive Governments have managed it for appearance’s sake. Over the past third of a century the number of pupils getting a C grade in GCSE maths has risen from 22% to 73% with no apparent increase in performance, and between 2006 and 2009 alone the number of pupils getting a C grade in GCSE maths and English rose by 8% when, at the same time, PISA showed a slight fall in the proportion of English pupils who achieved highly.
Then we had the greatest confidence trick ever perpetrated on the English public: the absolute scandal of GCSE equivalents, whereby subjects that were often not valued by employers and did the pupils taking them no favours were hugely overrated in terms of their GCSE-equivalent status.
You might think that a young person who has five A* to C grade GCSEs, including English and maths, would indeed have five GCSEs, but not a bit of it. In many cases they merely had English and maths and the rest were entirely made up of equivalents, often in merely one subject. For instance, a BTEC higher-level diploma in fish husbandry, in which there were no examinations, equated to four GCSEs. Other favourite equivalent subjects of mine are cake decorating, health and safety and hazard control. The fact that many pupils took these subjects is not the fault of teachers, as they can only respond to the incentives put on them by Governments, but as a result of these incentives, under the Labour Government, the number of pupils taking a core academic suite of subjects fell from 50% to 22%.
Something similar happened to content. For instance, more than 90% of questions answered on novels in English literature are on three books: Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies. In the country that gave us Chaucer, Hardy, Dickens, Trollope, Austen and the Brontës—I could go on and on—how can this be, excellent though these books are? It is an example of how the curriculum has been hijacked by political correctness, victim culture, guilt trips and the concept of relevance. For instance, in history, children are doing Nazism over and over again with no concept of the broad sweep of history.
Additionally, about a third of a century ago there grew up a myth that the human brain was like a computer or a calculator and that it just needed to acquire skills and did not need knowledge. More recent cognitive science shows that in order for the brain to learn skills, it needs knowledge to apply what Michael Young of the Institute of Education has called “powerful knowledge”.
Throw in a couple of other things, such as the false perception that there was such a thing as the perfect Ofsted lesson, minimum teaching from the front, group work, lots of activities, peer review, a plenary at the end, the abolition of competitive sports in many schools and the fact that many teachers were unaware of the boundaries to the behaviour strategies they could employ, and it is hardly surprising that during the first decade of this century we plummeted down the international league tables as other countries in the Far East and eastern Europe overtook us. Nor is it surprising that our school leavers are among the most illiterate and innumerate in the developed world, coming joint bottom in a recent OECD survey of 24 countries for literacy and 21st out of 24 for numeracy; or that, as Alan Milburn tells us, we are the most socially immobile country in Europe, so that we, the sixth-largest economy in the world, rank in the mid-twenties for the quality of our education.
This cannot go on. It is not fair on our children. We cannot compete internationally with education of this standard, and the only way we can break that dreadful cycle of worklessness and generational unemployment that we see in so many of our inner cities, coastal towns, former mining villages and other areas is through education. That is why this Government have such an extensive programme of educational reforms in place.
We know that the barriers to social mobility start right from a child’s early years. By the time children reach the age of five there is already a 12% achievement gap between those from lower-income households and the rest. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds can, therefore, benefit most from attending a high-quality pre-school setting. We are the first Government to fund 15 hours of free childcare for all disadvantaged two year-olds, we have extended the benefits of funded early learning for three and four year-olds from 12.5 to 15 hours per week, and we are raising the status and quality of the early years workforce.
My right honourable friend the Minister of State for Schools is currently making a Statement in the other place about action we are taking to deliver fairer funding in English schools. For too long, the system has been out of date, and schools with many disadvantaged pupils can end up being funded at a level well below nearby schools in affluent areas. Today we are announcing a substantial, £350 million, boost to schools in the least fairly funded local authorities in this country. This represents a huge step forwards towards fair funding in English schools and will make a real difference on the ground. The details of our proposals are set out in a consultation document being published today, and a copy will be placed in the House Library.
It is also important that children are well fed. Nutrition is the foundation of effective learning and development, which is why we are funding free school meals for all infant school pupils from September this year, and why we are also providing funding to help set up breakfast clubs and providing every primary school pupil with a free piece of fruit each day.
We have provided additional funding for disadvantaged children through the pupil premium. Pupil premium funding will rise from £1.9 billion to £2.5 billion in 2014-15. The primary school rate will increase from £900 to £1,300 and, for the first time, all pupils who are looked after or leave care through adoption, special guardianship or residence orders will attract £1,900 from April 2014. We are starting to see the positive impact of the pupil premium. In July 2013’s key stage 2 tests, the gap in attainment between these pupils and other pupils in key stage 2 has narrowed by 3.7% since 2010, moving from 17% to 13.2% in 2013. The gap is also starting to narrow in secondary schools.
While closing the gap, we must also raise the bar across the system and we are committed to reforming the school curriculum and exams. We are reforming the national curriculum to equip all young people with the essential knowledge and skills they need to succeed in life by working with academic experts from around the world. In particular, we know that a confident grasp of maths and English is vital, with maths providing the strongest links to future earnings and employment. That is why we have made it a priority to ensure that no student leaves school without reaching a good standard in both disciplines.
In primary schools, we have introduced phonics at every stage of English teaching so that teachers can intervene early to help children catch up and we are increasing the emphasis on spelling, punctuation and grammar. We are strengthening the primary maths curriculum with a greater emphasis on arithmetic. We are introducing a new requirement to teach a foreign language at key stage 2. At secondary school level, we are providing a literacy and numeracy catch-up premium of £500.
We are introducing a new computing curriculum which encourages students to see how they could create technology as well as simply use it and is unique among major economies. Our new design and technology curriculum places a greater emphasis on the links with maths, science and computing and will prepare pupils for the cutting-edge technology industries of the future. All students, whether on academic or vocational courses, will be expected to continue to study English and maths if they did not achieve a GCSE grade C in these subjects by the age of 16.
In further education, we are introducing new core maths qualifications which build on GCSE study for students who achieve a B or C in GCSE maths, and will also be valuable for those with A* and A who are not taking A or AS-level maths. In addition, we are supporting increased take-up of A-level maths and further maths. Maths and English will also play a more important role in vocational education. From 2014-15, all intermediate apprentices will be required to work towards a level 2 in English and maths, and all people undertaking a traineeship will also be required to study English and maths, unless they have achieved a GCSE A* to C in those subjects.
Aside from the importance of developing strong literacy and numeracy skills, we know that disadvantaged children, in particular, benefit from the core cultural capital that comes with access to a breadth of basic knowledge and a core suite of academic subjects, as is found in all successful education jurisdictions. This was recently confirmed in a study by Edinburgh University. To quote the right honourable Diane Abbott MP:
“It is precisely if you don’t have parents to put in a word for you in a tough jobs market that you need the assurance of rigorous qualifications”.
Our EBacc measure is achieving exactly this. Since the EBacc’s introduction, the proportion of students taking the academic subjects in state-funded schools has risen from 22% to 35%, and we are expecting that to grow further this year. The proportion of FSM pupils taking the EBacc has more than doubled since 2011. In the past year alone, history entries went up 19% and geography by 21%. Language study is also increasing rapidly, with Spanish up 31% since 2012.
In addition, we are making GCSEs and A-levels more stretching. Following a public consultation in 2013, the new GCSEs have been drafted by experts to ensure that the reformed qualifications match those in line with the highest-performing jurisdictions. We are working with Russell group universities to restore rigour to A-levels so that students from all backgrounds can apply to university with highly valued qualifications. We are already seeing success. In March last year, UCAS reported that the proportion of 18 year-olds from the most disadvantaged backgrounds applying to university increased to the highest level ever recorded.
Another way to ensure that disadvantaged children have access to cultural capital is through a rounded curriculum that includes character-building activities. We are strongly encouraging as many schools as possible to set a longer school day, including rich, raising-aspirations programmes for their pupils. We also want pupils to be able to access the cadet experience as part of school life. We are making progress towards this, having already established 28 cadet units. Our target for 2015 is 100 units. We are ramping up the National Citizen Service, and investing £150 million in primary school sport.
It is vital that we make schools more accountable for the achievement of our most disadvantaged children. As the Shadow Secretary of State for Education said recently:
“The great crime was an awful lot of effort being put on kids getting a C at GCSE, then not going further. There should be no limits—the system should be saying how far can this child go?”.
I could not agree more. Hence our move towards the new Progress 8 measure from 2016. That will track the progress of all pupils of whatever ability throughout their school careers, rather than encouraging schools to focus excessively on their pupils who are near the GCSE C/D borderline. We will value the progress of every child—low attainers and high performers alike. In addition, schools will not normally be judged outstanding by Ofsted if disadvantaged pupils are not making at least good progress. We are also publishing details of the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and the in-school gap between them and their peers.
None of what I have outlined above would be possible without our brilliant teachers. I have often said that teaching is the most noble profession. Teachers do a wonderful job, and those many thousands of dedicated, hard-working individuals working in our schools are transforming the lives of thousands of children. We now have the best generation of teachers ever working in our classrooms. Education is now the most popular career destination for Oxford graduates. Some 14% of its graduates enter teaching—a remarkable figure—and 74% of graduates entering teaching have a First or Upper Second degree, the highest percentage since records began. We have quadrupled the size of Teach First, now the largest recruiter of graduates in our country, and extended it into primary schools as well as to every region of the country.
We are also changing the way we recruit teachers. The School Direct programme, launched by Charlie Taylor, an outstanding headmaster, enables our best schools to hand-pick the most exceptional candidates and our prospective teachers to start their careers in our best schools. That has proved extremely popular with both schools and trainees, attracting more applicants per place than any other training route, with three applicants for every place compared with 1.8 for training provision delivered by a university.
We are also offering new bursaries worth up to £25,000 to attract top graduates into teaching maths, physics and chemistry. Last year we recruited a record number of physics trainees. For those already in the profession, we are giving heads more freedom and scope to make decisions in line with pupils’ needs. Our new Teachers’ Standards remove unnecessary bureaucracy, and we have freed up teachers to teach as they wish so long as pupils are making progress.
We have strengthened the ability of teachers to discipline pupils and, through reform that links pay and performance, we have made it easier for schools to reward good performance and attract the top graduates and professionals. We have set up almost 350 teaching schools which support other schools to improve teacher training. In addition, of course, there is the academies programme.
The genesis of the academies programme itself was of course the city technology programme introduced by my noble friend Lord Baker, whereby 15 failing schools were essentially taken over by entrepreneurs. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, took that programme and beefed it up substantially, and by 2010, 15 CTCs had become 203 academies with about 70 in the pipeline. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and my noble friend Lord Baker—both of whom I am delighted to see in their places today—for the sheer brilliance of the academy concept. We have taken the number of sponsored academies now to more than 1,000 up and down the country. Schools that were left to languish in failure by their local authorities for years, with perhaps occasional and soft intervention, are now being turned around permanently by strong academy sponsors.
Those are schools such as ARK’s Charter Academy in Portsmouth, where results have more than trebled since the school became an academy in 2009 against a backdrop of high local deprivation, with 68% of pupils gaining five A* to C grades, including in English and maths, in 2013. Then there are Outwood Grange’s Portland Academy, where results rose from 57% of pupils achieving five A* to C grades, including English and maths in 2012, to 75% in 2013, and Greenwood Dale’s Stanground Academy in Peterbrough, where results have improved from 39% achieving five A* to C grades, including English and maths, in 2012, to 62% in 2013.
The academies programme is working across the piece. The performance of sponsored academies is far outstripping that of other schools; for instance, sponsored academies that have been open for three years improved their GCSE results last summer by 12% versus 6% for other schools. The latest Ofsted Annual Report on schools found that:
“Sponsor-led academies are delivering a step change in performance for chronically underperforming schools”.
We have also allowed all good schools to become academies in their own right, and a further approximately 2,500 schools have done this. These convertor academies do better than local authority maintained schools against the new tougher Ofsted framework.
Some 60% of secondary schools are now academies or on the way to becoming academies. We have now focused our attention on primary schools; indeed, we are the first Government to really focus our attention on the underperformance of primary schools. Some 11% of primary schools are now academies, and we have taken more than 500 underperforming primary schools and turned them into sponsored academies. We are focusing the academy programme on school-to-school support by groups of schools in local geographic areas. Half of academies have engaged with a vulnerable school or schools to raise standards.
We have also taken the academies programme and expanded it into the free schools programme under which any group can apply to the Government to open a new school. Our free schools programme is benefiting disadvantaged children in particular, with 70% of open secondary free schools in areas of basic need, and every primary free school in an area of basic need. We have created 150,000 new places through this programme. At the end of 2013, 73% of free schools inspected were rated good or outstanding, compared to 64% of all schools inspected in the same timeframe.
I think we have all been a little confused about the Labour Party’s policy on free schools, but I am pleased to see that the shadow Education Secretary has now made it clear. He originally said that it would be parent-led academies, but I was delighted to see that on the “Sunday Politics” show recently he amended this to say that they will be academies led by social entrepreneurs and parents—in other words, free schools with another name.
Alongside academies and free schools, both our UTCs and studio schools provide high-quality technical education to 14 to 19 year-olds alongside academic GSCEs and A-levels. There are currently 17 open UTCs which have been designed and delivered in partnership with more than 200 employers and more than 40 different universities, with a further 33 approved. Twenty-eight studio schools are now open and over 400 employers are involved, with a further 18 approved.
The last piece of our holistic reform of education is ensuring that success at school is transferred into gainful employment. To equip our young people to compete in a global market, we need to end what my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education has called the,
“apartheid between academic and practical learning”,
and see practical, technical and vocational training integrated and as rigorous as academic learning. Professor Alison Wolf carried out an independent review of vocational education; she found that vocational education was immensely valuable as part of a broad curriculum, but made it clear that changes were needed to prevent schools enrolling pupils on low-quality qualifications that do not promote progression to further education or employment. We have slashed the number of qualifications approved for reporting from 3,175 to 180 for 14 to 16 year-olds and from 3,721 to 318 for 16 to 18 year-olds. Along with our TechBacc, these reforms will identify existing high-value vocational qualifications, spur the development of new vocational qualifications and provide students in England with a respected, high-status vocational training route to help them compete in the world and give them the skills that employers need.
Ofsted reports that schools have improved faster in the past year than at any time in its history. Our reforms are working. They are extensive, but they are necessary and I commend them to the House.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, on this auspicious day when the Children and Families Bill receives Royal Assent, I congratulate my noble friend the Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Nash—on having secured this important debate.
I am always conscious that when we in Parliament at Westminster debate education, schools and schooling we are talking only about England. We are not talking about Scotland. The only power that we have in Scotland is over teachers’ conditions of service. We are not talking about Wales either, so let us be clear that the debate in many respects is about the English education system and English schools. Perhaps we should give our Secretary of State the new title of Secretary of State for Education in England.
Why do some talented children grow up to fulfil their potential and develop their talents in particular fields while others, sadly, never reach their potential? Or, to put it another way, what can we do to help all children succeed in life? There is no one answer, but surely it is our job to ask these difficult questions and find common threads that can help.
A person’s life chances ought not to be decided by the circumstances of their birth. Education and schooling must be the key to unlocking the door so that all children have the opportunity to thrive and prosper. What happens in the period from birth to the age of seven will decide a person’s life chances. It is suggested that all interventions after that period will have only a marginal effect. The country’s poorest children are likely to do worse, and make less progress, than their better-off classmates. I am reminded of the saying attributed to Ignatius Loyola: “Give me a boy to the age of seven and I’ll make him a man”. It is a little outdated, yes, but the maxim is as true today as it was hundreds of years ago.
Of course, we know that a child’s brain does not fully develop until about the age of seven, so the foundations need to be laid at this formative stage to make sure that learning can flourish and grow. We need to make sure that any problems are indentified at an early stage and, once they have been identified, that intervention strategies are put in place. Take reading, for example, which is probably the building block of all school learning. If a child is struggling with his or her reading by the time they get to key stage 2, it is an uphill struggle from there on in. Let me emphasise again—I underline it and underline it—that if a child is struggling with reading by the time they get to key stage 2, it will be a real struggle. As the Native American poet, Sherman Alexie, put it:
“If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one’s chances of survival increase with each book one reads”.
This sounds like an easy solution, but the fact of the matter is that, sadly, we can pinpoint the problem exactly. It starts when children come from homes where there is no love of books, no ethos about the importance of reading, and where parents, or carers, do not share books with their children. Children need, and thrive on, verbal communication. They need to feel, touch, explore, and even chew books when they are babies. They need parents to share stories with them every day. A true love of reading needs to be kindled, and nurtured, from a young age. You can literally say that non-readers and struggling readers will have a huge uphill struggle once they get past seven.
The figures speak for themselves. Children who do not reach the expected attainment levels of English and maths at seven are unlikely to do well at 16. Fewer than one in six children from lower income families who have fallen behind by the age of seven go on to achieve five good GCSEs, including English and maths. If a child from a disadvantaged family is already behind with reading by the age of seven, they have only a one in five chance of going on to achieve a grade C in GCSE English. We must, and should, ensure that building blocks are in place at an early stage, as falling behind at school, as I have suggested, has such a monumental impact on a child’s future life chances, and hence their social mobility.
The qualifications a young person leaves school with matter enormously to their chances of future employment. Just look at the furore at the PISA results. Indeed, Save the Children showed that, never mind the lack of opportunities afforded to the child, this also results in a massive cost to the health and coffers of the nation.
I mentioned early identification of problems and intervention strategies. Again this is crucial to the life chances of any child. Imagine the damage we do to a child by leaving the barriers to their learning and development unchecked, unnoticed and unresolved. That is why many of us have gone on and on about how teachers should, for example, be trained to identify dyslexia, how schools should have a trained person to test and advise, and how schools should have the necessary resources. However, there are many barriers to learning apart from dyslexia. If we could find out what they are early on, we could then deal with them, help the child flourish with their learning and go on to reach their full potential—and, by the way, help the UK economy.
If noble Lords will forgive me, I will stray slightly from the exact wording of the debate and remind us how parents need support in those crucial years of a child’s development. As the Education Select Committee recommends, we must focus our minds not on only a child’s educational development but on facilitating better parenting, improving health outcomes and helping parents back to work. That is why Sure Start centres were so important; they were targeted at the most deprived areas of the UK. Their success meant that there was a demand for universal provision, which strayed slightly from their original remit and purpose.
Some 3,500 centres were developed, which meant that we achieved almost nationwide coverage of children’s centres, but there is a wide variance in what is offered to different communities. Some have fully integrated centres while others have smaller signposting centres. Even with budgetary pressures, there are still 3,000 centres operating, and they have a crucial part to play in child development through the support that they can give to parents.
Yet we have lost direction from the original purpose of these centres. There is confusion as to the lack of a clear, defining model, and there are disparate versions of what is on offer. I agree with the conclusions of the excellent report produced by Barnardo’s, What are Children’s Centres For?. Barnardo’s suggested that they provide early intervention so that they become recognised as an early help service. Children’s centres should focus exclusively on providing services to families, from a child’s conception to school starting age. I suggest as much to the Minister. Perhaps the functions, duties and oversight of children’s centres should be placed on a statutory footing. I will leave that with my noble friend.
I mentioned earlier that we are talking about the English education and school systems, but whether a child is in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, a number of important characteristics matter to all children, their learning and their social mobility. That must be about the points that I have perhaps overegged: the importance of the years from birth to the age of seven, and the importance of early identification of problems and early intervention. It is also about having primary and secondary schools with highly motivated teachers who are qualified, valued and respected. I was pleased and impressed to hear the information given by the Minister about, for example, graduates coming into teaching. That is hugely important.
We also need—I would say this, wouldn’t I?—the best possible school leadership. I regret the decision to close the National College for School Leadership, because leadership is not something that you just apply for; you have to have the qualities and characteristics to understand how leadership works. There are other areas that, again, are crucial to social mobility. I do not have time to go into them now but careers education is one example.
I end by saying that I hope we have seen some cataclysmic changes in the English education system over the past few years. I hope that we can start to come to a point where education is no longer an area that we constantly change, and that the political parties will come to a consensus and work with teachers, parents and pupils to ensure that the social mobility that we all want actually happens.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, the coalition Government have said that they want to close what they called “the vast gulf” between the life chances of children educated in the state sector and those from independent schools. I should like to use the opportunity of today’s debate to draw attention to the role of learning foreign languages in achieving that objective. If by social mobility we mean being equipped to have more choices, broader horizons and greater employability, then language learning must be a vital component in any educational or wider public policy strategy. Sadly, the status quo is that languages at GCSE, at A-level and at university are increasingly seen as a mark of the advantaged elite. I believe that state schools where languages are not offered or encouraged are doing their pupils a huge disservice in terms of the quality of their education and their future chances in a global labour market.
Before I go on, I should declare interests as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages and as a vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Linguists.
I know that I am, in theory, knocking on an open door with this argument. DfE Ministers made it clear that the gap between rich and poor in language learning was one of the main drivers behind the EBacc initiative. There has certainly been a positive impact on take-up of languages at GCSE in the past two years, attributable to the EBacc. It was notable that the increase was concentrated in schools with the highest levels of social deprivation. The latest GCSE entry figures for languages also show the gap between independent and state schools beginning to narrow. The Government deserve credit for this, but the EBacc is just one part of the jigsaw and by no means enough on its own to turn round the decade of dramatic decline that we have witnessed since 2004, when languages became optional after the age of 14. Indeed, a parliamentary Select Committee report on the EBacc raised questions as to its effectiveness as a measure of progression and social mobility. Nor is it enough to claim that things will improve over time because of the introduction of compulsory languages at key stage 2 from next September. Thoroughly welcome though that is, a great deal of support, recruitment and training still needs to be put in place to ensure the genuine success of key stage 2 languages.
Perhaps I may briefly summarise the evidence for languages being such an important part of any person’s skill set for the 21st century. It is a myth that English is enough. Certainly no one will go very far in business or international relations, academically or culturally unless they speak English. However, if they speak only English, they will find that that is a huge drawback and a limitation on their choices and advancement in pretty much any field. British employers regularly express dissatisfaction with school and college leavers’ foreign language skills. A CBI survey in 2013 revealed that only 36% of employers were happy, although 70% of businesses said that they would value such skills. Our school leavers have the worst language skills in the whole of Europe and are increasingly losing out to their peers from other countries—not just from the EU but from the US, India, China and elsewhere—in a global labour market. A British Academy report last year pointed out that language skills are needed at all levels of the workforce, not just for an internationally mobile elite. A survey in 2011 showed that 27% of vacancies in the UK for admin and clerical jobs went unfilled due to shortages of foreign language skills.
Specialist linguists are needed too, of course. We are desperately short of English native speakers in the interpreting and translation services of the EU and the United Nations. There is a shortage of public service interpreters in this country—those who translate and interpret for people in hospitals, courts and police stations. Language skills are also needed for defence, security and diplomacy purposes. Ironically, some of the languages most needed for this work are present in abundance in our own communities, such as Tamil, Turkish, Somali and Farsi—I could go on. But the Government, very short-sightedly, scrapped the Asset Languages programme which had provided a way for children who speak another language at home to develop that language in a more formal way and have it accredited at GCSE level. What a waste of talent. Will the Minister please take this issue back to the department to persuade the Government to think again about how we can offer children with English as an additional language, who often come from the most socially deprived areas and schools, the opportunity to have their language skills recognised and rewarded and shown how this could lead to a range of professional opportunities when they are older?
It is also important to know that learning a foreign language helps you learn everything else. That is another reason why schools are misguided if they deny their pupils a chance to take languages because they are not considered bright enough. Robust evidence shows that learning another language improves children’s literacy and oracy in their own language. Research from America shows that language learners are better at maths and reading tests. At key stage 3, the cognitive benefits from language learning transfer to problem solving, lateral thinking and critical analysis across the curriculum. It is therefore extremely disturbing that the practice of disapplication, whereby certain pupils are removed from the statutory language teaching during key stage 3, seems to be on the increase. I have had the benefit of seeing a preview of the 2013 Language Trends survey; it will be published in a couple of weeks and I have been authorised to refer to it today. It shows that a significant and increasing number of state schools carry out some form of disapplication of pupils from languages at key stage 3, with the result that many lower ability pupils have no experience of learning another language at all. Will the Minister agree to study with particular care this aspect of the Language Trends survey when it comes and take steps to discourage schools from this practice so that all pupils, whatever their level of ability, have access to the cognitive, social and employability benefits of learning a foreign language?
Despite the boost to take-up at GCSE from the EBacc, I am afraid that nearly half of all secondary schools still say that they have no plans to improve their language offer. Take-up overall has halved post-14 in the past decade. Twice as many pupils in independent schools take a language GCSE than in state schools. Even within the state system there is a very worrying variation, with only 14% of children eligible for free school meals getting a good language GCSE, compared with 31% of other state school pupils. This pattern carries on to A-level and to university. A third of all MFL entries at A-level are from independent schools, and at university 28% of students going on to do modern language degrees come from the private sector, compared with only 9.6% across all subjects. Alongside this, there is a distinct lack of opportunities to study a language as part of any vocational course. Only a very small number of FE colleges offer languages and this in turn has implications for employability and the general divide between those who are seen as the academic elite and the rest.
Despite the recent signs of improvement at GCSE and the advent of languages taught at primary school, it has to be said that our language provision is fragile. Competence in at least one language in addition to English should be a 21st century skill that our young people can take for granted. Those who have it will be not only more socially mobile but more culturally aware. Those without it will be left behind. Individual schools should not have to sort this out by themselves, however much the Government want to give them freedom over the curriculum. The Government must give a stronger lead and I urge the Minister to accept this challenge.
The Lord Bishop of Newcastle
My Lords, I, too, welcome this debate about the role of primary and secondary education in improving social mobility, and I want to speak from my experience as a bishop in the north-east of England for the past 16 years. The north-east faces serious and significant challenges. Despite having the best record of exports of any region in the country, we have a higher level of unemployment than any other region, particularly youth unemployment, and significant and intractable levels of poverty.
Before I went to the north-east, I served as Bishop of Kingston upon Thames, and the differences are huge and stark. It has been like living in two very different countries, two very different worlds. Social mobility is a much trickier and more complicated concept than it might at first sight appear. We have always to remember the distinction between relative and absolute mobility, but in everyday understanding of the term, I use it to refer to the opportunity for individuals from socially disadvantaged backgrounds to move on in the world. It is about closing the attainment gap between the results achieved by children from disadvantaged backgrounds compared to children elsewhere. The relatively newly formed north-east local enterprise partnership has put schools at the heart of the strategy for economic development of the north-east. It calls for a north-east challenge modelled on the success of London Challenge. However, schools cannot do it all. They can be part of the solution, of course, but there has to be a wider and more integrated response.
In my diocese we have more than 50 Church of England schools. Most are primary or first schools which do very well. Indeed, all across the north-east, at the early years foundation stage the children achieve a good level of development—slightly below the national average, but not much. Furthermore, our primary schools have been judged by Ofsted to have some of the best leadership in the country, and results at the end of key stage 2 seem to support that. However, performance in our secondary schools is not strong—what someone has described as the north-east conundrum. Perhaps that is hardly surprising given the nature and reality of the social context beyond the school gate, where 18 to 24 year-olds experience much higher levels of youth employment than anywhere else. It is quite hard to convince some young people that education really matters.
Just for a moment I want to take your Lordships with me to south-east Northumberland, a former coal-mining area clustered around the famous town of Ashington, home of the Pitmen Painters, and Jackie Milburn, Jack and Bobby Charlton and Steve Harmison. Several years ago I was asked, and I asked myself, “What is the single most important thing we can do for the young people of this area? What is the one thing that would do most to transform the lives of these young people, their families’ and their community?”. The answer was to provide the very best kind of school and education that we could. This led to the birth of the Northumberland Church of England Academy, where the diocese of Newcastle and the Duke of Northumberland worked in partnership with the help of the Government to establish this new school. We had to raise £1.5 million to found an academy in those days. It is the largest academy in the country, located on five different sites, serving 2,500 children aged from three to 18. The school has within it a wonderful centre for 100 children and young people with severe and multiple disabilities and special educational needs. I am as proud of the care and the commitment shown by the staff and of the development of those young people there as of anything else that we do—even though, of course, that never ever shows up in school league tables.
More than one-half of all the children in the academy receive free school meals; 47% of the children there are officially defined as living in poverty. There is real deprivation all around. And yet last year half of our young people in the upper sixth—I still cannot get used to calling it year 13—went on to university, one-quarter into apprenticeships and the rest either into further education or some kind of employment. Three-quarters of our 16 year-olds now stay on into the sixth form and, crucially, parental engagement with the school has increased significantly. School attendance is improving, the teaching quality is getting better and progress is moving towards the national averages.
The academy is charged with being a catalyst for change in the community. That is a very big challenge, but it has transformation of the community at its heart. It is about beginning to change the culture and developing children who are well educated in the broadest sense, young people who are resilient, creative, articulate and socially engaged. Education is the only means I know to help social mobility and to begin to break down some of the barriers that hold young people back. To build an aspirational culture that values, encourages and equips every child it has to permeate all that we do, so that we can overcome the social background of disadvantage in which our children find themselves and enable each and every one of them to be the best that they can possibly be. Last year, pupils eligible for the pupil premium outperformed their ineligible peers in GCSE maths, a small indication perhaps that a young person’s background need not hold them back and that, when our schools get it right, we can overcome disadvantage and transform both lives and communities.
So what conclusions do I draw? If our schools are to be successful in transforming communities facing adversity they will need to be supported by a whole and committed network of other groups, including local business, local government, the arts, churches and other local institutions. Partnerships are absolutely vital, whether they be with, say, the Army—which has led to the Combined Cadet Force being established in the academy last year and allied to the Coldstream Guards—or with other schools elsewhere, including independent schools. We need to continue to find new ways of building new networks which will successfully work in harness with our schools.
While good attainments and high-quality qualifications are crucial, we have also got to develop character, confidence, resilience and spiritual development as well as academic standards. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, we need clear pathways and encouraging support for young people as they make key decisions about their future. Imagine how hard it is for the bright young girl or boy who is the first in their family ever to consider applying for university to make the kind of choices that will affect the rest of their lives. I know about that from personal experience because I was such a person once upon a time myself. Guidance and good advice are crucial.
This country has some of the very best education institutions in the world and some of the most able and dedicated teachers. Here I join the Minister in paying tribute to our teachers, many of whom are working heroically by almost always going the extra mile, sometimes working against the odds, and yet not feeling as valued and appreciated by the rest of us as they should. We must not underestimate the challenges we face if we are to unlock the potential of every single child so that they have the widest opportunities to become the best they can be. They, like we, can then give back to our own society.
A few weeks ago noble Lords would have found me in the miners’ welfare in Ashington. It is a community centre that is open seven days a week and it is superbly led by a very able young woman. Originally from Ashington, she went away to university but then, crucially, returned to give back to the wider community the benefits of the education that she had received. We need more people like her—people not using their education to escape from the area, but realising that with well trained minds and warm hearts they have much to give for the common good. Fortunately, resilience and a strong sense of local identity, together with shared communal values, are still a strong feature of life in the north-east. To build on them with the best kind of schools we can offer is the way to bring hope for the future, both for individual young people and for their communities, and indeed hope for us all.
Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Nash on initiating this important debate and I thank him for explaining to the House the various initiatives the Government have taken in order to achieve improvements in the education system. Social mobility has to start in our schools or it can start nowhere. If it does not start at school, there will be virtually no social mobility. In one striking area it has worked very well: namely, in the expansion of universities. Parties around the House have supported this expansion. When I was the Education Secretary, the percentage going on to university was 15%. Just before I left that job I forecast that it would rise to 30% by 2000, and that was slightly exceeded. Today it is close to 50%, and there is no doubt that many children from disadvantaged families now experience the huge richness of university life.
So, three A-levels and a university degree are one pathway to success. I suspect, however, that it will be a rather less crowded pathway in the immediate future because graduate unemployment has now become a common feature. One study examined students who graduated in 2010 to see what they were doing two years later. At that point, four out of 10 had got jobs at graduate level, two had jobs at below graduate level, usually in bars and cafés, one was unemployed, and the others were trying to recycle themselves back into the education process. Added to that is the fact that students will now leave university with debts approaching £40,000, so many young people who in the past would have thought about going to university will be looking for other things to do. I rather welcome that in several ways, because a university system that turns out people who are unemployable is not a very effective system.
The days have gone when large numbers of unskilled jobs were available. Very few unskilled jobs are available in our economy today. We therefore have to find other pathways to success beyond three A-levels and a university degree. That is the reason why, with Ron Dearing, I established five years ago what are now called university technical colleges. Seventeen are already open and a further 33 have been approved. They aim to give young people skills. The pupils are aged between 14 and 18. The UTCs operate on a normal working day, so pupils have to turn up between 8.30 in the morning and five in the afternoon. However, we see very high levels of attendance for those hours, at 95%. Students learn for two days of the week by making things with their hands or designing things. We are giving them the skills that will make them employable.
I think that the employability potential of education is one of the most important tests. Every school, whatever it is doing at secondary level, should report on the employability of its students when they leave. I am very glad to say that the employability of students from UTCs is really quite remarkable. Our target is that when youngsters leave at 16 and 18, none of them gets jobseeker’s allowance or joins the ranks of the unemployed, and I am glad to say that in the two that have had leavers at 16 and 18—the first being the JCB Academy in Staffordshire, which has had 300 leavers since it started—everybody got a job, an apprenticeship, a place at college or a place at university. Twenty-three went to university and 84 became apprentices, while others went on to study A-levels or went into work. That is a remarkable achievement for any school.
The one in Walsall, which has an average comprehensive intake, is in a much more challenging situation. It took over the remnants of a school that was closing, with very disgruntled students. It has had 107 leavers, and I am glad to say that none of them joined the ranks of the unemployed and there were no NEETs. Fourteen went to university, 30 or so to apprenticeships and some into work or other colleges. That should be the target for all schools—no NEETs. I think it is the intention later this year to judge schools on the destinations of their pupils. If a school, of whatever nature, manages to ensure that none of its pupils become NEETs—they all get a job or go on to further education—it cannot possibly be described in an Ofsted report as inadequate. That would be a contradiction in terms, as it is a major achievement.
The other thing that we have now developed, alongside UTCs for the STEM subjects, are career colleges for the other range of skills such as hospitality, catering, tourism, the creative arts and logistics. Two of these colleges, based on UTCs, are going to start this year in Oldham and in Bromley and 60 other schools are interested in becoming ones. We have established the success of specialist colleges for 14 year-olds in promoting social mobility. Many of these youngsters at 13 and 14 would be disengaged and would switch off from education, but we are engaging them and giving them a real opportunity which they would not otherwise have. I really believe that unless we increase the numbers of these colleges very considerably, we will rather stifle social mobility. These are alternative pathways of success, with pupils going to university, in some cases, or getting into very good jobs.
Finally, I remind your Lordships of the success of some of the old technical schools that existed in 1945. The committee established in 1941 said that the pattern of education after the war should involve selective grammar schools, selective technical schools and secondary moderns. There were 300 technical schools, which all closed in five or six years. They were closed by snobbery—everybody wanted to go to the school on the hill like the grammar school, not the one down in the town with the dirty jobs and greasy rags. It was a massive mistake, which Germany did not make in adopting its education system, which is one of the reasons why Angela is ruling the roost.
The success of those technical schools was really remarkable, and I will just leave noble Lords with the names of four people who went to them and are today very distinguished. The vice-chancellor of the University of Leeds, one of the biggest universities in our country, Sir Alan Langlands, who ran the health service for six years, went to a technical school in Glasgow that also received Charles Rennie Mackintosh through its doors—a very distinguished figure. Mike Turner, the chairman of Babcock and GKN, who ran BAE Systems very effectively for many years, went to a technical high school. Sir Mike Tomlinson, the former Chief Inspector of Schools, started his life at Oakwood Technical High School. Coming to your Lordships’ House, the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd—the dear, beloved Betty Boothroyd, former Speaker of the House of Commons—went to a technical school. Those technical schools were real agents of social mobility, as they can be again today.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for giving us the opportunity to debate the issue of social mobility and education and I thank him again for his flexibility on the Children and Families Bill. However, I might dispute some of his rhetoric today, some of which I found somewhat selective. It is surely the case, as the right reverend Prelate said earlier, that social mobility is much more complex than I think the Minister made out. I share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that education should not be a political issue. Children are too important for that. We have enough research and experience now to know what benefits children. I call for a consensus based on independent evidence.
I declare an interest as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children and a trustee of UNICEF. I will reflect for a minute on social mobility, recognising that it has many more influences than education, and then give some examples of what I think schools might do.
If every head teacher of a primary or secondary school was a brilliant and inspiring leader, as many are, and if every teacher was relentlessly focused on raising standards, building social skills and closing attainment gaps, as many are, we would still have problems in this country with social mobility. Schools can make a difference. I appreciate what the right reverend Prelate said but I also think that social mobility—or immobility—can begin at birth.
The National Children’s Bureau was founded in 1970. In 1973, it published a study called Born to Fail?, which looked at the experience of children from poor, disadvantaged backgrounds and how their lives were damaged, resulting in poor health, underachievement at school and lack of opportunity to fulfil their potential. I am not sure whether the term “social mobility” was used then, but that last phrase summarises for me what social mobility is about: the opportunity to fulfil one’s potential—perhaps, in the process, moving from the social class and limited ambitions of parents and communities.
Fifty years on, the NCB has just produced another report, called Greater Expectations, which examined whether children in this country are still suffering from inequality and disadvantage. The findings are stark. The number of children in poverty has increased by 1.5 million since the publication of Born to Fail?. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds do worse educationally and their health is poorer. The report calls for a new course of action so that our children do not,
“grow up in a state of social apartheid”.
Of course, there have been signs of progress. Examination results have generally improved, with more children going on to higher education, but that is not the whole story. Alan Milburn, the Government’s adviser on social mobility, criticises all political parties for being on,
“a carousel of short-termism that prevents them from addressing the deep-rooted causes of inequality and social immobility in the UK”.
He blames decades of entrenched elitism, which may well worsen because of the breakdown in the link between economic growth and the wages of most workers. Sir Michael Wilshaw, Chief Inspector of Schools, has criticised selective school systems for not improving social mobility. Top jobs tend to go to people who have been to elite schools. There is a concentration of power and influence in the hands of a minority.
Of course, for some children, education is the way out and up—the opportunity to achieve potential. This is not about picking out small numbers of children and sending them to elite schools; it is about increasing opportunity for the majority of pupils. Some academies have failed; some free schools have failed, with damage done to children before mistakes have been discovered. Government cuts to the Building Schools for the Future programme have led to shortages of school places; for example, in Swindon North.
An independent taskforce chaired by Professor Chris Husbands reported last week and recommended major reforms to the 14-19 education system. The report states that we have a poor record of delivering high skills and effective qualifications for that 50% of young people overlooked by the Government who wish to pursue a vocational route through education. The report proposes a rigorous technical baccalaureate—I am now looking at the noble Lord, Lord Baker—driving up standards in English and maths and strengthening character and resilience, about which I shall say more later. It is simply disgraceful that we lag so far behind other countries in this area.
I worry about the early years, about access to childcare, about the depletion of Sure Start centres and about the paucity of school counsellors, careers advisers and school nurses. I worry about the seemingly growing emphasis on the expectation of academic achievement without the building blocks being in place to achieve that.
I turn to some things that schools could do which may enhance social mobility—I am trying to be realistic here. The first is to improve pupils’ confidence in their own ability to learn and communicate, and have ambition. I have discussed personal, social and health education in this House more than once. Let me give one more inspiring example from a primary school that I visited two weeks ago. The school is in Watford, an area with much disadvantage. It has set up a centre of excellence for social learning and it makes visible the social aspects of learning in every part of school life. The centre brings together academic research and practical innovation to improve outcomes for pupils—and it does improve outcomes, providing significant benefit to individual children, accelerated progress and raised attainment, a learning community, and maximised individual learning potential. Such a model can and does improve social mobility early by giving pupils social and academic confidence.
It is interesting that a Demos report in 2011 noted that soft skills such as communication, teamwork and application were as important as academic ability in the prediction of earning rates at the age of 30. A DfE-commissioned report in 2012 found that children with higher levels of emotional and behavioural well-being have higher levels of success in school. The CBI in 2013 called for a more “rounded and grounded” education, concluding that personal behaviours and attributes play a critical role in determining personal effectiveness. What more do we need to convince Government that PSHE is a vital component of a child’s development and essential for social mobility? I think that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, understands this, but do his colleagues in government? If so, I wish they would say more about it.
The Association of School and College Leaders has identified the need for other structural changes in addition to good PSHE; for example, improving quality in the early years workforce, building on London Challenge and City Challenge, monitoring the comparative performance of academy sponsors, more incentives for teachers and so on.
Another intervention which can have a great impact on social mobility is the mentoring of pupils—a one-to-one, adult-to-young person system which boosts ambition and achievement. The Aspiring Professionals Programme is open to ambitious students who may not have family members with relevant educational achievement. The Amos Bursary, of which I am a supporter, enables ambitious black boys to achieve through a mentoring system and other support. Some banks have teamed up with the Sutton Trust to boost access to careers in banking through training and support. Future First connects students to successful role models—people who went to their own school and are now at college, university or in jobs. It builds communities of former students around the school, most of which have twice the national average of free school meals, to provide support through mentors and work experience. The programme has had a significant impact. Eighty per cent of students say that they feel more confident that they can succeed in the world of work and 75% say that they have been encouraged to work harder.
The word “support” has occurred many times in my previous sentences. I wish that all means of support could be drawn together. Every child who could benefit should have a mentor from outside the school, someone who will push and encourage. More industries and communities could be encouraged to supply such people. Will the Government survey mentoring and support schemes to see whether they could be extended? I know that good practice in PSHE is being surveyed, thanks to the Minister’s intervention on the Children and Families Bill but, as I said, it is not emphasised by Ministers.
Social mobility is indeed a complex issue. It is societal as well as individual. All children deserve opportunities to succeed, and we are up against some enormous barriers. We must get the 14 to 19 offer right. We must increase mentoring and ensure that PSHE is integral to every school. I hope that some of the thinking in this debate will have an impact on improving systems to enable children to achieve their full potential in their lives.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend for initiating this debate on a topic which is of importance to those in education but, even more widely, to the well-being of our society. This debate follows one called by the noble Lord, Lord McFall, last month on the impact of inequality on social mobility and the report from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility published earlier this year—a group chaired by my noble friend Lady Tyler, who has great expertise in the subject and whose contribution we await with interest.
There have been several reviews, reports and strategies on the subject in recent years, all from slightly different vantage points, but with general agreement that social mobility makes for a fairer society and a stronger economy. As the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission highlighted in its excellent report:
“When one in six children—2.3 million—is officially classified as poor, it exacts a high social price. There is an economic price too in wasted potential and lower growth”.
My noble friend Lord Storey highlighted in his comments the importance of parents at the start of children’s lives. Indeed, they are crucial to children’s development, helping them learn and build their self-confidence. Government can play a part at that early stage by improving the focus on parenting skills within relationship guidance, which forms part of such programmes as PSHE or citizenship. Such lessons are appropriate before young people become parents.
The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, is a doughty champion of PSHE, but the Minister will be only too well aware of the support around the House for the teaching of life skills within the curriculum. I draw to the Minister’s attention the report from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, which makes a recommendation to,
“bring together organisations from across the third and private sectors to develop an innovative parenting campaign with clear strategies to target those at the lower end of the income spectrum”.
What progress is being made on that? How might such a parenting campaign be introduced to the parents of the future while they are still at school?
As has been mentioned, the OECD has found that in the UK, more than in other countries, the start of a child’s life has a powerful effect on that child’s educational success. We seem to face greater challenges than elsewhere in breaking the cycle of deprivation for children from disadvantaged backgrounds and giving them the skills, self-confidence and aspiration to better themselves. We very much welcome the moves that the Government have taken with such developments as the pupil premium to try to redress that balance.
Schools have a distinct part to play in preparing their pupils for life with the soft skills that are essential to social mobility, but they also need to prepare them for the world of work. I add my voice to those concerned at the direction being taken over careers advice and guidance. The indications are that many schools have been struggling to provide comprehensive advice about the range of opportunities in the world of work that their pupils might consider. From primary school age, a child’s interest can be captured by exposure to jobs and careers outside their immediate experience. Children are open to new ideas, through visits to workplaces and by coming into contact with people who are engaged and enthusiastic about their work—people who they may never have come across within their close circle of family and friends.
Those links with the world of work help them make connections between lessons and future opportunities, between study and business, between paying attention in class and earning a living. They can have a very positive effect on behaviour and engagement in school studies. For all young people, these connections are important. They are particularly so for those who do not take naturally to formal learning but who may have talents and find motivation in craft, technical or business activities—such as are encouraged in my noble friend Lord Baker’s technical colleges—or indeed in modern languages; I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, that foreign languages can also open doors and broaden aspiration and understanding.
The Government rightly take pride in the growth of apprenticeships—not only in their numbers but in their status, as they come to be seen as a valid alternative to university. This standing is helped by their extension to higher-level skills and into professions such as insurance, accountancy and the law. What place will progression to apprenticeships have in school league tables? I note what my noble friend Lord Baker said about the importance of the employability of school leavers. We hear all too often of young people aspiring to apprenticeships being encouraged—sometimes even coerced—into applying to university instead. What encouragement is given to schools not only to record progression to apprenticeships but to celebrate their students’ success in being taken on as apprentices with the same enthusiasm as they report progression to higher education? It is very difficult to find from school reports, from their websites or indeed the notice boards in front of their schools any mention of where young people have gone on to these keenly sought future careers.
Of course, many professions used to have direct routes from school, which were as highly regarded as graduate entry and led to careers that could be just as successful. Those were the days before university fees. Those routes were a powerful means of enabling social mobility. Increasingly, young people are finding it attractive to learn and earn, but it is important that their achievement has the recognition that it deserves from schools and from parents. It would benefit the country if, as recommended, non-graduate routes became the norm across the professions.
I would not wish this debate to pass by without paying tribute to youth organisations for the part that they play in social mobility. They provide invaluable services, particularly in more disadvantaged areas, and give young people an opportunity to develop personal and social skills, take responsibility, gain confidence and learn both self-respect and respect for others. The Minister made reference to the value of the cadet forces, as indeed did the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle, and it is encouraging to hear that there will be an increase in cadet units within schools.
With uniformed organisations such as the cadets, Scouts, Girl Guides and many others, and with schemes such as the Duke of Edinburgh Award, young people are faced with challenges. They learn how to manage risk and how to channel their youthful exuberance into positive action and to develop in ways that, whatever their start in life, can lead to a fulfilling and useful life. Schools have a part to play in encouraging their pupils in these formative activities.
I join in the tributes to the teaching profession; the teachers that I know work amazingly hard and give of themselves to their pupils, often at very low rates of pay. They can be transformational in young lives. However, society as a whole has a responsibility to enable young people to achieve their potential. Schools have a key role in opening up opportunities, encouraging aspiration and making the UK a country where, whatever a child’s start in life, he or she will have a chance to shine.
Lord Northbourne (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing forward this debate today on this hugely important subject. I was, however, very disappointed that his introductory speech made it perfectly clear that the Government believe that schooling is only about cognitive learning and cognitive achievements. I am going to follow the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey and Lady Garden, in taking a rather different view. In my view, the key to social mobility is hope.
The glass ceiling of social mobility is a lack of self-confidence and self-belief. Self-belief, or the lack of it, starts in the family on the day the child is born with the experience of being, or not being, loved, the experience that to someone you matter and the experience of feeling safe and belonging. That is why to me social mobility depends so much on the first few years—indeed, on the first few months—of a child’s life, which is usually spent in the family. That is why I believe that families are important and that we should be including them in our debate today.
This Government and, indeed, previous Governments have for some time realised the importance of what are called the early years. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, referred to seven years. Some would perhaps say that the first three years are the most formative in a child’s emotional development. Governments have introduced many excellent interventions, not least children’s centres, the positive attitude towards supporting childcare and so forth, but what they have so far significantly failed to do is to encourage and require schools, particularly secondary schools, to develop in their pupils the personal and interpersonal skills—the soft skills we were talking about—which they will need to create a secure, nurturing environment for their child in the home.
Why are we not doing more through schools to promote those so-called soft skills which are so central in creating a secure and supportive family environment for the young child? Why are we not doing more in secondary schools—indeed, in all schools—to help pupils grow up to be positive, confident, hope-giving, love-giving parents and to ensure by doing so that a child grows up full of hope?
I remember being privileged to give the prizes at a school in Eastbourne for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. It was a weekly boarding school. I was talking to the headmaster, a very wise and experienced man, and as I had some time to fill in, I asked, “How do you make contact with new pupils when they arrive in the school?”. He said, “I sit the child down in my study, I make him comfortable and say, ‘Tell me about yourself’. Half an hour later, sometimes three-quarters of an hour later, the child has told me about all the awful things that have happened in his life, how hopeless he is, the mistakes he has made, all the disasters and how everything is hopeless. When he dries up, I say, ‘Right. Now you’ve told me about the things you can’t do. Let’s talk about the things you can do’”. I suspect the Government’s education system is not really addressing that problem.
The importance of hope and self-belief was strongly emphasised four or five years ago when Ofsted did a special report on 16 primary schools and 12 secondary schools, I think, which had outstanding records but were taking young people from very disadvantaged areas. Ofsted was trying to find the common factors which made those schools so successful. Among the first three common factors was every child believing that they can succeed. There is a message here for those who think that only academic learning is important.
The ability to rear a child who can succeed is highly relevant to the issue of social mobility. We need to do more in schools to develop confident, competent adult parents. Some of your Lordships will know that I have been boring on about parenting in your Lordships’ House for the past 25 years. What surprises me is that so little is being done by the Government or local authorities to try to improve the quality of parenting children are receiving by doing more to prepare teenagers when they are still in school for the challenges they will encounter as they grow up and become parents. What is needed is not prescriptive advice to pupils about the details of parenting, but, as noble Lords have already suggested, to develop, as they grow up in school, the self-confidence, understanding and personal and interpersonal skills which they will need if they are to be able to give their children the confident love, support and guidance they need in the home in the early years. I call upon the Government to recognise the importance of these relationship skills and soft skills and to do more to encourage secondary schools to recognise that their job is not only to produce academic success for young people but to prepare them for the challenges of adult life.
I shall mention one more thing: teachers. Teachers are a great problem. There is a terrible lack of teachers who have any training or skills in developing social skills and helping children to develop their social skills. Will the Government please do more to ensure that secondary schools take this responsibility seriously? Our secondary schools should be encouraged to accept that their role is to educate the whole child and to prepare their pupils for the challenges they are likely to meet as they move into the adult world.
The Lord Bishop of Winchester
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for the opportunity of this debate. I shall focus on the impact made by initial teacher training on social mobility. I begin by quoting from the Government’s 2010 White Paper The Importance of Teaching:
“All the evidence from different education systems around the world shows that the most important factor in determining how well children do is the quality of teachers and teaching”.
I have a particular interest in teacher training as I am the spokesperson for the Bishops on higher and further education, and in my diocese 12% of the University of Winchester’s intake is trainee teachers wanting to play their part in transforming lives and enabling social mobility. I also declare a personal interest as my daughter has recently trained as a teacher on a mixed-mode teacher training programme and is now a teacher working in a school just north of Southampton.
We are debating the impact of schooling on social mobility, and noble Lords will know the Church of England’s long commitment to education, particularly for the disadvantaged. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle has well illustrated this. My main point is that teachers can make the greatest difference to pupils from the most disadvantaged communities. Thus without a strong cohort of excellent teachers, we cannot hope to inspire disadvantaged young people with the confidence to contribute to society and equip them with the tools to seize opportunities. Academic success is vital, but so too is capacity, resilience and spiritual maturity.
It is from this perspective that I question whether the Government’s policies for improving the quality of teaching have been fully effective and will enable social mobility. I am particularly concerned about the School Direct programme. In fact, I suggest there is an urgent case for rethinking arrangements around initial teacher training before a crisis develops. School Direct gives individual schools responsibility for running teacher education. The school adapts the programme for the local needs and distributes funding as it sees fit, buying in training, sometimes from universities, either as part of a PGCE or as a bespoke qualified teacher status package.
In a number of examples, the policy has worked very well. Canterbury Christ Church University for example, which has an Anglican foundation, is working with a great many schools over a wide area to support their recruitment and training of teachers in the classroom. Indeed, I visited that university yesterday and I commend to noble Lords the work of the Kent and Medway Progression Federation, energetically promoted by Canterbury Christ Church. It is a partnership between universities, local authorities and more than 40 schools and colleges in Kent and Medway, working together to raise the attainment and aspirations of disadvantaged young people who may not otherwise consider higher education. Results have been extremely positive, with 26% of the tracked participants from deprived areas progressing to higher education. However, I fear that these successes cannot be taken as the rule, and there are three major concerns about aspects of School Direct I should like to share with your Lordships.
My first concern is that the take-up of the School Direct programme has been rather disappointing, and raises the danger of a damaging teacher shortage very soon. The move to School Direct has been rapid. This year, the allocation for School Direct will jump from 25% to 37% of all ITT places. However, last year it was widely reported that only two-thirds of School Direct places had been filled. This might not be particularly troubling had the core allocations for existing universities not also been reduced. For every School Direct place unfilled there is one less teacher available in the classroom. Your Lordships will be aware that primary schools are in many areas experiencing a high pressure on places, and this pressure will soon flow through into secondary schools. This is not the time to pressurise schools to take on training responsibilities when many are desperate for new teachers. The Government must surely recognise that this policy is simply not attractive to schools in the numbers they first imagined. If the aim is to get good-quality teachers teaching in the classroom, then now is the time to free up those surplus places to universities, many of which have 200 years of experience in training some of the best teachers in the world.
My second concern is that by placing planning decisions in the hands of individual schools, the Government are jeopardising the financial viability of our teacher training institutions. It is my privilege to be working with the 11 Anglican universities which account for 24% of primary initial teacher training and 12% of secondary. They are enormously valuable institutions for our whole education sector, and they see initial teacher training as core business. The School Direct policy is undermining these institutions and runs the risk of putting them out of business.
They report a number of very real dangers. For example, as I have said, a significant increase in places allocated for School Direct limits the funding for traditional PGCEs. Last year, Cumbria University lost 60% of its core PGCE provision. Secondly, where universities are involved in providing training for School Direct places, this is at significantly reduced funding per student. It also requires each contract to be renegotiated every year—not only a labour-intensive process but an arrangement that makes long-term strategic planning extremely difficult, not to say almost impossible. Lastly, as the number of classroom-based routes into teaching increases, universities are finding it harder and harder to identify school placements for their students. This means that one of the central advantages of university-based training, the opportunity to work in a number of different schools, is left vulnerable.
I am not asking your Lordships to be sympathetic to Anglican universities. Rather, I am highlighting that their vulnerability has grave implications for social mobility and our wider education system. These institutions host high-quality, long-standing ITT departments which provide specialist lecturers and resources, access to continuous professional development and leadership training. Through these universities and their ITT departments, research is conducted on the efficacy of different teaching practices. Our understanding would be deeply diminished without them.
These universities also maintain and develop a mixed ecology of teacher training routes by keeping open the opportunity of university routes for those who are keen to start their career with the benefit of the highest-quality tuition and the widest possible experience of schools. To jeopardise these institutions and all that they offer the education system is surely an act of great folly which will not serve a Government committed to improving social mobility, but will rather pull apart the very institutions dedicated to the primary engines of social mobility: excellent teachers.
My third concern is that we run the risk of demoting the academic rigour of teaching that underpins its practice. I have referred already to the importance of teachers in equipping young people from disadvantaged backgrounds with the tools they need to take advantage of opportunities placed before them. Excellent GCSEs alone are not a passport to success. What we ask of our teachers is not to fill empty vessels with knowledge, but to inspire young people, to nurture them, and to give them the confidence to make the most of themselves and to contribute to society.
If we are to ask this of our teachers, we must provide them with appropriate training. On-the-job training is good, but not if it focuses too heavily on planning, marking and behaviour management at the expense of developing a confident understanding of pedagogy and child development. It is from that deeper background and understanding that teachers can impart a vision for getting on in life and work.
My own experience, in a previous role, has allowed me to see, around the world, the importance of education—to see the power of quality teaching and teachers for transforming students from disadvantaged backgrounds, nurturing them to become the nation-builders of their countries. However, quality teaching and teachers need quality preparation and training and I am not sure School Direct will do it on its own unless it is set within a wider ecology of university and research.
The universities are not against classroom-based routes into teaching. Canterbury Christ Church University was the first institution to take up the Teach First programme, and has been deeply involved in its development since then. Indeed, more widely, 18% of all School Direct allocations for 2014-15 were in partnership with Anglican universities, often as part of a PGCE.
I have no doubt that many School Direct programmes are working very effectively. However, we must keep a careful eye on how the policy is implemented because it is the young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who will be disproportionately hit by the looming crisis. I urge the Government to reflect again and to promote a truly mixed ecology of teaching training that allows for proper planning and forward thinking, ongoing research in education as well as an entrepreneurial spirit for how teachers are trained.
Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)
My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for initiating this debate with such a powerful speech. His own record in offering truly life-changing opportunities to hundreds of children in the Pimlico Academy stands as an example to all providers, whether local authorities or sponsors of free schools and academies.
Although I am a once-upon-a-time philosopher, I will resist the temptation to deconstruct the phrase “social mobility”, complex as it is. We all know what we mean by it and recognise it when we see it. If an individual rises in social and economic status over their lifetime, and if they rise beyond the social status of their parents, we say that they have achieved social mobility. Much of our proper concern as a civilised and prosperous society has been towards breaking what Keith Joseph—the late Lord Joseph—called the cycle of deprivation, in which children from the poorest parents never rise above the level of their parents’ deprivation, and nor do their children or grandchildren. All Governments have tried to find ways to break that cycle, beginning with the Education Act 1870. Rightly, in my view, they have looked to education as the means of breaking it. A brief look at the history of those efforts, all of them top-down, may help us to understand why the Government are tackling the issue in a new way now.
I will not weary the House with a complete history of education, but I must pause on the effects of the Education Act 1944, which was so earnestly well meant and which was, in my view, so sadly misguided. That Act provided that something between 15% and 25% of young people, depending on the local authority, would be selected at age 11 for grammar schools. These academically excellent schools provided the young people with the skills needed for white-collar jobs at the least, or with access to the professions via university at best. Although the excellent ambition for technical schools was a part of the Bill, we now know, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, so eloquently said, how little was achieved in providing that demand in technical education. That left up to four-fifths of the population sent—as failures—to secondary modern schools which provided at their best a generalised and undemanding curriculum, which in my less kind moments I describe as soup-kitchen education.
That model was based on an economy which had already begun to die. It assumed a structure in which 80% of workers could be unskilled—an economy which our competitors in Germany, Japan and elsewhere had abandoned. They saw the need for all workers to be skilled in industries where technology was taking the place of the unskilled workers, and they rejected our 1944 model in favour of a model which ensured that 100% of their young people were given a demanding education, both academically and technically. Our error did more over those crucial post-war decades to deny social mobility and economic growth, as we saw in our competitors. So many of our young people simply lacked the skills for the changing economy.
Like many of my generation, I hoped that the move to comprehensive schools would reverse our educational and economic decline. By offering all children access to the same good-quality education, we hoped that all would leave with employable skills and opportunities that had been denied to their parents. I will not enter the argument about why the original comprehensive failed to deliver. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis—the much admired pioneer of the academies movement, as several noble Lords have said today—makes clear the reason that they failed in his excellent book Education, Education, Education. He commented that,
“too many comprehensives were simply a continuation of the secondary moderns”,
and that even the celebrated Holland Park and Pimlico schools,
“soon became educational battlegrounds in the face of low standards, poor teaching and hard-left politicisation”.
So, comprehensives were not the answer, though for my part I remain wholly convinced that selection is not the answer. I do, however, believe that elective differences in the route through education for older pupils—a formula which works for most other successful economies and which has been offered by the UTCs of the noble Lord, Lord Baker—should be the way ahead for this country.
Experience over the years had demonstrated all too clearly that top-down reform and diktat has had little impact on the quality of education. As many began to understand, it was the quality of the leadership and the initiative of the individual school which determined the success of its pupils. Some years ago I was entranced by the words of a Scandinavian educator who declared at an international conference:
“The school is the living cell of the body educational; it is the health of the individual school we must address if the body is to become well”.
I equally rejoiced in the words of the chief inspector of Ofsted at the launch of his annual report this year, when he said that we should end the categorisation of children as either “deprived or well-off”. Their social background, he said, is not the arbiter of their success; there were simply “lucky or unlucky” children: those who went to a good school were lucky; those who went to a poor or inadequate school were unlucky. This puts the emphasis on the quality of education each child receives and not on their social background.
We have spent far too long being emotionally concerned about poverty and too little concerned in shining a light on the crucial contribution of schools. Good schools have been shown time and again to be able to grant success to all their pupils regardless of background. It was this understanding which led to the founding of independent state schools, first started as CTCs in the 1990s, as has been said, and then becoming the academies movement, first under the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and now hugely accelerated under my right honourable friend Michael Gove.
Academies have autonomy over many aspects of their provision. Their quality depends on the leadership and expertise of the head with her or his staff. Control from the centre has been replaced by responsibility at the school level, with freedom for the professional judgment of heads and teachers to meet the needs of their individual children and the community from which they come.
One story of an academy trust illustrates the huge success of this approach. My noble friend Lord Harris of Peckham started one of the first CTCs back in the 1980s. Now there are 27 academies in the Harris Trust, 17 secondary and 10 primary. Those schools were previously classed as failing or near failing: 45% of the pupils qualify for free school meals, and 44% come from black and ethnic minority backgrounds. Under their previous management thousands of children would have been consigned to educational failure and to a lack of any prospect of social mobility. Now, 20,000 “lucky” children are finding success; 72% of the pupils in these schools achieved the magic five good GCSEs—well above the national average—and that improvement has been sustained year on year since the schools became independent.
The Harris Trust story has been matched up and down the country by over 3,500 schools, now with over 2 million pupils. These schools have taken the opportunity to determine their own professional destiny, backed by powerful and supportive governing bodies. These independent state schools are innovative, using all the professional skill and judgment of the teachers and their leaders. Uniformity imposed from the state or local authority too often stifled innovation and the flowering of professionally creative schemes in the academies has been a delightful feature. Examination success has not been their only contribution. Music, art, dance, drama and creative writing have flourished as teachers have felt free to share with their pupils their own enthusiasm and skill. To the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, I would say that good teachers very much recognise the need for emotional development, emotional skills and emotional intelligence.
Not all academies and free schools will succeed; in any system there will be problems and failures. However, there are mechanisms for those to be dealt with quickly and firmly in the way that local authorities manifestly found it difficult to do with the huge number of failing schools under their control.
We are watching a revolution in education. It is a benign revolution. It is contributing hugely to social mobility and has brought life-changing opportunity and the experience of success to thousands and thousands of children. The academies movement is one which all who care about the future of our young people should welcome and celebrate. I am pleased to do so in this debate today.
Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)
My Lords, I will also start by congratulating the Minister on initiating this debate. When I heard his first few words, I thought that I would agree with much of what he was to say, because he talked about the importance of education in breaking the cycle of deprivation and praised teachers, and I was very happy with that. However, I am sorry that he then went on to be so aggressively political in his opening remarks, and so critical of the previous Labour Government. That made me cast my mind back to 1997, when class sizes were often over 40, and we had to make a pledge to bring them down to a maximum of 30; when many of the schools I visited had leaking roofs and even outside toilets, and we had to have a fantastic building programme to get them up to scratch; and to the initiatives we took on pre-school education and on early years generally, especially with Sure Start.
I am very proud of many of the things that the Labour Government did, and I am sorry that there has not been more scope from what the Minister said in his early remarks about us working together on these issues. In all parts of the House there is a great deal of consensus about what should be happening in education and how we should value each and every child. We can all agree that social mobility is important and that schools play a vital role in that. Incidentally, I hope that we can also agree that education is more than just about the product of providing social mobility. Education is of value in its own right for each and every one of us, as it gives people confidence, the equipment they need to face their lives and, indeed, enjoyment.
The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, has just said that it is very difficult to define social mobility. I have read with some interest some of the definitions that have been provided. I saw one that said that absolute mobility is whether a person is better off financially than their parents. Mention was made of Alan Milburn, whose concerns might be very well founded, given the level of personal debt that we see many young people having and, indeed, the difficulties that people will have providing for their pensions in future. So that type of social mobility is actually quite difficult. Then I saw a definition about relative mobility—a measure of which rung of the ladder a person lands on compared with their parents. Personally, I am not very comfortable with using any definitions like that whatever. Perhaps the noble Baroness is right that we should just say that we know what we mean, but I think that we should be careful about how we assess an individual’s contribution to society and, indeed, to their families.
What I think that we have to accept from the research is that in 2014 there is still, from all the analysis, a dreadful and unfortunate link between poverty and limited educational attainment. Too often that is true—not universally or absolutely, but too often. When the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, talked about language skills, her comments reinforced that. Too many social and economic outcomes are almost predictable, with too much in education reinforcing advantage and, indeed, privilege. To my mind, education should be about countering disadvantage, not reinforcing privilege, and about giving very real opportunities to all—and I mean all—of our children. We should be grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle for putting the context in which many children are making their decisions about their futures.
Many of us got educational opportunities that our parents never had. That may make us more socially mobile, but I would put it that we got opportunities to make decisions and have more choices about our lives, and that is what we should be talking about when we try to advance every child. I do not think that the amount of debate on the structures of our education system provides the answers. I am sorry that the Minister boasted so much today about the success of free schools and academies and placed so much emphasis on that, not least because, as we all know, there have been some very well documented failures that have recently been reported. Just the other day, I heard about Goole High School, which became an academy in 2011 when rated good by Ofsted; since November of last year, just two years later, that school has been put in special measures, with Ofsted concluding that it was inadequate in all categories—a pretty horrific decline in a very short time. When the Minister was talking about academies providing a step change, I do not think that he was thinking of it going in that direction.
I could certainly boast about the success of many local comprehensives that I know of in many different parts of the country, but that does not get us very far. However, I must take issue with the Minister when he says that local authorities often leave schools in difficulty to languish in failure. I do not think that trying to undermine what local authorities do in that way really helps us at all. I wish that he would not push the idea that academies and free schools are the answer to everything. Yes, we should have some flexibility. The Minister knows that my football club, Bolton Wanderers, which is on a high at the minute—we will see how long it lasts—has recently been given the green light to have a free school, which is almost a pupil referral unit with, of course, an extra dimension. I am not saying that we should not look at how to provide different structures in education, but we should be cautious in presenting any one form as a panacea.
Thinking about this debate made me think back some time. More than 50 years ago, in a primary school in a council estate in Bolton, a class of 10 year-olds sat the 11-plus examination. Education at that time required children to stay at school to the age of 15, but those children who passed the 11-plus for grammar schools were required to stay at school to 16 and complete O-levels and examinations. Indeed, parents had to sign an undertaking to that effect. I passed my 11-plus and my parents signed happily. My best friend also passed the 11-plus for grammar school, but her parents refused to sign the form. They just did not see the point of it. Our head teacher eventually persuaded them to change their minds and sign, and my friend went to grammar school—albeit without a school uniform. She was a bright girl and did very well; but that was not the end of the story. When she was 15, her mother found her a job in the local shop, took her out of school and paid a fine in the magistrates’ court to effect this—no exams, no qualifications and no further education. They were not bad parents; they just did not see the point of education.
I am not sure that all the factors that influenced those parents are not still present today. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, pointed out, not all parents read to their children, have books in the home, see education as a priority or understand its importance. If we are going to counter disadvantage, we have to tackle the causes of parents not being engaged and deal with this vital issue, because anyone who has ever taught in a school knows that, if parents are interested and involved, teaching that child is so much easier. That is why we cannot simply talk about structures or parental choice—and we certainly cannot just talk about league tables and results. As others have said, we have to look at this issue long before children go to school.
I have a few suggestions to make to the Minister on the other things that we should be doing. We need a different outlook, which sees education as being about opening doors for young people, not creating a series of hurdles, which I think we are still doing. One day I hope that we can discuss credit accumulation for qualifications. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, touched on the fact that we have to value not just the traditional pinnacle of education. What he has done in terms of other pathways, university technical colleges and career colleges is something that we can all learn a great deal from, not just in providing routes for young people but in giving real value to some of those alternatives.
We also have to teach children how to learn. The Minister said that we had to emphasise facts, and facts come into this—they play a part. But we have to teach people using modern technology in teaching, mentoring and monitoring, and do it in a way that is relevant to the modern world, whether it is talking about relationships, social media dangers or the dangers of payday loans. The noble Baronesses, Lady Massey and Lady Garden, both made very important points in that respect.
I come back to one of the essential points. We have to start very early. In a way, I was disappointed not just with the closure of so many Sure Start schemes but with the attempt by some in government almost to undermine them. If there are problems, we should build on the experience and look to close them. We need to look at what we need to do to engage parents as soon as possible. If you have a baby in hospital today, you are given a freebie bag when you go, with free nappies and free creams. There should be a children’s book in there, and things that would start to engage the child in the right way. When we talk about steps to advance social mobility, we have to start talking about the period before any child ventures into school.
Baroness Greenfield (CB)
I would like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Nash, on introducing this highly important topic for debate. As a neuroscientist, I can appreciate only too well the impact that the environment, and thus the experience in the home and the classroom, can have on the physical brain processes, and subsequently on the unique individual that each child will become. The human brain is astonishingly “plastic”, which is why we as a species occupy more ecological niches than any other on the planet.
Our brains are constantly adapting to wherever we are placed and to whatever we are doing. Even thinking alone can drive an observable physical change in the brain. An intriguing study, which is much cited, showed this very well. It involved three groups of volunteers, none of whom could play the piano. Over a five-day experiment, the control group was exposed to the experimental environment but not to the all-important factor of five-finger piano exercises, while a second group learnt the exercises. Even within five days, you could see an astonishing change in their brain scans. However, the third group was the most remarkable. In this group the subjects were required merely to imagine they were playing the piano, and their brain scans showed almost identical changes to those who did the physical practice. Therefore, the important issue here is not the contraction of the muscle but the thinking that preceded it.
Such endless neuronal updating on a “use it or lose it” basis is particularly marked in critical timeframes during development within the first 10 years or so of life. So, if that is the case, what would be the ideal educational outcome in terms of mental prowess? For example, the Education Minister, Michael Gove, has suggested that all young children should learn a poem, but surely the more important, and harder, goal would be that they should understand it. There is a temptation sometimes to adopt the Gradgrind approach from Dickens’ Hard Times to aim simply to transmit facts. After all, you can readily train a brain—in certain cases, even that of a parrot—to give the right responses to a given input and to answer factual questions with factual answers. However, such success in, for example, activities such as Trivial Pursuit or pub quizzes is not regarded by even the most enthusiastic fans as the apotheosis of intellectual endeavour. Facts on their own are not enough; information is not knowledge. While collecting information may be simply gathering dots, knowledge is being able to join them up, seeing one thing in terms of another, and thereby understanding each component as part of a greater conceptual whole.
I would like to suggest that the more connections you can make in your brain across an ever wider and disparate range, the more deeply you will understand something. This connectivity, which is achieved through the plasticity of neuronal connections during development, could then be the key feature that defines real learning, and which sets the human brain above and beyond the information processing of a computer.
The work of the late educational neuroscientist John Geake provides hard evidence for this proposition. Geake’s imaging studies on gifted children revealed that their brains showed greater interconnectivity than the brains of those with average cognitive ability. Specifically, Geake’s findings led to the idea that giftedness is linked to analogical reasoning: for example, the analogy of the extinction of a candle with the extinction of life, as in the famous soliloquy in Macbeth. This ability to make connections where they did not exist before—to connect the dots—probably accounts for exceptional talents and creativity in many areas, including art, philosophy, mathematics, science and music.
So, how can the education system best provide an environment conducive to making such connections? Some might think the answer lies in digital technology. One meta-analysis of 46 different original studies involving a total of more than 36,000 students showed significant positive effects of computer use on mathematics achievement. Similarly, a recent large-scale analysis reviewed how educational software programs could beneficially affect reading outcomes in some 84 studies based on more than 60,000 students. Yet a report commissioned by NESTA in 2012, entitled Decoding Learning, concluded:
“In the last five years UK schools have spent more than £1 billion on digital technology. From interactive whiteboards to tablets, there is more digital technology in schools than ever before. But so far there has been little evidence of substantial success in improving educational outcomes”.
How can we reconcile these seemingly conflicting perspectives? I think it is done by flagging one all-important additional factor. The findings of the meta-analysis had indeed suggested that various reading programs, predominately computer delivered, generally produced a positive, but small, effect on reading skills. However, the really significant factor to emerge time and again has been that innovative technology has much more positive impact when accompanied by teacher support, so the greatest promise of digital devices lies not so much in the software and screen delivery themselves but in their use in close connection with teachers’ efforts. For anyone who has read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, or Goodbye, Mr Chips, this will come as no new insight. Nothing beats an inspirational teacher—not even an iPad.
Education research and practice supports this argument too. Sir Michael Barber has stated that the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers. Meanwhile, Pearson Education, in a recent report on worldwide school attainment, states that there is no substitute for good teachers. This conviction would seem nowhere more relevant than in schools in low-income areas. Take, for example, Mulberry School in Tower Hamlets—a non-selective, fully comprehensive school in which 76% of the pupils are entitled to free meals. The school has a policy to concentrate its resources on developing teachers and using as much of its budget as it can to pay for extra teaching and support for learning in a multitude of ways so that it maximises the amount of focused attention which pupils receive. The results have already shown considerable success. GCSE results doubled between 2005 and 2011 from 34% gaining A* to C with English and maths, to 78%, and, most commendable of all, 80% of students at this school now go to university.
So when it comes to giving a child the best start in life, to realise their potential irrespective of their background, we need to focus on ways of helping the young brain to join up the dots and to understand deeply what they are learning. This is best done by someone who can interact with them personally and act as an intellectual guide—a mentor. A mentor has been defined as someone who believes in you more than you believe in yourself. Could not more of the education budget go on ensuring that those key players—the teachers—have the best possible pay and conditions, so that they can focus on being much needed mentors, especially in cases where, as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has already flagged, a child comes from a background where perhaps they have not been able to believe in themselves at all?
Lord Lingfield (Con)
My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for choosing this important subject for debate and refer noble Lords to my education interests in the register. I hope that your Lordships will forgive me for straying out of the realms of primary and secondary schools into an area of education which, if it were more successful than it is at the moment, could practically guarantee an increase in social mobility in this country. I refer, of course, to the further education sector.
In 2012, the Government’s own statistics show that, of 16 year-old school leavers, an incredible 28% were functionally innumerate, at best with the arithmetical accomplishments normally associated with a nine year-old, and just under 15% were functionally illiterate, using much the same criteria. These young people cannot even enter the gateway of social mobility unless further education providers pick up the pieces and teach them skills that should have been dealt with at primary school. It is an appalling indictment of our teaching system that this should be so, and that so many pupils have been let down by it. One sincerely hopes that the reforms which the Government are carrying out, and which the Minister mentioned today, will help to alleviate this serious problem in the future.
I pay tribute to the dedicated teachers in our FE colleges who attempt to remediate underachievement in these subjects, although for many of their students, it is almost too late. The huge task of teaching what are often kindergarten skills to these young people, also, in my view, has a profound effect on FE providers and too often distracts them from their primary mission, which should be to teach vocational subjects to those who, we hope, will be the technically accomplished workforce of the future that will enable this country to outperform its competitors in a difficult economic climate.
I have in the past couple of years had the privilege of visiting many excellent further education providers, and yet I am also aware of many that are mediocre and, indeed, a small minority that are, frankly, of extraordinarily poor quality. One of the ways in which the Government hope to improve quality across the sector is gradually to identify the very best providers, to give the professionals who run them and those who govern them as much autonomy and freedom from government control as possible, and to allow them to flourish and spread best practice throughout further education.
To this end I have accepted the challenge of creating a new body that will receive into membership only the most distinguished providers. This will be known as the Institution for Further Education and I have petitioned the Privy Council for a royal charter, which will give this group of colleges, whether public, charitable or private, a collective status akin to that which a university has. Although the new body is being created with seed-corn funding from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, to perform its task properly it must be authoritative and entirely independent of government. The petition makes it clear that, like the other royal chartered institutions, it will be governed by professionals from the sector itself.
Prospective member colleges and private and charitable providers will have to demonstrate high-quality provision, including consistently good teaching, learning and assessment. They must: provide direct routes to higher education; have strong leadership, management and governance; and provide first-class professional development. They must show a culture of innovation and high levels of satisfaction from students. Most importantly, as my noble friend Lady Garden of Frognal reminded us, they must have effective involvement with employers and a strong contribution to economic well-being and growth in their areas. They also must have a high commitment to transparency. Evidence will include Ofsted grades, robust self-assessment reports, an inspection regime, rigorous peer review, and references from a range of employers.
There are some 1,100 providers within the sector, serving more than 4 million learners. One of their strengths is that they are a mixed economy, dealing with further education, full-cost work for United Kingdom and foreign customers, and, in the case of most colleges, higher education. As Ofsted deals with only a part of these providers’ work, and the Quality Assurance Agency only their degree courses, there is at the moment no single quality-assurance association for them, and the new royal chartered institution will endeavour to be that.
It is our hope that a significant number of providers will aspire to membership during our first years and that the institution’s device, which it will be entitled to display, will be a mark of the highest quality for students and employers alike. In the fullness of time there is no reason, in principle, why every FE institution should not qualify for membership. As with other such bodies, any that are seen to be diminishing in quality could be asked, of course, to demit their membership.
We hope that opportunities will be given for collaborative work and the spreading of the tradition of a high-quality service to students throughout the sector, thereby driving up vocational standards nationally. I hope very much also that in time the new institution will help bring some rationality to the plethora of vocational awards that bewilders employers and students alike. In 2012 there were 164 national vocational awarding institutions and many thousands of vocational qualifications. The Government have in the past two years, as the Minister told us, bravely set about rationalising the approved list and have cut it considerably. However, the time is long overdue for the establishment of a simple set of benchmark qualifications for the sector that are easily understandable by all and guaranteed to be of high quality. In higher education, bachelor’s and master’s degrees are easily recognisable by employers; there should be parallels at FE level.
There is no doubt that the gaining of a valuable vocational qualification by a young person not only leads to a greater sense of self worth, to far more opportunities for gainful employment, to the possibility of entry to higher education and to the respect that professional skills bring in our society, but enhances immeasurably his or her chances of social mobility.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, it is interesting that I have not totally disagreed with anyone who has spoken in this debate—it is always nice when you can pretend you totally disagree with someone. But the theme that is coming across from the debate is that everyone understands that it is complicated and difficult to talk about social mobility, the lack of it, how to encourage it, and the role that education plays. We all agree that it has a role. Education allows you to become more socially mobile.
It is also worth pointing out—no one has done so yet—that if you fail in education you can become downwardly socially mobile. I have made that point because I want to draw attention to hidden disabilities as a factor in this cocktail of reasoning and pressure. I will talk primarily about dyslexia because I am dyslexic and know more about it than the other conditions, but hidden disabilities are a group of conditions that covers such things as dyslexia, dyscalculia and dyspraxia, to which can be added the higher-functioning areas of autism and numerous other conditions. It means that you do not relate to your environment, particularly your educational environment, in the way in which others do. It means that you are always going to have more problems with the educational part of your life than others will.
This is probably very much accepted now. When I first spoke about this subject nearly 28 years ago in this Chamber, it was more of a revelation. People asked, “Is it there? Is it really happening?”. Now the vast majority of people understand and accept dyslexia. We still occasionally hear from the “It doesn’t really exist; I have a miracle cure” brigade. However, if we accept that these factors are there, how do they affect this argument about social mobility?
After first accepting that the factors are there, we must then identify them. If we cannot do so, it does not really matter what is in place or what understanding we have because we will not be helping the right person at the right time. We have a history of saying, “Yes, we should do something”, but not putting enough in place to do it. All political parties bear a degree of blame for this, because it is much easier to pass a piece of legislation than it is to change structures, provide funding, and change the structures that administer the funding. There is not much doubt about that.
How does this affect our outcomes? What if you cannot access, for instance, the written word successfully enough to get a qualification that says you have passed? Most structures and exams are training paths towards taking a job that provides status and money. Both are factors in social mobility; having enough confidence in yourself to apply or encourage your children to do so is another factor that we should not forget. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, talked about things that are “not for us” and not relevant. These things are still happening, not in exactly the same terms but the principle is still there, based on the assumption that we know what normal is—“Normal is me”.
What do we need to do to improve this situation? The first thing we must do is to train our foot-soldiers—that is, our educationalists at all levels—to identify these problems early. This situation is better than it was, but we are still not investing enough in the teaching profession as a whole for it to be able to say with confidence, “I think that person is dyslexic and they should see X and Y”. There are still far too many cases in the dyslexia world of the parent going to the teacher and asking, “Why is my child not succeeding?”, and that is what inspires the movement through the machinery which this House and others have put in place.
Of course, my noble friend will point out that the big change that we are celebrating today—the big change in that recent Bill—means that we now have a duty to identify the problem, and to identify those at risk, if I remember correctly. When the Bill was going through the House, I said that this was a fundamental change, but do we have the foot-soldiers in place to do this easily and well? I would say that at the moment the situation is better than it has ever been, although it is still nowhere near good enough. However, at least having that duty is a step forward, so let us not get bogged down in it too much.
However, what happens if we do not identify those at risk? If we do not, we find ourselves with that hard core whom we cannot reach, and that hard core is reinforced by the factors that I have already spoken about. When you choose a life partner, one of the big things that you tend to look for is that a person has had the same educational experience as you. Two people who can discuss books, theatre and so on, and who at least had a chance to go to university, have infinitely more in common than a couple where one of the two has consistently failed. Increasingly in the dyslexia world, we find that generations of families have all had dyslexia and nobody has passed an exam. We are increasingly finding that the people in the last couple of generations of such families have never had a job, and that contributes to the downward spiral. That happens when you fail to be identified as dyslexic, when you are not given the necessary support and when your parents do not have the desire, the money or the time to make sure that you get the help that you need within the education system. This goes back to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor. It happens when you are not economically active and do not receive the support to catch up.
It should be remembered that one of the problems is that you are on a conveyor belt in the system. You have to hit targets at points in your life that are directly related to your age, and if you are not achieving, you are slipping back. Also, if you are told that you are a failure, you are even less open to that prolonged process of still having to achieve things which you know other people have already done.
Whatever progress we have made in the nearly 30 years since I first spoke about this, unless we concentrate on the early recognition of this problem, we will always compound it. There is an argument within the prison system about whether dyslexics are over-represented by a factor of two or a factor of five. We know that the prison population has the lowest level of literacy compared with any other part of the population, at 50% to 70%. Possibly having some more substantive academic work done in that field would help, but these are the groups where you find the by-product of reinforcing failure by not identifying it.
I hope that my noble friend will have some words of encouragement on this, because unless we start to get to this hard core at the bottom of the pile—this group that reinforces failure—it will always be there. It will always be difficult to reach and to help. People in the education system need to start saying, “I think you have a problem”, as opposed to individuals having to go to the education system and saying, “I think I have a problem”. First, we should remember what some people know as normal—that nobody in their family has passed an exam—and, secondly, we should remember that people do not want to be told one more time that they are stupid. If we do that, we will start to chip away a little at our hard core and make the system a little more accessible to the people in that group. It is not a miracle cure but it might take away some of the problem.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for the opportunity of this debate and I add my salutation to all those wonderful teachers who go beyond their duty of care. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, that an individual teacher can make all the difference. In my own case, I remember my wonderful teacher, Nicolle Freni, who made all the difference to many of the girls whom she taught.
I believe, and have always believed, that through the opportunity of education people enhance their chances of having greater access to improved personal and financial circumstances. That is why many parents like mine crossed the seven seas. At the same time, having myself experienced an English education and other institutions, I can say with confidence that being better educated and becoming integrated into the mainstream of life does not necessarily protect a person from the walls of prejudice. Thus, for some, social mobility through education can never be guaranteed.
I and my cohort of the late 1970s and early 1980s in the East End of London fought for the notion that not only do we have to address the quality of schools and equality in education but we also have to tackle head on the structural and societal deficits and inequities to kick-start a generation of communities who are stuck simply because of where they came from and where in the inner city they and their families settled.
As an activist in the very exciting period of the 1980s, I remember how I and others hoped that social policy changes enveloping poverty, poor housing, education, health, employment and childcare would have a significant impact on improving people’s life chances. Although it has taken many more decades than we had envisaged and anticipated, our intervention has produced some positive developments, although those are far from meeting our expectations. Overall in the same population, poverty, unemployment and health inequalities remain deeply embedded, and social mobility is, at best, stagnant. Indeed, for the poorest in our society, opportunities to get on and prosper have probably shrunk.
Far from creating social mobility, the variable provision of primary and secondary education too often compounds social immobility according to available resources and, sadly, postcodes. Just as the Americans mythologise a land of opportunity that is a fallacy, we are guilty of speaking in favour of a social mobility that is truly out of reach for too many in this country. The OECD study, which has already been mentioned, found in 2010 that Britain had the lowest intergenerational income mobility of all the developed countries in the study. This pattern can be found in relation to attainment throughout the life cycle. Taking GCSEs as an example, in 2011 34% of pupils on free school meals achieved five good GCSEs including English or maths, compared with 62% of pupils from more prosperous homes. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, that it is not necessarily about social circumstances; it is what is provided in many schools that can make a fundamental difference to pupils.
Take the top universities—five elite schools sent more pupils to Oxford and Cambridge than 2,000 schools comprising two-thirds of the entire state sector. We know the statistics. Take the professions—more than two-thirds of the public servants and leading lawyers studied by the Sutton Trust were privately educated, while the thousands of graduates in Tower Hamlets and neighbouring boroughs cannot access the hundreds of thousands of jobs on their City doorstep and the increasing number of our home-grown graduates are staffing the rising pockets of areas which have local branches of Sainsbury and Tesco. As Sir John Major observed last year:
“In every single sphere of British influence, upper echelons of power in 2013 are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or the affluent middle class”.
He said that, counterintuitively, our education system is not an engine of social mobility and that too often it reinforces social division.
The truth is that there is scarce room at the top for accommodating diversity and for disadvantaged groups. We are not an equal society when it comes to men and women, majority and minority groups, the able bodied and the disabled. Social mobility will remain cloth that is cut by the elite and a matter for the conjecture of social scientists rather than of social ambition or justice. Higher spending on primary and secondary education over the past decades has not succeeded in rectifying this. Money alone will not create opportunities unless we root out institutional and societal prejudices and inequalities.
The gentrification of east London and the docklands has had little impact on the social mobility of the longer-established Bangladeshi, Chinese and Somalian families. Most second-generation people born and educated here can look in awe at the skyscrapers, penthouses and townhouses which are beyond their financial capacity. With too little in the way of mobilising the consciousness of the large corporate businesses that occupy these neighbourhoods, most workers commute in daily. The ongoing regeneration has certainly not catapulted the British-born generations into social mobility or given them the opportunity to take up any meaningful leadership position and senior jobs in the neighbouring square mile.
Even the magnificence of the Olympics and its aftermath has had only little, limited and peripheral benefit for the local communities—bar catering and retail jobs. The stagnant social mobility of past decades has revealed that economy, growth and higher overall educational performance will not create social mobility when accompanied by inequality. Intervention targeted at the most disadvantaged is required to open up opportunities still enjoyed by only a few.
Needless to say, children with special needs are eight times more likely to be permanently excluded than those without SEN. Among children with autism, 27% have been excluded from school compared with 4% without autism. The Children and Families Act, which has concluded its passage through this House, will replace special educational needs statements with education, health and care plans. I welcome the Bill’s attempt to reduce the labyrinth of bureaucracy that confronts children with special educational needs and their carers by co-ordinating the provision of schools, NHS and social services. But removing the legal obligation for services will, I believe, further alienate the vast numbers of already disadvantaged students in the education system, and it is regressive. I am particularly concerned about those who are autistic and their carers; our mishaps will almost certainly create another underclass for whom social mobility is out of the question. I wonder whether the Minister will take on board social mobility in the upcoming review of strategies for people who are autistic.
As someone who has struggled and fought against apartheid in the education system, I understand that no Government or institution alone can root out inequality totally. However, as someone who has local government and parliamentary experience, I also believe that we must make our best efforts to erase structural inequalities so that all children have equal opportunities, at least in terms of the result that they leave school with, and that when they face the prejudice and barriers in their adult life, we will have equipped them with the skills, strength and aspiration for them to develop sufficient tools to compete in the workplace and in life as an adult generally.
Social engineering of the education system, depending on the Government of the time, uses mainly already disadvantaged children as pawns to trade statistics. We know that in reality any impact on the state of education would have been accumulated over decades, not over the term of any particular Government.
Raising the Bar: Closing the Gap is an admirable ambition. The panacea of upward social mobility will remain an ambition unless the best that primary and secondary education has to offer is constructed with equity and social justice. I agree with the comprehensive analysis of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle that we have to be all-encompassing in our response to unlocking the full potential of all our children.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, it is a privilege indeed to take part in this debate, not least because it was initiated by my noble friend Lord Nash, for whom I have enormous respect. I did not find his speech rhetorical or partisan—I found it compelling and impressive, and his logic was unarguable.
I declare an interest as leader of a London borough. Perhaps I should also say, in the light of some of the things that have been said implying that the grass was once so green, that in the 1990s I was for a good time a member of Sir John Major’s Policy Unit at No. 10, with responsibility for education—a sort of precursor of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. There, like him, I had experience of the tenacity and, at times, ferocity of those who opposed the kind of reform that Mr Major wanted in terms of creating opportunity for all—the creation of Ofsted, the publication of school results, and so much else. Rarely, in a life of public service, have I found such a shocking lack of humility or indeed any sense of responsibility, as was displayed by some of those who had peddled and clung to nostrums in education which were manifestly failing and have manifestly failed. Many were complicit in what I think were lost opportunities and the waste of young lives. Some, at best, washed their hands week by week in the Times Educational Supplement as Beveridge’s “giant of ignorance” stirred. England slid down the tables of international competitiveness and a generation and more of young people, almost invariably the least privileged and most disadvantaged, were let down by those who underasked of them, attacked knowledge-based learning and dumbed down standards. My noble friend Lord Nash is right to be angry about this, and I believe that that feeling is shared by many on all Benches in this House and outside. I wholly agree with what he said about examinations, curriculum content, the tyranny of politically correct methods and so much else.
It has always been the case that reformers such as my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and my right honourable friend Michael Gove are accused of acting in haste or out of ignorance. But we need urgency; we need determination. I speak as a strong admirer of what Mr Gove is seeking to do. I say to the House and to many who criticise him that his life story and his humane intellect speak to us of what good education can achieve. He is right to act quickly and decisively. The Prime Minister is not here to listen, but I trust that Mr Gove will remain in office to complete the work that he has begun.
I think that this debate’s title is something of a truism. As other noble Lords have said, social mobility is the essence of all education. Is not the purpose of education to show young people the best, teach them the best and bring out the fullest potential in all? The great betrayal is not to ask the best and the most of all and to stretch every child. I owe all that I have done in my life, after my parents, to those who taught me. Like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle, I was the first in my family to go to university. Like the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, I do not necessarily think that a university education is the be all and end all, but my teachers got me there. I was taught by a remarkable group of people, from my year 2 primary teacher who recognised that my love of books and precocious reading did not make me strange but opened up a great thing in reading and those teachers in my secondary school. The other day I came across a yellowing prize day booklet. All their names were in there—it made for wistful reading. Almost none of them had a formal education qualification, although they had degrees in subjects about which they were passionate. They would never be allowed to set foot in a maintained school now as they would not have so-called qualified teacher status. Frankly, I cannot think of a more qualified group of teachers to bring out the best in young people and I honour what is sadly now mostly their memory, as I honour all good teachers who seek to bring on the young.
I support what my noble friend said about training and the freedom given to free schools and academies to employ those without qualified teacher status. We need diversity in education, including the best teachers wherever they come from. Diversity also means a wider range of schools and choice. Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the topping-out of a new sixth-form school in my borough where we have invested £25 million or more in bringing sixth-form choice to young people in all our secondary schools. If your Lordships will allow me a whimsical aside, I must say that this change has been bitterly opposed at every stage by my Liberal Democrat colleagues on the council who have voted against sixth-forms at every stage—a quite bizarre policy from that party, although I do not expect my noble friends here on the right of me to defend that.
Some youngsters will still choose to go to FE colleges; some will want the technical course that is so wisely and brilliantly being opened by my noble friend Lord Baker. It also must be right to offer the option of sixth-form choice with the attraction that that offers to specialist teachers and the example that successful more mature youngsters offer to younger children. We need to help young people to move on in the best way for each of them, and I believe that inspiring peer models within schools are incredibly important in education. Had I more time, I would also say how much I support, in the cause of diversity, faith schools which do outstanding work in primary and secondary schools often, as we heard from the right reverend Prelate, in some of the toughest inner cities. I deplore the attacks now being made on faith schools. How perverse it is to wish to destroy such islands of excellence and their ethos, as if we are not all taxpayers mutually contributing to the diversity of free education for all.
As part of diversity, I welcome academies and free schools. All our secondary schools in Richmond are now academies, but most have become so in informal partnership, working as a local family of healthily competing but friendly schools. I am a little suspicious of very large chains of academies. Again, like the right reverend Prelate, I believe that the spirit of place is important in a school. A good school should be at the heart of its community; it should not be remote-managed from afar. I was pleased to hear my noble friend speaking about more multischool academies where local primary and secondary schools work together, pooling their experience for the benefit of their area. We are working actively on these concepts locally now and I hope that my noble friend will reiterate his support for that.
The independence of schools is something that people in local government and everywhere must accept as a great benefit. In my Downing Street days we worked to support the new grant-maintained schools, whose parents actually voted for self-government. How sad it was to see those parental hopes snuffed out by an incoming Government after 1997, along with a number of other things which offered opportunity. It is good to see many academies, CTCs and free schools now recapturing that self-governing spirit, following on from the work of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I thank him and my noble friend for that, and I hope that we will hear unqualified support for academies and free schools from the Front Bench opposite in the wind-up.
Having spoken strongly in support of my noble friend’s policies, I hope he will allow me a couple of more qualifying comments. First, the system is too loaded against local authorities. I understand the suspicion of local authorities. I well remember in the 1990s how some councils worked to thwart and even threaten self-governing schools. But the world has moved on. Not all local authorities are hostile to academies, CTCs and free schools—quite the reverse. We still have a statutory duty to provide school places and welcome good schools from any source.
I understand why successive Governments might want to stop local authorities preventing or hampering new academies or free schools, but the law now even hampers their creating them. It seems absurd that department officials do not always openly discuss with local authorities sites for free schools. That makes it much harder for free schools and planning school places alike. It is absurd that councils seem the only institutions not able to propose new academies or free schools, except at the fringes. We would not want to do this to run them; running schools is for others. I believe in the support of academies and local authorities have a contribution to make. I hope that my noble friend will consider that as the law evolves.
Perhaps I may make a special plea from the point of view of the London area. Will my noble friend on the Front Bench beat the drum at the door of the Department for Communities and Local Government to stop its damaging policy of allowing the uncontrolled change of offices into residential flats? We are seeing blocks going that could have been free schools and prices are being forced up to residential levels beyond the Education Funding Agency’s pocket. This is happening for quick financial gain, with the developers required to contribute not one penny towards new schools for the children of the new residents they are packing into former offices. It is a destructive policy with a potentially bad impact on medium-term education provision in London. I do not expect an answer now, but I plead with my noble friend and Mr Gove to use all their powers of persuasion to stop this soon.
I will not trouble your Lordships further. I am enormously heartened by the courageous steps being taken by my noble friend and Mr Gove. They have my strongest personal support in all they are striving to achieve to improve the life chances of all.
Lord Graham of Edmonton (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to make a contribution to the Thursday debate club because many, like me, look forward to the relaxed opportunity that we have of speaking without the Whip and about our own experience. If we are talking about social mobility, there is no better place to start than at the bottom. That is where I started on my social mobility. I was the eldest of five children, born in the 1920s. My dad was unemployed in 1930 and finally got a job in 1939, when the war started. He was on what we would call the dole, and in 1937 he received the state benefit of 37 shillings a week. I remember discussing this with him. It was two shillings for each child and there were five of us, so that 10 shillings was very important.
Of course, I remember most the love and affection that I received from my brothers and sisters and from my parents. However, let me give two illustrations of the extent to which being at the bottom of social mobility occurred to me. One day I dashed home with a piece of paper in my hand and said to mam and dad, “Mam, dad, I have passed the exam, the 11-plus”. Dad laughed and mam cried. They reacted in that way because they could do nothing about it. There was little discussion about whether I would be able to go to the other school. Having earned the place and shown that I had some ability, that was it.
I finished up at school as head boy. When people ask, “What kind of a school was it?”, I say, “Well, it was not a secondary school or a grammar school; it was an elementary school”. I took an exam to move on from the elementary school, which I passed, but I was unable to go. Later on I got the opportunity to take an exam to go to Atkinson Road Technical School—my friend from Newcastle who sits on the Benches opposite will understand the geography—which I passed, but of course I did not go. In time, mainly through my own efforts but thanks to the good work of the National Council of Labour Colleges, the Workers’ Educational Association and the Co-operative College, I finally landed here.
I know that my friend from Newcastle will enjoy this extract from the Newcastle Chronicle which, under the heading “Remember When”, states:
“Haven’t you come a long way, my Lord?”.
That was me. I have not changed. It tells my life story and says that eventually I went on to the Open University. I remember that in the first class I was associated with was an 82 year-old lady who was taking advantage of the opportunities.
When we talk about social mobility, we must remember that there are many illustrations—I was delighted by the contribution of my noble friend Lady Taylor—of the reasons why people who have potential fail to take advantage of it because of circumstances. She mentioned a good friend of hers who left school at 15 because there was no incentive or opportunity to go on even though she could have done. The only question I want to ask the Minister, which I have asked before, is whether we can have a 2014 comparison with the days I am talking about. I am convinced that many people would have had the opportunity to go on last year and this year but failed to take advantage of it, not because they were unable to do it but because, primarily, their parents needed their wages to come into the house.
I can remember when I dashed home with a pair of boots and said, “Mam, dad, look, I have got a pair a boots”. At the age of 10 or 11, I had never had a pair of boots in my life. Dad said to me, “Where did you get the boots from?”. I said, “A policeman came to the school and gave me this pair of boots”. He hit me around the head. He said, “Tell the truth”. I said, “Mam, I am telling the truth”. What had happened is that two policemen had come into my classroom, whispered to the teacher and the teacher pointed out different people—Tommy, Willy, Wilfie, Charlie, Teddy. We all went out and we were all fitted with a pair of boots. Years later I spoke about this to my mam and dad and said, “Mam, when I told you about the pair of boots, you cried”. She said, “Yes”. I said, “Why did you cry, mam?”. She said, “Because I knew that the teacher had selected the poorest pupils in the class to get a pair of boots”. In those days, all I ever wore were plimsolls, sandals and sand shoes, but I got a pair of boots. When things like that have happened to me and other people, social mobility becomes meaningful.
I was grateful to get the Library brief on this. It is an excellent document, which lays out the various interpretations of social mobility. The greatest illustration of it, to my mind, is opportunity. If you have it in you and you take advantage of the opportunities, you may or may not get some of the rewards. I would welcome from the Minister—not today because I realise research may have to be undertaken—a statistic that will tell me, fairly and honestly, the number of people who fail to go on with their school education and drop out at the earliest opportunity, and which shows the intelligence that informs the teachers and others that this is because of economic circumstances.
I do not wish to extend the politics involved in this debate—which is primarily about education but involves politics as well—except to say that there are undoubtedly many children in school now who have demonstrated that they could go on but will leave as quickly as they can. This is not because they cannot go on but because their parents have decided to pull them out of school. I think this is a crime. We are talking about young boys and girls who may not be as fully aware as we are of what lies ahead, but who are denied the opportunity of going on.
The opportunity to debate these topics is very good. In his opening remarks, the Minister used the phrase, “Our brilliant teachers”. I know that the teachers’ unions will be grateful to have the endorsement that in the mind of the Minister they are brilliant. They do a fantastic job under circumstances which are far from ideal. I hope that out of this debate there will come a better understanding not only of aspiration but of achievement.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, it is always a huge pleasure and privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Graham, whose powerful personal testimony brings vividly to life the rather dry term “social mobility”. I thank my noble friend Lord Nash for calling this debate. Certainly there can be no overstating the importance of this subject for both the long-term prosperity of the UK and a fairer society, by which I mean equal chances for all irrespective of background.
I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that if we want to give everyone an equal chance to succeed in life, our education system needs to function as an instrument of social mobility. However, as other noble Lords said, I fully accept that education has a wider purpose. Alan Milburn, the chair of the Child Poverty and Social Mobility Commission, said recently that when it comes to school, an “energetic focus on reform” is needed to narrow the educational attainment gap and “drive social mobility”. As we have already heard in this debate, some of that important work is going on.
A contribution to the thinking to which I would like to draw the attention of noble Lords is set out in the recent report of the All-Party Group on Social Mobility—here I declare an interest as vice-chair—called the Character and Resilience Manifesto. The report was drawn up in collaboration with CentreForum and the Character Counts! programme. It highlights the increasingly convincing case for how important attributes such as character and resilience are in terms of improving social mobility. The fundamental argument of the report is that in order for all children to have a fair chance of succeeding in life, character and resilience need to be given a stronger priority within the education system and should become the core business of all schools, as they are already becoming in some. It is this crucial piece of the social mobility puzzle, which has already been alluded to by other noble Lords, that I will focus my remarks on.
What do we mean by character and resilience? I think that language can sometimes get in the way in this area. It is really a shorthand phrase for a set of traits that are sometimes called the soft or non-cognitive skills. In my view, both terms are somewhat misleading as some of this is definitely tough stuff which involves a lot of cognition. Character and resilience traits are closely aligned with social and emotional skills—emotional intelligence, empathy, self-awareness and the ability to forge relationships with others. All of these are important. It also encompasses traits such as self-esteem, self-worth, confidence, a sense of well-being and the belief that one has a degree of control over one’s life, as well as things like mental toughness, application, delayed gratification and self-control.
All the evidence shows that character and resilience involve having the drive, tenacity and perseverance to stick with it when the going gets tough, to make the most of opportunities, to bounce back from life’s inevitable setbacks, not to accept second best and to be able to deal with failure. I have laboured that point slightly because I hope to get across the message that we are not talking about pink and fluffy things here; this stuff really matters. The other key thing the evidence tells us is that these character traits are not innate or genetic—a common misconception—but can be taught, and that, significantly, you can learn and develop them throughout your life.
While the core academic skills are of course an indispensable component of education, character skills have been empirically shown to be an equally important predictor of future success across all socioeconomic groups. The work of Nobel prize-winning economist James Heckman builds a strong case for the correlation between character traits and life chances. This is true not only because children with good character skills tend to do well at school—which they do—but because many of the skills that are valued in the jobs market such as self-reliance, teamwork, customer empathy, enthusiasm and being able to communicate well, are ultimately more about character traits than any particular academic skill set.
John Cridland, the director-general of the CBI, said recently:
“There is a danger that schools become exam factories, churning out people who are not sufficiently prepared for life outside the school gates … alongside academic rigour, we also need schools to produce rounded and grounded young people who have the skills that businesses want”.
That point has already been made by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. In light of this evidence, the question must be asked: how do we ensure that all students, regardless of their background, have access to an education that prioritises both academic development and character development? I want to stress that both are important. It is not a case of either/or; they are mutually reinforcing.
I am not someone who buys into the simplistic argument that if only state schools were more like private schools, the world would be a better place. Many state schools are doing a fantastic job in very difficult circumstances and facing various challenges. They have hugely talented and dedicated teachers who often work with significantly fewer resources than are available in private schools, but I do believe that both sectors could and should learn from each other and collaborate. As others have said recently, the so-called “Berlin Wall” between the two sectors should come down. That is true when you look at some of the differences between private and state schools. The former tend to put more emphasis on character and resilience, which is reflected in the wide range of extracurricular activities that are offered, as well as providing the resources to do so.
That leads me to the first major policy recommendation made in the all-party group report that I should like to highlight. We need to ensure that the Ofsted inspection framework, which we all know is a key driver of behaviour in schools, takes more account of the efforts made and activities offered in a school to develop these key non-cognitive skills. That means evaluating the extent to which a school provides opportunities for participation in character-building activities as part of its ethos. I agree with other noble Lords that competitive sports and links with the uniformed organisations can be highly beneficial. It might also include engaging with local charities or taking part in social action projects. It may indeed be part of the way the curriculum is taught, perhaps by providing leadership and debating classes alongside more traditional subjects, as well as ensuring that students are helped to deal with both success and failure, and attending to their own emotional well-being. I would contend that the way we evaluate our schools is the strongest policy lever we have for effecting change in education.
A model I want to mention briefly is that of the Bedford Academy, a charitably funded academy school in a deprived area that is modelled on the Knowledge is Power programme that was first implemented in the United States. Students at the academy receive marks not only for their academic performance, but in seven key areas: grit, zest, optimism, social intelligence, gratitude, curiosity and self-control. Although it will be many years before we can measure the full effects of these methods, students are already reporting feeling more aspirational and having a sense of possibility for the future.
As other noble Lords said, the greatest resource we have at our disposal for building character in all students is the teachers who are currently working in primary and secondary schools around the country. Our nation’s teachers are incredible people with wide-ranging interests and talents. If a maths teacher is an excellent chess player, if an art teacher has some previous training in fashion design, or if a science teacher plays football at the weekend, we ought to encourage them all to share these skills with their students.
In light of that, the second policy recommendation I want to highlight is that of incorporating extracurricular activities into teachers’ employment contracts. Just to be clear: this is not about asking teachers to take on extra work for no reward. It is primarily about rebalancing the school curriculum and allowing more time for these activities in the school day. Alongside this, we also call for an understanding of character and resilience to be incorporated into both initial teacher training and continuing professional development.
I should say at this point that I recognise that private schools have resources that state schools do not have. For example, in terms of extracurricular programmes, a state school is not likely to be able to do very much if it does not have adequate playing fields, drama rehearsal spaces, musical instruments and the like. That is why I would like to see private schools being encouraged to share their facilities for extracurricular activities. Many private schools have first-rate facilities in these areas, and, given their charitable status, it surely makes sense and serves the public interest to share facilities that are often underutilised with students in the state sector. This would be a significant step forward in terms of equalising life chances.
My final point concerns the geographical disparities in the quality of primary and secondary education. As the all-party group’s report, Capital Mobility, stresses, London has gone from having some of the worst state schools in the country to outperforming other areas in almost every category relevant to social mobility. One reason cited in the report for this imbalance is the visibility of potential opportunities. Students in London, regardless of their background, see opportunities for success all around them. Translating that positive thinking into all geographic contexts will require radical and innovative thinking, but it is essential in order to achieve the goals we are aiming for.
There is much more that I could say, but I think I have used all my time. I look forward very much to hearing the Minister’s response to some of the recommendations I have highlighted today.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (CB)
My Lords, I will be the 18th to thank the Minister for ensuring that we have this debate, although my thanks are none the less heartfelt for that and are very sincere. This is such an important topic and it is much appreciated that he succeeded in finding a slot that gave us more time than the usual two or three minutes.
The debate has focused on a wide variety of things. I have agreed with some of the points of view expressed, but I would vary from some of them. One of the opening points made by a number of noble Lords, and indeed in some of the briefings I have had, related to what we mean by social mobility. I find this a bit tricky. When I hear the two options of “absolute” or “relative”, I am reminded of Garrison Keillor introducing the mythical Lake Wobegon, that town in the far, far Midwest in which all the eggs laid by chickens were larger than normal and all the children were above average. That is one of the risks when we start to talk about social mobility. We need to try to understand not what the statistics are, but what Johnny would achieve if he were liberated and opened up to the future and what Mary would succeed in that she might not have otherwise. That is social mobility.
I had two versions of notes for this speech. One, in case I was called early, is packed full of statistics. Happily—as I suspected—most of those have already been produced, and I will not bore your Lordships with them again. The version that noble Lords will get now is, I fear, slightly autobiographical. I do not think I can match my noble friend Lord Graham of Edmonton but I will do my little best. I am from the north-east of Scotland, not the north-east of England, and we are a little less forthcoming with our emotions up there. None the less, I wanted to point your Lordships to a school and a date.
The date is 5 January 1946, and the school is called Woodside Primary School. That was my first day at that state primary. It was just after the war, with my father not yet out of the military, when we all fronted up to this state school. It was right at the edge of the north end of Aberdeen—which now extends for another four miles—and surrounded by council estates and old-fashioned tenement-type rented accommodation. That was its catchment area and the population it served. We went along as part of a three-class intake on that first day. My class had 48 pupils in it and our teaching location was a nissen hut that looked as if it had been used to store tanks during the war. It had a coke stove in the middle, which I am sure was a health hazard—there is no doubt that you would not get away with it today. The lavatories were outside and required more of a triumph of mind over matter than anything else even to contemplate going near them.
That was the physical context. Among the 48 of us and the other two classes that arrived at the same time at the school, there were no better-off families, just those who ended up with one shilling and eight pence in their purse at the end of the week and those who did not manage that. That was the difference financially between the children in the class and their parents. It was wartime but, happily, we mostly ate a reasonable diet because food was rationed. We did not have a lot of choice and could not go and buy expensive food, but you got your ration. Most of us, in one way or another, found that that was more than adequate. We wore our brothers, hand-me-downs and read the comics that they discarded towards the end of the week.
That is a picture of a state primary school that apparently had all of the disadvantages that we fear. Did it have anything by way of social mobility to offer? Where did the pupils end up? I will give some examples. Two of us became professors, one of electronics and one of philosophy—the electronics man was the smart guy. One became a Guardian features writer and one became a solicitor. Two became heads of school departments in excellent state secondary schools in Scotland, one in mathematics and one in English literature. One became a Fleet Street printer in the days of hot metal and, from what I remember of him, I dare say that he was one of those who caused Rupert Murdoch most trouble in getting out of Fleet Street. That was a big step, from the north end of Aberdeen to Fleet Street, but he wanted to become a printer and he did it. He was very successful. One became a radio and TV engineer in the early days. He was happy in his work and very good at it; if you had something flickering on your television screen, it was Colin you went for.
The whole range of careers, futures, jobs and professions came out of that class. The range was huge, which allowed some form of social mobility. Was this then some sort of urban idyll, which we could create again? Of course it had one huge flaw, referred to several times in this debate, which is the great divide between what came next: senior secondary and junior secondary. We did not have the 11-plus up in Aberdeen—they are tough guys there—we had an exam named “the control”. You were allocated. Occasionally, one parent would not allow their son or daughter to go on to senior secondary, which was a real tragedy, but there were those who moved through the system. That was a large—perhaps the biggest—flaw in the system but there were forms of upward mobility for all of us. A number went into the construction trade. You still had shipbuilding in Aberdeen then; later there was the oil industry and so on. They had the opportunity to move forward.
What allowed this? Was there anything different about that school? Just the obvious things: we had excellent teachers, who were absolutely superb. They were not soft; they were tough, and if Miss Paul called you out in front of the school, you walked shaking towards her. However, tough as they were, they taught us the core skills that an education should teach. We became competent in mathematics, reading and writing; perhaps less so in articulation, but that is a local, social thing. Perhaps if we had had to learn another language, that might have improved things, but we learnt skills that were basic to what we eventually all became. We had supportive parents, who were not involved that much but did care. My parents read books and had books around the house. They read books to me and took me to the local library—originally set up, interestingly, through philanthropy of one kind or another.
There were some other, some might say softer, skills. Football was quite good. I was not especially good at it, but the shining example was held up, as an aspiration for all of us, of an older pupil, Graham Leggat, who had signed professional forms for Fulham Football Club. He might as well have been going to Real Madrid as far as we were concerned. For us, that really was hitting the high spot, at least until a few years later, when we discovered that the guy down the road who kept engineering the defeat of our football team—a spotted youth with national health specs—was actually called Denis Law. That was good, in that we had competitive sport of a good order.
That was education and social mobility at work, and I do not see why we cannot do that now. There are different problems today, and we did not have schools with 39 and 40 native languages to deal with, but we did have a degree of poverty in the place. We did not have the possibility of overseas trips, holidays elsewhere or even visits to the farm. Occasionally, on the odd day when the sun shone, we went for a walk through Persley Den, doubtless slashing at the weeds as we walked down the road without caring about the future of the ecosystem, but that was it.
Are there any lessons to be learnt or is this just sheer self-indulgence? I think there are lessons, such as the excellence of the teachers and the grittiness of the head teacher, who was too old to go to the war but extended his working life to provide opportunity. He was great. He was tough but he was very good. We inherited the problem of the junior and senior secondary. Comprehensivisation was eventually brought in to solve that. I have to say it failed and it is because it failed that we are where we are in the OECD league tables. There are good comprehensive schools but we cannot all be Holland Parks—nor were we.
The education system has had to change and I salute those who have been bringing about that change, not least the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who is with us today, and the Minister and his colleagues in the current Government. The one lesson we take from comprehensivisation is that there is not a single solution. There is not a quick switch in the structure that will mean that all will be well and there will be social mobility. That is why I think we have yet to exploit the full richness of the possibility of giving more power to the schools and the head teachers; for example, through the excellent UTC system. We have to give these opportunities and allow schools to develop new ways. There will be failures and there will have to be a decent regulatory system, which, happily, I think we have in Ofsted, but we have to keep working with it.
All the drivers that we have had outlined to us, such as the excellent pupil premium, are necessary but are not sufficient. Eternal vigilance in the education system is all that will be sufficient. We place our hopes and expectations on the teachers, good leadership in schools and commitment to high standards.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, it is very good to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland. I remember doing so in a previous education debate, when he drew most interestingly on his reminiscences, and it was immensely instructive to hear more from his work of autobiography again today. I will speak chiefly about independent schools and social mobility in this debate, which we owe to my noble friend Lord Nash and which he introduced so brilliantly to us.
My noble friend will always be remembered in connection with the Children and Families Bill, which, by happy coincidence, receives Royal Assent today, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, told us. None of us who took part in the debates on the Bill—in my case it was only a small part—will forget the immense care and skill with which my noble friend dealt with the protracted proceedings through this House, which resulted in major changes and major revisions to this most important piece of legislation.
The impression of independent schools and social mobility that I would like to give the House differs from that conveyed briefly by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. I declare an interest as president of the Independent Schools Association, the ISA, and of the Council for Independent Education, CIFE. The association represents the interests of some 330 independent schools. The council acts on behalf of 18 colleges of further education, which offer a wide range of A-level subjects in extremely flexible combinations.
These schools and colleges, whose success year by year is reflected in the impressive examination results of their students, do not exist to serve a narrow band of well-off families. As a result of the truly excellent education they provide, ladders of opportunity are placed before children of families in all manner of different circumstances. The ethos that these institutions possess makes them profoundly conscious of the contribution they can make to the wider community in general and to social mobility in particular.
My colleague, Mr Neil Roskilly, the chief executive of the ISA, has summed up the predominant features of our member schools as follows:
“The 330 schools within ISA are often small and tend to cater for their local communities. Many of their pupils come from socially deprived backgrounds. A large number of our schools are heavily involved in working with local maintained schools. In some cases the fees represent not much more than the cost of places in the maintained sector. An open access scheme backed by the Government would enable us to realise our aspirations—and particularly our contribution to social mobility—even more fully”.
The essential basis of an open access scheme of the kind to which Mr Roskilly refers would involve the transfer of funds equivalent of the cost of a place in the maintained sector for each pupil taking up a place in an independent school participating in such a scheme. My noble friend the Minister has made it abundantly clear that the Government have no plans for such a scheme, but the House will understand that it is widely supported among independent schools, which want to serve their communities more fully.
The characteristics so prominent in ISA schools can be found throughout the independent sector, as I discovered during my seven years as general secretary of the Independent Schools Council, the ISC, which works on behalf of seven member associations—of which the ISA is one—and their 1,220 schools. These schools are firmly committed to the values of a meritocratic society, not those of a privileged elite. They are firmly attached to an idea commended to them nearly 75 years ago. In 1940, the year in which our country faced the severest trials, Churchill declared that,
“after the war, the advantages of the public schools must be extended on a far broader basis”.
Two years later, he said that he wanted 60% to 70% of the places to be filled by bursaries. Like many others at that time, he envisaged that the bursaries would be provided by national and local government to create an enduring partnership between the state and the great public schools, as he always referred to them.
If Churchill’s vision had been carried into effect, the history of post-war education in our country would have been very different, but no great scheme linking the independent sector with the state in the way in which he proposed was ever implemented. From time to time, ambitious plans were drawn up but the results were extremely limited until the introduction of the assisted places scheme by Mrs Thatcher’s Government. The scheme was widely mourned when the Labour Government abolished it in 1997, yet progress towards Churchill’s ideal—access to independent schools on a far broader basis—has taken place.
Wider access is being secured as a result of determined action by the schools themselves. The families of more than a third of pupils at ISC schools now receive help with the fees. The total value of that help is more than £730 million a year and more than 85% of it comes from the schools themselves, even though nearly all of them have little or nothing in the way of endowments on which to draw. Increasingly, fees are being reduced through means-tested bursaries, to the benefit of less well-off families and with the objective of contributing to greater social mobility over the years ahead.
How should the process be carried forward to make independent schools as open and accessible as possible? The headmaster of Eton College, Mr Tony Little, has recently pointed the way. He wrote:
“Schools should state their intent by publishing targets for increasing means-tested bursaries. At Eton at present, 263 boys receive means-tested financial assistance averaging 60 per cent remission of the fee, with 63 paying nothing at all. The short-term target is to raise that number to 320 with 70 on full remission – and then move on to the next target, with the ultimate goal of being, in the American phrase, ‘needs-blind’: in a position to take all suitable candidates irrespective of their family’s financial situation”.
The words of the headmaster of Eton make plain the extent of the ambition that can be found in the independent sector, particularly among the great public schools today, ambition which, if given practical effect, would have a profound impact on social mobility even in the absence of a government-backed open access scheme. Already, nearly 30% of pupils at independent day schools in England come from ethnic minority families, a figure uninfluenced by overseas pupils who study in ISC boarding schools. That 30% compares with some 26% from ethnic minority families in English maintained schools.
Widening access to highly successful schools is the most obvious way in which the independent sector can assist the increase of social mobility in our country, but there is a second way: through partnership with the maintained sector, to which my noble friend Lady Tyler referred. She mentioned the frequent references that are made by journalists and by politicians of all parties, including, I am sad to say, recently by the Secretary of State for Education, to a “Berlin Wall” separating independent and maintained schools. Such references create an utterly misleading impression of two antagonistic sectors interested only in exchanging insults. Whatever may have happened in the past, I assure my noble friend Lady Tyler that there is no such Berlin Wall today.
Up and down the country, partnership between independent and maintained schools is flourishing. There are myriad examples; I shall mention just one, well known to my noble friend the Minister: the London Academy of Excellence in Newham, east London, set up in 2012 and sponsored by a group of seven independent schools, including Eton. Yesterday, it was reported in the press that 100 students of the academy had received offers from top universities. Mr Little, the Eton headmaster, is an enthusiastic supporter of partnership because of the mutual benefits it brings. He has said that,
“our teachers and students have something to learn and something to give. Their understanding and skills are enhanced as much as those in the partner state school, if perhaps in different ways”.
Partnership is one of the unsung success stories in education today. When the House is not in session, this Chamber is used for various purposes connected with young people. I suggest that there could be no better purpose than to bring here students and teachers from both maintained and independent schools who have participated so enthusiastically in partnership work. Such an occasion might be organised under the auspices of the independent/state school partnership forum, with which my noble friend and I are connected.
There are some who say that independent schools are part of the problem of stunted, arrested social mobility in our country. I would like to suggest that they could be part of the solution.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I am one of three speakers in today’s debate with roots in Newcastle upon Tyne. All three of the speeches may have had different content, but the broad argument is the same: it is about enabling all young people to succeed. I therefore thank the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for the opportunity to discuss the role of schools in promoting social mobility.
I think that all speakers in the debate so far have acknowledged that, for social mobility to be a reality, a good education relevant to the career possibilities for each young person is an essential building block. Many have pointed out that a good education has to include experience not just of the world of work but of all the opportunities that could be available to that young person. As we know, career choices often need specific qualifications, not least in STEM subjects, but these career choices can be more limited if the right subjects are not taken at the correct time in a young person’s education.
Raising the participation age means that, next year, young people will have to stay in education or training until they are 18. After the age of 16, young people can study full time, do full-time work or volunteering together with part-time education or a training course, or they can undertake an apprenticeship. In addition, since last September, secondary schools and academies have had a duty to prepare young people for post-16 education and training and provide an individual plan for them. They have to engage with local employers and work-based training providers to offer young people the opportunity to consider options they may not have thought about. It is reasonable to ask how things are going with careers guidance given the raising of the participation age.
An Ofsted report published last September said that,
“the new statutory duty for schools to provide careers guidance is not working well enough”.
It reported that three-quarters of schools are not executing their statutory careers duties satisfactorily—that figure is very high. It identified the problem that links need to be much stronger between schools and businesses. That is a fairly obvious thing to identify because it is about the transition from the world of school to the world of work, but it has nevertheless caused me much concern, not least because there is a very real and fast-growing skills gap that is proving very frustrating for employers. For example, in the north-east of England, my home region, it is reported that there will be too few young people ready and trained to take over from skilled workers now in work but due to retire in the next five years, never the mind the growth in key sectors of the economy demanding more skilled young people. In a region with higher than average unemployment, this is an unacceptable situation to be in, and it is quite unnecessary.
I want to draw the House’s attention to a recent report by IPPR North published in January and entitled Driving a Generation: Improving the Interaction Between Schools and Businesses. The IPPR concludes:
“Today’s secondary school pupils are being let down by careers services that are not equal to the task of helping them navigate the increasingly difficult transition from school to work”.
In essence, it echoes the Ofsted report. The IPPR report makes three important proposals, to which I want to draw your Lordships’ attention: first, that the remit of the National Careers Service should be expanded to enable it to perform a capacity-building and brokerage role for schools; secondly, that careers advice should be more fully embedded in the curriculum for pupils beginning in year 7; and, thirdly, that all secondary schools’ careers services should be required to take the lead in developing stronger relationships with major employers and that all employers, especially those with skills shortages, need to be proactive in this process. This amounts in practice to something similar to what is taken for granted in Germany and from which we must learn.
The IPPR has emphasised that the trend towards skills hubs, currently being developed in some of our urban areas and which provide a central information resource, is increasingly important. Basically, they involve information hubs to show key contacts for each business online, what visits they would host and what advice they could offer schools in specific subject areas. As the IPPR says, making those resources easily accessible would enable careers services to spend less time finding local employers to engage with and more time giving face-to-face careers advice to older pupils and arranging the logistics of visits for younger ones.
I have come to the conclusion that we can turn the current problem into an opportunity, because this is not just about money. The cut in funding, amounting to £200 million made available annually to the Connexions service, has not helped but, on the other hand, we have the pupil premium which, as the Minister reminded us in his opening speech, amounts to £2.5 billion. That money is available but there is also the extra £300 million to which the Minister referred, the extra allocation. I am pleased to say that Northumberland Council has received £10.6 million of that, which I hope will be used to increase opportunities across the county to enable young people to be more mobile in gathering work experience.
However, it is not just a matter of money; it is a matter of culture, organisation and leadership. Increasing social mobility starts in primary schools, as a number of speakers have emphasised. Preparation for post-16 education and training should not be considered entirely a matter for key stages 3 and 4. From an early age, children should be encouraged to think about careers and the appropriate ways in which ambitions can be achieved. That means that children need to be taken out of their school and local environment at that stage, encouraged to see a variety of ways of earning a living and to develop their personal aspirations. As we have heard from a number of speakers, that is particularly important for children living in areas of deprivation, where their parents may not themselves have had the opportunity to develop their ambitions. Those children need to be taken to visit their local universities and colleges, to visit local businesses, to visit rural areas, if they live in urban areas and, perhaps, to develop links with schools in other countries or other parts of the United Kingdom that are very different from their own.
The critical issue is this: many young people are unaware of the opportunities available and what educational qualifications are needed to take up those opportunities. Conversely, not enough employers are taking up the chances to invest time in helping young people make the right choices.
In conclusion, I return to the IPPR report that I cited earlier. What is particularly interesting about its report—I hope that, following our debate, the Minister will look closely at it—is that it tested its conclusions. It arranged for four secondary schools to receive talks from local employers in the automotive industry and for pupils to visit local plants to learn more about the industry and the careers within it. It surveyed young people’s thinking about available careers and found that pupils had insufficient knowledge about which careers did and did not have science qualifications as prerequisites. As a case study, that is very important, because it demonstrates the gap that exists and points to a way to bridge it.
If one of the aims of raising the participation age is to enable young people better to understand the job opportunities that could be available to them and thereby to improve social mobility, the responsibility for achieving that needs to be shared between schools, careers advisory networks and business, but we must be very clear that the leadership role lies with a school’s careers service. I do not know when Ofsted will return to the issue, but I hope that the Minister will be able to say something further about that in his response. We cannot have another Ofsted report which says that three-quarters of schools are not fulfilling their statutory role.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for giving us the opportunity to participate in this debate. I thank the House of Lords Library for an excellent briefing paper. I want to talk about two things: social mobility generally and, secondly, the area of education that is my specific concern: arts education. I declare an interest as a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Art, Craft and Design Education.
A number of your Lordships have carefully called social mobility “tricky”. I intend to be more critical about the term, which is today widely accepted as a social policy and, indeed, perhaps even as a goal in itself for many individuals. However, I read carefully the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, in the debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord McFall, on social mobility on 6 February, which challenges social mobility as a major social policy, and indeed questions whether social mobility, in the sense in which it is usually meant, operates in anything other than a limited manner.
The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, gave an education example which is worth citing. He said that,
“you might introduce a policy to help kids from an inner-city school to get into a higher level of the system, but middle-class parents can easily mobilise to negate that because they are not stupid and they know what is going on, too”.—[Official Report, 6/2/14; col. GC 166.]
In other words, they are more powerful and school education is today a significant site of competition in itself.
That is an important point about the intransigence of the system as it stands, but it also seems to me that social mobility in the sense that it is commonly understood is necessarily predicated not only on the existence of but the acceptance of a hierarchical society, because the journey taken from A to B of those who in theory become socially mobile involves moving up rungs, including rungs perceived to exist within the educational system itself, which of course will leave people behind. That is the assumption that has to be made—otherwise there will be no journey.
To me, one of the big problems with social mobility as a policy is that it is too narrow; it is not ambitious enough; it is too piecemeal. Social mobility is not about society, it is specifically about individuals. There is nothing wrong with wanting all people to do better at the thing that they enjoy or are good at—alongside knowledge of the opportunities possible, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, pointed out—but a policy that highlights material gain, makes money the god and its accumulation the only worthy pursuit, which social mobility also does, is inevitably flawed and ethically questionable.
What of the people who are left behind: for instance, the children in those schools at the bottom of the league tables? Do we really want “getting on”, to use the old colloquial expression, to be the overarching social policy of our time, when perhaps we should be fundamentally challenging the structure of society itself—the extreme income differences that now exist and the shaming food banks? I would say that social mobility, because it makes unacceptable assumptions about our society, is not a solution to the problem but, unfortunately, part of it.
That is of relevance to school education not least because all sectors impinge on each other. Families that are poor, struggling to survive and feel disfranchised from or neglected by society—I believe that social mobility as an underlying social principle will further promote that sense—will have school-aged children who will grow up within that culture, so the job of good education, particularly in the early years, will be made harder at those levels within society, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, made abundantly clear.
The 2012 Institute for Public Policy Research report, A Long Division, by Jonathan Clifton and others states that,
“the problem is not just that a group of the poorest pupils fail to reach a basic level of education … Rather, there is a clear and consistent link between deprivation and academic achievement wherever you are on the scale”.
The overriding problem, then, is not bad education in itself, but greater and greater deprivation, which is something that league tables by themselves will not analyse but will in many cases reconfirm.
The comments in his blog of Peter Brant, head of policy at the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, about bright working-class children believing that they will not fit in at university, which were reported last week in the Daily Telegraph, made me feel how much social mobility has become an end justifying the means, and how badly we need an education system that is understood to be geared to all individual needs, rather than trying to create a normalising effect within society. It is not the gap between educational outcomes that we should primarily be attempting to close but the gap between rich and poor.
More specifically, I believe that good education should be broad-based education for all students, particularly up to age 16, and also—this may be a high ideal but it is worth fighting for—that every pupil deserves an education that is beneficial to them individually, which, ideally, means as much choice as possible, particularly at secondary school level, including vocational training, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, pointed out, has been so successful in Germany.
On the point about a properly broad-based education, it is for that reason that I would support STEM becoming STEAM. This is one of the major recommendations of last year’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee report, Supporting the Creative Economy, and is supported by Maria Miller, who made this clear in her speech at the British Library in January. Is the message getting through to the DfE that art and design subjects should have the same level of support in the core curriculum as STEM subjects, and is the department giving this serious thought? Having said that, though, and having listened earlier to the passionate and convincing arguments from the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, in favour of greater take-up of foreign languages, I wonder if there is not an excellent case to be made on strong cultural and economic grounds for extending STEM to STELAM, where L could stand for languages and A for art and design.
Choice, however, is also important. I want to take the opportunity to expand a little on the issue of discount codes, which I raised with the Minister in an Oral Question last month. The arts education community is very pleased with the decision to separate dance from drama at GCSE level so that they do not now count together as a single unit towards the performance tables. However, the GCSE art and design subjects, many of which carry the same code, JA2, need to be looked at as well. The Council for Subject Associations states that it is,
“unreasonable and illogical to assume that the differences between an endorsed Photography GCSE and Fine Art GCSE are of little significance”.
It seems fundamentally unfair that these two subjects, alongside others including textile design, should have the same code when the perhaps more closely related mathematics and statistics have different ones.
The National Society for Education in Art and Design says—the Minister may be particularly interested in this as the evidence that he is seeking—that:
“We have had teachers telling us that some art courses will no longer run in their schools, or that different art courses are put in one option block so that students can only pick one when previously they could pick two”.
It seems entirely logical that because of the enormous influence of performance tables, there will be a tendency for schools quite quickly to seek to mirror the performance criteria themselves to achieve the best outcomes in those tables. I hope that the Minister will review the GCSE codes for art and design subjects, and perhaps agree to meeting with interested parties on this issue.
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for this wide-ranging debate and particularly for its focus on social mobility. I am not an expert in the field of social mobility; I am a case study. I am so fiercely proud of the state education that I received that my title, The Vale of Catmose, was the name of my state comprehensive school. It is now called Catmose College, and in its 2012 Ofsted inspection it received “outstanding” in all four categories as well as overall. I warned your Lordships—I am fiercely proud.
I am the first generation of my family to go to university, and sometimes I still pinch myself to think that from a great-grandmother in service, to a mother who worked the most punishing shifts in a local factory, to my being on the Conservative Benches in the House of Lords is quite a journey. However, I am sure that I am not alone in becoming more and more grateful as time goes by for all the education that I received. A quick glance around the globe, particularly at girls’ education, should make us all appreciate the level of primary and secondary education available in this country at no cost to the child. Such education is pivotal and is the key foundation stone of all social mobility.
I have to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, that I have some unease myself with the term “social mobility”, as education is important for all human flourishing, and social mobility has somehow come to imply rising up some kind of economic ladder or even a class system. I have appreciated the Government’s focus on vocational education and apprenticeships, as I believe that good education will mean that someone at Eton who wants to be a plumber will be encouraged just as much as a budding brain surgeon in Brixton.
However, education enables children to be socially mobile in this limited sense, and the OECD report in 2010 marked us as the worst among the developed countries. Secondary education is particularly important to social mobility as this is when exposure to the workplace begins, particularly through work experience placements. It is so often a teacher who acts as a talent scout, spotting the gifts of their pupils, opening up horizons and offering them advice. When I began, at 16, to enjoy the more extensive freedom that existed at a sixth-form college, I was advised by a teacher that if I stopped skipping lessons I might get to a land called Oxbridge.
Before global technology brought the world to your smartphone, many rural children needed the world opening up for them. I recently had my nephew Kyle in for a week’s work experience. He lives in deepest rural Derbyshire, and he commented that he had never met so many people from different countries before. None of his friends did anything like as adventurous as coming to London for a week, but I could not help wondering how to ensure that such work experience was opened up more equally to children. Your first work experience placement is often the first rung on the ladder of your CV. As a former lawyer, I was interested to note the recent comments of the Supreme Court judge, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, about the “startling leap” in the proportion of privately educated and Oxbridge lawyers now entering the profession. She said:
“One of the causes of this, apart from … the networks that their parents have, is the”,
preponderance,
“of work experience and internships in today’s recruitment criteria”.
So although primary and secondary education is one factor in social mobility, it is not the only one. Law is not alone as a profession in this regard; fashion, the creative industries, the media and of course politics all suffer from this. It is through the Twitter campaign, Intern Aware, and friends who work at the BBC that I have been told that you can no longer get work experience at the BBC through knowing someone who works there; everyone goes through a central system and is selected on merit. Could this be a model to be adopted for all public institutions? I understand that some commercial firms, such as Deloitte, are also adopting that strategy. Would it not be possible for the wonderful Peers’ outreach scheme somehow to connect that to the work experience placements offered in your Lordships’ House? I do not just mean with Peers ourselves, as I have outlined.
Recently I was on a train to Cambridge when I stumbled across two 18 year-olds, who were clearly going for the day, sitting opposite me. Obviously, their parents were on the opposite side of the carriage, being embarrassing. They got into a conversation and one of them happened to mention that she had been here to do work experience. At an appropriate juncture I interjected into the conversation and asked for some feedback about that, and inquired where she had been. She mentioned some department to do with seals that I had never heard of. She had had a wonderful time, which I thought was great. I asked her, “How did you happen upon your placement?”. She replied: “My daddy knows the person who runs the department”. When the taxpayer is paying to keep the lights on and to keep the place running, I wonder whether we should be looking at a more objective system of selection.
Secondary education will also be aided to enhance social mobility with what I consider to be this Government’s most radical and exciting policy: to get rid of the divide, however one wants to term it, between private and public schools. However, I believe that this change and partnership began under the previous Government with the significant change to the Charities Act so that no longer is education presumed to be a charitable benefit. One has to produce some evidence to receive gift aid.
I am pleased to note the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, that schools have much to learn from each other. I commend Future First, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, which is bringing in something that private schools have been good at: keeping in touch with your alumni. The state system has lost much by not keeping records and not calling on the experience of those who have been through the system, which Future First seeks to introduce.
I grew up in Oakham, a small market town where, in relation to this divide, there is a context to look at. Oakham is dominated by one private school, but has a state comprehensive school. Over the years, when people have asked, “Where did you go to school?”, and I have answered, “Oakham”, they have immediately leapt to the assumption that I went to the private school. Back when I was being educated, there was complete separation. It was not safe for us to play sport against each other. We went to different bakeries at lunchtime, and we were instructed to use different newsagents. I know that things are changing, but the Minister would do well to look at geographical—
Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
I hate to interrupt the noble Baroness, but I cannot resist asking her whether she is aware that Oakham School and Uppingham School were founded by Archdeacon Robert Johnson in the 1580s for poor boys and poor girls.
Baroness Berridge
Yes, I am aware of that. Indeed, when Oakham was a grammar school my father passed the 11-plus to go there. I say that that was when I grew up. I believe the context is changing, but there are sometimes particular geographical issues which matter to children growing up in such small areas. There can be that divide between children at the private school and children at the state school. It perhaps does not matter if you live in London.
Most encouraging for this fiercely proud state-educated Baroness is that it seems that the daughters of the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister will follow in my footsteps.
Will the Minister outline how we are going to sort out the key problem of work experience placements on the “mummy and daddy know” basis? As I have outlined, I confess to my involvement in that system.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for tabling this debate today and to all noble Lords who have contributed to what has been a wide-reaching and thoughtful debate. I have to confess to being a little surprised that the Government chose to have a major debate on social mobility because, putting it kindly, I would not have thought that this issue was their strongest suit. After all, the latest evidence shows that, if anything, the education attainment gap is widening.
However, many noble Lords have quite rightly made the point that a proper assessment of the influences on social mobility requires a rather longer-term perspective and is rather more challenging than a simple statistical snapshot would imply. This point is echoed by John Goldthorpe, an eminent professor at Nuffield College, Oxford, who has argued that the rate of relative social mobility, which measures the chances of a given person escaping their class origins, has not changed for a century. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Graham for reminding us of some of the problems that he experienced over that century and which continue to exist today.
Of course, what has happened is that the structure of the labour market has changed, with a rapid growth in white-collar, middle-class employment, which, when combined with a change in women’s employment opportunities, created an upward curve in relative mobility, which unfortunately has now tapered off. It is a challenging issue. In this context, we need to be realistic about what government can achieve through education policy alone, but this does not mean that we should not be ambitious.
The previous Labour Government were certainly ambitious and, like my noble friend Lady Taylor, I am very proud of the changes we made to tackle the attainment gap, improve standards and raise aspirations. For example, we spearheaded a relentless focus on raising the status and quality of the teaching profession, delivering the best generation of teachers ever. In 2007, there were 42,400 more teachers than there were in 1997. We invested in Teach First, attracting a new generation of education leaders and teachers with a social mission, bringing the brightest and the best into the most challenging classrooms. The pioneering sponsored-academy programme of my noble friend Lord Adonis transformed schools that for decades had let down the most vulnerable. In the period 1999 to 2008, literacy and numeracy improved, and schools with the highest proportion of free school meals saw a 36% improvement in the number of pupils achieving five good GCSEs. We created the London Challenge, which has been widely credited with turning around many of the London schools and creating the narrowest attainment gap in the country. Reflecting on the point made by my noble friend Lady Massey, we created a network of children’s centres and Sure Start centres to address inequality at the very earliest point, from birth through early years.
All these measures, and many others, were aimed at reducing educational inequality, and we are proud of what was achieved. Our success has been confirmed in a recent LSE evaluation of our time in office, although we are, of course, still committed to reflecting on and learning what more we could and should have done and would do in future.
You would have thought that an incoming Secretary of State committed to addressing social mobility would have taken time to look at the research and learn from the evidence, but, as we know, that is not his style. Instead, there was a ceremonial ripping up of most what had gone before, to be replaced with a glossy new set of untested policies in pursuit of greater social mobility. So, how are they doing so far? Well, we know from Alan Milburn’s social mobility commission report of October 2013 that the Government are missing their targets by a long way. For example, he said that the,
“ambition to end child poverty that the previous government set is going to be missed by a considerable margin, possibly by as much as 2 million children in relative poverty”.
On education, his report finds that:
“The most deprived areas still have 30 per cent fewer good schools and get fewer good teachers than the least deprived. Schools in London are improving most but other places are falling behind for disadvantaged students, including parts of Middle England”.
Meanwhile, other statistics show that under this Government nearly a million young people are not in education, employment or training; and the number of people starting an apprenticeship fell in 2012-13 for the first time since 2005-06. This has been compounded by the Government’s decision to scrap the education maintenance allowance, to sideline constantly vocational education and to create a schools-based careers service which is widely acknowledged not to be fit for purpose. That very much echoes the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. In terms of access to higher education, a 2012 report shows that young people from the richest fifth of families are still three times more likely to go to university than the poorest fifth.
What are we to make of the Government's flagship policies? Of course, we welcome the additional funding that the pupil premium has delivered, but Ministers should not spend too much time patting themselves on the back. The recent report from Demos shows that the attainment gap widened in 72 out of 152 local authorities last year. In 66 areas, the gap was larger than it was two years earlier, before the pupil premium was introduced. This problem is highlighted by the recent Ofsted report which showed schools using the money inconsistently, often to plug holes in other budgets.
Meanwhile, the Government’s obsession with their flagship free schools programme has distracted attention and resources away from the most important thing, a theme which we have heard consistently today: the importance of the quality of teaching. That has led, for example, to West Sussex County Council being forced to put aside £285,000 to ensure that pupils from the failed Discovery free school in Crawley can continue their education back in the state system.
The new education landscape is also leading to greater social segregation, with middle-class parents better equipped to play the game. This includes the financial resource to move house to high-performing catchment areas, to buy additional tutoring or to pay for additional travel. In the words of David Laws, the Education Minister, there is nothing wrong with the sharp-elbowed middle classes dominating the system and pushy parents and those who pay for private education are worth emulating. Well, in contrast to that view, we remain absolutely committed to improving access to good high-quality education for everyone. We will build our policies on evidence, not dogma.
I thank the Minister for his statement on school funding. We will, of course, take time to scrutinise the detail and will want to address the concerns of the Institute for Fiscal Studies that, among the winners and losers, it may be that those in the most deprived areas will lose out disproportionately. We will also want to ensure that it properly addresses the 250,000 extra school places needed as a result of demographic changes, an issue on which the Government have so far shown considerable complacency. We hope to return to that debate at a later point.
Looking forward to a future Labour Government, we recognise that the importance of early-years education would be underlined by expanding free childcare for three and four year-olds to 25 hours a week as part of a wrap-around early years and childcare package. In contrast to the Government’s obsession with school structures, we will concentrate on raising the quality of teaching by ensuring that all teachers have, or are working towards, qualified teacher status. Teachers will have to be revalidated on an ongoing basis and will have new career routes to keep the best teachers in the classroom. We will take steps to repair the morale of teachers, which has fallen so far through the constant criticism by this Government. Echoing the significant points made by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, we will create the tech bacc, a rigorous and accredited vocational qualification, on a par with academic qualifications, that will command the respect of employers. We will give young people hope again by eliminating long-term youth unemployment by introducing a compulsory job guarantee for young people, combined with a proper expansion of apprenticeships, including to young people leaving school.
As I said at the outset, there is only so much that an education policy can contribute to improving social mobility. Unlike the opening contribution from the Minister, I think that this debate has got to the heart of what needs to be done. Key themes have been repeated time and time again, such as the vital importance of early years provision; the many pathways to success, not just the academic route; the need for better careers advice; the importance of soft skills, of character, resilience, self-confidence and self-belief, and of communication skills; the need for schools to educate rounded and grounded pupils, not just those drilled to excel in exam factories.
I hope that when the Minister responds, he will be able to demonstrate a little more reflection and a little less certainty, taking on board the many wise points that have been made in the debate today and recognising that we all still have a lot to learn about what truly impacts on social mobility, a cause that I know we all want to address. I look forward to hearing his response.
Lord Nash
My Lords, it has been a privilege to participate in today’s debate, and I am grateful to all noble Lords for their valuable and insightful contributions. This has been a fascinating and instructive discussion, which has demonstrated once again the range of experience, knowledge and passion that this Chamber offers. I would like to join the ranks of noble Lords who said that they are of the first generation in their family to go to university. However, my grandfather was the professor of oil engineering at Birmingham University, although he got there via night school while working for years on an oil rig. How likely is that to happen today?
I will attempt to deal with noble Lords’ points in order, but so that I can perhaps end on a rather happier note, I will start by addressing some of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I disagree with the noble Baroness that the attainment gap is widening; it has narrowed for pupil premium pupils in primary schools from 17% to 13% under this Government, and is narrowing in secondary schools. I do not wish to say that the Labour Party did not try with its educational reforms, some of which noble Lords will know I am a great fan of. However, between 2000 and 2009 on the OECD tables we fell from eighth to 28th in maths, fourth to 16th in science, and seventh to 27th in literacy, while other countries in eastern Europe and the Far East overtook us. Under this Government we have come off the bottom by a few points in maths and literacy, but we still have a very long way to go. Among our school leavers we now have the lowest level of NEETs for many years.
As far as free schools are concerned, we have closed one and a half of them. The total number of pupils in those one and a half free schools was 200. The closure of those schools is very significant to those pupils and their parents, and we are working closely with the relevant local authorities to ensure that they find alternative places. In the case of Discovery virtually all of them have. However, those children’s places represent 0.1% of the total 150,000 free school places we have created to deal with the shortage of places we inherited.
So far as unqualified teachers are concerned, I am delighted that we are having this discussion. It is such a red herring, and if that is the best criticism we are going to get, I am delighted. That shows that we are truly reaching a consensus on the future of our education system. The number of unqualified teachers has fallen under this Government from over 18,000 to just under 15,000. It is not true to say that there are more unqualified teachers in academies and free schools; it is only a couple of per cent, and many of those are drama teachers working part-time, support teachers or teachers on their way to qualifications.
I agree entirely with my noble friend Lord Storey, the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and other noble Lords that a person’s background should not decide their life chances. My noble friend Lord Storey made a brilliant analysis of early years and primary education based on his extensive experience for many years as a primary head in Liverpool. He identified the importance of early identification and the lack of words that pupils from more disadvantaged backgrounds experience. That is why we are putting such an emphasis on early years and primary education. There has been far too much focus on GCSEs, and we all, particularly parents, need to appreciate that it is in primary years that things can go so badly wrong or so right.
I agree entirely with the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, about languages, particularly about the wider benefits of studying a language. That is why we are making such teaching mandatory at key stage 2. I am grateful for her comments about the increased take-up of languages, particularly for less privileged pupils. I will commit to study in detail the Language Trends survey to which she refers, particularly as regards the point she made about take-up, and to consider further what we can do to improve language take-up. We continue to highlight the importance of recruiting high-quality linguists in teaching through our extensive bursary programme, and of course academies now have the freedom to recruit from a much wider field and can bring in native speakers of a language to enthuse and inspire children’s learning, even where they do not hold qualified teacher status. Through the free schools programme we have opened the Bilingual Primary School in Brighton, which delivers the curriculum in both English and Spanish, and the Judith Kerr Primary School in Southwark, where the curriculum is delivered in both English and German.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle spoke eloquently and movingly about the success of the Northumberland Church of England Academy. I agree entirely with him about the importance of links with business, professions, the forces and the wider world. All schools should provide their pupils with a direct line of sight to the workplace. That was also mentioned by my noble friends Lady Garden and Lord Shipley, and other noble Lords.
All good schools should involve their local businesses and professional communities to give young people a broad experience of the careers open to them, opening doors, as the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, said. I have been incredibly heartened to see many examples of that developing across the country; for example, Business Class, a programme organised through Business in the Community, brings schools and businesses together. There are now just under 300 partnerships in 59 clusters across the UK, under which pupils gain access to work experience, work placements and careers-focused activities, while businesses have the opportunity to influence the curriculum and skills being taught in schools.
There is also Inspiring the Future, Speakers for Schools, Barclays Life Skills and, in my own school, a huge Raising Aspirations programme involving businesses and charities. I have seen with my own eyes the dramatic effect it can have on pupils who come from incredibly narrow backgrounds to see and mix with people from work. We have two people full-time employed on this programme; I believe that all schools should have at least one person full-time on the programme. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, took me to the Morpeth School in Tower Hamlets recently, where there is a highly successful “speed dating” career service. Tomorrow, I shall be in Leeds, visiting Make the Grade, another organisation that provides schools with a bespoke programme for employability and skills. The remit of the National Careers Service will be expanded to encourage links with businesses.
The noble Lord, Lord Baker, spoke passionately about the UTC programme, and I pay tribute to his relentless determination in this regard. He mentioned NEETs. Our destination measures will, I hope, result in the NEET percentage for schools becoming an increasingly big driver of parents’ choice and school behaviour.
The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, talked about entrenched elitism and the concentration of power in a few hands. It seems odd to some that a party that is sometimes—although it may be rather exaggerated—criticised for being run by a bunch of toffs is so concerned about the future of the most disadvantaged, but we are. Indeed, compared to the home circumstances of many of these young people, we are all toffs, and I know that we all share a concern to make sure that the playing field is levelled. Private school students are 55 times more likely to win a place at Oxbridge and 22 times more likely to go to a top-rank university than students at state schools on free school meals. The life chances of a child are still far too determined by their background, and that is unacceptable.
The noble Baroness mentioned mentoring programmes, of which there are many good examples such as Chance UK, Mosaic and the mayor’s mentoring programme in my own school. We have a large mentoring programme and a separate one to mentor those boys and girls in gangs. The noble Baroness asked whether the Government will survey mentoring and support schemes, and I undertake to look at that.
We have discussed PSHE at great length, and I am greatly looking forward to speaking at the PSHE Association’s annual conference on 26 June.
My noble friend Lady Garden, and the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, spoke about the impact that poor parenting can have on a child’s life chances. The parenting classes trial known as CANparent is running until spring this year and is delivering high-quality parenting classes benefiting parents from all backgrounds. It aims to test how a market in parenting classes can be established and to remove the stigma from attending such classes, which often puts off young parents in particular. We want all families to be able to access and benefit from parenting classes if they choose, creating a culture of seeking help and strength from parenting classes to be the norm. Parents who attend good parenting classes find that they can be life-changing. I was intrigued by the suggestion from the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, that books should be put in the baby bags that new parents receive. That is certainly something that I shall look at.
My noble friend Lady Garden talked about schools advertising the number of pupils that go on to apprenticeships, and I certainly hope that our new destination measures will encourage this.
The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, talked about hope and the very early years of children. He mentioned a number of initiatives. Of course, we are also doing a huge amount of work in our programme on families with multiple problems. The noble Lord also mentioned soft skills in secondary schools; I have sent a message at every opportunity about the importance of this and that all schools should have this right at the forefront of what they do. As my noble friend Lady Perry said, good teachers and academy sponsors get this big time—the importance of confidence and inspiration. I do not know a single successful person who does not have that essential confidence and a positive attitude.
My noble friend Lady Tyler reminded us that character and resilience are other important features of a rounded education that are too often overlooked, and that they can be learnt. I am a great believer in characteristics such as learnt optimism. Schools play an important role in providing character-building activities for their pupils, and we encourage all schools to have those programmes. I shall consider the point that she made about taking more cognisance of these. I am also delighted to hear about her recommendations about teachers being involved in extracurricular activities and that character-building skills should be incorporated in ITT and sharing facilities with private providers.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester made some observations about School Direct. In 2013-14, School Direct attracted more applications per place than any other training route, with three applications for every place compared with 1.8 for provider-led provision. It is a struggle to recruit for some of the shortage subjects but this has also been the case for other types of places. All School Direct places are delivered in partnership with an accredited ITT partner and 71% of places have been allocated to schools working with a university provider. The expansion of School Direct has provided opportunities for universities to maintain, or even increase, their ITT market share.
The quality of ITT training is, however, very patchy. We believe that we need to create other training options, and that competition will improve the situation. Those institutions which do provide good-quality ITT should have nothing to fear from competition. Those that do not—and they exist—need to raise their game, but we believe in a mixed economy in teacher training and greater research into the effects of education measures, which is why, for instance, we have funded, with some £100 million, the education endowment fund.
My noble friend Lady Perry made some very kind remarks about the success of the academies programme and paid tribute to the chain of my noble friend Lord Harris. She mentioned that there are now many other successful chains, including Ark, Greenwood Dale, Outwood Grange, REAch2 and Aldridge.
I was delighted to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, mention that we are moving towards more of a consensus on education. She talked about an overemphasis on structures. I agree that we can talk too much about structures; the key is what happens in the classroom. However, I believe it was Tony Blair who said that you have to free up the structure to get the autonomy for schools to deliver. The noble Baroness mentioned failure. Of course, there are failures in the academy system. We have, in fact, issued 41 pre-warning notices to academies that are failing in their achievement, but 25 of those concern academies approved by the previous Government. I see no point in highlighting that because it is still a very small percentage. Overall, the performance of academies and academy chains far outstrips that of other schools.
The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, mentioned the 16 to 19 free school we have approved led by Bolton Wanderers Football Club, which will be a continuation of the excellent work it is doing with young people in its community. I was interested to hear first hand about its work when I met the club with the noble Baroness last year.
My noble friend Lord Lingfield spoke about the institute for further education, which he described so eloquently. It is a fantastic way of helping FE institutions celebrate their success, build their reputation and status and gain recognition for what they have achieved in their communities. I look forward to its formal launch later in the year.
My noble friend Lord Addington spoke with his customary eloquence about the problems encountered by children with hidden disabilities such as dyslexia. The Children and Families Bill—which is, as of today, an Act, I am delighted to say—makes it clear that schools and colleges must use their best endeavours to secure support for pupils with special educational needs. We have taken steps to improve teachers’ skills in recognising and supporting young people with dyslexia and other types of SEN. We support systemic synthetic phonics, which has been shown to be effective for teaching dyslexic pupils to read and write. We have supported 3,200 teachers to obtain specialist qualifications in dyslexia and, since 2009, the Government, and the previous Government, have funded the training of more than 10,000 new SENCOs. We are also developing specialist resources for initial teacher training and new advanced-level online modules on areas including dyslexia, autism and speech and language skills. Reasonable adjustments must also be made for examinations and assessments. As a result of my noble friend’s powerful intervention during the passage of the Children and Families Bill, we now have this incorporated in the Act. I hope that this will now happen.
The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, talked powerfully about autism. Transition to adulthood is something that many young people with autism find particularly difficult. They will benefit in particular from the change to a zero to 25 system and the opportunity to keep their education, health and care plan in place as they transfer from school to college. I will look carefully at the other points the noble Baroness made.
My noble friend Lord True made an impressive point about the danger of adults involved in education putting their interests, dogma and prejudices ahead of those of children—something which we are eradicating but which, sadly, still exists in increasingly isolated pockets of failure. I reiterate my support for clusters of secondaries and primary schools coming together in local multiacademy trusts. So far as the role of local authorities is concerned, we are of course involving them extensively in our targeted, basic-needs programme.
The noble Lords, Lord Graham and Lord Sutherland, spoke powerfully about their experiences, and I will look for the statistics that the noble Lord, Lord Graham, is after.
My noble friend Lord Lexden spoke with great knowledge based on his experience of the independent sector, which has a long history of increasing social mobility through bursaries, scholarships and collaboration with the state sector. Indeed, in 2013 Independent Schools Council schools provided more than £300 million in fee discounts for pupils, which benefited almost 40,000 children. This is something that I absolutely applaud and welcome. I know that the independent/state schools partnerships programme has been particularly successful—notably at King’s Wimbledon and in Southwark, which have had remarkable improvement in the achievement of the state schools involved. I know from my experience as a trustee of the Eastside Young Leaders Academy in Newham, where we have sent more than 15 children—15 black boys who were right on the edge of exclusion—under full bursaries to schools such as Rugby, Wellington and Eton—how powerful this can be. However, we are not currently looking to initiate an open-access scheme. Our priority is to invest our resources in making sure that all state schools provide an excellent education for their pupils, which, in the end, will be the greatest means of achieving much higher levels of social mobility and ensuring that every child fulfils their potential. However, we wish to encourage ever greater co-operation between the independent and state sectors.
I know that the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, was particularly concerned about discount codes for the arts subjects. I should like to reassure him that we take this very seriously. A recent review of discount codes for dance and drama has led to our decision to separate them, meaning that they will be counted separately in performance tables, as he knows. We are also taking evidence on the decision to discount art and design GCSE with art and design and photography GCSE. We will review this decision in the light of that evidence, and I would be delighted to meet the noble Earl to discuss that further.
My noble friend Lady Berridge is right about inspiring children to aspire to university and work experience, and make sure that this is not a province of only Daddy and Mummy’s friends. I look forward to introducing her to David Johnston, who runs the Social Mobility Foundation, which organises work experience and other connections between state school pupils, business and other outlets.
I am delighted to say that that I sense an emerging consensus across the House and all parties as to the future of our education system, which is so important, bearing in mind that the future of our children and of our country depends on this.
I conclude on the subject of teachers. As the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, said, there is no substitute for good teachers. There has never been a more important time in the recent history of our country to be involved in education. We must continue to raise the status of teaching because of the importance of education to our children and our country’s future. Teachers are performing the most important job in our country at this time. I thank them most warmly, as I thank all noble Lords who have participated in this excellent debate.
Regenerative Medicine: S&T Committee Report
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Patel
To move that this House takes note of the Report of the Science and Technology Committee on regenerative medicine (1st Report, HL Paper 23).
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, I invite noble Lords who have just taken part in the education debate to stay, if they want to enrich their education. However, while they make a decision on that, I am pleased to introduce this debate on the Science and Technology Committee’s inquiry into regenerative medicine.
Our chairman of the committee and of the inquiry, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, could not be here but, on behalf of the committee, I thank him for his brilliant chairmanship. I also thank our special adviser, Professor Fiona Watt FRS. The committee was well and expertly advised by her. I also thank our clerk, Mr Chris Atkinson, all the staff of the committee and all its members, some of whom are taking part in this debate. I thank all noble Lords who are taking part, particularly the Minister, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, on the Opposition Front Bench.
I declare my relevant interests. I am a professor and chancellor of the University of Dundee, a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and I have previously chaired various stem cell committees in the United Kingdom.
Regenerative medicine is an umbrella term for the medical specialty of the regeneration of human tissue, organs and cells. It has the potential to treat or cure disease. Possible treatments range from curing neurological disorders to eventually repairing hearts. Our inquiry sought to pinpoint the UK’s strengths in regenerative medicine, identify barriers to translation and commercialisation—in the case of commercialisation, primarily dealing with treatments in the healthcare market—and recommend solutions.
The UK has an enviable potential resource in the National Health Service, with access to hundreds of thousands of patients in one system and a strong science base in this field. The Government have also been paying significant attention to developing this field. Together, these factors could combine to benefit patient well-being and the health of the UK economy. Basic science translation and commercialisation in this field are being well supported in other countries. However, there are growing concerns that, despite positive progress so far, the UK could fall behind in this area and miss out on opportunities to translate basic science into commercially viable treatments as the science develops. The opportunity cannot be missed. The UK could and should be a world leader in this field.
It is for that purpose that the committee chose to limit its inquiry to the regulatory framework for the translation of science and commercialisation. The key areas of inquiry were the research base, the application of science, barriers to translation, barriers to commercialisation and international comparison. The call for evidence was issued in July 2012. The committee was informed by a seminar held prior to our inquiry at King’s College, and during the inquiry some members of the committee visited the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine in San Francisco, often referred to as CIRM, for three days of intensive seminars and discussions. CIRM is an impressive organisation and, in many aspects, is quite special—in its inception, its funding and its delivery and scale—and is likely to deliver regenerative treatments in the near future.
We published our inquiry report and the voluminous evidence in July 2013 in HL Paper 23, and I now turn to the report and its findings and recommendations. The term “regenerative medicine” is used to refer to methods to replace or regenerate human cells, tissues or organs in order to restore or establish normal function. This includes cell therapies, tissue engineering, gene therapy and biomedical engineering, as well as more traditional treatments involving pharmaceuticals, biologics and devices.
Perhaps I may give some examples. Bone marrow transplantation, which is well understood by many, is the original stem cell therapy. Another is the use of pancreatic islet transplantation for certain types of difficult-to-control glycaemia in type 1 diabetes. Another is the use of skin cells to treat burns. Less well known perhaps is the use of gene therapy to treat lipoprotein lipase deficiency and autologous cell therapy to treat cartilage defects in knees. Treatments likely to be available in the next four or five years are those that support the body’s own regeneration and repair mechanisms. Others are treatments using cells, including embryonic stem cells, for certain eye conditions, such as retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration, which affects 30% of the population over the age of 60. The hope is that eventually there will be treatments for Parkinson’s disease, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and cures for diseases for which we currently have no treatment.
Through their various publications on regenerative medicine and life science strategy, and funding for research, the Government have recognised the potential of regenerative medicine and life sciences generally to improve both health and the UK economy. This is valued, and our report says that we value the Government’s support. The UK has a strong science base, reflected in the number of much-cited publications, multiple academic centres of excellence and the three Nobel laureates of recent times: Sir Martin Evans, who is still working in the field of cell biology, Sir Robert Edwards and Sir John Gurdon.
The UK currently has nearly 40 early-phase clinical trials involving stem cells. There are more than 76 projects funded in basic science and early-phase trials. So far, it is good news. However, when it comes to translation, the theme that permeated our inquiry was that of uncertainty. Those who gave evidence asked for proportionate regulation and a clearer path from bench to bedside. The current system was described as a sort of great frustration. We make recommendations for improvement. Similar comments were made about clinical trials, despite the recognition that the NHS affords the best environment for clinical trials. The Government need to address the issue to make the UK more effective.
The Cell Therapy Catapult reported delays in starting trials, and similar comments were made by others. Furthermore, the delivery of regenerative medicine treatments, particularly involving living cells, produces challenges for manufacture and delivery on a large scale. If the UK is to be competitive and be attractive to companies from outside, both investing in the UK and using UK facilities, the Government need to support and invest in infrastructure development. The committee recognised that setting up the Cell Therapy Catapult has significant potential but to achieve it, alternative funding channels will need to be explored.
We make some suggestions. We make several recommendations for evaluation and pricing of treatments and look to NICE to devise suitable models, including value-based pricing. Covering all the areas, we make 24 recommendations to help ensure that the potential of regenerative medicine is realised. To bring it all together, we asked that an expert working group be set up with an independent chair. On the whole, we welcome the Government’s positive response to our report and hope that they will ensure that the recommendations will be taken forward. However, I do have some questions.
What progress has been made to ensure that the regulatory process for clinical trials is simplified? What plans do the Government have to encourage investment in large-scale manufacturing facilities for regenerative medicine products? What action has UKTI taken to improve the chances of the UK being the location of the development and manufacture of regenerative medicine therapies?
Although the Government did not accept our recommendation of an independent chair for the expert working group, they accepted the establishment of such a group, and we are pleased that Sir Michael Rowlands is to chair it. What terms of reference have been given to Sir Michael’s committee, and when is it expected to report?
In conclusion, regenerative medicine has the potential not only to save lives but, with the NHS as a resource, also to support the UK economy. We can be the world’s centre for developing regenerative medicine. I commend the report and beg to move.
The Earl of Selborne (Con)
My Lords, the whole House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Patel, who speaks with great authority on the subject and was a fellow member of the committee. He speaks as a very distinguished professor in this area; I speak as a layman, but one who learnt a lot during the course of this inquiry into a fascinating area of very fast-moving technology and science.
This is a highly appropriate subject for a Select Committee report. Where science moves so fast, the regulatory framework will inevitably lag behind and it is a challenge for Administrations to ensure that there is the appropriate regulatory framework and fiscal support for what everyone will recognise has enormous potential. The technology has enormous potential in the longer term to produce new treatments for the plethora of diseases mentioned in paragraph 18 of the report, which lists Parkinson’s disease, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. I am sure that many people will wish to add to that list.
In the shorter term, a number of treatments can be seen coming over the horizon or are indeed almost available. One example, in paragraph 15, is a therapy which seeks to reverse the damage caused by a stroke. Given an ageing population—which is common to pretty well every developed economy—given that healthcare as practised at present with the tools available to us is forecast to require ever larger proportions of our economic resources and given the international interest, let alone our own national interest, in novel and innovative treatments that may have great economic and social benefits, there will be enormous rewards to those countries that put in place successful policies to promote these opportunities.
As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, reminded us, we have a strong science base at present and we need alongside it a suitable regulatory framework which gives confidence to patients, investors and, of course, the scientists and those conducting trials. We will need to ensure that public funds can complement funding from other sources, such as charities and commercial interests. We will have to negotiate the so-called valley of death, which is the difficulty, so often experienced in this country, in commercialising research findings. That is being addressed by the Cell Therapy Catapult, about which more anon. We will have to ensure that we make best use of those advantages derived from the National Health Service. The noble Lord, Lord Patel, reminded us that we have the great advantage of access to much valuable data on a scale not available to some of our competitors.
The Government have identified regenerative medicine as one of their eight great transforming technologies. Other reports, as well as our own, have alerted the Government to the critical importance of identifying barriers to development. The Government’s own report of July 2011, Taking Stock of Regenerative Medicine in the United Kingdom identified,
“steep technological, regulatory and strategic barriers to realising regenerative medicine’s significant potential”.
Our report emphasised the frustration that some scientists and clinicians have experienced negotiating the various regulatory hurdles. The Government response recognised the need for regulatory simplification in the long term and help to get through the existing minefield—perhaps I should call it labyrinth—in the shorter term. The establishment of the Regenerative Medicine Expert Group, tasked with developing a regenerative medicine delivery readiness strategy and action plan, is certainly a positive response to the report and is to be welcomed. However, at the risk of seeming grudging in my praise for the Government’s response, I draw attention to the rapidly changing international competition for recognition as a global leader. We refer in our report to the high level of investment in the United States and to the rapid progress in countries such as China and India.
Since we published our report, Japan passed legislation in November last year that revised its pharmaceutical affairs law, with the intention of establishing Japan as a global leader in regenerative medicine while continuing to protect patient safety and confidence. Last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Japanese Prime Minister made it clear that this legislation redefines the regulatory framework and gives the opportunity for new therapies to move more rapidly from an early-stage clinical trial towards conditional approval, which enables the product to be brought to market and therefore to obtain reimbursement for the product in an accelerated manner. In the light of such responses from our competitors, it may well prove necessary to look more fundamentally at our own regulatory framework, as indeed we recommended.
On pages 42 and 43 we say that we will revisit the regulatory aspect of the inquiry to ensure that progress has been made. I am absolutely sure that it will be essential to monitor progress, although we all hope that the Regenerative Medicine Expert Group can facilitate simplification without, at least for the present, the need for further legislation.
I want to say a word in support of the catapult centres in general and the Cell Therapy Catapult centre in particular. For years we have complained in this country that we allow others to reap the rewards of commercialising scientific research. The previous Administration are to be congratulated on asking Hermann Hauser to make recommendations on how we should address this long-standing problem. He concluded that what was missing from the United Kingdom’s innovation landscape was a network of centres working at the commercialisation stage of technology, matching scientific research to industrial needs. His recommendation was that we should follow the model of the Fraunhofer institutes in Germany.
One of the seven new catapult centres is the Cell Therapy Catapult established in 2012 through the Technology Strategy Board and is designed to create a world leading cell therapy industry in the United Kingdom through innovation and collaboration. It is early days and we do not yet know how successful the centre will be—we will not know, probably, for a decade or so—but meanwhile we should allow the centre to build up its dedicated cell therapy teams, bringing together scientists, investors, manufacturing interests, regulatory experts and other interested parties from around the world. We must resist all temptation to interfere or change—it will need a good long period for bedding down—but it must be a highly appropriate subject for a catapult centre.
What is now needed is continuity of funding and support from us all. This catapult centre is exactly what is needed if we are going to emerge in the next decade as a global leader in this exciting sector.
Lord Turnberg (Lab)
My Lords, I am delighted to reiterate the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, on chairing our Select Committee so ably, and on the support of his expert adviser and secretariat. I also commend the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for introducing this topic and for explaining so clearly the enormous potential of regenerative medicine to cure diseases that are hitherto incurable, and for pointing out the considerable benefit we have from our expert scientific base in the UK.
I express my interests as scientific adviser to the Association of Medical Research Charities, many of whose members have strong interests and involvement in regenerative medicine.
It is worth noting that our report was produced last summer after taking evidence for more than a year and that things have moved on since then. It is a rapidly moving field and some things have changed for the better while others have been thrown into starker relief. There have been more advances in the science; clinical applications are being developed; the mood in the investment community, oddly enough, has improved—I am told that there is a greater appetite among venture capitalists to take the risks needed to invest in the field; and there is some hope that we will see some of the recommendations of our report being put into action.
However, I want to focus on only three aspects: the complex regulatory framework; the MHRA and MEA approval processes; and our capacity to manufacture and scale up production.
First, on the regulatory framework, I hope to build on the words of the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, and I know that the noble Lord, Lord Willis, will also take up the cudgels on regulation. Under the regulatory framework, a researcher or a small biotech company wanting to take a discovery forward for further development in a clinical trial or commercialisation will be faced with no fewer than 11 regulatory bodies that they may have to apply to. This morass of bodies, with a mix of acronyms from the HFEA to the HTA, from GTAC to the MHRA, from the EMA to the HRA—to say nothing of having to jump through the hoops of NICE—is extremely confusing, and not only to the novice. The UK has many more regulators than virtually any other country in the world, and certainly more than the USA, which seems to have one.
Our recommendations focus on the need to take a grip of this complexity and suggest that the Health Research Authority should expand its current role in streamlining the regulatory process. The HRA is doing an admirable job within its limited resources. It is under the expert guidance of Professor Jonathan Montgomery, and in a pilot study that it has already carried out, it has demonstrated that it could do much more. The authority has shown that it could provide a sort of one-stop shop for researchers so that a single application made to the HRA would be fed through a gateway for approval by the authority where it has the competence to do so or distributed to those other bodies that need to give their approval. This would be a remarkable achievement if it could be done and would transform the atmosphere for researchers. However, of course, it requires more funding for the HRA. It would not need vast sums, and could indeed be achieved with a modest investment, while the gains made, both financially and in saving wasted time, would be enormous. My first question for the noble Earl is whether he will examine whether there is some way to find the modest extra money needed. I know that a bid from the authority has gone in to the department, and it would be helpful if he could tell us how far it has got.
I turn now to the processes by which new treatments are assessed by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. Here the timescale is almost always very long, and sometimes it can several years and involve large and expensive phase III trials. However, for treatments such as those using regenerative medicines, stem cells and the like, such a lengthy process is quite inappropriate. This has been recognised in Japan and the USA, where a much more flexible approach has been taken. In Japan, as the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, mentioned, the law has recently been changed so that approval for regenerative medicines can be based on phase II trial evidence alone, without the need for phase III trials. In the USA, the FDA has introduced what is called a breakthrough therapy designation that provides a similar phase II-only requirement. I know that the MHRA recognises the need for something similar here, and it would be extremely helpful if the noble Earl could indicate how far the expert group set up by the MHRA has progressed in its efforts to develop an adaptive licensing system to speed up approval of these types of innovative treatment. The Government are paying much more attention to the need for innovation in healthcare, and certainly those in the field would find the efforts of the MHRA encouraging. It would allow us to keep up with our rivals around the world.
Finally, I come to another concern. Our report described a reluctance among venture capitalists to invest in biotech in general and in regenerative medicine in particular, and I mentioned earlier that the situation here may be changing. The so-called valley of death between invention and commercialisation may not be as deep as we thought, even though we remain way behind the more adventurous investors in the USA. However, as prospects for investors are now improving and more cell-based therapies appear to be coming on stream, the problem of the lack of manufacturing capacity to take these advances to the market has been shown to be much more obviously rate-limiting than had been thought. We have drawn attention to this problem in several of our recommendations and we have had supportive responses from the Government and others, but much more needs to be done. Our ability to scale up the production of these highly specialised treatments so that they can become available to large numbers of patients is sorely lacking. I feel that the UK Regenerative Medicine Platform, which has been asked to take this on and which could have had all this in hand, has been just a touch complacent. In this light, can the noble Earl tell us how far the Ministerial Industry Strategy Group, which met in November, got with its discussions on manufacturing capacity? What recommendations, if any, emerged as a result of that meeting?
I note that the Cell Therapy Catapult is gathering evidence on capacity, but that alone will not solve the problem if we do not offer some inducement to those who need to build up our manufacturing capacity. It is also the case that the resources available to the catapult are limited and will only go a little way in offering this inducement. Is there any prospect that the Technology Strategy Board will offer more support for this purpose? Will the UKTI Life Science Investment Organisation play a role in helping fill this gap? It will certainly be offering advice and information to potential investors overseas. What practical encouragement will it be able to offer companies that they will be supported if they come here?
The potential for regenerative medicine to transform healthcare in the next few decades is enormous. We must take advantage of the lead we have in basic research and convert it into therapies for patients and economic benefits for the UK. There are encouraging signs, and the Government are clearly aware of the importance of investing in this area, but there is much that remains to be done. In particular, we must make sure that we have a regulatory environment that is efficient and fit for purpose, that we keep up with the competition with a responsive and speedy approval system, and that we are well prepared with the capacity to manufacture to scale these potentially remarkable treatments.
Lord Willis of Knaresborough (LD)
My Lords, as a member of the committee that produced this report, it is a pleasure for me, too, to speak in this debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for the way in which he introduced it and for the very expert advice and guidance he gave to members of the committee throughout the inquiry. It was like having your own personal adviser at your side. In particular, I echo his comments about Professor Fiona Watt, who I thought was an outstanding adviser to the committee. Her standing in the international community gave the report real aplomb when it was produced.
Having sat as chair of the Science and Technology Select Committee in the House of Commons, and now as member of this committee in your Lordships’ House, I have to say that, although most of our inquiries are interesting—some more so than others, which I find quite difficult—this one afforded us the opportunity to examine an area of medical science that promises significant breakthroughs in the way in which we treat patients with a wide range of medical conditions, where there are currently no effective treatments or no treatments at all. Faced with that sort of scenario, you can understand the huge hope that regenerative medicine gives to tens of thousands of people around our nation.
Equally, the NHS is faced with a funding crisis that will get worse as each year goes by, as an ageing population with multiple long-term morbidities makes increased demands on a decreasing real-terms budget. The need to introduce disruptive technologies into the NHS to treat patients therefore becomes ever more urgent and there are two drivers for supporting regenerative medicine.
The stark evidence contained in the report showing the increase in the number of people with long-term conditions—diabetes up by 25% in the five years to 2011, chronic kidney failure up by 45% over five years and dementia up by 25%—is really sobering. The escalation of these figures over the next five, 10 and 15 years will put a huge burden on our health service but also on the Exchequer. The King’s Fund estimates that by 2070, 20% of the UK’s GDP will be spent managing long-term conditions. That is simply not affordable, nor is it acceptable, unless we can introduce some new disruptive technologies to address the situation.
Will regenerative medicine change this landscape? Probably, but not in the short term. Our report makes the point very forcefully that this is not a short-term fix—this is a long journey. Many of the technologies that the noble Lord, Lord Patel, spoke of in his introduction will not come about within five, 10 or 15 years, but could take even longer than that. However, it is important that efforts by our researchers, funders, regulators, manufacturers, government departments and industry have a clear steer. For me, the central theme of this report is certainty—in terms of the regulatory framework and the funding framework and, irrespective of which Government are in power, that we are going in a particular direction and we are going to keep to it.
The report assessed where we are at present, recognised the global competition and suggested ways in which we could move swiftly and effectively to get promising technologies into clinics. Global competition is strong and that is good. We are aware that in Japan, Germany, South Korea and, particularly, the US, there is a recognition that regenerative medicine has huge potential both for domestic use and in terms of its wider economic impact. Research shows that by 2050, 37% of US GDP will be needed for health and healthcare at current rates of growth. That is totally unsustainable, so the emphasis is on finding solutions because the US cannot afford not to, and I think that is the situation in the UK.
It was interesting that when we were in California, so great was the reputation of our research base that American researchers—even in CIRM, with $3 billion over 15 years at its disposal—were looking to UK research groups to add to their expertise. Indeed, our Professor Fiona Watt was revered among the researchers that we met.
To be fair, the Government have played their cards well—as did the previous Government, who recognised that this was an emerging destination. Allocating £180 million to the biomedical catalyst fund, the biomedical research centres and units established at leading universities with an £800 million investment, research councils continuing to fund very basic research, and the establishment of the Regenerative Medicine Platform to address technical and scientific discoveries are all going in the right direction. The UK Stem Cell Bank gives us a unique advantage, as does our NHS database. The establishment of the Cell Therapy Catapult, which we have just heard about, with a vision for global leadership, are all things that the Government rightly deserve credit for.
I suspect that our resources will never match those of our competitors, particularly the US, but it is interesting that other sectors, particularly the charitable sector, are beginning to shift their funding into regenerative medicine. The Association of Medical Research Charities, which I chair and of which the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, is the science adviser, spends 15% of its R&D budget—remember, we raise £1.3 billion every year—on regenerative medicine research. That was in 2011; it has probably gone up since then. It is not surprising that Research Councils UK, the MS Society, the British Heart Foundation, Fight for Sight, the Alzheimer’s Society and, of course, the Wellcome Trust all see regenerative medicine as the real hope for their future as they struggle to find treatments for the most hard-to-reach diseases.
However, if we are to get regenerative medicine treatments into clinics, we have to address the issue of cost. There is, I am sad to say, a somewhat complacent air about the Government’s response to our various recommendations about costing novel treatments. This is a not inconsiderable issue; it is the very essence of getting early treatment for patients. It will not be the NHS or the British Government who actually fund putting the treatments into clinics; it will be the private sector, and we have to make it sustainable and attractive in order for private investment to take those things past the valley of death and into phase 3 trials and patients.
That is why the point in our report about looking at value-based pricing is crucial. Yes, we were perhaps naive to say that within one year we would like to have a report on what the Government are doing on value-based pricing, but the principle is right, and I hope that when the Minister responds he will say when we can expect to see a review and whether regenerative medicine technologies will be part of it.
In their response to the report the Government have been partly helpful, but there is a long way to go. The noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, and the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, have said many of the things that I wanted to say, so I shall not repeat them. UK regulation is rightly prized and valued across the world as being the yardstick by which other countries judge their regulatory frameworks. We are rightly proud of that, but I remain to be convinced that, despite the great efforts which the Government have made to make the regulatory framework less complex, it is fit for purpose.
Let us remember that our regulatory framework has grown rather like Topsy; it has been built in parts to respond to new developments in science and medicine. Regenerative medicine needs a bespoke regulatory framework to drive it through. We cannot go on saying that we have a complicated regulatory system and that somebody will help you with it. I found it quite depressing when representatives from the MHRA came to our committee and said, “Well, it’s very complicated science. Therefore, you need very complicated regulation”. That does not follow. With complicated science, you have to be able to drive through that science and have essential regulation which is easy to follow, because many companies and research groups that develop these technologies will not be the large pharma companies of yesterday but small groups with relatively small budgets that need an awful lot of hand-holding. To have, as the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, said, up to 11 regulatory frameworks to go through—and sometimes you have to go back over the hurdle as well—to satisfy Europe as part of the deal means that we have got to help.
Our proposal that there should be a particular group that looks at regulation was turned down; the Government said that they wanted instead a Regenerative Medicine Expert Group. To be fair, one of the three main strands of that will be a work stream on regulation and licensing. I welcome that; it is a reasonable response. Getting Mike Rawlins to chair that is an excellent move. But who will the expert group report to? I understood that the HRA was going to be the authority which looked at all that, yet what we now have is another expert group with another remit in terms of streamlining regulation. When the HRA comes up with a groundbreaking scheme to bring together ethics permissions and local NHS permissions, and it has sat on a desk at the Department of Health since October awaiting an answer when everybody else feels that it is the right way forward, I genuinely feel that we are missing a trick. When the Minister responds, I hope that he will respond to the question that I have asked today. This is an excellent report. I give the Government at least seven out of 10 for their response, but at the bottom of their report, I would always say, “Could do better”.
Baroness Greenfield (CB)
I add my voice to those of the other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Patel, on bringing attention to this timely and important report. He and others have already spoken eloquently on the wider issues surrounding stem cell research, so I shall restrict my comments to my own particular area: diseases of the central nervous system.
While other conditions such as heart disease and cancer are devastating, we all fear in particular the disorders that destroy our brains. The report discusses the wonderful prospect that in the next five years treatments are likely to be available for stroke and multiple sclerosis. However, only under a section on longer-term possibilities is Parkinson’s disease mentioned.
The neurodegenerative diseases of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s target the very essence of what it means to be human: what it means to move freely, to smile, to think, to speak and to have memories—indeed, to be a unique individual. The problem is that, as yet, we do not know why key brain areas in each case embark on the initial cycle of self-destruction or why it occurs only in certain brain regions and not in others. Because we do not currently understand the basic mechanisms, we cannot get to the root of the problem. The best that we can do is to combat the symptoms.
As brain cells die, they release less and less of their essential chemical messengers. Current strategies, therefore, are to offset the dwindling level of those naturally occurring chemicals with drugs, but here the problems are several-fold. First, as with all drugs, the treatment will permeate into areas of the brain and body where it is not needed and hence cause side-effects. For example, with Parkinson’s disease, treatment with the drug in current use, L-dopa, will supply the necessary chemical messenger, dopamine, to the area of devastation, but will also raise levels of the same chemical elsewhere in the brain, and this can often result in psychotic side-effects, with disturbing hallucinations. Even when such treatment offers temporary alleviation of the patient’s basic condition—or slowing down of the deterioration, as in the case of the anti-Alzheimer’s drug Aricept—it has proved hard to convince organisations such as NICE that the costs are worthwhile.
The situation is made even worse when we consider how many more of us are going to need such treatment in the future. Today, nearly a million people suffer from Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or both, and that number is expected to double by 2050. The total cost of caring for one person with dementia can be up to £30,000 per patient per year—plus the additional costs caused by loss of earnings.
Even more sobering, beyond the mere economics, is the human cost. For every person suffering from either Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, let us say there are 10 people who care about that individual. Hence, as the number in the UK reaches almost 2 million by the middle of this century, almost 20 million lives could be affected by those devastating disorders.
So there is a huge and growing need: a need that is currently unmet. Stem cell therapy offers an exciting and realistic alternative. The rationale is completely different from that of conventional treatments. The idea is not to treat the symptoms, but to harness regenerative biological mechanisms so that new cells are created. That would be a real cure. It would not be merely replacing the chemicals that are lost as a result of cell death, but actually replacing the neurons themselves.
Some cases of Parkinson’s disease have been successfully treated using human foetal cells; however, such tissue is hard to obtain, and the ideal would be switch to human embryonic stem cells. Those cells are derived from very early embryos, at the stage when the embryo is a microscopic ball just a few days old and consisting of only one to 200 cells. Not only are they immortal, they can produce every type of cell in the body. By introducing such cells into the appropriate environment within the brain, they will actually become the brain cells that have been lost.
There are, inevitably, potential downsides, As a neuroscientist, I am unable to comment with any authority on the ethical or financial issues, so I will restrict my caveats to technical issues. The first would be immune rejection of the new cells. However, that can be overcome by immunotolerising patients or even by immunosuppression. Such therapies have side-effects, but the risk-benefit ratio compared to that with conventional drugs is greatly shifted in favour of the positive.
A further problem is that stem cells could proliferate out of control in the brain and therefore become a tumour. However, to date, there is no clinical evidence that that has occurred with stem cell therapy and, in any event, it could be circumvented by biochemical chicanery—for example, manipulating stem cells so that they divide at a few degrees hotter than would normally be the case in the living brain.
Another issue is that implanted stem cells may produce excessive amounts of chemical messenger compared to normal levels. In principle, however, once stem cells have repopulated the brain, they should behave like their naturally occurring predecessors and release chemicals within the normal range as and when they are stimulated and interacting in their normal brain environment. In any event, conventional drugs already produce excessive amounts of chemical messenger, but that can be controlled by current treatments.
Finally, we must be careful not to conflate Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. They are very different conditions and are differentially tractable to stem cell therapy. Parkinson’s disease is much more localised in the brain than Alzheimer’s, and therefore it will be much easier to locate where the stem cells should be placed. However, there is often a co-pathology—patients presenting with both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases—so in these cases perhaps the alleviation of the movement symptoms of Parkinson’s may help in the patient’s quality of life, not least because we know that the better that people can move physically, the more that they can sustain a good blood supply to the brain.
There is now a growing body of evidence that physical exercise can enhance the natural growth of brain cells, a phenomenon known as neurogenesis, as well as the proliferation of blood vessels, therefore bringing more oxygen to the brain, which improves its functioning. There are even some claims that Alzheimer’s disease could be less prevalent in those who exercise routinely. So a treatment for patients suffering from both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s that enabled them to move more freely might in the long term be more generally beneficial.
Some might say that introducing the cells into the brain would be problematic, but the brain surgery required is modest. Modern stereotactic surgery is performed under local anaesthetic, with only a small hole made in the skull and a fine needle introduced—a bit like drilling for oil using precise three-dimensional co-ordinates. The area targeted can then be localised.
In summary, we have reason to be confident that, although not without risks or difficulties, stem cell therapy could be a chance to harness the nervous system’s natural mechanisms to regenerate itself. In the case of neurodegenerative disorders, though, much more research needs to be done.
I commend the authors of the report for increasing the chances that we will,
“facilitate the translation of scientific knowledge into clinical practice and encourage its commercial exploitation.”.
Still, far more money needs to be devoted to research into the use of stem cells in brain disease, which at present is a poor relation to heart disease and cancer. If these recommendations are implemented, the horizons could be very bright, not just for those with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, who are currently condemned to a highly disabled life and an even bleaker future, but for everyone who cares about them.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford (LD)
My Lords, as a member of the committee, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for his excellent introduction to the debate. I repeat the thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who cannot be with us today, who was an excellent chairman, and to Professor Fiona Watt, our specialist adviser.
Working on this report took me back to the 1980s when, in my position in the science policy research unit at the University of Sussex, I was an alien social scientist sitting in as a fly on the wall on an experiment in university/industry collaboration called the Protein Engineering Club, which was an attempt to assist the process of carrying science from the laboratory through to industrialisation and commercialisation. Then, as now with regenerative medicine, there were great hopes about what might be achieved. As we were working with proteins and antibodies, we hoped, for example, that regulation would get easier rather than more difficult because we were working with biological entities rather than chemical entities that were alien to the body.
There was also hope that the rise of the venture capital industry in the United States would rapidly spread to the United Kingdom—there was some indication that it was coming—and that this would lead to a wholesale change in the process of coping with, as they put it, the valley of the shadow of death—the process of financing commercialisation—with a wave of new firms that would be well funded, developed and built up, either contracting to or, as in many cases, being bought up by larger firms.
Looking back on it, the work that was done then has been very much the foundation of the current range of biotechnology medicines that are now coming on to the market, but it was 25 to 30 years ago. It has taken a very long time to get many of these medicines on to the market, and indeed some of them are still working their way on to it. The regulatory process, far from getting easier, has if anything become considerably more difficult and complex. The financing is no easier; venture capital waxes and wanes, largely with the macroeconomy. Big pharma itself has waxed and waned. The sort of work that was being done in the Protein Engineering Club has in many senses provided an underpinning for the technology for the two big British pharmaceutical companies, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, in their current success. Nevertheless, there have been many ups and downs in the process.
The lesson that comes through clearly in the report is that there are great hopes for these new medicines but much hype. In paragraph 19, we talk about the possibility of regenerative medicine that may provide treatments for long-term, chronic diseases, such as Parkinson’s, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, but we also say:
“Many submissions to the inquiry offered a ‘health warning’, however, that public expectations must be managed as many of these treatments are relatively far from delivery to the wider public”.
As my noble friend Lord Willis said, regenerative medicine is not a short-term fix.
Our report identified the four main challenges to be overcome. Other noble Lords have spoken at some length about some of the issues. One is the science itself. As the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, said, it is moving under our feet. It is a highly innovative area where new ideas are bubbling up and being tested all the time. In no sense is the science stabilised. It is an extremely stimulating environment, but because things do not stand still, it is always a matter of the science moving forward and innovation having to adapt to the new developments that are taking place. The regulatory framework is increasingly complex—perhaps unnecessarily complex, as my noble friend Lord Willis suggested. We were hoping that an expert group could be set up which would manage to find some way to simplify it. Scale up—the shift from the laboratory to larger scale production—is also a considerable problem. There are always completely unforeseen difficulties in such processes. Cells do not behave on a larger scale as they do in a laboratory dish. Finally, there is the business model. It is very important that there should be patient capital. One is looking at 25 years, a whole generation, for such medicines to come on to the market. There has to be capital that is prepared to put its money down and wait for results.
On the whole it seems to me, as it does to others, that the processes the Government have put in place have been appropriate. As my noble friend Lord Willis said, the Government have played their cards well. They have designated regenerative medicine as one of the eight great technologies and have concentrated on the life sciences with the emphasis on investment in the research base, where we have a considerable comparative advantage. In November 2011, they produced their strategy for the life sciences, reinforcing what they call the “life sciences ecosystem”, and, in particular, bringing together R&D in the National Health Service and academic research supported by the research councils and seeking to exploit what other countries see as the UK’s unique advantage in having a unified health service as a platform for assessing the effectiveness of treatments.
Building on this, and into this, indeed, is the Technology Strategy Board. Its April 2012 report A Strategy for UK Regenerative Medicine dealt with the translation from research into commercialisation and concentrated in particular on the regulatory framework, manufacturing and industrial collaboration. Alongside the TSB initiatives is the Cell Therapy Catapult, which was originally a technology and innovation centre to help develop an emerging industry to be a precursor to what could be a £10 billion industry. The catapult is working on a five-year plan pulling academic and industry plans together and ensuring a voice for this new technology within government here and within Europe.
All of this is very positive, except when we come to what is happening in California. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine—CIRM—has been raising $3 billion in 30-year bonds. The National Institutes of Health is spending $1.3 billion on regenerative medicine. In the UK, TSB is spending £16.25 million over the next three years; approximately £5.5 million a year. Catapult has core funding of £70 million over five years—£14 million a year core funding—and is hoping that the third sector will add another £10 million, and industry another £10 million, making somewhere in the region of £35 million a year. However, much of that is still a matter of hope, although both sectors are beginning to put more money into this area. Putting it all together, we are looking at something in the region of £70 million to £100 million a year for this sector, compared with the $3 billion that the Californians have raised through 30-year bonds.
Our recommendation 13 to the Government was that the ESRC and the Technology Strategy Board should do an evaluation of innovative funding models. The Government must, we said, put their money where their mouth is: we cannot expect the goose to lay golden eggs unless we feed it. The UK public spending and accounting framework is, to my mind, quite unduly risk-averse and focused on the short term in many senses. The centralisation of all capital funding via the Treasury cuts out intermediate authorities as raisers of capital. This compares with the United States, where states such as California, come in and can raise money for innovation. In Germany, the Länder, again, can go to the capital market and raise money for innovation and then work in conjunction with the Landesbank. There is no encouragement here by the Government of highlyconcentrated funding mechanisms at a regional level. The response of the Government to this recommendation was non-committal at best. They said:
“The TSB and Research Councils will respond to the recommendation to evaluate innovative funding models for late stage clinical development”.
Indeed, the TSB and the research councils welcomed the idea. The Government’s response continued:
“The Government is confident that regenerative medicine has enormous potential which is why we invest in the research base through the Research Councils and support commercialisation through the TSB. We cannot commit to adopting policy recommendations on regenerative medicine that might emerge from an Economic and Social Research Council … and TSB study … although we will consider any recommendations of such a study”.
As I say, that is non-committal at best. Unless we are prepared to think big in the way that California does, we shall end up—as we did in some senses with protein engineering—with positive but relatively little gains from this new technology while others grab the really big gains.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I very much welcome the debate and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Patel, on securing it and commend him, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the committee members for the quality of the report itself. I declare my interests as chair of an NHS foundation trust, president of GS1 and consultant and trainer with Cumberlege Connections.
This subject is of considerable interest to me. I am sure that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, will remember our great debate on the order allowing the extension of embryonic stem cell research over 10 years ago, when your Lordships’ House debated the matter for over seven hours. We agreed to it subject to the establishment of a Select Committee. I think that we played our part in laying some of the foundations for the progress that has subsequently been made.
The report itself is a powerful one. It very helpfully points out the many strengths the UK has in regenerative medicine—strengths we always hoped we would be able to take advantage of—but it also points out some of the issues around private investment, regulation, translation and how we are to take forward developments that look particularly promising as far as patient treatments are concerned.
Overall I welcome the Government’s response, which has been positive. However, it leaves four specific questions, which I will put to the noble Earl. They concern: regulation; the funding of research and development; and manufacturing capacity. I will then look a little further down the line towards the role of the National Health Service and the uptake of such new medicines and developments.
Both the noble Lords, Lord Willis and Lord Turnberg, spoke particularly eloquently about the issue of regulations and the problem we may have because of the number of regulatory bodies involved in regulation. The committee itself wanted to give a stronger role to the HRA; that is an important point on which we look forward to a perhaps more considered response from the Government. However, I was particularly interested in the point raised by my noble friend Lord Turnberg about the issue of clinical trials and the approach of the MHRA as compared to regulators in Japan and the US. That is the issue in Japan, for example. My noble friend cited that approval can be based around phase 2 trials and that what is needed is the adoption of what my noble friend called an adaptive licensing system. I am well aware of that issue.
I believe that the MHRA is a very good agency that does very good work. However, I am not yet convinced that it sufficiently recognises the urgency of making changes to its own approach. I understand that this is difficult, and I have no doubt that it has to work within the context of European directives in that area. However, can the noble Earl give us some assurance that the MHRA and the other regulatory bodies recognise that this country has a big stake in regenerative medicine? We cannot allow overbureaucratic regulatory procedures to get in the way of that.
I know that we have debated regulation on many occasions, and I wonder whether the noble Earl might consider taking a more proactive role himself—because I think he has responsibility in this area—to knock heads together between the different regulatory bodies. We have huge potential here; it would be a very great pity to lose it because our regulatory bodies were not able to keep up with the science.
Can the noble Earl respond to the issue of research investment? We will never be able to match the kind of investment that the US makes. However, we have clearly shown that we can produce very good results with investment at UK levels. Hearing the sums—the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, very helpfully went through them—I think that they are pitiful compared to the kind of sums that need to be invested. I would like to hear some more about how the Government think that they, the medical charities and other sources can increase our effort in this area.
Manufacturing capacity has been raised as an issue. I welcome the Regenerative Medicine Expert Group, but I saw no reference in the work streams to the issue of manufacturing capacity. Can the noble Earl say a little more about how the Government think they ought to be able to encourage more manufacturing capacity in the UK?
Finally, I will ask the noble Earl about uptake by the National Health Service, which again is an issue that we have debated and which will become a big problem in the future. We know that the NHS, wonderful though it is, is very conservative as regards uptake of new medicines and treatments. The reason NICE was created was to encourage the NHS to do better. Yet in a recent report, as regards technology appraisals, which clinical commissioning groups are by law duty-bound to fund, it is clear that the take-up varies 20-fold for some important new technologies in England. We cannot allow the caution of the NHS over the uptake of new medicines to get in the way of making the most of regenerative medicines. I would be interested in the Minister’s view of how we can get the NHS to play a much stronger role.
The Regenerative Medicine Expert Group is very much to be welcomed. All of us respect highly Sir Mike Rawlins, who is an excellent choice as chairman, and I note that the group is expected to conclude its work by the end of 2014. It would be very helpful to the House if the Minister could be clear with us that the Government will take the report seriously and, on the back of it, will be prepared to reconsider some of the points that they have made in answer to the excellent report of your Lordships’ House.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Patel, on securing this debate and congratulate the Select Committee on Science and Technology, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, on its excellent work in highlighting the important issues associated with the development of the regenerative medicine sector in the UK. The Government welcome the committee’s report and recommendations and agree that it is very important that the translation and commercialisation of research in this area in the UK is enabled.
As noble Lords recognised, regenerative medicines have enormous potential to treat and cure diseases, including in areas where no cure yet exists, to improve the quality of people’s lives and generate significant economic benefits for the UK. The Government remain committed to developing this important field of medicine, which we recognise as one of the UK’s eight great technologies. As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, acknowledged, the UK, with its strong science base, research funding and regulatory frameworks, and access to patients provided by the NHS, retains a strong international position to support the successful commercial translation of regenerative medicines. That said, more can be done to support and enhance the development of regenerative medicines in the UK.
I am grateful to the committee for the recommendations that it made on ways in which this area of medical science can be better supported. The actions that the Government are taking are set out in detail in our response to the report, but I would like to take this opportunity to highlight a number of areas of important activity.
The Government are continuing to invest to support translational health research on regenerative medicines, and this remains a high priority. A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Patel, asked for some reassurance that the NHS was ready for regenerative medicine clinical trials. As he knows, the Department of Health’s National Institute for Health Research—the NIHR—funds infrastructure in the NHS for translational research in regenerative medicine, in particular, as my noble friend Lord Willis mentioned, through biomedical research centres and units. These are established in leading NHS and university partnerships to drive progress on innovation and translational research in biomedicine into NHS practice. In 2011, the Government announced £800 million of NIHR funding for five years from April 2012 for 11 biomedical research centres and 20 biomedical research units. As part of this, the NIHR is investing more than £9 million annually in research programmes within its BRCs and BRUs that involve significant cutting-edge translational research in regenerative medicine across a range of disease areas.
This approach is already bearing fruit. For example, scientists at the NIHR biomedical research centre at Guy’s and St Thomas’s, and King’s College London have, for the first time, identified the unique properties of two different types of skin cells, including those responsible for repairing skin wounds. This research could pave the way for new and effective treatments to repair injured skin and reduce the impact of ageing on skin.
In addition to these centres and units, the NIHR funds infrastructure for regenerative medicine studies through its clinical research facilities and the Clinical Research Network. The Government’s response to the committee’s report highlighted work to implement changes to the organisational structure of the Clinical Research Network to take effect from 1 April, and I can report that these changes are on target.
The noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, in her highly informative speech, spoke about the development of regenerative medicines to treat neurodegenerative diseases, including dementia. The Government have established the new National Institute for Health Research Dementia Translational Research Collaboration to pull discoveries from basic science into real benefits for patients. This brings together resources within the NIHR biomedical research centres and units.
As part of the collaboration, the NIHR Queen’s Square Dementia Biomedical Research Unit recently held a workshop on the use of stem cells in dementia and other neurological diseases, without—as the noble Baroness emphasised—conflating very distinct conditions. In addition, the NIHR Clinical Research Network will be responsible for delivering clinical research studies across a full breadth of specialties, which will include dementia and neurodegenerative diseases. Studies in regenerative medicine will be supported within the relevant specialty.
Regenerative medicine research has also benefited from the Regenerative Medicine Platform, the Technology Strategy Board and the Biomedical Catalyst, which have made significant investments in this area. Furthermore, noting the committee’s observation that there are a large number of different research and development funders, I am pleased to report, particularly to my noble friend Lady Sharp, that a single, interactive research “funding portal” is in development. We anticipate that it will be rolled out this spring. This portal will support researchers across academia and industry to identify and access relevant funding opportunities. As noble Lords have suggested, there should be a clear pathway from development to delivery of regenerative medicines in the NHS. This will aid the growth of this sector so that effective regenerative medicines become readily available and provide benefits to patients.
The healthcare system in the UK has already been delivering regenerative medicines successfully for decades, as shown through stem cell or tissue transplantation and through medicines such as erythropoietin. As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, pointed out, it is important to remember the breadth of the therapies that fall under a regenerative medicine definition, ranging from well established bone marrow transplantation procedures through to those at early-stage research. Each regenerative medicine product that is developed will differ by its mode of action, cost and therapeutic application.
My noble friend Lord Selborne referred to some new therapies appearing over the horizon. For new innovative therapies we are implementing recommendations from the Innovation, Health and Wealth report to spread innovation quickly and at scale throughout the NHS to improve outcomes and quality for patients and the NHS. I recognise fully the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about the pace of uptake in the NHS of NICE-approved medicines; it is a concern that I share.
NHS England’s Commissioning through Evaluation programme provides an opportunity to strengthen the information we have available to inform commissioning policy for procedures or treatments that show significant future promise, but for which the evidence base on clinical and cost-effectiveness is currently insufficient to support routine commissioning. This is particularly important for rarer or smaller-volume treatments, such as some regenerative medicine treatments, where randomised controlled research evidence may be less readily available. We have also asked NICE to develop multiple-technology appraisal guidance on autologous chondrocyte implantation, a regenerative medicine for repairing symptomatic articular cartilage defects of the knee.
As noble Lords mentioned, in order to develop an NHS pathway for regenerative medicines, we have established a Regenerative Medicine Expert Group, as recommended by the committee, to develop an NHS regenerative medicine delivery readiness strategy and action plan. We are pleased that Professor Sir Michael Rawlins has agreed to chair this group, which is of a multidisciplinary nature with all the key stakeholder groups represented within the membership, including NHS England, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, regulators, industry, researchers, patient representatives, NHS Blood and Transplant, the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service, the Welsh Blood Service and the Cell Therapy Catapult.
The noble Lord, Lord Patel, asked about the group’s terms of reference. These can be found on its website, which is located on the Department of Health’s website. However, in essence, we have tasked the group with considering all the important elements of the pathway of regenerative medicines into the NHS, including licensing and regulation of a product, evaluation, commissioning and reimbursement, as well as practicalities such as manufacturing and distribution. I can tell the noble Lord that the group has been asked to report to the Secretary of State by the end of this calendar year, and its work is well under way. It will deliver an NHS regenerative medicine delivery readiness strategy and action plan.
I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, will be glad to know that as well as NHS delivery we have also tasked the Regenerative Medicine Expert Group with looking at the regulatory system for regenerative medicines. My noble friend Lord Selborne referred to this, as did my noble friend Lady Sharp and other noble Lords. The Government recognise, as did the committee, that regulation in this area may act to stifle innovation and thus that we should endeavour to simplify systems to provide support for those developing regenerative medicines to navigate regulatory pathways. With these aims in mind, the main regulatory bodies are working closely with one another to streamline the regulatory system and provide support to help guide applicants with regulatory submissions—for example, the Health Research Authority is undertaking work to streamline research approvals and has a new website to guide researchers. Also, we can look to the joint working of the MHRA and the Human Tissue Authority as a result of the McCracken report recommendation on the regulation of tissue for applications aimed at developing regenerative medicines. I hope that those initiatives will be of particular comfort to my noble friend Lord Willis.
I should like to emphasise to him, to my noble friend Lady Sharp and to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that the Government remain committed to streamlining research approvals.
Lord Willis of Knaresborough
Before my noble friend leaves that point, I asked specifically—as did the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg—when a decision will be made on the initiative of the Health Research Authority to bring together and streamline NHS approvals and local ethics approvals. The decision has been awaited since October.
Earl Howe
My noble friend anticipates some news that I was about to convey. He is right: the Health Research Authority is the organisation created to deliver the streamlining of research approvals. It has completed its feasibility study. The results demonstrated that NHS R&D assessments could be integrated with elements of the research ethics committee review into a single HRA assessment for the approval of all research in the NHS. Department of Health officials are scrutinising the business case submitted by the HRA as part of standard governance processes, and approval of the case is subject to the proposals demonstrating value for money. Consideration of the business case is well advanced and we would anticipate that this process will conclude shortly.
The noble Lords, Lord Patel, Lord Turnberg and Lord Hunt, asked me about support for manufacturing, in particular as regards large-scale trials. The Cell Therapy Catapult has recently completed its survey of regenerative medicine manufacturing capacity in the UK, and an appraisal of national capability is planned on an annual basis to keep abreast of the evolving needs of the area and to ensure that the UK remains globally competitive. The 2013 survey and analyses that the Cell Therapy Catapult compiled have been shared with stakeholders. The key findings of the survey, including a demand forecast, have been shared at various meetings in the UK, including at the Regenerative Medicine Expert Group, and at meetings of the advanced therapeutic products manufacturing community and will be published shortly. The survey output, along with analysis of demand, was used to make a proposal to BIS for further investment to fill the cell manufacturing gap and support late-stage clinical trials. The investment proposal is currently being assessed.
The noble Lord, Lord Patel, asked what action UKTI has taken to improve the chances of the UK being a location for the development and manufacture of regenerative medicine therapies. UKTI has consulted extensively with UK stakeholders and has developed a new UK regenerative medicine sector proposition, which was launched in December 2013 at the World Stem Cell Summit in San Diego. Training on the materials has been rolled out to a number of its overseas teams, with more training to follow in the coming months.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, made some criticism of the MHRA in the context of progress on adaptive licensing. This issue was also raised by the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg. The MHRA has been involved with a discussion group at the European Medicines Agency in developing guidance, case studies and draft calls for expressions of interest to go out this year. One has to remember that work on adaptive licensing must be conducted within the context of European law. We had hoped that this would be issued last year but there has been a delay, as the European Commission has wanted to be satisfied that proposals can be accommodated in the existing regulatory flexibilities. I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that we continue to be actively involved in pushing the EMA in bringing this work forward, and I have been personally involved in overseeing that.
Distinct from the concept of adaptive licensing is the early access to medicines scheme. This is designed to enable earlier UK patient access to highly promising medicinal products before they are licensed. This is expected to be announced very soon. It will operate within the current regulatory structure, and is voluntary and non-statutory. The MHRA will provide a scientific opinion on promising new medicines that will treat, diagnose or prevent life-threatening or seriously debilitating conditions without adequate treatment options before the medicines are licensed. Further details will be announced in the near future.
My noble friend Lord Willis asked about NICE’s value-assessment process. NICE, in consultation with stakeholders, keeps its methodologies under review to ensure that they remain fit for purpose. Our priority is to make sure that we get the best possible results for all NHS patients with the resources that we have, which means using taxpayers’ money responsibly and getting good value for money. We have asked NICE to look at how drugs are assessed so that patients can get the treatments that they need at the best value for the NHS and so that the price that the NHS pays is more closely linked to the value that a medicine brings. NICE will carry out a full public consultation before implementing any changes. I would just add that NICE is a key member of the Regenerative Medicine Expert Group, which will look at and provide recommendations on the evaluation and commissioning of these novel medicines and their adoption in the NHS.
My noble friend Lord Selborne and the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, referred to developments in Japan. We are aware of the Japanese plans, and the report on the approach is being considered by the expert group. As noble Lords have mentioned, the Japanese Government are exploring ways in which the regulatory process there might be changed to support earlier evaluation of the clinical effectiveness and adoption of regenerative medicines within their health system following evidence of safety. Earlier this year, a Department of Health official, along with Foreign Office officials, attended a conference in Japan where the plans were discussed. The details have yet to be worked out but a watching brief will be maintained with the contacts that were made. A report of the conference has been made available to the expert group for consideration.
The Government look forward to receiving the Regenerative Medicine Expert Group’s strategy and action plan. We anticipate that this will provide a platform to help ensure that the UK will be in the lead in realising the exciting medical and commercial potential of these cutting-edge treatments.
Lord Patel
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for his detailed response and all other noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. It has been a very good debate, which went wider than the inquiry report. I look forward to another debate when the report of the expert working group comes out; we will know then whether progress has been made.