House of Commons

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

Thursday 23 October 2014

The House met at half-past Nine o’clock

Prayers

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

1. What steps he is taking to relieve congestion on roads.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

6. What steps he is taking to relieve congestion on roads.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)]

The Government have an ambitious strategy for tackling congestion and improving performance on our roads, as I think the whole House would acknowledge. This autumn we will set out our plans for a road investment strategy, with £24 billion to be spent on strategic roads up to 2021. For local roads, £7.4 billion will be spent in the next Parliament, and £1.5 billion funding from the local growth fund will bring forward vital schemes.

[Sir Nicholas Soames]

My right hon. Friend may well have an ambitious strategy, but it does not go as far as Mid Sussex. Is he aware that particularly in the towns of Haywards Heath and East Grinstead there have been frankly intolerable delays owing to works by the utilities? I want him to take a much, much tougher line with the utilities on how they handle traffic management so that they cease destroying the trading opportunities of towns that are trying to make much better of themselves.

[Mr Hayes]

As my right hon. Friend knows, I was in Sussex only last week looking at these very matters. There is no end to my strategic ambitions— geographically or in any other way. He is absolutely right that we need to take a tough line in ensuring that schemes do not have undesirable or unintended consequences. I will certainly look very closely at the circumstances he describes, and he can be absolutely certain of my toughness.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

The pinch point fund is an excellent and cost-effective way of assisting with schemes such as the Blackheath lane roundabout in my constituency, and I urge my right hon. Friend to continue with it. However, there are even cheaper ways of reducing congestion, such as traffic light re-phasing and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) said, proper co-ordination of road works. Will the Minister also consider requiring local highway authorities to publish weekly information on delays caused by congestion in their areas in order to give them an incentive to do something about it and to give drivers the information they need to plan their journeys?

[Mr Hayes]

My hon. Friend will know that Staffordshire has been provided with local pinch point funding of £4.8 million to support three schemes: the Beacon business park growth point in Stafford, which was completed on 20 June 2014; the A50 to Alton growth corridor, which is due to be completed in March 2016; and the Gungate north-south link road in Tamworth, which is due for completion in March 2015. His idea of weekly reports is innovative and interesting, and I am more than happy to take it back to the Department. Once again, he has shown that he brings to this House fresh thinking that is most welcome.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Last week we had an excellent debate in the House on cycling. It was so good, in fact, that the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) said he was going to take up cycling, which we look forward to seeing. One of the benefits of cycling is that for every driver who moves on to a cycle, less road space is taken up. How much of the £100 million that the Minister has announced for new roads will benefit cycling?

[Mr Hayes]

It is a hallmark of this Government that we have taken cycling as seriously as we have, and that is in no small measure due to the work of the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill). All new road schemes must take account of cycling provision, and, although I am never unnecessarily partisan in this Chamber, as you know, Mr Speaker, I am not sure that previous Governments could have claimed that.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister to his role. Congestion is, as we have heard, all too often made worse by the poor state of local roads. The Local Government Association has warned of a road maintenance “time bomb”. The Minister may think that everything is going swimmingly well, with funding competitions, which pre-date him, that rob Peter to pay Paul, but when the Public Accounts Committee says that it is

“very frustrating that the Department for Transport still has not got a grip on how it funds road maintenance”,

one might think that he would listen, so why will he not?

[Mr Hayes]

I always take that kind of analysis and scrutiny seriously. This Government are going to resurface 80% of roads, because we acknowledge the hon. Gentleman’s point about the effect of road condition on congestion. This Government are taking a more strategic approach, putting their money where their mouth is and listening to the kinds of arguments the hon. Gentleman has amplified.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

2. What assessment he has made of the merits of granting provisional licences for small motorbikes and scooters.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)]

No formal assessment has been made of the merits of granting provisional driving licences for small motorbikes and scooters. The minimum age at which a motorist can apply for a provisional licence to ride mopeds is 16. From the age of 17, motorists can apply for a provisional licence to ride small motorcycles with an engine size of up to 125 cc.

[Mr Sheerman]

I tabled that question because I nearly killed a young motorcyclist two weeks ago. He was a Domino’s Pizza delivery boy and it was obvious that he was totally inexperienced and should not have been employed delivering around London. Motorcycle and scooter users account for 20% of fatalities on our roads, yet they represent only 1% of the traffic in our country. Something significant is happening. Can we do something about it?

[Claire Perry]

May I commend the hon. Gentleman for his long-standing commitment to road safety? It started many years ago and he has done an amazing job. He will be as pleased as I am that, overall, road deaths this year are at their lowest level since 1926. Since the regime of testing and compulsory basic training was introduced in 1990, deaths and fatalities among users of small and medium-sized motorbikes have fallen by up to 60%, so the regime is fit for purpose and we are always looking to make our roads even safer.

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

3. What recent discussions he has had with stakeholders in the aviation industry on the use of flight paths over conflict zones.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

The Department keeps in close contact with UK carriers about the whole range of threats to aviation, including the risks of flying over conflict zones. The Secretary of State recently met the secretary general of the International Civil Aviation Organisation and discussed this very issue.

[Mr Bain]

Our thoughts remain very strongly with the families and friends of those who died in the terrible disaster that affected flight MH17. Since then, conditions have become even more dangerous, particularly in relation to the middle east. What are the Government doing, through the ICAO, to ensure that information about international flights is shared between domestic countries?

[Mr Goodwill]

May I extend the Government’s condolences to the families of the 283 passengers and 15 crew, including 10 British citizens, who were killed? Indeed, at the European Council in Luxembourg, we had the opportunity to express condolences to my Dutch counterpart; a very large number of the casualties came from his country. The ICAO has set up a taskforce to look at the provision of over-flights in conflict zones, and the UK is participating actively in that work.

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

May I associate myself with the Minister’s condolences to the families, not least our own UK citizens? After MH17 was shot down, I wrote to the Minister in August to ask how the Government would ensure that all airlines had equal access to recommendations based on authoritative intelligence about safety over specific conflict zones. I also asked him to reconsider his reserved powers so that passengers, pilots and airline staff in the UK could have confidence in the process. His reply was that he was looking into it. After eight weeks in which conflicts in Iraq and Syria have intensified those concerns, what changes has he made?

[Mr Goodwill]

I have already explained that work is being undertaken at an international level. Indeed, the Secretary of State has power to direct airlines not to fly over particular locations and the independent Civil Aviation Authority can issue a notice to airmen—a NOTAM—instructing pilots not to fly over those areas. Ultimately, it is up to the airline and the captain to take the decision, based on the best available information they have.

[Mr Speaker]

We are pleased to see the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) sprinting into the Chamber.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

4. What recent estimate he has made of the change in the number of rail passenger journeys in each of the last three years.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)]

I am proud that rail in this country is doing extremely well. Privatisation has seen passenger numbers more than double to over 1.6 billion last year. Innovation in the private sector has led to more seats, faster journey times and brighter station environments, which is why there have been an extra 233 million journeys between 2011 and 2014, despite economic conditions.

[Richard Graham]

The growth in the number of passengers on the railways is encouraging, particularly at Gloucester station, where figures have risen considerably higher than the national average. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the train companies have to play their part in providing extra capacity and that the 2006 decision by Arriva cross-country services to halve the number of trains stopping at Gloucester station has not helped us to grow the number of railway passengers in a sustainable way? Does he agree that that should change when the renegotiations happen?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I am always pleased to listen to the representations made by my hon. Friend to get more and better services for his constituency and the people who live in and around Gloucester. I understand the points he makes, but we have seen a massive increase in rail use. The great difference from when I was in the Department 25 years ago is that rail was seen then as yesterday’s industry. Everywhere I go now, people are lobbying for extra services, which I think privatisation has brought about.

[Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is good to see such expansion in the use of rail, but what action will the Secretary of State take to relieve the severe overcrowding on some routes caused by the lack of both electric and diesel trains? Is he concerned about the safety threat posed by the continuation of the Pacer trains?

[Mr McLoughlin]

As Secretary of State for Transport I have seen franchises being told to convert first class carriages to standard class carriages so that more people can travel. I think I am the first Secretary of State to do that. It was not done by any previous Labour Secretary of State, so I am very pleased about that. On Pacers, I entirely agree with the hon. Lady. We must look for better services for those people who are currently served by Pacers, possibly by improving and redesigning the Pacers, which some of the companies are looking at. It is certainly something that I am interested in.

[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the record that he set out to our hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham). If he looks at the restarted franchise, which sees more passengers being put right at the heart of the process, more towns likely to come on to the network, and more seats available, does he agree that far from being yesterday’s industry, this is likely to be the industry of tomorrow and these trains are likely to accelerate?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I start by thanking my hon. Friend for all the work he did in improving and getting franchises back on the road after the difficulty that we inherited when we first entered the Department two years ago. He made a great contribution to that. I completely agree with him. As I said, all the meetings I have with various local authority leaders now are about increasing capacity and providing more and better services. The train operating companies and the rolling stock leasing companies all have roles to play in doing that.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

My constituents frequently play “sardines” on Northern Rail trains, often with passengers left at stations. Was the massive increase of up to 162% in fares a perverse way of reducing demand?

[Mr McLoughlin]

As I said, it is important that we provide that extra capacity. My only regret is that the previous Government did not order enough rolling stock for us to be able to do that. We are putting that right.

[Sir Alan Haselhurst (Saffron Walden) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that there could be a further boost to rail passengers if we had faster journeys on the west Anglia main line? Will he assure me that improvements to that line will not slip down the priority list?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I assure my right hon. Friend of that. Not only has he made that case to me in person on a number of occasions, but when I visited his constituency he pointed out the need for those improvements.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

As my hon. Friends have already said, the north has some of the most overcrowded trains in the country, and Ministers have hit passengers with stealth fare rises of up to 162%. The Department said that this will

“help reduce crowding on evening services.”

Will the Secretary of State confirm that it is his official policy to price people off the railways?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I will take no lectures from Labour about pricing people off the railways. This Government last year capped fares at inflation and have done so this year. We are the first Government to do so—the previous Government never did. The hon. Lady talks about the problem of serving northern cities and we fully accept that there are a number of problems. That is why the Chancellor has led on the question of how we improve connections between northern cities. We have to catch up after 13 years of neglect.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

5. What progress he has made on improvements to the A417 and A419 at Nettleton Bottom and Crickley Hill; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)]

The Highways Agency is preparing a route strategy for the midlands to Wales and Gloucestershire. This includes the A417 at Nettleton Bottom and Crickley Hill, which is part of the section of the road identified as a key challenge on the route. Current options are being assessed, including major improvements, to produce an indicative business case as the basis on which to prioritise investment from 2015. I will press the Highways Agency to provide its assessments so that I can make decisions on this as soon as possible.

[Mr Robertson]

I thank the Minister for that response. He will be aware that the Secretary of State recently visited the area called “the missing link” and saw for himself the difficulties and dangers of that road. I know that my right hon. Friend is a very caring and a very competent Minister, and he will be very saddened indeed by the news of yet another death on that road less than two weeks ago. Will he therefore do everything in his power to bring about a solution for this congested and very dangerous stretch of road?

[Mr Hayes]

Yes, I had indeed heard about that fatality, and I obviously offer my commiserations and condolences to all concerned. My hon. Friend has been consistent in this campaign. In July, he asked the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), a very similar question. I know that he has prioritised improvements to the road. I will look closely at the matter again, and we will do our very best for him.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

No. I am not going to call the right hon. Gentleman because Nettleton Bottom and Crickley Hill are a very long way from Newcastle. We will hear from him later, I feel sure.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Nettleton Bottom happens to be in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) and in mine. May I therefore reinforce what my hon. Friend has so adroitly put to the Minister? The recent fatality—I send my sympathy to the family—is the eighth since this time last year. This road is in desperate need of refurbishment.

[Mr Hayes]

I do understand that the death toll on this road is continuing to rise, and I also understand the delays that travellers are enduring as a result of congestion. I know that my hon. Friend has previously made this case, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson). The Department is conscious of that and of the need to do more across a whole range of roads, but he can be assured that the powerful case they have both made will not fall on deaf ears.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

7. How many of the shortlisted bidders for the inter-city east coast franchise are wholly or partly foreign-owned.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)]

Three bidding companies are taking part in the competition for the inter-city east coast franchise, one of which is partly foreign-owned.

[Sheila Gilmore]

When I last asked the Transport Secretary about this issue on 8 May, he said that the reason Directly Operated Railways would be at a disadvantage and therefore could not take part in the competition was that it was funded through the taxpayer, yet both parts of Keolis-Eurostar are currently majority-owned by the French and UK Governments. What is it about that state-owned company that gives it an edge over our own state-owned company?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I just remember and call to mind the words of the last Transport Secretary under the previous Labour Government, who said that he did

“not believe that it would be in the public interest for us to have a nationalised train operating company indefinitely.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 1 July 2009; Vol. 712, c. 232.]

I agree with those words, which he used when he was last in this office and had responsibility for this issue.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

8. What recent progress has been made on the tram-train project.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)]

The tram-train pilot project, which introduces new services from Rotherham Parkgate to Sheffield city centre, is progressing. The seven new tram-train sets are being built, and modifications to the existing super-tram network and depot are well under way. Network Rail is developing its programme to modify the heavy rail network on which to run the tram-trains, including electrification from Meadowhall to Rotherham Parkgate and the construction of new platforms at Rotherham Central station. The service is due to start in 2016.

[Mr Betts]

I thank the Minister for that reply because, as she is aware, that is precisely the timetable. The trams are supposed to start running early in 2016. As I understand it, Network Rail’s timetable is now slipping substantially, and there are concerns that it might slip by as much as a year. In response to those concerns, Baroness Kramer has simply promised extra scrutiny and that officials would impress the importance of the project on Network Rail. Will the Minister now get a grip of Network Rail so that it gets a grip of this project and gives an absolute assurance that the trams will start to run early in 2016, as planned?

[Claire Perry]

The enthusiasm of the hon. Gentleman and the South Yorkshire passenger transport executive shows how vital that project is. He will know that it is an important pilot project. If this fantastic service works, it will liberate many transport systems in other cities. It will also future-proof the lines for the long-awaited electrification process, which we want to see on other parts of the railways. The Network Rail route director, my officials and I have made personal commitments to deliver this vital project.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Next week, the new Metrolink line to Manchester airport will open. At 14.5 km, it has been one of the biggest civil engineering projects in the country. Will the Minister join me in thanking the M-Pact Thales consortium, which has delivered the project a year ahead of schedule, as well as Transport for Greater Manchester and the good people of Wythenshawe, who have endured the disruption with good grace?

[Claire Perry]

I certainly will. I also commend the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members who came to the fabulous presentation by the Greater Manchester transport team earlier this week, where we heard about all the exciting plans for the area. It requires a large network of private and public sector innovation and effort to deliver these vital services, which are so long overdue.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

9. What recent progress his Department has made on the rail electrification programme.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)]

The electrification programme announced in the 2012 rail investment strategy is under way. The Manchester to Scotland route transferred to full electric operation in early 2014, following the electrification between Manchester and Wigan. The plan is for the Liverpool to Manchester, St Helens, Wigan and Warrington routes to move to electric operation in early 2015.

[Toby Perkins]

Following cost overruns on other electrification projects, Network Rail has said that it is reconsidering all electrification projects. Commuters in Chesterfield will be very concerned that that will mean delays or reductions to the midland main line project. Will the Secretary of State therefore confirm that the only review the Government are undertaking is about ensuring that they are on time and on budget next time, and not about cutting or delaying that important project?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I do not like to be party political, but considering that the last Government managed to electrify no more than 10 miles of railway in 13 years, Labour Members should not be giving any lectures to a Government who have announced plans to electrify more than 800 miles of railway. I am very proud of what we are doing. Of course there are challenges with electrification. If the hon. Gentleman pays a little more attention when he travels by train from London to Chesterfield, he will see that the work is already being undertaken.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

When he looks at the electrification of the midland main line, will the Secretary of State consider extending electrification to the line through Langley Mill and Alfreton in my seat, which has been missed out of the plan? That would improve the services for those stations and the resilience of the line.

[Mr McLoughlin]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I will look at that. However, I stand by what I have said. We have ambitious plans for electrification and it is right that we ensure they are delivered in a practical and timely manner.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

Electrification in the rest of the north-west is adding to the worry that the Furness line might lose its direct service to Manchester and Manchester airport, which is vital. Has the Secretary of State read the report by the Railway Consultancy, which was funded by businesses in my constituency through Cumbria Better Connected, and will he pay attention to the irrefutable case to keep and improve that service?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I will take the hon. Gentleman’s representations seriously and ensure that I re-read that report.

[Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for a productive and useful meeting with representatives of the Peninsula rail group and West Devon local government, who are pressing hard for the reopening of the line through Okehampton to Tavistock and Plymouth, which would preferably be electrified. On his visit next week, will he examine closely the compelling case for the reopening of the line via Okehampton on the grounds of cost and resilience and of the economic benefits that it would bring to a wide swathe of economic areas?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for leading that delegation to my office yesterday. As I informed him yesterday, I am looking forward to my visit to his constituency next week and to seeing what is behind the points that he made to me. As we all saw last winter, resilience for the south-west is incredibly important, and I am determined to look at all the available options.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

In May when I asked the Secretary of State about problems with the electrification of the Great Western main line, he said that

“there will always be problems”.—[Official Report, 8 May 2014; Vol. 580, c. 264.]

Will he confirm that the Great Western £1.1 billion electrification project is now a £1.6 billion electrification project, and will he say which electrification projects will be delayed or cancelled when his Department has concluded its panic review of his flagship projects?

[Mr McLoughlin]

A “panic” review of a project that is more ambitious than anything the last Government ever dreamed of? I would have thought there would be a consensus across the House for the huge investment that we are putting into the railways through Network Rail. I am working with Network Rail and it is working with me to ensure that we get the electrification programme delivered, and within an overall budget.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

10. What plans he has to improve rail services in the east midlands.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)]

The east midlands will share in the Government’s massive investment in the railways, which is so unlike what was delivered by the Labour party. Last week we announced major service enhancements on the Nottingham to Lincoln line, which will provide 24 additional weekday trains from next May. The east midlands has already benefited from investment of approximately £70 million to improve line speeds on the midland main line up to 125 miles per hour, and it will see further investment with electrification extended to Corby in 2017 and Sheffield in 2020.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Of course this wonderful Minister can do no wrong, and it must therefore have been due to an oversight of her wrongheaded advisers that in the invitation to bid for the east coast main line there was no requirement to include the through train to Cleethorpes and Grimsby via Market Rasen. Will she put pressure on the bidders to ensure that the through train that we used to have, and which is vital to our Lincolnshire economy, is included?

[Claire Perry]

My hon. Friend will know that I stood on Cleethorpes seafront only last week. I rode that line myself, and I was made fully aware of the strength of the feeling about it. Bids are currently being assessed, and I am looking forward to publishing further information in December. It is clear that we need investment in those areas of the north. The previous Government let those franchises on a zero-growth and zero-investment basis, and they should be ashamed of themselves.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for recently visiting Sherwood and looking at the case for extending the Robin Hood line to Ollerton and Edwinstowe. Will she continue to support that project and give us advice on how to further it in the near future?

[Claire Perry]

I enjoyed my meeting with the Ollerton economic forum. The advice and support of such bodies—as well as of local authorities—help us to pull together a business case to look further at such investment. I commend my hon. Friend and his constituents for their hard work on this line.

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

11. What recent discussions he has had with his Department's quality contract board.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

It is for the senior traffic commissioner to make arrangements for the constitution of a quality contract scheme board. No discussions have taken place between the Department and a quality contract scheme board, but I understand that the North East combined authority considered it on 21 October, and has decided to refer its draft quality contract scheme to the QCS board.

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am grateful to the Minister for his answer; as he indicates, discussions now need to take place. In Tyne and Wear this week we took a major step forward when the North East combined authority unanimously agreed to press ahead with plans for a quality contract scheme in the north-east. Will the Minister now respect the will of the people and ensure that the quality contract board has all the resources it needs to arrive at a speedy conclusion?

[Mr Goodwill]

The Government are committed to localism and to local people making decisions about their local services. Whether to adopt a London-style quality contract scheme is a matter for individual local authorities to determine. This is an independent process, with the scheme examined by the QCS board and chaired by a traffic commissioner. It would be inappropriate for the Government to comment or intervene, but if there are issues to do with resources for that board, we would be keen to consider them.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

Large infrastructure transport projects such as HS2 and Crossrail are all very well, and quality bus contracts may help in areas such as Tyne and Wear, but when will the Government do something—anything—for rural areas that have no buses at all, or no buses at weekends and at night?

[Mr Goodwill]

Representing a rural area, I am well aware of the problems of pensioners with concessionary travel passes but no buses to use them on when, in some cases, evening or weekend services have been withdrawn. The Government are contributing more than 40% of the farebox through subsidies to buses in various ways, and we are committed to improving local bus services wherever we can, working in conjunction with local authorities.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

12. What research he has conducted into the effect on the number of deaths and serious injuries of increasing HGV speed limits.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)]

The Department for Transport commissioned the Transport Research Laboratory specifically to assess the possible effects of raising the national speed limit for heavy goods vehicles and bringing them in line with those set for other large vehicles, such as coaches and cars towing caravans. In addition, the Department conducted analysis related to the national speed limit changes using its internal well established and peer-reviewed national transport model and also considered a substantial body of existing research into the various effects of speed changes on road safety.

[Susan Elan Jones]

I am grateful to the Minister for her response, but many of us are very concerned about this proposal. The plan is to raise HGV speed limits on single carriageways when the Minister’s own impact assessment makes it clear that that is likely to increase deaths and serious injuries on our roads. I know that the Minister sometimes comes up with very good ideas, but this is daft and dangerous. I urge her to reconsider in the light of the new evidence.

[Claire Perry]

No decision is taken by me—I speak as a keen cyclist and someone with young children who are out on the roads—and my Department without careful consideration of the impact on road safety. Those speed limits have been in operation since 1960, since when technology in our road traffic and HGV fleet has advanced dramatically, and deaths and injuries caused by HGVs have declined substantially. We have assessed the deaths that might occur from the change, but we have also assessed the impact of not needing to overtake platooning lorries driving far below speed limits that already apply to other large vehicles such as coaches and caravans. I suggest that the hon. Lady speaks to hauliers in her constituency, such as Williams Haulage, which deliver vital services for the country. They are investing in safe-truck technology and they really welcome the changes.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

The country faces a national shortage of 40,000 qualified HGV drivers, which is acting as a brake on national economic growth. Will my hon. Friend agree to meet me and Knights of Old, a distinguished lorry operator in my constituency, and the Road Haulage Association, to see how the Government might fund a package of vocational driver training and recruitment?

[Claire Perry]

I am always reluctant to make funding commitments for the Government, but it would be a pleasure to meet my hon. Friend and his constituents. This is a vital industry for Britain and a core part of economic growth, so it would be a pleasure to listen to representation about how we might improve the skills of drivers.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

13. What steps he is taking to improve passenger safety in taxis and private hire vehicles.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

The Government’s principal role in relation to taxis and private hire vehicles is to ensure that the legislative framework and the guidance to licensing authorities are fit for purpose. Our best practice guidance for licensing authorities stresses the importance of adequate safety checks and enforcement to ensure that these services are safe.

[John Cryer]

But the Government are also planning to allow taxi operators to subcontract calls to other taxi operators without consent. What implications will that have for safety, especially for women?

[Mr Goodwill]

All the taxis will have been licensed, albeit by a neighbouring authority. I cannot see the difference between getting into a minicab in York to go to Scarborough, so I am being driven around Scarborough in a York minicab, and a firm in Scarborough ordering a York cab for me because it is so busy owing to the success of our resort.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

I urge the Government to look one more time at the provisions in the Deregulation Bill, which is currently before the Lords. In northern towns such as Skipton, taxis have been a key part of the problem of child sexual exploitation.

[Mr Goodwill]

It is up to licensing authorities to carry out all the necessary checks. If people who are not the designated driver are driving vehicles, it is a matter for enforcement. The changes that the Government propose would make no difference to that.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)]

Last month I was pleased to announce that from December this year Shrewsbury and Blackpool will benefit from direct rail services to and from London. More generally on franchising, our programme remains on track and most recently the Department announced its intention to negotiate a three and a half year direct award on the Great Western route. On roads, we started work over the summer on a major scheme to increase capacity on the A1 western bypass around Gateshead. I can also inform the House that after its first six months of operation the HGV levy has brought in £23.4 million in revenue from foreign hauliers, substantially above the forecast.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

North-east manufacturers in the port of Tyne are warning that from January the EU sulphur directive will increase shipping costs by more than 15%. These effects could be mitigated by abatement technology, but that will take time to fit. In the meantime our local businesses are suffering. Will the Government live up to their commitment to support manufacturing and offer transitional support while new technology is implemented?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I am more than happy to meet the hon. Lady to discuss the problems that companies are facing as far as the sulphur directive is concerned. I would just point out to her in a friendly way that it was negotiated and passed by the previous Government.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

T2. The Secretary of State will recall a joint letter from me and nine other of his hon. Friends urging him to restore a direct Oxford to Bristol service through Chippenham in the new Great Western franchise. Our campaign is now backed by Business West and the Swindon and Wiltshire and the West of England local enterprise partnerships. Will he meet us to consider how this could be achieved in his direct award negotiations with First Great Western?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I am more than happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members to consider the proposal. It goes to show that rail services in the south-west, and not only in the north, are being pressed on us all the time.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

T8. What are the Minister’s proposals for the future structures of trust ports?

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)]

The right hon. Gentleman will know that trust ports are an important part of our ports sector. They have no shareholders and plough their profits back into the port for the benefit of stakeholders. Since the modernisation of trust port guidance was published in 2009 a lot of work has been done, but I think it is time to re-evaluate the current effectiveness of trust ports and to update our guidance. A trust port study is therefore being undertaken to look at these matters. Officials are working closely with trust ports to that effect.

[Mr Speaker]

I am sure copies will be placed subsequently in the Library, preferably signed by the right hon. Gentleman.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

T3. The local growth deal recently announced a much needed new bridge over the River Mersey in Warrington. I thank the Minister for his support on that but ask that he continue to support the need for a second bridge over both the Mersey and the ship canal, which is a strategic priority for the local enterprise partnership. This will make a much needed difference to the town.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

Local growth deals across the country have been a great success in supporting local priorities. A second crossing in Warrington falls firmly into the category of a local priority, and the purpose of the local growth fund is to reflect those strongly.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

T10. Only a third of the infrastructure projects trumpeted by the Government will have actually started by 2015, and the A14 fiasco probably sums up the Government’s record on roads. When will the Government end the delays and re-announcements and start to deliver the infrastructure our country needs?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I would put the infrastructure record of this Government alongside the infrastructure investment of the previous Government any day. It would be shown to be far more substantial than anything ever planned by the previous Government. I have had the solid support of both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer in making sure we have available funds for infrastructure.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

T4. Street lights provide safety for all, so will the Minister responsible for road safety confirm that turning off street lights at midnight results in added road safety risks for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians?

[Mr Goodwill]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question. This is a matter for local authorities, and of course they are keen to reduce the carbon footprint resulting from having needless lights on. The experience around the country is mixed. In fact, some local authorities have shown that turning off lights does not detract from road safety.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

A large gauge rail freight network capable of carrying lorries and lorry trailers on trains is being developed across the continent of Europe. In Britain, such traffic can only reach as far as Barking from the channel tunnel, so Britain is being left behind on these developments. Will the Secretary of State look seriously at proposals to develop such a rail freight network in Britain?

[Mr McLoughlin]

The hon. Gentleman speaks with passion on this subject and has led the campaign for some time, but I have to say he has not succeeded in persuading me, just as he did not succeed in persuading the last Government, on this matter. However, I am pleased that over the last 10 years we have seen a 60% increase in freight on our railways, and I will do everything possible to encourage the freight industry to transfer more of its freight to rail, because it is in the long-term interests of this country. HS2 will also allow us to concentrate on that.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

T5. I thank the ports Minister for visiting the trust port of Dover last week. It was great to have a people’s Minister come to see the rise of a people’s port at Dover. Does he agree that community directors should be appointed by the community to deliver for the community?

[Mr Hayes]

It is generous of my hon. Friend to describe me as the people’s champion. I have never sought acclamation, but it would be negligent not to step up to the mark. I was delighted to visit Dover last week, to see once again the white cliffs and to be reminded of this

“precious stone set in the silver sea”.

He is right that the link between the port and the community is vital, and community directors are critical to that. I share his view about the importance of investment in linking the port to the town, particularly in the western dock, and about the significance of community directors. He has my full support, as does the port.

[Mr Speaker]

I hope that Dover also enjoyed the right hon. Gentleman.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

Ministers will know that the growth in rail usage in recent years is unevenly distributed across the regions. London has seen the highest growth and the most journeys, which has a knock-on impact in the form of overcrowded trains. What percentage of national investment in rolling stock and infrastructure will go into London commuter services over the next decade?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)]

I do not have those numbers directly to hand, but I am sure the hon. Lady will be reassured to know that under this Government the overall transport infrastructure spend outside London is higher than it was under the last Labour Government. I shall instruct my officials to see whether we can get the data on rolling stock, but I am sure that she, like me, will welcome the fact that the £40 billion we are spending across the country is benefiting all parts of the country. If I could just—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I want to hear from the hon. Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies).

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

T6. The roads Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), from whom I anticipate an excellent answer and whom it is always a pleasure to welcome to my constituency, will be aware that the M55 link road received £2 million of Government money as part of the regional growth fund announcement. Will he meet me to ensure that the work on this vital road begins in 2015, as planned?

[Mr McLoughlin]

As my hon. Friend knows, because I visited the site with him not very long ago, I am more than happy to arrange a meeting for him with the relevant officials and my right hon. Friend to ensure that this project gets the necessary approval.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

A few days before her appointment, the rail Minister wrote to her predecessor about proposals that direct services to London from Bedwyn and Pewsey would cease as a result of electrification proposals that she described as “mad”. Will she tell the House whether she has now received a reply from herself, whether she has had an opportunity to read it and whether she agrees with herself?

[Claire Perry]

The hon. Gentleman has rightly pointed out that one of my important local campaigning priorities is the maintenance of those vital direct links, but as he will know, as a former Minister, owing to ministerial propriety I can no longer directly comment on or investigate those links. I am delighted to say, however, that electrification and investment on that network is an important priority for this Government.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

T7. I am grateful for the private reassurances given to me by the Minister, but he will know that Lincolnshire county council has wrongly decided to close Hawthorn road over the new eastern bypass around Lincoln. Under pressure, it is now opening a footbridge, which I am glad to say one can bring a horse across, but unfortunately not many of my constituents have stables at the back of their gardens to access Lincoln on a horse. Will he please put pressure on the county council to put a proper bridge over the bypass so that we can have access?

[Mr Hayes]

Few are greater champions of rural roads than my hon. Friend, and he knows that I share his passion in that respect, particularly in Lincolnshire. I will happily organise a meeting between the county council, him and myself to take up the very matters he describes.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am afraid that we must move on.

The Leader of the House was asked—

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

1. What recent progress he has made as the Prime Minister’s special envoy on preventing sexual violence in conflict.

[Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

7. What recent progress he has made as the Prime Minister’s special envoy on preventing sexual violence in conflict.

[The First Secretary of State and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr William Hague)]

We have now started the work on delivering commitments from the June global summit to end sexual violence in conflict. Members of the UK team of experts have been deployed to Mali and to the Syrian borders, and shortly we will also deploy an expert to Iraq.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s answer and all the work he is doing in this most important area. In the International Development Committee report of June last year, we recommended that the UK Government make the prevention of violence against women and girls a priority in the response to humanitarian emergencies and that UN peacekeepers should be trained in preventing and responding to such violence. Will he kindly update us on progress?

[Mr Hague]

It is a very important priority of the work we do on this to encourage other Governments and international organisations to incorporate the prevention of sexual violence into military doctrine and training. I think we are making progress on that—in the EU, for example, by ensuring that the prevention of sexual violence is included in all common security and defence policy missions. We are also supporting the efforts of the African Union and the United Nations to ensure that there is zero tolerance of sexual exploitation and abuse committed by UN and African Union personnel in peacekeeping missions. We will keep up this work.

[Gregory Barker]

May I pay tribute to the extraordinary personal commitment of my right hon. Friend to this agenda and say how much I think it is appreciated across the House? Will he tell us what specific action he has taken to address reports—horrific reports—of violence being perpetrated against women and girls in ISIS-controlled areas of Iraq and Syria?

[Mr Hague]

This is the latest appalling demonstration of the importance of this issue. Crimes against humanity are being committed by ISIL in Iraq and in Syria. The UK is providing £23 million in humanitarian aid, including aid that meets the specific needs of displaced women and girls. We are sending an expert to Iraq to look at what we can do to work with the Iraqi Government to help prevent sexual violence in conflict, to punish those responsible in the future and to provide more assistance for those affected.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

2. If he will make it his policy that topical questions be asked in the House to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

[The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)]

While the status of oral questions is, of course, kept under review, there are no current plans to change the policy so that topical questions may be asked of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

[Mr Robertson]

I thank the Minister for his response. He will be aware that there are occasions, particularly in Northern Ireland, when urgent matters need to be discussed and that that has sometimes proved problematic. I ask him to reconsider the possibility of perhaps allowing 10 minutes to be given over to topical questions in each session.

[Tom Brake]

I guess that one of the issues with topical questions for Northern Ireland is that matters are often more complex because of devolution. Mr Speaker has rightly been generous in allowing urgent questions, which provide another route for consideration of urgent matters in Northern Ireland.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

I very much support the proposition put forward by the Chairman of the Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs. The Democratic Unionists very much support the introduction of topical questions and urgent questions for Northern Ireland matters. I do not accept the argument about complexity: every Department has complex issues to deal with and Northern Ireland issues are no more complex. I thus urge the House authorities and the Government to consider this very carefully.

[Tom Brake]

I am afraid that I am not in a position to change my earlier response. Urgent questions provide a route to raise urgent matters. The complexities of devolution are a fact, which makes it more difficult for Members to ensure that their question is pertinent to topical questions and is one to which Ministers can respond.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I support calls for topical questions for Northern Ireland but also a review of topical questions in general and, in particular—despite the great skills of Mr Speaker—the almost impossibility of fitting in all the topical questions to the Deputy Prime Minister.

[Tom Brake]

My hon. Friend will be aware that the time set aside for topical questions to the Deputy Prime Minister was extended owing to demand. The issue is that we have a limited amount of time in this House available for questions and extending questions in one area inevitably means cutting them in another.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

3. What recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of September sittings of the House.

[The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)]

The House performs its functions effectively in September just as it does in other months of the year.

[Kevin Brennan]

Before anyone gets too excited, may I just make it clear that I am not suggesting that we have fewer sitting days? September sittings were introduced early in the 2000s but ignore the facts of the party conference season, which was originally at the end of September and into October because of the availability of cheap rooms in seaside resorts. That is no longer an issue for parties. Have there been any discussions about bringing party conferences forward in September so that we can avoid this very expensive two-week period when the House is brought back to life?

[Tom Brake]

The Deputy Leader of the House is responsible for a limited number of things and party conferences is certainly not one of them. Members would agree that the September sittings that we have just had were essential. We debated some essential matters and there might well have had to be a recall of Parliament had we not had those sittings. I was pleased to note that on Friday 5 September there was the largest turnout of Labour MPs ever—subject to my being corrected by the Labour Whips—on a private Member’s Bill. I was pleased to note that the hon. Gentleman’s name followed mine in the list in Hansard of those who voted.

[Sir Alan Haselhurst (Saffron Walden) (Con)]

Has the institution of September sittings made any difference at all to the total number of days per year on which the House sits? What does my right hon. Friend calculate the cost to be in terms of the interruption of maintenance works and the inconvenience to all people on the Parliamentary Estate when certain facilities are not available at that time?

[Tom Brake]

The number of days has not changed as a result of September sittings. Were we to abolish them, if that is something for which Members are pressing, we would simply have to make that time available elsewhere. The additional costs are marginal; I understand them to be of the order of £200,000 for that period.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

Whatever the arrangements are for possibly changing the times of conferences, is the Deputy Leader of the House aware that it would be totally unacceptable to return to a situation where the House did not meet for nine or 10 consecutive weeks? In the past many of us urged that that should be discontinued and I am pleased that it has been.

[Tom Brake]

I do not think the hon. Gentleman and I often see eye to eye on matters in this House but on that point I am in total agreement with him. The public and indeed Members of Parliament would consider it strange that for a very extended period during the summer we are not sitting and there were not opportunities to raise important matters in this place.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

Is not the real problem that the two Houses are now completely out of sync with each other, with the House of Lords sitting until the end of July and not now coming back until mid-October? Will the Leader and Deputy Leader of the House speak to their counterparts about trying to realign the two Houses, thus not only saving money but improving parliamentary scrutiny?

[Tom Brake]

That is a valid point and I am certainly happy to follow it up. Often the Houses are not synchronised in terms of the progress of Bills in any case, but the hon. Gentleman has raised an important point. It is certainly worth seeing whether the timetables could be synchronised if that had a significant impact in reducing the costs of running Parliament.

The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, representing the House of Commons Commission, was asked—

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

4. What steps he is taking to reward staff for exceptional work in supporting hon. Members.

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)]

May I begin my answer by reiterating, on behalf of Members on all sides of the House, the gratitude for the excellent work of all those who serve us at every level in the House service? More specifically, as part of the current three-year pay agreement for the main pay groups, there is a commitment to review the existing performance management arrangements and to introduce a new system that can reward staff based on their overall contribution, including service to Members. In addition there are also a number of non-financial ways in which staff who provide excellent service can be recognised and rewarded. One particular example is through the regular “thank you” events that are now held by the acting Clerk.

[Mr Sheerman]

That all sounds fine and good, but should we in this House not be trying to be a model employer, and a model employer would not employ lots of people on short-term contracts to substitute full-time employees with agency staff? Also, surely we should be an employer that can boast that our staff have the highest morale and highest commitment. They do have the commitment, but the morale is going down week after week, and early retirements of good, valued members of staff is the result.

[John Thurso]

On morale, the most recent staff survey shows that 84% of the staff spoken to would recommend the House of Commons and PICT as a good place to work, and that is up on last year’s 76%, so I think that actually morale has been improving, particularly since we have come to a settlement on pay and other matters. With regard to contracts, I would point out that the House, in its endeavours to become a model employer, has got rid of zero-hours contracts and some of the people who were on zero-hours are now on contracts that are appropriate to the work they do. The House always looks to produce the best contract for employees and to retain its staff. We do not always succeed as best we can, but we certainly always endeavour to do it and will continue to do so.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

5. What recent representations he has received on the case for a rescue cat being adopted to control the mouse population on the Parliamentary Estate.

[John Thurso]

That suggestion has been made from time to time, most recently and specifically by the hon. Lady, who suggested a rescue cat or two from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in our exchanges on 6 February. The idea has a clear appeal and has therefore been given full and proper consideration by the House authorities. However, that consideration showed that there are very clear practical and technical difficulties, and therefore this has led to a decision not to accept the generous offer.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am grateful for the full reply and the fact that the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home has offered a rescue cat. It is a matter of fact that the mouse population is spiralling out of control, particularly in areas where food is being prepared, which poses a clear health hazard. Will the right hon. Gentleman review his decision and, using the same model adopted by Nos. 10 and 11, consider having a rescue cat that can be released in the evenings to keep the mouse population under control? If mice can be close to the source of food and pose a health hazard, one would think it would be perfectly sensible to introduce a cat to keep the mouse population down.

[John Thurso]

The hon. Lady has made reference to the significant rodent problem in this place, and measures are being taken to combat that through pest control. On the possibility of having a cat, given the scale and size of the estate, it would be necessary to have a great number of cats to make any real impact, and having a herd of cats on the Parliamentary Estate would present a number of difficulties. I am also advised by my own Chief Whip that herding cats is quite difficult.

The Leader of the House was asked—

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

6. What plans he has to improve the system of e-petitions.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

9. What plans he has to improve the system of e-petitions.

[The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)]

Following a resolution of the House on 8 May, my office has been working with the Procedure Committee on a collaborative e-petition system. Details of what the new system will look like and how it will operate are still being discussed and developed. However, I can assure Members that before the end of this Parliament a set of proposals for a new e-petition system will be brought before the House for debate and decision.

[Andrew Stephenson]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. My constituent John Clough has sponsored a petition on the change.org website calling for a stalkers register that so far has attracted over 120,000 signatures. Could well-supported online petitions such as Mr Clough’s hosted on sites other than the official e-petition website play a role in influencing the debates here in Parliament?

[Tom Brake]

Clearly the petition of the hon. Gentleman’s constituent John Clough can indeed play a role in influencing Parliament, in that the hon. Gentleman has a number of opportunities to raise it, such as through Adjournment debates, and the Backbench Business Committee remains an option to raise petitions not just on the e-petition site, but any other site.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether the Government are planning to change the threshold of 100,000 signatures in relation to e-petitions to ensure that they get more of an airing in the House of Commons?

[Tom Brake]

The Government intend to set up a petitions committee, whose purpose will be to allow a greater airing of petitions and to give advice to people seeking to table petitions. The committee will be able to consider petitions of any size, so the threshold will be completely flexible.



Royal assent

[Mr Speaker]

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 Measure:

Bishops and Priests (Consecration and Ordination of Women) Measure 2014.

Five Year Forward View

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

10:35

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the “Five Year Forward View” for the national health service.

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

NHS England, along with other NHS organisations, has today published its independent “Five Year Forward View”, which sets out its view of how the health service needs to change over the coming years. It is a report that recognises the real challenges facing the NHS, but it is essentially positive and optimistic. It says that continuing with a comprehensive tax-funded NHS is intrinsically do-able, and that there are

“viable options for sustaining and improving the NHS over the next five years.”

The report says that the challenges of an ageing population can be met by a combination of increased real-terms funding, efficiencies and changing the models of care delivered. It also says that

“decisions on these options will need to be taken in the context of how the UK economy overall is performing.”

In other words, a strong NHS needs a strong economy.

The report proposes detailed new models of care, putting out-of-hospital services front and centre of the solution, delivered through greater integration between primary, community and specialised tertiary sectors alongside national urgent and emergency networks. These can help to reduce demand significantly for hospital services and give older people in particular the personal care that we would all want for our own parents and grandparents.

The report talks about continued opportunities for efficiency savings driven by innovation and new technology, and suggests that they could be increased above the long-term run rate of efficiency savings in the NHS. It talks about reducing variation in the quality of care, in the wake of the tragedy in Mid Staffs, and about how the new Care Quality Commission inspection regime is designed to drive up standards across the system. It says that to do this we will need to move to much greater transparency in outcomes across the health and social care system. Finally, the report makes important points about better integrating the public health agenda into broader NHS activity, with a particular focus on continued reductions in smoking and obesity rates.

The Government warmly welcome the report as a blueprint for the direction of travel needed for the NHS. We will be responding to its contents in detail in due course, but we think it is an important contribution to the debate. We are proud of how the NHS has coped with the pressures of financial constraint and an ageing population in the last four years, but we also know that to sustain the levels of service that people want, the NHS needs to face up to change—not structural change, but a change in the culture of the way we care for people.

Given that the report has been welcomed on both sides of the House, I also hope that this can be the start of a more measured debate about the future of the NHS in which those from all parties in the House recognise our shared commitment to its future and focus on the best way to achieve the strong and successful NHS that the whole country desires.

[Andy Burnham]

A five-year forward view for the NHS, involving more than £550 billion of public spending, briefed to the media but not to Parliament—what clearer illustration could there be of the serious loss of public accountability arising from the Government’s reorganisation? The Secretary of State is in his place today only because he was dragged here by us. I do not know who runs the NHS these days, but I do know that it is certainly not him. We know why he wants to distance himself from this report: because it endorses key planks of Labour’s plan and leaves him with big questions to answer.

First, on GP services, does the Secretary of State agree with the report that primary care has been under-resourced and that people are struggling to get appointments? Will he accept its recommendation to stop his cuts to the GP budget, stabilise funding and match Labour’s plans to recruit 8,000 more GPs?

Secondly, on cancer, the report makes it clear that “faster diagnosis” is needed—we agree. So why did the Prime Minister yesterday dismiss Labour’s proposals for one-week cancer tests?

On integration, the report endorses Labour’s vision for new models of care, including hospitals evolving into integrated care organisations with more salaried GPs. Can the Secretary of State tell the House why he has spent the last few weeks attacking that plan, and is he now prepared to drop his opposition? On public health, is the report not right that the time has come for radical action on obesity, and will he now concede that his voluntary responsibility deal is simply not working?

It will not have escaped people’s notice that the report does not give one mention to competition—that is because it creates fragmentation, when the future demands integration. So will the Secretary of State commit to reviewing his competition rules and vote with Labour in four weeks’ time to repeal them?

Finally, on funding, the report could not be clearer: simply protecting the NHS budget in the next Parliament, as the Conservatives propose, will not prevent it from tipping into a full-blown crisis. As the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), the Chair of the Health Committee, has said, current Tory funding plans raise the spectre of rationing, longer waits and charges. Will he now drop them and match Labour’s plans for more money for the NHS? Labour has set out its plan, and today the NHS endorses that plan. The big question people are asking is: where on earth is his?

[Mr Hunt]

I talked about having a more measured debate, but I think I was speaking a trifle too soon, judging by what we have just heard. The right hon. Gentleman obviously was not listening to what I actually said, so let me just repeat to him that the Government warmly welcome this report. I talked about it as a “blueprint” for the future. He did not agree with setting up NHS England, and I do not think he agreed with the appointment of Simon Stevens as the chief executive, but we did that so that we would have a body that would think strategically about the long-term future of the NHS at arm’s length from the Government. That is what it has done, and the report is excellent.

The right hon. Gentleman and I have a sometimes slightly fractious relationship, but I would like to congratulate him this morning on his Houdini-like spin in the way he is approaching this report. He has been constantly telling this House that the NHS is on the point of collapse, but the chief executive of NHS England says that the NHS has been “remarkably successful” in weathering the pressures of recent years. The right hon. Gentleman has told this House constantly that the biggest threat to the NHS is privatisation and competition. This report, a five-year forward view, by bodies at arm’s length from the Government, contains not one mention of competition and privatisation as a threat, yet he says this report endorses Labour’s plans.

The right hon. Gentleman says, as has his leader, that the first thing he would do in government is repeal the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and strip clinical commissioning groups of their powers. He really should read the report carefully on that. He now says he welcomes the report, but it begs him not to carry out further big structural changes; it does not call for the repeal of the 2012 Act, and this is the report which he warmly welcomes today.

Then we need to consider money. The right hon. Gentleman told this House repeatedly that it was irresponsible to increase spending on the NHS, but now we have a report that says that the NHS needs real-terms increases, along the lines that this Government have been delivering in this Parliament. What does he say? He says, “It is great to have our plans endorsed by NHS England.” This report does not endorse Labour’s narrative; it exposes it for the shallow party politicking that we have had from him.

Let me say to the right hon. Gentleman that the really important message of this report is something we can agree on, and he should be talking about that. We both agree about the integration of health and social care, which is now happening. We both agree about improving investment in primary care. We both agree that we need more GPs. We both agree that we need more care closer to home. I think the public would say that we would have a more measured, intelligent and sensible debate—the kind of debate they want to hear—if we started talking about the things we agree on a bit more instead of constantly pretending there are vast disagreements.

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend has welcomed this report, which says, among other things, that there have to be new ways of working and breaking down barriers. The Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine—part of the University College London Hospitals NHS Trust—which is about a mile away from here, is Europe’s largest public sector provider of integrated medicine. Will he go there and see its 13 care pathways, which use qualified complementary and mainstream practitioners, because then it will be clear to him how we can reduce costs in the health service and take the pressure off practitioners? Will he make that part of his package?

[Mr Hunt]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on finding every opportunity to promote integrated care. What the report says is that we need much more person-centred care. It welcomes the kind of models that we see in Tower Hamlets, where the new clinical commissioning groups, led by inspiring leaders such as Sam Everington, are carrying out social prescribing. GPs are actually prescribing social solutions to problems as well as medical ones. This report is a big stepping stone towards that type of integrated care.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

In my constituency last year, 23,000 people were unable to see their GP within a week. What, if anything, will these plans do to address that crisis?

[Mr Hunt]

I welcome the hon. Lady to her place. This report says something with which this Government very strongly agree, which is that we need to reverse the shift that there has been over many decades of investment away from community care towards hospital care. It is really important that we focus on the role of GPs. We do not want to force all GPs to become employees of hospitals, but we would like to back them, so we have brought back personal responsibility for GPs for every single NHS patient as an important first step in that direction.

[Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

This is an important report, which must not turn into another political football. We should focus on what it says and make that the basis for a real debate about our NHS. There are 23 references in this report to mental health. Parity of esteem is an established idea, but it has not yet been incorporated into NHS practice, so we still have further to go. Does the Secretary of State agree that another area in which we need to go further is perinatal mental health, where the cost to society, to mothers and to generations runs into billions? If the NHS could do a bit more in that regard, it would make a big difference.

[Mr Hunt]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We know that perinatal mental health problems have a big impact on the child as well as on the mother. This report says that we must stop looking at conditions such as mental health as separate to physical health conditions. We need to look at people’s whole condition in the round. If we start to do that, we will make the NHS sustainable by making the kind of investments that will bring down the overall cost of treatments. Putting mental health centre-stage in that approach will be an important part of our strategy.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

The NHS has been a political football ever since the 1947 Government decided to take it under public control. The Tories fought against it then, and they have fought against it ever since. The important thing to remember is that this report does not commend the Government for carrying out their reconstruction of the health service, which has cost billions. What we did when we were in power for 13 years was increase the amount of money for the health service from £33 billion to £100 billion—a threefold increase in real terms. Had we continued with that approach over the past five years, people would not be dying of cancer because they had not been tested early enough. The Tories talk about all-party agreement, but it is high time that they understood that since 1947 the Secretary of State and his posh people on millionaires’ row have opposed the very essence of the health service, which is why it will be the biggest political issue at the next election. It will also help us to win and get this lousy mob out.

[Mr Hunt]

I think that is the kind of rhetoric that does the whole country a massive disservice. If the Government had the kind of views about the NHS that the hon. Gentleman talks about, we would not have protected its budget during the most difficult recession we have had since the second world war. We actually increased the NHS budget over that period, because we believe in the NHS. With regard to what he says about the report, the chief executive of NHS England, a former Labour special adviser, said this, and it is a fact: “Over the past five years, despite growing pressure, the NHS has been remarkably successful.” That is what Labour people are saying.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I very much welcome the plans for urgent and emergency care set out on page 4, in paragraph 10, which ought to produce a solution that could be welcomed in Wycombe hospital and more than 20 similar hospitals across the country. When the proposals are taken forward, will my right hon. Friend ensure that they are explained to people in such a way that they can have real peace of mind that urgent and emergency care will be there for them?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend, as ever, makes an important point. I do not think that we have been as good as we should have been in the NHS about explaining changes to urgent and emergency care, and people are understandably worried if they think that there is any risk that they will not be able to see a doctor in an emergency, which is what the NHS is there to do. I think that we now have a better blueprint for urgent and emergency care, but the report also recognises that it is not sustainable to say that all urgent and emergency care will always be dealt with in A and E departments. We have to find a way to improve the capacity of primary care and make it easier for people to see their GP so that we can reduce the pressure on hard-pressed A and Es.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Secretary of State take on board the fact —I invite him to visit Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust to have a look—that the reforms that his Government introduced have fragmented the health service? It is very difficult to find in the health service one common purpose or one common voice. The fact of the matter is that whether it is A and E closures or NICE—National Institute for Health and Care Excellence—prescriptions being handed down by GPs, everywhere I try to find an answer, instead of one voice, one team and one leadership, I find fragmentation and no real positive movement.

[Mr Hunt]

Let me try to reassure the hon. Gentleman. The reality is that those reforms, by getting rid of the huge bureaucracies of the primary care trusts and strategic health authorities—19,000 administrators—have allowed us to hire an extra 10,000 doctors and nurses. We are doing nearly 1 million more operations every year. I will write to him with the details, and I think that he will find that there are more nurses and doctors employed in his constituency now than there were before the reforms.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

May I thank my right hon. Friend for appointing me to be the Government’s pharmacy champion? What role does he perceive pharmacies playing in this, because I think that they are an important part of the whole NHS?

[Mr Hunt]

I had a very enjoyable evening at the pharmacy business awards last night. Pharmacies have an important role to play, because they could save a significant number of A and E and GP visits. The single most important change—my hon. Friend and I have talked about this—is to make it possible, if a patient gives permission, for pharmacists to access their GP record so that they can see their medication history and ensure that they give them exactly the right drugs.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

In the light of this report, is it still the Government’s case that the emerging English hospital trusts’ deficits can be dealt with by efficiency savings alone?

[Mr Hunt]

The Government believe that the NHS has to live within its means, as do individual hospitals. We recognise that that is challenging, and one of the reasons it is challenging is that in the past it has been too easy for hospitals trying to balance their books to cut corners, for example on nursing numbers in elderly care and dementia wards. We have a new inspection regime that has made it much harder to do that, which I think is a good thing, because it means that older people are getting the care they need. It also means a harder road to getting those deficits under control, however.

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

Page 26 of the document refers to

“an equal response to mental and physical health”.

Despite my right hon. Friend’s good leadership on this topic, I suspect that the document’s authors do not operate an equal funding formula for mental and physical health. Can my right hon. Friend give me any guidance on that?

[Mr Hunt]

We are looking at the issue very closely, and I think that we have made very good progress. We have introduced maximum waiting time targets for some mental health conditions, which has never been done before, and we have made a clear commitment to applying those targets to all mental health treatment during the next Parliament. However, my hon. Friend is right: ultimately, we need to look at funding differently. We need to look at it holistically. We need to understand that it is a false economy not to invest in proper mental health care, because it will only make the overall costs to the system greater in the long run.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

The Health Secretary will know that one of the biggest challenges facing the NHS is our ageing population. Thousands of lonely people are living in unsuitable accommodation and are not receiving the care that they need. What proportion of the NHS land that will be sold off over the next five years will be used to create more suitable accommodation for older people, and to create communities of care where they can be given the service and attention that they need?

[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Lady has made an important point. We would like more NHS land to be sold off for precisely those purposes.

There is a broader point to be made about housing, which is also important, and which I thought the hon. Lady was going to make. If we are to think about care in a more integrated way, we shall need to reform the NHS so that we look at people’s problems holistically, and that will include looking at their housing, which has a direct impact on their health. I think the structures that feature in the five-year plan begin to make such an approach possible for the first time, and I find that very exciting.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that the key aim of our reforms is to support hospitals which have not been fully supported before? Medway Maritime hospital, which is in my constituency, had one of the highest mortality rates in 2005-06, but nothing was being done. I thank the Secretary of State for putting the hospital into special measures, so that it can secure the support that it needs to turn things around and my constituents can have an excellent hospital that delivers for them. I also thank him for visiting the hospital recently and meeting its excellent front-line staff, who do a great job.

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for what he has done for Medway Maritime. That was a very good visit: I met both management and staff, and gained a better idea of the challenges faced by the hospital.

The report makes it clear that we must become much better at tackling variations in care. Never again must we have a system in which hospitals are struggling and delivering poor care, and that poor care is swept under the carpet and nothing is done about it. The Government have put 18 hospitals into special measures—more than 10% of all the hospitals in the NHS—and that has been very challenging. We have been accused by Opposition Front Benchers of running down the NHS when we have done it, but do you know what has happened? Six of those hospitals have now come out of special measures, and nearly all the others have improved dramatically. It is time that the Labour party got behind what is a really good inspection programme, based on openness, honesty and transparency about problems.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Bolton clinical commissioning group is putting mental health services out to tender, which seems to involve a cut of between a half and a third on the basis of current spending. Are such cuts in mental health services what the Secretary of State means by his vision?

[Mr Hunt]

No, and that is why the Government legislated for parity of esteem between mental and physical health. As I said earlier, we have introduced maximum waiting times for some mental health conditions, and we have focused on improving access to psychological therapies—IAPT—and on dementia. Anxiety and depression and dementia are two of the most common mental health conditions in respect of which we can make a real difference, and we are doing more all the time.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

May I remind the Opposition that the primary care trusts that the clinical commissioning groups replaced sat above primary care, and were remote from it? Let me give an example of how much more integrated the system is now. Our clinical commissioning group has joined our hospital to fund the opening of an urgent care centre, which will relieve pressure on accident and emergency departments and give more patients a chance to gain access to the hospital from primary care. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is an example of integration, not fragmentation?

[Mr Hunt]

Exactly—that is precisely the point. This report has example after example of how the new structures—clinical commissioning groups—are integrating care. That is why it makes it so clear that it would be wrong to do what Labour wants to do, which is to repeal the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and to strip CCGs of their powers when they are providing precisely the integrated care that we all think is important.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Trust has made significant progress over the past two years, but it remains financially very challenged and in significant deficit. What, if anything, in these plans will help to remedy that challenging situation?

[Mr Hunt]

Two things. I have had a very interesting visit to Goole hospital. It was very impressive to see how it has responded to the special measures programme and how, as a result of the new inspection regime, which Labour Front Benchers tried to vote down, it has made real improvements in care on the front line for the hon. Gentleman’s constituents. Those at the hospital will be pleased to see that this report endorses the new transparent approach to dealing with variations in care. It also says that we need to continue with increases in real-terms funding for the NHS, which we only get with a strong economy.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

The theme of integration is re-emphasised in this plan, but how can commissioners ensure that they achieve that integration if they are forced against their will to outsource many services and also fear that their commissioning decisions will be challenged for being anti-competitive?

[Mr Hunt]

They are not forced against their will to outsource. They make the decisions as to where they want to purchase services from, and they do so on the basis of what is best for patients. Just like the primary care trusts that they succeeded, they have to follow European law in the way that they do that.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

The growing funding gap over the next five years is a real cause for concern. Can the Secretary of State tell me whether, after five years of changing plans, scrutiny and prevarication, we will finally get approval from his Department and the Treasury for the new North Tees and Hartlepool hospital, or will I have to wait for my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) to approve it after the election?

[Mr Hunt]

I have met the chief executive involved and heard their case for that, and we are processing it as fast as we can.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

The Commonwealth Fund’s recent study of 11 national health systems, including those of Sweden, France, Germany and the United States, found that the NHS in England was ranked top for a safe, effective, co-ordinated, efficient, patient-centred care system. Against that background, is it not rather unedifying for Labour Members constantly to try to pretend that the NHS in England is in some form of crisis, particularly given the deplorable performance of the NHS in Wales, which is run by Labour? Would not the shadow Secretary of State do rather better to remember the words,

“Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye”?

[Mr Hunt]

I welcome the King James Bible reference. The independent Commonwealth Fund report that my right hon. Friend mentions contained one very startling fact, which Labour Members would do well to remember when they go on about the NHS—when they left office, we were seventh out of 11 countries on patient-centred care, whereas this year, now that we are in office, we came top. That is a huge improvement in patient-centred care. Under the new Care Quality Commission regime, his own hospital, John Radcliffe, got a “good” rating, which is an extremely impressive result.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

The ambulance trust in the north-east has quadrupled the use of private ambulances, increasing its costs, and South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is in deficit. In my constituency, two urgent care wards and a minor injuries unit are to be closed. A medical centre in Skelton has been closed, a medical centre in Park End has been closed, and a medical centre in Hemlington is to be closed. Does the Secretary of State take any responsibility for any of these health services in my constituency or across England? Every single response we get from him, every single time, is that somebody else is to blame.

[Mr Hunt]

Not at all—I take full responsibility for the NHS. Given the pressures created by having nearly 1 million more over-65s than we had four years ago, and the fact that the Government have had to cope with the deepest recession since the second world war, I believe that the NHS is doing remarkably well, and this document gives it a blueprint for the future that we can all welcome.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

Under this Government, the number of young people taking up smoking has fallen dramatically to some 3% and the number of people giving up smoking has increased. I welcome that very good news. We can now aspire to a smoke-free Britain over the next five years. Personally, I would like to see the tobacco companies taxed out of existence, but is it not irresponsible to base future spending plans on the basis of a tax on companies that will cease to exist?

[Mr Hunt]

That is a very good point and I agree with my hon. Friend that we should aspire to a smoke-free Britain. We are making remarkable progress. The point the report makes—this goes alongside what my hon. Friend has said—is that we need to integrate our thinking about public health with our thinking about the services the NHS delivers. The better care fund has shown how it is possible to get excellent collaboration between local authorities and the local NHS for the delivery of social care. Transformational things are happening up and down the country right now. I would like to see the same thing for public health as well.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Alcohol abuse costs the NHS in Nottinghamshire more than £55 million a year and cuts in social services are making the pressures worse, especially for emergency departments. Dr Stephen Ryder, consultant hepatologist at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, wrote to me recently to express his deep concern that the Government are not taking forward the introduction of minimum unit pricing. Why are this Government ignoring advice and clinicians and ducking the issue of dealing with cheap alcohol?

[Mr Hunt]

We are doing a number of things to tackle alcoholism. Alcoholism rates have continued to fall under this Government, so we are making good progress. The approach to alcohol is different from that to cigarettes, because responsible drinking is perfectly okay for a person’s health; it may even be good for their health, depending on which doctor they speak to. We want to be careful that our alcohol policies do not penalise responsible drinkers who may not have large salaries and worry very much about the pennies their shopping basket costs.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

Women chief executives now lead every one of the three hospitals serving my constituency. We have to thank all members of the NHS for this report, but will the Health Secretary comment in particular on the role of women in delivering NHS change and development?

[Mr Hunt]

I am absolutely delighted to do that. The new hospital inspection regime we have introduced has shone a light on some outstanding leadership. One of the best examples is Basildon hospital, which had terrible problems, including blood-stained floors, blood on the carpets and syringes left lying around in wards. That failing hospital has been turned around by an inspiring chief executive, Clare Panniker, and in the space of just 18 months it has now officially been rated as a “good” hospital by the CQC. We welcome the brilliant leadership of a growing number of female chief executives.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

GP commissioners in Morecambe bay are doing exactly the kinds of things mentioned in the report by shifting their focus from primary care to prevention. They know, however, that all the things they could do will not come close to closing the £25 million deficit. The Government say that they have to close it, but doing so would decimate hospital services. Will the Health Secretary listen to our case about the special funding needs of the area?

[Mr Hunt]

I am very happy to look into that. I recognise that all clinical commissioning groups face very real financial challenges to balance their books. That is why the report is so important, because it says that we cannot go on like this for ever and we have to look at changing the model decisively. It addresses the three things that could give hope to the hon. Gentleman’s CCG: increased real-terms funding based on a strong economy; more imagination in looking for efficiencies; and innovation and technology. We are absolutely committed to doing those things.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

In my constituency Deal hospital was left under threat of closure. It has now been safeguarded. Our acute hospitals had a Care Quality Commission inspection to identify problems, which have been dealt with; they were not covered up. Dover hospital, which was wrecked, is now being rebuilt. Will my right hon. Friend take a forward view of his diary and consider reopening that hospital at the opening ceremony in the spring?

[Mr Hunt]

If I possibly can, I will be delighted to do so. This is the pattern in many parts of the NHS that we do not hear from the Opposition Benches—where there have been problems in care year after year, they are finally being addressed. In my hon. Friend’s constituency and the hospitals that serve it he will be seeing more nurses and more doctors being employed and giving a higher standard of care, particularly to vulnerable older people. That is the kind of NHS that we should all welcome wholeheartedly.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State talks about holistic care and a range of issues that affect people, but active participation in sport, recreation and cardiovascular activity is declining. In constituencies such as mine, that is a real problem. What will he do to integrate CCGs with district councils? He seems to be saying nothing about this.

[Mr Hunt]

In my earlier comments I spoke a bit about childhood obesity, which is a very important issue. I was the Secretary of State responsible for the Olympics, and as part of the Olympic legacy we set up the school games movement, which now has about two thirds of schools in the country doing Olympic-style games every year, and we have put an extra investment into school sport. We need to work closely with the Department for Education on this, and I agree that it is very important that we do so.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

May I invite my right hon. Friend to come to my local hospital and to my constituency to see what good works have been done in my area? A £25 million health centre has opened, we have a new walk-in centre that was opened by the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter). May I ask my right hon. Friend’s views on the talk about top-down reorganisation? [Interruption.] We walked into a shambles of an NHS after 13 years of Labour government and a debacle of a CQC policy that we had to reconfigure. What are his thoughts—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman has had a very full tilt. On the whole, it is a good idea to face the House, rather than the Government Front Bench. We are grateful.

[Mr Hunt]

Of course I would be delighted to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency. Morecambe Bay hospital is one of the hospitals whose problems we are looking at in a way that should have happened before but did not. We are turning round that hospital. We are determined to do it and we want his constituents to have absolute confidence in the quality of hospital care they receive.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State told us that a strong NHS needs a strong economy, so I presume he is extremely worried about the fact that reduced tax revenues have led, on this Government’s watch, to higher borrowing this year.

[Mr Hunt]

That is why we continue to take the tough and difficult decisions—[Interruption] that keep this country on the right economic path and which are opposed at every turn by Labour. They told us that our economic plans would lead to a million jobs being lost—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) keeps calling out “Ah!” as though he is sitting in the dentist’s chair. It is quite unnecessary. He can exercise his vocal chords later.

[Mr Hunt]

Perhaps the simplest thing is to say to the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) that we inherited one of the poorest performing economies in Europe. We now have the fastest growing major economy in Europe and that is the best possible future for the NHS.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

The report makes it clear that with an increasing population and increasing proportion of elderly patients, the role of GPs will become even more important, yet the demographics of the GP profession mean that we will lose thousands of GPs to retirement in the next few years. What can be done to address this very important problem?

[Mr Hunt]

That is a very important issue and we need more GPs. We have about 1,000 more full-time equivalent GPs during this Parliament but we face the demographic issue that my hon. Friend identifies. That is why we are looking at how we can make it easier for GPs who have stopped practising, perhaps to have a family, to come back into the profession, and how we can make it easier for GPs to do part-time work. We are looking at all those issues because we are committed to reducing the burn-out that many GPs experience by improving and increasing the number of GPs actively practising.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

General practitioner managers throughout the land will be tearing their hair out at the complacency of the right hon. Gentleman’s statement today. According to the patient survey, 39% of people could not see their preferred GP. That is an increase of 1.2 million. My general practice managers in Sale are saying that the situation is at crisis point. Why does the Secretary of State’s view differ from theirs?

[Mr Hunt]

As I have just told the House, I welcome a report that says we need to invest more in general practice. There has been historical under-investment over decades, which is why more and more resources have been sucked into the hospital sector. We are calling time on that and saying that we have to invest more in primary care, community care and out-of-hospital care. It is a big change for the NHS, and I think that the hon. Gentleman’s practice managers will be thrilled to hear it.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

The Secretary of State may be aware that the excellent Airedale hospital, which he has visited, in the neighbouring constituency to mine, has been highlighted in “BBC News” coverage today, especially for its telemedicine service, as an example of what the future of evolving heath care may look like. Will he join me in congratulating the excellent staff at Airedale hospital on embracing change and pioneering new models of care?

[Mr Hunt]

I am delighted to do so. Airedale is mentioned in the “Five Year Forward View” as an example of how technology can be transformative. It has a system under which older people in the locality are given a red button, and as long as their TV is turned on, all they have to do is press the red button and they are talking to a nurse. That is immensely reassuring for them, and it means that they are more likely to stay healthy and happy and to live at home for longer. That is better for them and for the NHS, and it is a real model.

Business of the House

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

11:15

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing next week’s—[Interruption.] Sorry. Will the Leader of the House please announce the business for next week?

[The First Secretary of State and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr William Hague)]

I will. It is nice to be thanked in advance. I am very grateful to the hon. Lady.

The business for next week will be:

Monday 27 October—Consideration in Committee of the Recall of MPs Bill (day 1). I expect my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to make a statement following the European Council.

Tuesday 28 October—Opposition day [8th allotted day]. There will be a debate entitled “The negative effect of the Government’s policies on disabled people”, followed by a debate on coalfield communities. Both debates will arise on an Opposition motion.

Wednesday 29 October—Motion relating to the appointment of the chairman of the National Audit Office, followed by Second Reading of the Taxation of Pensions Bill.

Thursday 30 October—Debate on a motion relating to UK drugs policy, followed by a debate on a motion relating to the sale of park homes. The subjects for both debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 31 October—The House will not be sitting.

The provisional business for the week commencing 3 November will include:

Monday 3 November—Consideration in Committee of the Recall of MPs Bill (day 2).

Tuesday 4 November—Remaining stages of the Modern Slavery Bill.

Wednesday 5 November—Opposition day [9th allotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 6 November—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 7 November—Private Members’ Bills.

[Ms Eagle]

May I thank the Leader of the House once more for announcing the business? It is always better to thank him once he has announced it.

I want to start by expressing our sadness about the loss of life, and our solidarity with our sister Parliament in Canada as it deals with the aftermath of the terrorist attack yesterday. This was an attack on democracy, and it will not succeed.

This week, the Recall of MPs Bill received its Second Reading, and on Monday we will consider it in Committee. As Members from across the House seek to strengthen its provisions, does the Leader of the House agree that the trigger for recall should centre on a Member’s conduct, not their opinions? Does he agree that we need to go further and reform the Standards Committee? Will he support proposals that seek to remove the Government majority on the Standards Committee and increase the number of lay representatives?

Last week, the Leader of the House accused me of suffering from amnesia on the deficit. I bet he wishes he had amnesia this week because the deficit has gone up. The Chancellor promised in 2010 that he would eliminate it by the end of 2015, and because of his economic failure he has had to push that back to 2018. Figures this week show that he is off track to do even that. Mr Speaker, you would not think from all the Chancellor’s complacent boasts that borrowing went up by 10% in the first half of the year. In its forecast in 2010, the Office for Budget Responsibility told us that wages would grow by 7.5% by the end of this year. They have actually fallen in the biggest squeeze on wages since Victorian times. Despite all the talk of Tory fiscal responsibility, the Prime Minister has just announced £7 billion-worth of pie-in-the-sky, unfunded pre-election bribes. With all the missed targets, is it not time for the Leader of the House to admit that this is less of a long-term economic plan and more of a really, really, really long-term economic scam?

This week, the Government were heavily criticised by the National Audit Office for failing to deport more foreign criminals. Unless they stand up to their Eurosceptic Back Benchers, on 1 December the UK will no longer be able to use the European arrest warrant, which enables the arrest and transfer of suspects across borders and was instrumental in the rapid return of one of the 7/7 bombers to face trial. The head of the Association of Chief Police Officers said that the warrant gives us

“a stronger, more effective means of arresting dangerous criminals”.

Until recently, the Tories were briefing that they would keep it. However, I hear that the Tory Chief Whip has been making panicked phone calls to his Back Benchers, suggesting that they may drop it. Will the Leader of the House therefore tell me whether he thinks that pandering to UKIP is more important than the security of this country? Will the Tories stand up to their own Eurosceptics and have a vote?

As Halloween approaches, it seems that the Tories are dusting off their ghosts of Governments past. This week, the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) launched an astonishing attack on a campaign by the girl guides for more sex and relationships education in schools, claiming that it would increase teenage pregnancy. Last week, the Prime Minister turned up, for the first time in 14 years, to a meeting of the ultra-Thatcherite No Turning Back group to plead with his ever-loyal Back Benchers. The hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) was openly conniving with the UKIP treasurer over lunch. It is no surprise that the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) took to the airwaves to challenge more Tory Eurosceptics to defect to UKIP. Today’s Tory party just cannot stop banging on about Europe.

I am often hard on the Tory Chief Whip, but, looking at his party, he does have the hardest job in politics. He has lost two high-profile votes, lost two Ministers to resignation and lost two MPs to UKIP. It is no wonder he is never here. Apparently, he has been hiding in Rochester and Strood. When asked about the UKIP threat, he said:

“Does this face look bovvered?”

The way the Government are pandering to UKIP, they are less Catherine Tate and more “Little Britain”.

[Mr Hague]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. I absolutely concur with her opening words on our sadness about what happened yesterday in Ottawa and our strong solidarity with the Government and people of Canada. They were very much in our thoughts as news of the incident broke yesterday. Of course, we will continue to work closely with Canada and many other nations on countering terrorism and protecting our own and their national security.

The hon. Lady asked about the Committee stage of the Recall of MPs Bill. I certainly agree that recall should be about the conduct of Members, rather than the opinions of Members. The House will be able to make its own decisions in Committee. The Standards Committee does a very good job. It currently has 10 MPs and three lay members, and it is for the House to consider whether there should be any change. Proposals may be put forward by any Member of the House.

I congratulate the hon. Lady on mentioning the deficit this week. Last week, we were waiting for mentions of the deficit. It is brave of her to mention it on the day when the Institute for Public Policy Research has shown that, under Labour’s plans, there would be £28 billion of additional deficit and additional borrowing. That is the scale of the black hole that has been described by a left-leaning institute. It raises a set of additional questions that Labour has to answer. The Chancellor has emphasised all along that, although the deficit has fallen by more than a third under this Government, there is more work to do. That has to be recognised by Labour Members as well.

The hon. Lady asked about the return of foreign national offenders. There was an urgent question to the Home Secretary on that earlier this week, so the House has discussed the matter in some detail. Under this Government some 22,000 foreign national offenders have been removed. Numbers are now going up again, and we are taking additional action to reduce the number of appeals.

On the European arrest warrant, as the hon. Lady knows, the Government have exercised the opt-out from justice and home affairs measures following votes in both Houses. That will bring about the biggest return of power from Brussels to Britain since we became a member of the European Union. That is an entirely welcome development, but it is important that our law enforcement agencies have the powers they need to bring serious international criminals, such as members of paedophile rings and human traffickers, to justice. That is why we are negotiating to rejoin a smaller set of measures. Those negotiations have not yet concluded, but once they have we will return to the House. The protection of our national interest and fighting crime are obviously prime considerations, as well as the independence of the country and our freedom to decide things in this House.

The hon. Lady asked about a number of party matters, and I assure her that we are not pandering to anybody—[Interruption.] She is always fascinated by the whereabouts of the Chief Whip, and I assure her that he is gainfully employed in many different ways—[Laughter.] Gainfully was the word, just so Hansard is correct, rather than “gamefully”. In a similar vein, I congratulate the hon. Lady on still being in post following the first stealth reshuffle in the history of Her Majesty’s Opposition under any party. It was trailed in advance by the New Statesman as something that would bring back “the big beasts” to the Opposition Front Bench. The biggest thing we can identify is the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) becoming shadow Europe Minister. That does not constitute the return of the big beasts growling at us from the Opposition Benches, but it is possibly the first ever reshuffle that hardly anybody in the country has noticed. We wonder whether the people who were reshuffled have yet noticed that they were reshuffled because we have not seen much spark of life from them, but we are happy to see the hon. Lady in her position today.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

May we have a debate on making better use of natural resources? Is my right hon. Friend aware that within a few days we will be undertaking the flawed ritual of putting our clocks back, thereby plunging the nation into darkness by mid-afternoon? Can we examine the benefits of having summertime in winter and double summertime in summer? If, as I suspect, the only objectors are a handful of Scots, can we say to them, “You want more powers for your Parliament, so we will give you powers to set your own time zone”?

[Mr Hague]

The House has debated this issue over the past few years. I am not sure that Scots are the only objectors, as in North Yorkshire we would also be plunged into darkness quite early in the morning. There are many different views on the matter around the House, but it is, of course, open to my right hon. Friend, who feels strongly about it, to pursue it. There have been private Members’ Bills on the issue in the past, and I have no doubt that there will be in future.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Public Health England this week reported an increase in deaths from liver disease of 40% in 12 years as a result of increasing levels of alcohol consumption, which suggests that the Government’s alcohol strategies have failed. Is it not time that we had a serious debate in Government time on all aspects of Britain’s alcohol problem?

[Mr Hague]

There is a case for a debate on that, and the matter was raised during the urgent question to the Secretary of State for Health a few moments ago. He pointed out that there can be benefits to moderate alcohol consumption, but not to excessive alcohol consumption. None of us has the perfect answer for this issue, but all parties will be concerned about it. The hon. Gentleman may wish to make the case for a debate to the Backbench Business Committee, or request an Adjournment debate.

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House send a message from this House to his counterpart at the Canadian House of Commons in Ottawa, expressing our condolences for the cowardly murder of the Canadian soldier there, and reiterating cross-party support from this House and this country to our Canadian allies and cousins?

[Mr Hague]

Yes, I absolutely will. I know that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has been in touch with the Canadian Foreign Minister and, of course, our high commission in Ottawa has been closely engaged in and well informed about what has happened. Several hon. Members have raised this issue and our strong solidarity with the people of Canada, so I will certainly send such a message to the Leader of the House of Commons in Ottawa.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

People are furious about today’s news that the notorious police killer, Harry Roberts, is due to be released, and the police say that it is a betrayal. The Home Secretary promised that life would mean life for anybody convicted of killing a police officer. What will the Government do to ensure that that evil criminal is kept behind bars where he belongs?

[Mr Hague]

There will be much sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman has just said. As I understand it, the decision has been made by the Parole Board, but of course people will be concerned by it and agree with what he has said. I will draw the attention of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to the hon. Gentleman’s remarks and the concern in the House about that decision.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

May we have a debate on metal theft? While instances of metal theft have reduced significantly since the introduction of the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013, recent months have unfortunately seen increases in metal theft from churches in particular parts of the country. We need to consider what support we give to the police following the disbanding of the national metal theft taskforce.

[Mr Hague]

As my right hon. Friend knows, the Government have invested more than £6 million in the national metal theft taskforce since it was formed in January 2012. That has led to an obvious improvement, and the Church of England has reported a large and welcome reduction in overall metal theft since 2012, although I am concerned to hear my right hon. Friend say that it is going up again. We agreed to provide funding for the taskforce to cover the first part of the new legislation and ensure that individual police forces had the time to implement proposals to tackle this crime effectively, as it is predominantly up to them to do so.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

On 30 April, I and several colleagues met the Prime Minister to talk about the issue of UK compensation for the victims of the Gaddafi regime’s sponsorship of IRA terrorism. It was a very positive meeting and subsequently the Prime Minister announced the appointment of Sir Kim Darroch to make progress on the issue with the Libyan authorities. May we have a statement to update the House on what progress has been made?

[Mr Hague]

It is open to the right hon. Gentleman to ask questions of the Foreign Office. He will appreciate how difficult the situation has been in Libya in recent months, with the violence between militias. Libyan ministries have not easily been able to function, so it has been a difficult period to take the issue forward, through no fault of anyone in the UK. I will convey his request for an update to my colleagues and I suggest that he also asks the relevant questions.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

The Leader of the House and I both represent mainly rural constituencies. May we have a debate on the need for the Association of Chief Police Officers to meet the Countryside Alliance and other rural organisations to ensure that, while maintaining security, the police do not take a heavy-handed approach to rural shotgun licence holders?

[Mr Hague]

There are many rural issues we could benefit from discussing in the House, and I have no doubt that the point that my hon. Friend raises is one of them. I cannot offer a debate on it in Government time, but I am sure that he will be able to pursue a request for such a debate through the normal methods of Backbench Business debates and Adjournment debates.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The sad news this morning of 9,000 more job cuts in Lloyds banking group will hit hard in my constituency and elsewhere. Is it not time that we had a debate about what is happening in the banking industry? I do not want just to knock it, because it is vital and we need it to be successful, but may we have a debate on how we get return to a healthy banking sector that actually helps people rather than hinders them?

[Mr Hague]

Parts of the banking sector are on a long journey back to health. The announcement, which will of course be of great concern to individuals working in Lloyds bank, is another illustration of that and of the pressures that remain in the sector. The good news is that it comes against a background of increasing employment overall, as the hon. Gentleman knows. Indeed, the fall in unemployment in the past year is one of the biggest we have ever seen in the history of this country. Nevertheless, the banking sector is an important topic and I will convey that point to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. The hon. Gentleman might also wish to seek debates through the normal methods.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

May I correct the record and say that I did not criticise the girl guides earlier this week? I merely criticised the Labour party for claiming that the child abuse scandal in Rotherham was caused by a lack of sex education rather than the politically correct culture of Labour councils.

May we have a debate on the Government’s ludicrous proposals to give GPs an extra £55 every time they correctly diagnose somebody with dementia? Surely GPs are already paid to diagnose their patients correctly with whatever ailment they have. If the Government do not have enough money to give low-paid nurses a 1% pay rise, how on earth can they find the money to give highly paid GPs an extra £55 a pop for doing their job?

[Mr Hague]

This is a proposal from NHS England. The remuneration of GPs is structured to give them additional remuneration for particular tasks. As my hon. Friend appreciates, dementia is a horrific and heartbreaking disease. We are in a situation where fewer than half the people with dementia know that they have it and that has to be unacceptable. A timely diagnosis is therefore vital for people with dementia and their families to get the care and support they need. This proposal is designed to help that, but there will of course be opportunities to ask the Secretary of State for Health and other Health Ministers about it.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

The Leader of the House will know that the Wild Animals in Circuses Bill is on the Order Paper again tomorrow. The Government are on record as officially supporting the Bill, but they have contrived to have it blocked on the past two sitting Fridays. Will the right hon. Gentleman clarify this apparent contradiction and indicate whether tomorrow the Government Whips might assist in progressing, rather than hindering, the matter?

[Mr Hague]

The Government support the hon. Gentleman’s Bill and I pay tribute to him for introducing it. We have always said that we want to legislate on this matter and that has certainly not changed. I cannot predict what individual hon. Members will do, but his point will have been heard throughout the House.

[Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)]

May we have time to debate the Environment Agency? It has changed out of all recognition since the problems we had at the beginning of the year, but we do not want it to revert to type. The problem with any such organisation is that it tends to go back to the basics. If that happens, the people whose lives were blighted right across the United Kingdom at the beginning of this year, and last year too, will feel that we have let them down. It is the pressure from this House that has made the agency change. May we have time to debate that pressure on the Environment Agency, to keep it changing and to maintain the work it is doing?

[Mr Hague]

This is an important issue and my hon. Friend has been assiduous in pursuing it. I hope it is not necessary to have a debate on it. There have, as my hon. Friend says, been important changes in the Environment Agency, including changes in leadership and personnel. We all hope that that change will be sustained. If it is not, my hon. Friend would be quite justified in calling for a debate.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

May we debate the role of the Chief Whip, whom the Leader of the House said was gainfully employed? Does he include in that the bizarre set of videos that have appeared on the internet showing the Government Chief Whip doing his impersonation of the fictional Tory Chief Whip Francis Urquhart, and appearing in somebody’s back garden declaiming lines from the TV programme “Game of Thrones”? Has the Leader of the House seen these videos and does he think something should be done about the increasingly attention-seeking antics of the Government Chief Whip?

[Mr Hague]

I am a little busy with the British constitution and many other matters, and I have not been watching these YouTube clips in my spare time—not that I have much spare time—but they sound fascinating. It is of course right that right hon. and hon. Members use all the new forms of social media to communicate with our constituents and the country at large, as I do on Twitter, which I recommend to hon. Members. No I have not seen the clips, but I look forward perhaps to taking a look.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

The Leader of the House will know that I have previously raised the case of Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of five children, who had been sentenced to death by the courts in Pakistan under its unacceptable blasphemy laws. After four years in custody, she has now lost her appeal at the high court in Pakistan, which has sentenced her to death by hanging. May we urgently ask the Government of Pakistan to review this miscarriage of justice and reform its completely unacceptable blasphemy laws, which run contrary to religious freedom and basic human rights? May we also have an urgent statement or debate on the treatment of religious minorities in Pakistan?

[Mr Hague]

This is a very concerning case. I have in the past, as Foreign Secretary, discussed the application of blasphemy laws in Pakistan with senior members of the Government there. It is concerning that in the recent appeal hearing the court sadly upheld the death penalty. The UK opposes the death penalty in all circumstances as a matter of principle, including in this circumstance. The EU is raising the case with the Pakistani authorities, and will continue to do so at a senior level, and our high commission in Islamabad will be supporting the EU-led action. We will continue to pursue this case.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

May we have a debate in Government time on the proliferation of police cautions? My local newspaper yesterday exposed this issue. More than 100 cautions have been issued in the past 12 months for very serious criminal offences, four them rape. The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, which was supposed to help by allowing cautions for only minor offences, is clearly not working.

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important issue. As with so many requests, I cannot offer a debate in Government time, because so much of the House’s time is allocated to Backbench Business debates.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Not enough.

[Mr Hague]

And some people would like still more.

However, it is open to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) to pursue that avenue for a debate. Across the country, as he knows, we are achieving a reduction in crime, but that does not mean that everything is perfect. We have an increase in the number of neighbourhood police officers and so on, but I encourage him to pursue a debate through all the normal methods.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

First, may I wish everyone who is celebrating it a happy Diwali?

Harrow council is currently consulting on closing libraries, day centres and the local arts centre. At the same time, the Labour group has decided to bring back the role of chief executive, which the last minority Conservative administration abolished, at a cost of more than £1 million. May we have a debate in Government time on these wicked proposals across the county to close centres when money could be saved in other ways?

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend can certainly promote a debate on this issue, but of course his point is that these decisions are made locally; councils are in the driving seat. Every part of the public sector needs to do its bit to pay off the inherited deficit, including local government, but councils should be protecting front-line services and keeping council tax down by merging back-office services and ensuring that administration costs less, rather than more. I am sure he will continue to encourage his local council to do exactly that.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

Two hundred years ago, the British Government made in France one of the canniest property investments in British history. May we have a debate on Britain’s incredible relationship—despite its ups and downs—with France, particularly in terms of trade?

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend draws attention to the Duke of Wellington’s purchase for 800,000 francs of what became our embassy in 1814. I was there on Monday night to celebrate that fact. Many historians were assembled to help us look back at the events of those times and to understand how, since then, we have moved on from centuries of conflict with France. There was the entente cordiale from 1904, and we are now inseparable allies. I am not sure when we can have a debate about that, but my hon. Friend has rightly drawn attention to it today.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

On Saturday, I shall be leading the Wellingborough taskforce campaigning in east Northamptonshire on our EU referendum. During that campaigning, the No. 1 issue on the doorstep will be EU migration. The new President of the European Commission has said that the free movement rules cannot be changed. Our Prime Minister has rightly said that we will control immigration from the European Union in the future. Will there be an opportunity on Monday, when the Prime Minister makes his statement, for him to update us on that position?

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend and others will have every opportunity on Monday to ask the Prime Minister about these things. A number of statements by EU officials and leaders have been made over recent days, but as my hon. Friend knows, the Prime Minister has a track record of outperforming expectations in EU negotiations, including reducing the EU budget for the first time ever and getting us out of the eurozone bail-outs, for which the Labour party left us liable. The Prime Minister has said that he will set out his intentions later in the year, but my hon. Friend will of course be able to ask him about them on Monday.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

The largest annual fall in unemployment since records began is a hugely significant moment in the life of our nation, yet it is being treated by the media this week as if it were just last week’s news. Likewise, the Conservative proposals to abolish youth unemployment in the lifetime of the next Parliament is another hugely politically significant moment. May we have a full day’s debate in Government time—with a vote at the end of it—on Wednesday 3 December, the day of the autumn statement, so that we can publicise to the nation the tremendous economic progress the coalition Government have made?

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend draws attention to what is perhaps the most important thing happening in this country at the moment, and it is vital that we always remember the work of Parliament in that. He has reminded us that employment is up by 1.75 million since the last general election, and over 2 million more people are employed in the private sector since the last general election. This is the strongest possible vindication of the economic policies that the Government have pursued. I hope that the autumn statement on 3 December will indeed concentrate people’s minds on that, and on the opportunity to have 3 million more apprenticeships over the next Parliament, as set out by the Conservative party. I am sure we shall all want to debate these things.

Points of Order

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

11:48

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your view on the role of the Leader of the House. Last week, I thought the Leader of the House assured me that there would be an opportunity to discuss the Ebola crisis in Africa. What can we do if the Leader of the House gives an assurance and then does not follow it through. Do you have a role in this, Mr Speaker?

[Mr Speaker]

I am not aware of any breach of undertaking. I respond cautiously because the hon. Gentleman presumably has a specific instance in mind. He recalls a commitment that he thinks was made, but I am not aware that there has been a breach. I would say two things. First, in my experience the Leader of the House—I have known the right hon. Gentleman for 20 years—has always been a person of his word who treats this House with the utmost respect. Secondly, the hon. Gentleman has been here for 35 years, and if there is a feeling of unhappiness on his part, I am sure he can talk to the Leader of the House. As to whether I regularly talk to the Leader of the House, of course I do, and I am quite happy to have a chat with him about this. Because the hon. Gentleman has been here 35 years, as I say, I will allow him a follow-up, but we must then move on.

[Mr Sheerman]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

May I just compliment the hon. Gentleman on his bright and enlivening tie?

[Mr Sheerman]

It is the only one I could find in my office this morning. Someone from the Green campaign gave it to me, as you can see.

What ability do you have, Mr Speaker, if the Leader of the House makes a commitment at any time and does not follow it through? I asked last week about the Ebola crisis and feel passionately that we seem to be ignoring it in the House. I thought we had a commitment. Do you have a role in chasing the Leader of the House on this?

[The First Secretary of State and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr William Hague)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

I will respond, but let us hear from the Leader of the House.

[Mr Hague]

Further to that point of order, it is a huge relief to hear that the hon. Gentleman was given the tie.

I do not have the record here, but I think I said last week that the Secretary of State for Health had made a statement the previous week about Ebola, that there would be further opportunities in the House and that the Government would keep the House updated. One of the things that the Prime Minister will discuss at the EU summit in the next couple of days is the response to Ebola. In his statement on Monday the Prime Minister will be expanding on the latest situation. I did not say that there would be a discussion of it this week, but there will be on Monday. I hope that the hon. Gentleman can look forward to that.

[Mr Speaker]

I simply say two things to the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). First, the main recourse for a Member disappointed that a matter he or she judges to be urgent is not being aired in the House is of course to apply to me for permission to put an urgent question, 185 of which have, I think, been granted since June 2009. Secondly, although I have made it clear that I think the Leader of the House is absolutely a person of his word and of unimpeachable integrity, I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that if the Speaker were required to apply a sanction every time something said was not subsequently delivered upon, I would be an extraordinarily busy man.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I take the opportunity to apologise to the Leader of the House for suggesting during the business statement that he was wrong to say that the Government Chief Whip was gainfully employed? I understand that the Government Chief Whip and his dog Snowy have just become runners-up in the parliamentary dog of the year competition, so I withdraw the implication that he does not have much to do with his time.

[Mr Speaker]

That is a characteristically resourceful and ingenious use, and abuse, of the point of order procedure by the hon. Gentleman.

Perhaps we can now proceed to the first of the two debates scheduled to take place today under the auspices of the Backbench Business Committee. That first debate is on the repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. To move the motion—wow, does he look excited about it—I call Sir Edward Leigh.

Backbench Business

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

Repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Relevant documents: Second Report of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, Session 2010-12, Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, HC 436, and the Government response, Cm 7951; and the Thirteenth Report of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, Session 2013-14, Fixed-term Parliaments: the final year of a Parliament, HC 976]

11:52

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House believes that the Government should bring forward proposals to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011.

The motion, which stands in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) and other Members of this House, is to review and repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. The Act was passed, of course, in the heady early days of the coalition, with many new Members present. This is a good time, after four years, to think about it, to review it and, I hope, to determine to repeal it.

Fixed-term Parliaments were marketed to us as a restriction on the excessive power of the Executive. In reality, fixed-term Parliaments are a restriction on democracy, not on the Executive. It was claimed then that a general election called at a time advantageous to a sitting Government, or because Parliament clearly needed refreshing after, say, four years, was somehow less legitimate than a general election held at a fixed time every five years.

Leaving aside the point that a democratic mandate is a democratic mandate whenever it is held, a Dissolution is forbidden under the Act unless two thirds of the entire membership of the House, including any vacant seats, support a motion calling for an election. That means that a party or group that has just one third of the seats has the power to block a Dissolution and can prevent the Government from consulting the people. How is that democratic? I think that undermines the whole democratic legitimacy of the Government, whether it is a majority or a minority Government. The old system, of course, allowed a Prime Minister to find a route out of decisional gridlock. It permitted the Government to consult the people on developments which may have been unforeseen at the time of the last general election. Governments who found themselves hanging under a parliamentary scandal—or when the economy is going badly or something has gone badly wrong—had an easy route out, and voters could give them their marching orders or return them to power.

We have always valued the combination of the general election and the first-past-the-post system, because it is, we say, capable of producing strong sustainable Governments who can deliver on their promises to voters. That has always been our pride. To an extent, we have therefore defined ourselves in opposition to other systems which have to form coalitions after general elections. I think all of us hope that the present coalition is an aberration. Our major political parties—particularly the Labour and Conservative parties—are, of course, coalitions in themselves, formed before elections in order to present voters with real choices.

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

On my hon. Friend’s remarks about the coalition, I have read his piece on the “ConservativeHome” website, and perhaps he would be good enough to look at mine, because I very much agree with him. The problem is not just the question of institutional issues; it is also the practical reality of the Liberal Democrats having the capacity, in relation to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act and in other respects, to frustrate the government of this country by a Conservative majority.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

It is not for me to speak for the Liberal Democrats—unfortunately they seem to be absent from the Chamber. May I say that I always read my hon. Friend’s speeches with the closest possible attention? Both he and I were, of course, in coalition in our beloved Conservative party with a social-liberal leadership. I sometimes think that the Conservatives on the Treasury Bench would rather be in coalition with the Liberals than with the likes of me. If that is true, it is no surprise if party membership is under stress.

The contrary system to ours involves a host of smaller parties combining in smoke-filled rooms—although they are probably smokeless now—in order to make deals and hash out a coalition that may be contrary to voters’ wishes. That is often the continental system.

Of course, the Act we are talking about today moves against the spirit of the idea that one Parliament cannot bind another. That is rubbish anyway, because if somebody gets a majority in the next Parliament, they can simply repeal this Act in an afternoon. All the checks and balances are meaningless in any event, because one Parliament cannot bind another.

So, looking to other parliamentary democracies outside the Westminster system, we see that fixed terms are a rarity. Often they are based on the peculiarity of local circumstances, such as in Germany or Switzerland. France, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands all provide for early Dissolution more easily than is envisioned under this Act.

One highly esteemed political scientist, Juan Linz, described in 1994 the capability for an early Dissolution as a critical antidote to the temporary rigidity of presidential-style systems. Linz was wise to point out that the power of Dissolution allows for stronger Governments who are more capable of responding to emergencies or to changes in democratic expression. He wrote that the fixed tenure means that the

“political process therefore becomes broken into discontinuous, rigidly determined periods without possibility for continuous readjustments as political, social and economic events might require.”

Indeed, I think the whole idea of fixed-term Parliaments has a Blairite feel to it, in a fawning admiration of the American style of government.

While a long line of thinkers, not least Russell Kirk, have been keen to point out the British roots of the American system, in fact, as you will know, Mr Speaker, it is very different from our own. Our daughter-Parliaments in Ottawa, Canberra and elsewhere have grown up in a very different way from the American system. The United States does not even have general elections, with different portions of both its Houses being elected in fits and starts every two years.

There is also another factor in the American system which we must avoid importing to these islands—this is an important point, which we have seen in this Parliament. With America’s fixed terms, the first half is spent legislating while the second half is spent in campaigning and raising money for the coming election campaign. The fixed date of the election is inherently conducive to that kind of mentality.

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

Is the logical extension of the hon. Gentleman’s argument that President Obama should be given the power to decide to call an election when he feels it appropriate, rather than when the constitution states that it should take place? Does he think that the President’s internment in a prison or a mental institution would be the first thing that would happen if he were to suggest such a thing?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The whole point is that the American system is completely different from ours, so it would be unwise for me or anyone else in this House to lecture President Obama on when he should go. Actually, the United States does have a system whereby a President can be removed through impeachment, and President Nixon took that route.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but I think his comment about the former Prime Minister Tony Blair was a little unfair. I cannot see that particular relationship with the United States, but does the hon. Gentleman see such a relationship in respect of the search to import other constitutional effects? I have never liked the idea of referendums, for example. Does he agree with me on that? In addition, of course, the idea of a recall is very much derived from the American experience.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I take back that cheap shot against Tony Blair—it was perhaps unnecessary—and I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. Over the centuries, we have established a pretty good system. I think we are the only country in Europe never to have been a police state or had a police state imposed on it. We should be pretty proud of our slow constitutional growth.

[Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

When President Nixon and Spiro Agnew resigned, the United States ended up with a President and Vice-President who had been elected by Congress and not by a mandate of the people. It is therefore possible to have a change of power without an election there, which would not happen here.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Exactly; that is a very fair point.

Our own beloved Mark Darcy, a BBC journalist who is really an ornament of the constitution, put it very well when he said that there was a danger under the Act of Parliaments

“oscillating between hyperactivity and torpor” .

We appear to be at the torpid end of this Parliament.

I welcome you to the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I regret that you cannot join us and make a speech. We recollect your coruscating arguments during the passage of the Bill, but we accept that you are of course now completely neutral.

I just think that five years is far too long. We have experienced a very front-loaded Parliament. The best evidence of that has been the recent explosion in the number of Back-Bench debates, compared with the number in the early part of the Parliament. I welcome Back-Bench debates, but they are taking place not through the kindness of the Government but because there is no majority in the House to do anything that would make a real difference. In my experience, the very best Conservative and Labour Parliaments have been four-year Parliaments, and the very worst have lasted for five years—in particular, our 1992 Parliament and Labour’s 2005 Parliament. Towards the end, five-year Parliaments get weaker and weaker.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

I am following the hon. Gentleman’s argument carefully. Does he agree that, for the purposes of consistency across the United Kingdom, if we were to go back to the old system and give this power back to the Prime Minister, that arrangement should also apply to the devolved Administrations? Should the leaders of those Administrations also be able to call an election whenever they wished?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

In my personal view, that is a fair point. The right hon. Gentleman has intervened at a good point, because I was about to say that our insistence on a five-year Parliament has resulted in delaying elections in the devolved Administrations. That delay was proposed because, when we had an election on the same date in Scotland, there was an unacceptable 147,000 spoiled ballot papers. I really do believe in devolution, however, and it is up to the devolved Parliaments to make that decision.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend saying not only that he is against fixed-term Parliaments but that the flexibility to go up to five years should be removed? Is he saying that, in a system in which an election could occur at any time, it should be called only within a four-year time frame?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

No, I am not saying that. I think we should simply go back to the old system and the Prime Minister should be able to call an election when it is appropriate. I agree, however, that if we were going to have a fixed term, a four-year one would be much more acceptable. However, we are not here to honour fixed-term Parliaments; we are here to bury them. So I would rather go back to the old system, which worked perfectly well. Interestingly, in the previous century the average length of a Parliament was four years and 10 months—

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Three years—

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Sorry, three years and 10 months. So if we stick with this Act, in the next century we could lose six general elections—that is six occasions on which the people are given a real choice. In short, the greater flexibility that the power of Dissolution allows is to the advantage of our parliamentary democracy. The great advantage of our constitutional tradition is that it bends rather than breaks, but fixed-term Parliaments remove that flexibility, with consequences that cannot be foreseen.

Professor Robert Hazell of University College London’s constitution unit, has said that

“Anthony Eden’s decision to call a premature election in April 1955 can be justified on a mandate basis: he had only taken over as PM nine days earlier after the resignation of Winston Churchill. Fixed terms will remove or at least limit the government’s capacity”

to renew their mandate. We all know that the decision of the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), not to have a general election as soon as he was elected—or, rather, appointed—as Labour Prime Minister was a serious mistake and his Government never recovered from it.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

That points exactly to the other argument on this issue. Had the former Prime Minister gone to the country on that date, he probably would have won a general election. The Government have an enormous power in being able to choose an election date, and is that not the other side of the coin?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is the other side of the coin, which is why the Liberal party, which always delights in its own rationality, came up with this idea of fixed-term Parliaments. It is strange that the Liberal party, which is so apparently rational in all respects, is so unpopular with the people—I never quite understand that. It is precisely the sort of point that comes from political scientists and leads to dangerous constitutional innovations that are not thought through and are, in the end, profoundly undemocratic. The old system was better, more democratic and more in tune with what the public want.

[Kevin Brennan]

Is it not entirely unfair to criticise the Liberal Democrats when they are not here to defend themselves?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is a good point. [Interruption.] Why be fair in politics anyway—they are not.

This constitutional change was not in our manifesto, although I believe it was in both the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. Interestingly, the Liberals maintained that fixed-term Parliaments would

“ensure that the Prime Minister of the day cannot change the date of an election to suit themselves.”

It is telling that the Liberals speak so contemptuously of consulting the people and seeking their approbation. I believe the Liberals had previously been in favour of a referendum on the European Union before they decided they were against one—they now say they will have a referendum at the time of a treaty change. Why not have a vote on the European Union at a fixed time—they have succeeded in foisting that on us for our Parliaments? They are totally irrational, and they are arguing from different points of view on fixed-term Parliaments and on a referendum on Europe. When did their support start imploding? It was when they broke their election promises on tuition fees, and they have never recovered. That was in the heady days of the coalition, which they were determined to try to maintain for five years. Indeed, now they are apparently the main body of people who have maintained that this coalition must struggle on for five years.

How was the arrangement formed? It was a hash job—let us be honest about it. It was designed to keep both parties in the coalition from doing a runner on each other and it was never thought through properly. This was always going to be a loveless marriage, and fixed-term Parliaments were a pre-nuptial settlement drawn up between two parties that were never in love. Indeed, they had to bind their marriage in barbed wire to stop them ratting on each other. Is that the right way to make a major constitutional innovation? I do not think it is. These constitutional innovations of profound import for our democratic system should have been the result of lengthy debate and academic debate, but they were not. They were cobbled together in five days in May in secret meetings between the leaderships of the two parties. These things were put not to a vote of my parliamentary party, but to a show trial public meeting of MPs in Committee Room 14 with planted questions. There was no democratic mandate in our manifesto for the fixed-term Parliament. We should put this issue in our manifesto and repeal the Act, and think about repealing it now.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is doing jolly well and I love the things that he is saying, but before he moves on, will he look for a moment at the length of time between the election and getting a winner in using the first-past-the-post system? It was five days then. Imagine the next time when it could be five, 10 or 20 days to make the Liberals happy.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

This was the subject of a very good debate among experts in the Hansard Society. They pointed out that this Parliament will end on 28 March. We will have a record five-and-a half-week campaign and two weeks of negotiations, so we could have two months without a Government, which would be the longest time that this country in recent history has not had a Government. We could have a Belgian situation—I love the Belgians but they do not necessarily have the best sort of Government—with no Parliament and no Government.

[Sir Greg Knight]

I think my hon. Friend is factually incorrect when he says that we will not have a Government. We will have a Government, but it will not be open to scrutiny.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Yes, that is true, but we all know—my right hon. Friend has been a Minister as have I—that the moment the election is called, civil servants do not allow Ministers to do anything. In theory, we still have Ministers in charge, but in practice we do not have a Government who can do anything. It is worrying that under this Act of Parliament we could have such a long period of, effectively, no Government.

[Sir William Cash]

Will my hon. Friend be good enough to give way?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

For the second time.

[Sir William Cash]

Yes, indeed. With respect to the role of the civil service—of Lord Gus O’Donnell specifically—in putting this coalition together, an extraordinary amount of power was exercised by civil servants in relation to the coalition discussions, which included the proposals for this Act.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I did not know about that, but my hon. Friend raises a good point, and I am very worried about it. Frankly, this coalition shows us that coalitions are a bad idea. It would have been much better to have had a minority Government. We could have gone to the people after a year or 18 months to seek a proper mandate. That has been done twice by Labour in the 1960s and the 1970s. There was no constitutional outrage, debate or scandal about it. Harold Wilson did it twice and nobody seemed to worry very much. People said that it was necessary to have a coalition to deal with the deficit. Leaving aside the fact that we have not yet properly dealt with the deficit anyway, a Conservative Government could have got on with dealing with the deficit from day one. They had the mandate to do so, and they could have renewed that mandate after a year or 18 months, and we would now have a much stronger Government.

We find ourselves stuck in a lowest common denominator straitjacket, which no one voted for—

[Mr Allen]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but the annunciator appears to be broken. We are on the hatred of Liberal Democrats and the coalition debate, and I am waiting for the Fixed-term Parliaments Act debate. Will you, Madam Deputy Speaker, ensure that the annunciator gets repaired, so we can carry on with the House’s business?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

I appreciate the eloquence and humour with which the hon. Gentleman has made his point, but it is of course not a point of order.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am coming to an end. I have put it several times to our beloved Prime Minister that we should end this coalition, which is haemorrhaging our support, and the support of the Liberal Democrats. He says that he cannot do it because, under this ridiculous Act of Parliament, he could not call a general election, and the Leader of the Opposition might be in power by teatime. I do not know whether or not that is right, but there is a certain rigidity in the system. We should end this coalition and go to the people at an appropriate moment.

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act is a constitutional aberration. It was cobbled together without pre-legislative review or proper national debate. It could and does result in zombie-government in the latter part of the term. Indeed it could conceivably lead to a Belgian situation of weak Government and weak Parliament. As is found around the world, it could and does lead to rigidity and angry calls by a disaffected public to extra-parliamentary activity. It actually leads to the growth of extremist fringe parties, as we are finding in our own country.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

rose—

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I was about to end, but I will give way one last time.

[Mr Chope]

Will my hon. Friend pray in aid the example of Ukraine, which has parliamentary elections this weekend? It had a fixed-term Parliament, but the President has called what he has described as early parliamentary elections.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Indeed, and dangerous situations can often be the result of fixed-terms.

We could see, as a result of this Act, an unprecedented long period without any Government at all. This is a bad Act. It was not thought through and it is not in our traditions. It should be reviewed and repealed.

12:15

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

I am delighted that we can now come on to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 debate, and I am pleased to open the proceedings on that discussion. I want people to watch our proceedings in Parliament, but, privately, I hope that they are doing other things—perhaps going out with their families—because sometimes we can be incredibly embarrassing in this House. It was only three or four weeks ago that the Union nearly fell apart. I am glad that the numbers were what they were at the end, but there was a moment when all of us thought that the Union—the United Kingdom—would be split asunder. It may still do so if we do not deliver properly on the package.

One would think that everything in the garden was rosy, apart from the fact that some would like to revert to those great old days that the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) described. I am talking about those days when we had an empire, homosexuality was illegal, we could slaughter people around the globe, we always had a Prime Minister who told us what to do, and we could go hunting, shooting and fishing in the right seasons. Those were the days indeed. Of course there are many colleagues who long for that degree of exclusivity and privacy, but there are some of us for whom times have changed. We believe that we must do better, and that joining the family of democratic nations in having the people know when a general election is to take place and when the Executive can be replaced is one of the hallmarks of a modern democracy. We are not yet there, but we have made progress in some areas in recent years. One such area is having a fixed-term Parliament.

I say to the hon. Gentleman, whom I have known for many years, that this idea that somehow this Parliament, rather than the Executive, is the creature that runs the nation is the fundamental misapprehension and fundamental flaw in his argument; it is mythology. This is not the Executive. This is not even a body that effectively holds the Executive to account, so to say that things should go back to the way they were does not alter some of those truths, which we all need to consider as parliamentarians first and foremost and as members of the Executive, members who want to be in the Executive, and members who have been in the Executive. That so-called truth is a mythology, and I hope that during this debate we can explore why having a fixed term—having some openness about how long a Parliament or a Government is—will be one of the things that lead people outside to say that at least it looks like we are getting it.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I share some of the hon. Gentleman’s concern at the lamentable way in which Parliament fails to hold the Executive—of whatever Government—to account. Obviously, he supports the notion of a fixed-term Parliament, but does he think that it is right that the Act ensures that that cannot be changed? The Act reinforces this whole push towards coalition Government almost irrespective of public wishes because there has to be a two-thirds majority for getting rid of them. Does he not think that an old-fashioned straight majority would have been the correct way for a fixed-term Parliament to operate?

[Mr Allen]

Sadly, one cannot always bring about democratic change through a rational process; it is often a matter of seizing opportunities. In this case a coalition Government came together and it was helpful—there is no question about this—to have a fixed term, because otherwise there would have been votes of censure and the Government could have fallen at any moment over the past four and a half years.

This might sound strange coming from the Opposition Benches, but I must say that I think history will judge the coalition, however painful and bruising it might have been for the partners, to have governed, or at least administered, in a way that will have surprised many people, particularly if we think back to 2010. There are wounds and difficulties, of course, and I do not seek to underplay them, but a coalition was formed and governance in this country, much to my regret at one level, has continued, one could argue, in a relatively civilized way.

We are where we are, and it would not be democratic to take the power away from Parliament and restore a power that allows a Prime Minister alone to decide the date of a general election. It is yet another strong Executive power that this House should stand up and say should not be restored. There are other Executive powers in this highly centralised democracy that we should be looking to next to ensure that they are made properly democratic, or at least that Governments are held to account for their use.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Allen]

I will give way first to my distinguished colleague from the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee.

[Mr Chope]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the argument is essentially between those who believe in rigidity, as he does, and those of us on the Government Benches who believe in flexibility? In a sense, is not that illustrated by what happened in Scotland? Had the Scots voted to leave the Union, the Prime Minister would surely have been required to call a general election, but the Fixed-term Parliaments Act would have prevented him from having that discretion.

[Mr Allen]

The hon. Gentleman is known for being a rather floppy and flexible individual, and perhaps I am renowned for being inflexible in the multitude of compromises I have attempted to make over my political career to secure at least some small reforms in our democracy.

[Mr Bone]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech, as usual. He is right to say that this is a restriction on the power of the Executive, but I think that he is slightly wrong to say that in this Parliament power has not become more centralised. I think his book was called “The First President” or “President Blair” or something along those lines. Surely he thinks that guillotining and the Whips Offices are doing much more to give power to the Executive than a fixed-term Parliament.

[Mr Allen]

I am not saying that it is the fixed term that has helped create a lively Parliament; it is Members of Parliament who have done that, by carving out a niche and exploiting the difficulties of coalition Government, and more credit to them for doing so. However, I have to say to the hon. Gentleman, who is foremost among those pushing back the envelope—I congratulate him on that—that what the Executive giveth, the Executive can take away. Were we to return to a one-party Government, of whichever party, I guarantee that they would seek to roll back some of the gains that he and just about every colleague in the Chamber today have played a part in securing, bringing greater responsibility to Parliament. I warn colleagues here today that the tide will go out very rapidly indeed. We now have, for the first time in parliamentary history, Select Committee Chairs elected by secret ballot and by the whole House, as in my case, and that could easily become a thing of the past. In a one-party Government, the Prime Minister would instruct people to clamp down on dissent and nonconformity.

Similarly, colleagues elected to Select Committees by secret ballot and by party, such as the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), could be under threat. Difficult and awkward customers of the sort I revel in dealing with in my Committee, many of whom are in the Chamber today, will be the first casualties. I say that not because I am trying to scare them, but because I used to be in the Whips Office and had to take Members out of Select Committees and try to get compliant Chairs elected. Sadly, I have been there, done that—I am the gamekeeper turned poacher, and possibly turned gamekeeper again.

The idea that we have cracked it and that we now have a Parliament that in a one-party Government will be as frisky as this one is misleading. We have to protect the small gains we have made in recent years and build upon them, rather than regressing to the good old days when we used to allow Prime Ministers the unprecedented power in a democracy of deciding the date of an election.

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern about the power of the Executive. Does he agree that the constitution should be established in the best interests not of the Prime Minister, but of the country as a whole, particularly in circumstances in which we are having to borrow a lot of money on the money markets to fund the deficit, which means the stability that arises from the Prime Minister not having the power to call an election anytime he feels like it is in the interests of the country as a whole?

[Mr Allen]

The hon. Gentleman, who speaks from the Liberal Democrat Benches, would have been terribly blackguarded by his coalition partners in the debate this morning. He is making up for that and makes some intelligent points with which I wholly agree.

What I think the people outside this place listening to the debate would find incredibly difficult is the idea that, as the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) said before leaving his place, we would not apply this to the devolved Administrations. We would not say to those who run Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, “Just have an election whenever you feel like it, for whatever purpose. We’ll happily give you that Executive power.” We have Executive power in No. 10 Downing street, and very rarely is it given away. It was not given away lightly, but on this occasion it was given away on calculation. We must retain it so that Parliament has at least some leverage and certainty so that it can fulfil its duty of holding Governments to account.

It is similar to the situation in local government. Imagine the leader of a council having the power to decide when local government elections take place. Consider the idea that the President of the United States could wake up one morning and say, “There’s some bad economic news coming down the tube in six months’ time, so I’m going to go for a snap election.” The President would then face prison or incarceration, because that would be unconstitutional and illegal. I suspect that the straitjacket would be the option of first resort were that to happen, whether in the US, France or any of our fellow democracies who figured this out a long time ago. Montesquieu figured it out in the 18th century when he wrote about the separation of powers. Given the flexibility we have created for ourselves in this House, perhaps we will come to that conclusion in the not-too-distant future.

[Kevin Brennan]

I caution against being too obsessed with the American system, because it is held in very low regard by American voters, largely because of the amount of money involved in their politics, and one of the reasons for that is the frequency of elections to the House of Representatives and the resulting gridlock. Does my hon. Friend agree that choosing a period of five years, which was done for the convenience of the Executive, whether a coalition or not, is far too long, not least given that the average length of Parliaments in the last century was three years and 10 months? Should not we go to four years, which would also stop the clashes with the devolved Administrations?

[Mr Allen]

We should of course be very careful about taking the American example lock, stock and barrel, although we should learn from other democracies. I also think that my hon. Friend should be a little careful about discussing the low regard in which politicians are held in America. Many people will have been watching the debate today with incredulity, given the way in which some Members spoke a little earlier.

As for whether the period should be four years or five, it is the first time that we have gone through this process. My anxiety relates only to practical politics. I fear that if the question of the period were opened up for review, some Members from whom we have heard today would seize the opportunity to hand power back, rather fawningly, to No. 10 Downing street. One wonders whether there would be as much enthusiasm for that if the Prime Minister were a member of a different political party from that of the mover of the motion.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

rose—

[Mr Allen]

I give way to my very distinguished Select Committee colleague.

[Mr Turner]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman could assist me by explaining what would happen if, for instance, we had lost the referendum in Scotland. In those circumstances, would there not have been an obligation to step up to the public and say, “I have failed, so someone else must take over”, and would it not be a bad thing if everyone were simply moved along one step and the job were put it in the hands of another person, with no election?

[Mr Allen]

The hon. Gentleman has made a powerful case. In fact, he has unwittingly made a powerful case for a written constitution, which would prevent that from happening. What we have, however, is a convention, and, like it or not, conventions mean what the Executive say—rather than, as we are finding now in relation to going to war in Syria, creeping something through the House and reinventing the convention. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister of the day would probably find, in giving way, that the Deputy would be appointed from within the coalition or from within the individual party. The only way of putting a stop to that is to have clarity, so that everyone watching at home has the rule book, the boxing rules, as it were. I am not referring to the fighters in the ring, but there should be a framework that we can all understand, and I am afraid that that is not the case.

Ultimately, even under the current legislation, it would be possible to dissolve Parliament if a vote expressing a lack of confidence in the existing Government were carried by two thirds. After 14 days, there would be a general election. However, those are extraordinary circumstances. We are trying to build a democracy in which everyone out there knows the rules.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

May I repeat the point made by the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan)? We are not going to convince the hon. Gentleman in regard to fixed-term Parliaments, but will he at least acknowledge that if we had had a proper national debate on the issue, we would obviously have decided on a four-year term, as in the case of the American presidency, rather than a five-year term?

[Mr Allen]

I believe that—particularly if there is a little less game-playing and a little more consensus-building—a five-year or a 10-year Parliament and longer-term planning make a lot of sense when we are faced with issues that are not about tomorrow’s newspapers, but about the future of the planet, the future of our children and the future of our economy.



Some of our colleagues are new to the House—I except the hon. Member for Gainsborough—and assume that things have always been like this. Some colleagues, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes), are very new to the House. They are probably thinking, “Why on earth are they talking about this ancient history?” Well, some of us remember the ancient history.

Having been in the House for some time, I am aware—as are you, Madam Deputy Speaker—of the paralysis that grips a Government when there is speculation about when a general election can take place. We have all lived through it. There is a long period of under-achievement, of anxiety, of shuffles, of the civil service not knowing when the general election will be, of appalling speculation in the media, and of threats by Back Benchers who say that they will do this, that or the other. That, to me, is bad governance and bad administration.

A fixed term brings clarity. It means all of us saying, “Let us get on with our job.” It does not mean saying to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the House will appoint you for a term but it may throw you out at any moment, or press speculation may end your wonderful career. Of course, no one operates like that in the real world. A degree of certainty will end much of the paralysis and speculation that has been so damaging to our politics for many years.

[Mark Field]

I do not entirely disagree with the hon. Gentleman’s remarks about uncertainty in regard to election dates. However—this may be because there is currently a coalition Government, and because all the parties are going into the next election telling the electorate that they intend to win and have a manifesto that will enable them to win—an element of paralysis has clearly set in even at this early stage. As we know, there will be an election in May. I think that, in the event of another indeterminate election result, we should be relaxed about the possibility that we will not return for the Queen’s Speech until early or mid-June next year. There may well be an interval of several weeks. That would not necessarily constitute paralysis—it would be possible for government to continue—but Parliament would not be able to sit until we recognised what sort of coalition would be taking the place of the current Government.

[Mr Allen]

The benefit of our having a final year and knowing it is a final year is that we can plan for how we can sensibly use that final year. I absolve my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) of this, but is all the nonsense of “It will be a zombie Parliament unless we pack the last year full of inconsequential legislation, so that we can we pretend that we are macho and running the country” the best that we can do?

My Committee has produced two reports on this issue. We have studied it in great detail, and have heard from highly expert witnesses. We concluded that the fifth year of a Parliament could, because we would know that it would be the last year, be very different culturally—although not this first time round, because we are not used to it. Let us return to the default position of the old dogfight! Let us all slam each other over the Dispatch Box! But perhaps we could use the last year very constructively, rather than entering a state of paralysis or conducting ourselves in our normal, conventional way—often disgracefully, in the eyes of the public.

[Sir William Cash]

Did the hon. Gentleman’s Committee take evidence from Lord Norton of Louth? If so, can he remember what conclusions Lord Norton reached?

[Mr Allen]

I am afraid that I cannot remember, but Lord Norton of Louth—who is a very distinguished Member of the other place—gives evidence to us regularly, and I am confident that if we did not take oral evidence from him, he would have submitted some written evidence. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for not being able to recite it. No doubt he can do so.

Let me return to the points made by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field). We can plan our lives here better. We, Members of Parliament—not the Government—can plan our lives better, in the parliamentary interest. That means not being told what to do. It does not mean being told how wonderful it is to be able to have a debate of our own choosing on days such as this. Aren’t we lucky to be able to have a couple of debates every so often? Aren’t we lucky to be allowed out into the playground? That is better than being told every second of our waking day what agenda is being set by the Government, and hearing the nonsense that somehow Parliament is deciding stuff. Of course it is the Government who are deciding—but, on this occasion, we have made a little bit of an inroad on behalf of Parliament.

Those were very good points, and I shall be sure to write them up and pass them to my local Member of Parliament; so the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster can expect a letter in the morning.

Let me explain a little about the importance of what a fixed-term Parliament allows us to do, first as a Parliament, secondly as an Administration and a Government, and thirdly for the electorate. What does a fixed-term Parliament allow us to do as Members of this House, and as members of Select Committees and other institutions in the House? For one thing, it allows us to have a sensible legislative programme. Until the advent of the fixed-term Parliament—and I look forward to the legislative programme of the next one, because by then we shall have learnt a few lessons—it was the same every time. An election was won, and no one was sure how long the Parliament would last. It was a case of “Let us stuff the big important Bills through the House at the earliest opportunity.” Then there will be a ton of Second Readings before the Christmas of the new Parliament, things will be pushed through and often written very poorly, and later on we will have a period in the doldrums when things are drifting along because most of the legislation has already gone through.

That is anathema to what I suspect virtually all colleagues in the House would support me on, which is pre-legislative scrutiny. A fixed-term Parliament allows us, for the first time ever, to plan our legislative programme, because we know when the beginning, middle and end are. Things that require more work and more detailed analysis by the civil service to produce a draft can be prioritised—really important, practical things that can involve the British public and bring them with us. The Scottish example has shown what fantastic accidental glory democracy can deliver us. Imagine if we planned our next employment Bill and talked to working people and employers. Imagine if we really thought carefully about what a climate change Bill could do three years hence. Imagine if we had a Parliament talking to the electorate because it knew how it could plan its legislative programme. What a different Parliament it would be if we decided to go that way—a Parliament that might earn people’s respect.

Pre-legislative scrutiny would allow this House to present a Bill and say, “Here’s our draft, let’s have a Second Reading and agree the principles, and then we’ll give it to an expert committee of colleagues of all parties to look at for a serious period”—three, four, five or six months—“to really get to the bottom of this and get the evidence together.” A Government who were listening could then enable that to happen—not once, because we have made a persuasive argument on the Floor of the House and won a vote, but as a matter of course because that is the way we conduct our business. We would then be in great danger of producing good law that did not require our coming back the next year to put right the things that were got wrong because we did not take our time or that needed a thousand amendments from the other place because our legislative process was so poor.

[Richard Drax]

South Dorset (Con): First, there was no pre-legislative scrutiny, as far as I know, of the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill. Secondly, in the wonderful, mythological world that the hon. Gentleman lives in, he seems to forget that there is such a thing as politics. We do not always get on in this place—we disagree—and that is extremely good for democracy. I do not think the wonderful world he is portraying actually exists in this place—thank God, because nor should it.

[Mr Allen]

It is hard to pick the substance out of that intervention, but I will do my best. This is the first time that we have had a fixed term; the hon. Gentleman is a new Member, so he may not know that. When we have gone through the process once and come to it again, I hope we will have learned a few lessons. It gives us time to plan, whereas a system where there could be a general election at the drop of a hat means that we are in a state of febrile suspense about whether we are going to go to the electorate. Rightly, that is the first thing on our minds, rather than holding Government to account and perhaps developing an understanding of why Parliament is a separate institution from Government. Should the hon. Gentleman be re-elected and we have a four or five-year term, perhaps he will be able to find more time to understand some of those things a little more deeply.

Let me go back to how Parliament will benefit from this situation. Imagine a situation where each Select Committee has the power and the drive, and perhaps even the personnel, of a Committee like the Public Accounts Committee so that it could look at value for money, seriously examine Government accounts, and seriously examine accounting officers—and possibly even Government Ministers. Very few, if any, Select Committees other than the PAC can do that. Imagine what we could then do in terms of our constitutional role outlined by William Gladstone, who said that our role in Parliament is not to run the country but to hold to account those who do. It would be a massive step forward. People at home would say, “These guys are really earning their crust. They are not just shouting at each other on a Wednesday afternoon—they are figuring out how to save me, a taxpayer, a lot of money, how to make our services work better, how to involve people, and how to get ownership of the things we have in our society.”

[Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I agree with everything my hon. Friend says about the benefits of Select Committees, pre-legislative scrutiny and all the other things that we want to develop, but the pre-supposition of his argument is that the people elect a Government who have the power to continue for a fixed term—in other words, they have a majority and can maintain it to carry out a legislative programme for a fixed term. In the present circumstances, with a multi-party system emerging and the two Government parties unevenly balanced, is that going to happen?

[Mr Allen]

We do not contrive a system for each result—we have to do it on the basis of principle. The principle that we know when a Parliament begins and ends is very important, not just for us here in our own cosy little world but for people outside. It is important for the electorate to understand why we are doing what we are doing, and that principle allows that to happen.

My Select Committee took evidence from other Select Committee Chairs, none of whom said that they wanted to go back to the old system. They all said, as I did as a Select Committee Chair, “This enables us to have greater planning ability, even within our own Select Committee.” I will give one example from my own Committee. As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, as one of its most important members before you came to exalted high office late on and robbed us of one of our main contributors, my Committee spent four years looking at whether we should devise a written constitution. We considered what other options there were; conducted a very detailed investigation through an external body, King’s college London; took copious amounts of evidence; and carefully produced a document that everyone can be proud of and that will stand the test of time. That is not possible if we think that in a couple of years’ time there might be a general election when Members, rightly, will want to be in their constituencies and so on. These things allow us to plan our work, as MPs and Select Committees, much more easily.

We also improve public debate if we allow people outside to see what we are doing—our measures, our policies, our options—and thereby engage with people. Rather than just being a glorified electoral college to elect a Prime Minister some time in the early hours of general election day, we can get a real role in life as a Parliament and start to produce good legislation and better law, and to do things that the public will be proud of us for in holding Government to account. We would not lose Bills in the “wash up” but be able to plan effectively. A lot of people in this House worked on the Sex and Relationships Education Bill, which, as finally drafted, had the support of most people. That Bill was lost because a general election was called. People outside who had an interest in young people growing up with fully rounded capabilities and full knowledge so that they could raise good families of their own found it inexplicable that Parliament could act like that.

The next area I want to turn to—I will try to be a little more brief, Madam Deputy Speaker, since you have glowered at me—is Government and the civil service. I had the privilege of being sent by my Select Committee to each of the permanent secretaries in Whitehall. To a man and a woman, they basically said the same thing, including the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood—that planning, long-termism and sequencing had improved markedly since people knew when the beginning and end of the Parliament were. That allows the civil service to address the comprehensive spending review and say, “We know when the next Government will be coming in, so we will have things ready for them. Perhaps they will want to do things differently, if they are not another coalition Government.” That also helps with budgeting.

That mindset goes down the pipe from the civil service and Government to local government, which then has a sense of the expenditure model it could operate over the next five to 10 years. It also gives our national health service an idea of when to plan hospitals and train doctors and nurses, which are long-term activities. It allows the civil service and Government to get to grips with those things.

The voluntary sector is also affected. I speak as someone who was plagued by not knowing from one year to the next where the next cheque was coming from or how much it would be worth. People would be fired at Christmas in the hope that we could put them back to work on 5 April. What a stupid way to run a system—making it up as you go along. Paralysis at one level means chaos at another, all because we cannot do what every business, local government and president in western democracy does as a result of knowing the beginning and the end of a governing period and how to plan life within it. Finally, this also applies to the electorate. I hope that sensible electors will view everything I have talked about as evidence that we can be more rational and more fit to govern.

At the end of the day, the key things are not those I have listed, but the fact that knowing the date of a general election, how a Prime Minister is elected and how a Member of Parliament gets the honour of the job the public give them is not a gift from an over-centralised Executive who are used to running an empire, but a right of which every citizen in our democracy should be aware. Those are the benefits of having a fixed-term Parliament.

I will talk briefly about what should happen in the last year of a fixed-term Parliament. The last year can be used not in a conventional way but in order to say, “Yes, this is the year we are going to run up to a general election. Can we involve people and have a public education drive? Can we, as parties, perhaps with the help of the Office for Budget Responsibility or other institutions, cost all our programmes?” We could have that debate a year out from a general election, rather than the mud-slinging that happens in the last few days leading up to a general election, where one party says, “You’re spending too much,” another says, “You’re not spending enough,” and another says, “We’re going to raise money, but you’re borrowing too much.” Let us try to work all that out. At the end of the day, we might surprise ourselves. Despite all the rhetoric, there can be common ground on a lot of stuff. The least we can do in Parliament—not the Government; leave them in Whitehall and No. 10 for now—is to figure out what the key problems are for the nation on whose behalf we are meant to parlay.

That is a different approach, but we also need to keep this Government to their promise of creating a House business committee to enable us to have the time to do those serious political activities, rather than have the same old dogfight. We as a Parliament could have a real impact on the main parties’ manifestos by creating an evidence base for policy, figuring out what works for that policy and making sure it is properly costed.

I hope that is a convincing argument for the need for clear planning and accurate budgeting and for involving the British people in our Parliament. We need to be confident that we are better than just doing what whoever runs the Government tells us to do or just opposing them from the Opposition Benches. We have gained a lot, but we can do even more. The Prime Minister committed to a review of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 in 2020. By then I hope we will have made progress, built on the Act and gone from strength to strength. I hope that will lead us to achieve two things that may just turn the tide and result in the electorate looking at us as something other than pariahs: better government and honest politics.

12:54

[Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

This is an important debate and I welcome the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) opened it. The subject needs to be aired by this House. I do not necessarily see the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 as the work of the forces of evil or, indeed, the Liberal Democrats. On the other hand, the alternative of the previous system is not necessarily a panacea.

In practical terms, if the coalition had fallen apart at some point, the Prime Minister would probably have come to the House and proposed a Dissolution, and I would have been extremely surprised if the Leader of the Opposition had not agreed with the proposition of having a general election to sort out the situation. The need for a two-thirds majority principally means that the Conservative party and the Labour party could conspire to have a Dissolution on a date on which they both agree. Essentially, it does not prevent a general election from taking place; it just means that there would have to be a degree of consultation between both major parties.

I do not think that fixed-term Parliaments are necessarily a good thing, for some of the reasons that have already been discussed. I think there comes a time—four years is probably long enough—when a Government ought to try to get a new mandate from the electorate. If we look back at history, we will see that at one point we had seven-year Parliaments and then the term was reduced to five years. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to general elections. We missed a general election in 1940, for the very understandable reason that we were doing other things at the time. That was quite reasonable and one must remember that that Parliament ran all the way to 1945.

Whenever the United Kingdom has had early general elections—I think we ought to focus on early general elections, rather than those that have taken place towards the end of a term after four, four and a half, or five years—it was usually because the electorate gave an indecisive result and, for the sake of good government, the political parties wanted the electorate to reconsider through another general election. At the end of the day, apart from holding the Government to account, Parliament is about ensuring that there is a Government, who have to deliver the health service, education and pensions. Of course, the 2010 Government had to manage the British economy, which has to be managed in a particular way. Those are very important issues.

Governments have gone early on two occasions in my lifetime. The Wilson Government of February 1974 went and got a small majority that October, and the 1964 Labour Government were re-elected in 1966, having initially got a very small majority.

[John Hemming]

Obviously, we have had fixed-term Parliaments for a long time; it is just that the Prime Minister had the power to call an early election. Who does my hon. Friend believe should have the power to decide to have an early election?

[Mr Syms]

Actually, the power to call a general election is a poisoned chalice for a Prime Minister: if they win it is great, but if they lose they generally get the chop because they made the wrong decision. Under the old system, Conservative campaign headquarters told its candidates that there were only so many Thursdays—which, by convention, we used—and only so many days of the year, because of summer days and autumn, on which we could have a general election. When it comes down to it, there are only four or five dates a Prime Minister can choose from. A Prime Minister has the seals of office from the Queen and the responsibility to discharge a Government programme. If someone has to decide, I would prefer it to be the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a thoughtful speech. He has spoken of the poisoned chalice, but what about Margaret Thatcher in 1983 and 1987, and Tony Blair in 2001 and 2005? Is he suggesting that partisan considerations were not at play in the choice to go after four rather than five years in those four cases?

[Mr Syms]

I am perfectly sure that, in normal politics, some incumbents have a slight advantage. Clearly, both Mrs Thatcher and Tony Blair used it to the maximum. One election was delayed by foot and mouth, so events can intervene and cause a delay, if everyone agrees to it. At the time, there was consensus across the House that it would have been impossible to have a general election. I remember driving through Devon and seeing pyres of the carcases of animals being burned. That showed the British system being flexible to deal with something that emerged very quickly.

[John Hemming]

I thank my hon. Friend for his previous answer. He said the effective test of whether the Prime Minister’s decision to have an election was a good one was whether the Prime Minister got elected, and that the test was measured by the political party. In essence, such a decision is driven by the party interest, not the public interest.

[Mr Syms]

There is an element of truth in that, but to go back to my earlier point, if a Prime Minister dissolves Parliament and loses, they usually end up losing the leadership of their party. Harold Wilson was unusual: he won three elections out of the four he contested, but survived after losing—by surprise—in 1970. He of course chose the date in 1970, but that was after a long period during which his party thought that it would win. In reality, most Prime Ministers go when they think they will win. Most of them hang on when they think they will lose, in the hope of something turning up, which it normally does not, and five-year Parliaments can be tortuous and difficult.

I believe we should go back to the previous system of having some flexibility in when general elections occur. In reality, they normally occur some time in the fourth and fifth year of a Parliament.

[John Hemming]

rose—

[Mr Syms]

I will give way for the last time.

[John Hemming]

I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees that a key priority of this Parliament has been to sort out the finances, but uncertainty creates greater instability in the financial markets. If we had to pay another 1%, it would cost us about £10 billion or more a year. Does he think that that is a reasonable price for the taxpayer to pay for giving back a power over general elections to the Prime Minister?

[Mr Syms]

One thing on which I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough, who introduced the debate in a very reasonable fashion, is that we may in future have more coalition Governments than some of us would like. If we look at the pattern of politics, we can clearly see that more people are willing to vote for a range of parties, which in itself brings challenges for the major political parties. It may well be that fixed-term Parliaments are used as a device when other coalitions are formed in future.

I hope that there will be a clear overall majority for the Conservative party when there is an election—or that there is a clear majority among the electorate—but if there is no such majority and, to return to my earlier point, someone has to run the economy, interest rates need to be maintained, restrictions on public expenditure are still needed and tough decisions have to be made, coalitions will sometimes be the best vehicle.

I have always taken a very pragmatic view of the British constitution. It has shown that it can be amended, changed and challenged by what is thrown at it. The remarkable thing about 2010 was that there was an indecisive general election but a strong Government were formed to deal with the very difficult issues we faced. Those issues will still need to be dealt with in the next Parliament.

I simply point out that it would be better to have flexibility in the system. At some stage, we will find ourselves in the situation where a general election is the solution to dealing with the problems. Given some of the current polls, with both major parties on percentage shares in the 30s, one possible result would be for each to have between 260 and 280 seats and for neither to be able to form a coalition with any other party, and that would lead us into grand coalition territory. We had that in February 1974, when the Conservatives conspired to allow the Labour party to govern until there was another general election. It would be unusual but not impossible to have a situation in which no Government could be sustained. In such a case, rather than having some absurd coalition with both major parties getting together but agreeing on nothing, it would be sensible for the electorate at some point to get the chance to decide which party or coalition of parties they wished to run the country.

The coalition has not done a bad job. It was necessary, and it has probably helped the British economy. Having fixed-term Parliaments was one part of the deal. That was perfectly respectable politics, because there was a need to reassure the junior partner in the coalition. However, being conservative constitutionally, I rather hope that we can go back to the previous system. If we do, it will be the decision of my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron), if he is the Prime Minister after the next election, to decide about the following election. If he then made the wrong decision, he would have to pay the consequences for that.

13:03

[Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I support the proposal to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. I congratulate the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and his colleagues on raising the issue. It seems to me that we should have much shorter Parliaments. It is possible to have fixed terms, but there has to be a right or an ability to end a Parliament in circumstances such as war, economic crisis or disaster. We can therefore have a term that is fixed, but the period should be shorter.

The best evidence against five-year Parliaments—frankly, five years is too long—is the long, slow death rattle of this Parliament. If Members want to see a monument to the failure of five-year Parliaments, they should look at what is happening now. In effect, this Parliament and this Government did all they were going to do in their first three years. Most of that was wrong of course, but it was done during those first three years. Frankly, we are now just hanging on in this House with nothing particular to do. It reminds me of the old Bing Crosby song:

“We’re busy doing nothing,

Working the whole day through,

Trying to find lots of things not to do”.

The attendance at this extremely important constitutional debate shows that Members do not particularly want to be in the Chamber; they would rather be in their constituencies fighting an election campaign. That is what, at the end of this Parliament, we are really doing: if we are not fighting an election campaign, we are busy throwing custard pies at each other.

At this moment in this Parliament, the Government have got to the end of their tether. There has never been a better moment to use Oliver Cromwell’s words—they apply to all of us—when he dismissed the Long Parliament:

“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

But this agony now has to be prolonged, with the farce of pretending to do things when we are just electioneering and throwing trivia at each other, until the end of March, before there is a renewal in the election in May. This Parliament is conclusive proof that five years is too long.

The hon. Member for Poole (Mr Syms) said that four years might be reasonable, but emphasised the need for continuity in economic policy. The usual claim for a five-year Parliament is that that gives the Government time to implement their policies, but this Parliament has given this Government time to change every policy that they started out with. We started out with “Hug a hoodie”, but that turned out to be cutting benefits for young people. We started out with “Hug a Husky” and “Save the environment”, but that ended up as “green crap.” We started out with “Support the European Union”, but we now use every possible occasion to provoke dissent and argument within the European Union. We started out with “Immigrants welcome”, but it is now, “Keep everybody out.” We started out with “We’re all in it together”, but that has ended up with putting the penalties and pains on the poor, while rewarding the rich.

Even continuity of economic policy, which is claimed to be the most sacrosanct element during this Parliament, has not been provided by a five-year term. The only continuity of economic policy to which this Government can lay claim—apart from cuts to everything, or slash and burn, which is the Government’s only long-term economic plan—has been produced not by them, but by the Bank of England. Frankly, the independent Bank of England has saved the Government. We now have a recovery, but if interest rates are kept flat to the floor, as they have been for the six years since the crisis, and if money is printed at a record rate—through quantitative easing, we have printed £375 billion—there is bound, at some stage, to be a recovery. That is not the Government’s long-term economic plan. Their plan was to cut and slash and burn everything and to roll back the state. The Bank of England’s management of the economy has produced the only successful long-term economic policy. Therefore, the argument for long-term economic policies also fails.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) is too hopeful about long parliamentary terms. He mentioned five-year and even 10-year Parliaments, which caused me to shudder in my seat. What is the best term for a Parliament? I do not want it to be thought that, now that I am leaving, I want to cut everybody else’s joy and pleasure by reducing the parliamentary term to three years, but I would like to do so. I have said that consistently. I proposed it when the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill was discussed in 2011.

[John Hemming]

The hon. Gentleman is making the case for shorter Parliaments. The question is who should make the decision. Should the term be fixed or should the Prime Minister be given back the power to make the decision purely on party interest, thereby costing everyone a lot of money?

[Austin Mitchell]

There could be a combination of the two. That happens in Australia and New Zealand. In New Zealand, there is a fixed three-year term, but the Prime Minister can call an election earlier. The Executive has to have that right and power. Most Governments work out their three-year term and do not go earlier. Some go earlier to seize a particular moment or because of an emergency. We have to give the Government that power, otherwise we will have the situation that Germany found itself in when the Social Democratic party had to engineer its own defeat in Parliament before it could get an election.

[John Hemming]

Why does the hon. Gentleman believe that the Prime Minister alone should be able to make that decision, rather than Parliament through a majority?

[Austin Mitchell]

In saying the Prime Minister, I meant the Government. It has to be a collective decision. It will effectively be a party decision, although in my experience most of the elections that have been called by the Labour party have not been party decisions, because I have not been consulted. I am not sure whether the Liberal Democrats are consulted on such matters.

[John Hemming]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for the confirmation that it would be a party decision taken in the party interest. Should it not be a decision that is taken in the public interest?

[Austin Mitchell]

I think that that would be difficult to arrange. It is a political decision that is taken by the Executive. In a democratic party, I would hope that the Executive would consult the party. That did not happen before the elections that were called by my party when we were in power, but I felt that it should have done. Jim Callaghan certainly should have consulted me, because if he had called an election in October 1978, we probably would have won. He tended not to listen to my advice, however loudly it was put. That was a failure of Back-Bench power.

I am in favour of a three-year term. At a pinch, I would accept a four-year term. It should be a fixed term, with the ability to call an early election in extreme or difficult circumstances. If we had that, we would not have to have all the silliness of the recall legislation that we were dealing with on Tuesday. I have never known a more stupid Bill than the Recall of MPs Bill. I was not given the opportunity to vote against it, because there was no vote. All parties are grovelling before the electorate by saying, “Let us sacrifice ourselves and throw MPs to the wolves.” There would be no need for recall if we had a three-year term, because by the time the machinery of recall had cranked into operation, the three years would be over and the electorate would be able to turn everybody out and make a new choice.

I am being moderate by calling for short, triennial Parliaments. I am old enough to have been a Chartist, I suppose, but I am not espousing annual Parliaments, as the Chartists did. A three-year Parliament accords with the mood of the public, as we read it in the major polls and surveys. There is an alienated mood. People want to be heard. They are angry and upset. They want to have an influence, but they feel that MPs are not listening and that Parliament does not represent them.

[Mr Allen]

Will my hon. Friend just beware and look across the Atlantic, where there are two-year terms? The people in the Houses that are elected on that basis are permanently campaigning. On one level, that might be a good thing, but because it means that they are permanently having to raise money for their election, it might not be regarded as progressive.

[Austin Mitchell]

I am arguing not for a two-year term, but for a three-year term. In any case, there is a big difference. Although my hon. Friend is right that members of the House of Representatives have to raise endless amounts of money to fight elections, that would not be necessary in our system because we provide free television adverts for the parties. The money that members of the House of Representatives raise mainly goes to the television networks to put on attack adverts about the other side. That would not be necessary here.

However, I am arguing not for a two-year term, but merely for a shorter term. That is in accord with the public mood, because the people want influence—they want a say. They feel that MPs are not listening and that we are in it for ourselves. They feel that decisions are being taken on immigration, economic matters and all sorts of things, over which they have no control. They want to be heard. The only effective way of ensuring that they are heard, that I know of, is to have more frequent elections. That is why I am in favour of a three-year term. We are too remote from the people if we have long, five-year terms.

If we had the fixed three-year terms for which I am arguing, it would be necessary to make two concomitant changes. First, we would have to limit the tenure of the Prime Minister. In recent experience, at the end of six or seven years, Prime Ministers are barmy, have delusions of grandeur or even competence, or are just brain-dead and exhausted. A seven-year limit on prime ministerial power would be a good idea.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North has much more faith in the two-party system than I have, because his argument presupposes strong government for a long period. I am worried that the days of one-party government are gone. We must not forget that in the ’40s and ’50s, 90% of people voted for one of the two parties that could form a Government; now, the proportion is only two thirds. The system is crumbling. The parties are losing membership and are hollowed out. They are controlled by small coteries and no longer represent the two great divisions in our society.

The main parties are weakening and we are developing a multi-party politics. However much we attack UKIP, it represents a point of view. Whatever we say about the Liberal Democrats—Tory Members have been scathing about the poor Liberal Democrats, who have left sulking, and about their participation in government—they represent a section of the community. We also have the Scottish nationalists and the Greens. Multi-party politics cannot work without proportional representation. The system has to be changed.

The change that introduced proportional representation in New Zealand has been very successful. It ensures that all legislation has the support of a majority of the parties in Parliament. That is desirable, because it means that the public are consulted and have a say, and through their parties they influence the legislation. [Interruption.] I am winding towards what I would hopefully call a peroration, so I would rather not give way at this moment. If we have a change of that nature for shorter Parliaments—and I think we need one—it must be accompanied by proportional representation so that we can work with the system, and so that the multiple views of society are represented in this place, rather than it being the scene for a conflict between just two parties.

13:20

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

I opposed the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill before it was enacted at every conceivable point during the procedure for simple reasons. First, I regarded it as fundamentally undemocratic, but I also believed that it will not stand the test of time. The reasons for that have been ably explained by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and others. My hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms) was a little more circumspect, but he indicated none the less that he is not very happy with the idea of fixed-term Parliaments. I stand by everything I said in 2010, and I believe that those of us who took a stand against the Bill before it was enacted, including in the House of Lords, have been proved right. The Act needs not only to be reviewed, as provided for in section 7, but it ought also to be repealed, and that is why I am speaking in this debate.

The Act was also conceived in very dodgy circumstances. It arose without pre-legislative scrutiny and there was no consultation whatsoever. It was not in our manifesto, but it has profound constitutional implications that I will try to touch on in a moment. It was designed to give succour and support to the coalition. Indeed, it is embedded in the whole concept of the coalition—in a moment I will explain some of the remarks made by the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws) about that, and the bearing that it has not only on this debate but on the whole of this unfortunate episode and this unfortunate Act of Parliament.

I wrote to my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister, on 10 May 2010, before the coalition was entered into. I urged him in the strongest possible terms not to enter into a formal coalition with the Liberal Democrats, although I explained that if there were to be an informal understanding—perhaps Supply maintenance or whatever —that would be another thing. Hon. Members have already mentioned this, but had we had a minority Government at that time, which I urged on my right hon. Friend, I think we would have won a general election quite soon afterwards, because nobody would have voted for the Labour party under any circumstances. We would have demonstrated that we had a good case by pursuing Conservative policies at that time, and that would, of course, have included not having a fixed-term Parliament.

In a letter in today’s Daily Telegraph I suggest that the time has come for the coalition on the basis that the Liberal Democrats are using their power of votes to frustrate the 304 Conservative Members of Parliament and their Prime Minister on a whole range of important matters of not only constitutional but also political significance. I understand that the referendum is still under discussion, but the Liberal Democrats have clearly indicated that they do not want one. The same applies to the question of boundary changes—the list is long. I do not mean to elaborate on those issues, but I have no faith in the coalition, and the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 is a vehicle by which it has been given a constitutional support mechanism that, in my judgment, is completely unjustified by subsequent events.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

My hon. Friend says he is concerned about what the Liberals are doing in standing in the way of this Government and Parliament, and particularly of Conservative Members, but the Conservatives are also not allowed to agree with the Labour party on anything. The Government cannot introduce a Bill with the support of the Labour party because the Liberals may veto it.

[Sir William Cash]

That is an important point, and I endorse very much what my hon. Friend has said.

The arrangements in the Act are effectively a stitch-up, just as they were when we first considered the Bill back in 2010. I am glad to note that section 7 contains a requirement for the Prime Minister to hold a review, and only MPs can sit on the Committee that will review this Act. The fact that the Lords had to insist on that provision demonstrates that the Government would not have got the Bill through had they not made that arrangement. The whole thing is effectively in suspension anyway, and it is therefore a natural consequence of the limbo that this unfortunate and unacceptable enactment has put in place that the Act is up for repeal, subject to what is decided in 2020. I believe that it should be reviewed much sooner than that, and I am speaking in this debate because I very much endorse the proposals of my hon. Friends the Members for Gainsborough and for South Dorset (Richard Drax).

On 24 November 2010 I said—and I stand by this:

“What does such innovation say about the coalition? It certainly demonstrates its determination to stack the cards firmly in favour of the coalition and the Whips.”

I said the Act was

“not modernising, but is a reactionary measure. It is not progress, but a step backwards, along the primrose path, undermining the constitutional principles that have governed our conventions and been tested over many centuries. The proposal has been conjured out of thin air, for the ruthless purpose of maintaining power irrespective of the consequences…we are supposed to be “Working together in the national interest—”

that was the theme of the moment—

“I fear that on this Bill, on this matter, we are working together against the national interest.”—[Official Report, 24 November 2010; Vol. 519, c. 318-9.]

What are the consequences of what we are now considering? The Fixed-term Parliaments Act is still in place and it should be repealed. Clearly it will not be repealed before the end of this fixed term, but I wish to dwell on a number of points that have been raised. I freely acknowledge that some of these arguments, which have not been given general circulation, were put forward by Lord Norton of Louth. I mentioned him in an intervention on the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. I hope that his Committee asked Lord Norton for his views, with which I entirely agree, and I will encapsulate them.

Lord Norton makes the point that there are real problems with the 2011 Act, and that fixed-term Parliaments limit rather than enhance voter choice. That is the real problem. I tabled an amendment on the confidence motion and the 14 days—I do not need to go into that now because it was not accepted although the vote was quite close with only about 50 in it. I tabled an amendment to the arrangements that were being proposed at the time, and it certainly evoked an interesting and lively debate. My concern was that the whole parade that would take place within the 14 days, including the confidence motion and its arrangements, would be very much governed by powerful whipping to ensure that people fell into line with what the Government wanted. I was concerned that there would be a constant stream of people walking up and down Whitehall, just as we saw on television screens when the coalition was being put in place, and that the people who would make the final decision on the final wording about the holding of a confidence motion—including an affirmation after 14 days that the House had confidence in the Government—would not only be driven by the Whips, but would exclude the voters. Surely that is the real point. Why are we here? Who elects us? It is not our House of Parliament or our Government: it is the voters’. If things have gone completely awry and there is a case for an early election, as prescribed by the Act, the simple principle is that we should go back to the voters. We should not have a stitch-up within the Government, with the Whips making certain that people vote accordingly.

Fixed-term Parliaments limit rather than enhance voter choice. The outcome of one election cannot be undone until the end of the stipulated term. One Government could collapse and inter-party bargaining could produce another. In those circumstances, voters would be denied the opportunity to endorse what amounts to a new Government. That is a fatal position for us to have adopted. It is so undemocratic. Indeed, an unstable and ineffective Government may stagger on without achieving anything—we heard remarks to that effect from the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell).

In 1991, the then Leader of the House of Lords, Lord Waddington put it thus:

“Is it better for a government unable to govern to go to the country to try to obtain a new mandate or for the same government to spend their time fixing up deals in which the unfortunate electorate has no say whatsoever? The people not the parties should decide who governs.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 22 May 1991; Vol. 529, c. 260.]

What wise words. In essence, fixed-term Parliaments rob the system of our hallowed flexibility and limit voter choice. That choice is limited by this Act.

Although the policy of the Liberal Democrats was for four-year Parliaments—I concede that—agreement was reached quickly in May 2010 for a five-year term, and the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws), who has written about that period, indicated that the object of the Act was to allow time to implement plans before worrying about the timing of the electoral cycle. But five-year terms mean that the voters have fewer opportunities than before to go to the polls, and most post-war Parliaments have not gone their maximum length—now a five-year term is an absolute requirement.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that by having a maximum length—which is not the norm, as most Parliaments lasted slightly under four years—the voters are denied the right to say what they think about policies and perhaps change their mind sooner rather than later?

[Sir William Cash]

As ever, my hon. Friend makes huge sense. These are simple questions. It is not an abstract, theoretical argument: it is about the simple question of whether, if the Government are ineffective or have gone badly wrong, they should be kept together with Sellotape because they satisfy the requirements to stay in a coalition—which is itself a stitch-up—under a provision in an Act of Parliament. As I wrote to the Prime Minister in my letter of 10 May 2010, that will work against the interests of voters and, effectively, the national interest.

[Mr Allen]

Does the hon. Gentleman realise that he is making a strong argument for the direct election of the Government, just as we are directly elected? It would be terrible if he were to pay the price personally at the next election for the faults of the Government. The Executive should be for election so that members of the public have the right, which exists in most western democracies, of directly electing their Government rather than using him as a proxy.

[Sir William Cash]

I do not accept that proposition, but we do not have time to go through all the implications. I also completely repudiate his suggestion of a written constitution, and I suspect what the hon. Gentleman has just said has something to do with that.

The revelations by the right hon. Member for Yeovil about the coalition negotiations also implicitly accepted the argument that fixed-term Parliaments facilitate long election campaigns. That is where we are now. We are in an election campaign already, and questions arise about the amount of money that is being generated for financing purposes. That is a practical objection, the realities of which we are seeing as I speak. MPs are not expected to be very visible in Westminster during this Session, and I need only look at the Opposition Benches to see that only two Opposition Members are listening to this debate.

As was made clear in evidence to the House of Lords Constitution Committee, knowing well in advance when the next election will take place encourages Governments to manipulate the economic cycle to their maximum advantage. That is a not unknown characteristic of Chancellors of the Exchequer, and we will have the autumn statement soon. But that substantial question has to be addressed.

The Act was a consequence of the need to build trust between coalition partners, and that is clear from all the books that have been written about the stitching up of the coalition. There was no agreement by the Conservative party that I would regard as proper agreement. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough said, we had a meeting at which we were told certain things about what was going on between the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats, and there was some doubt about that, if I may put it that way.

[Mrs Main]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the public made no mention of their desire for a fixed-term Parliament when we were out campaigning?

[Sir William Cash]

That is true. There was no consultation or any attempt to discuss the implications for the voters. The negotiators were not particularly well versed in constitutional arrangements and the Act did not do what its short title suggests. In fact, the Act provides for semi-fixed terms. It includes provisions that allow early elections in certain circumstances, so to call it a fixed-term Parliament is a misnomer. Certain procedures would allow an early election. It is just that the circumstances that would enable that early election would be stitched up—as was the original coalition. They would enable early elections, but to what extent would the voters be involved? That is essentially undemocratic, and it also gives false hope that voter choice may not be as limited as under strict fixed-term provisions.

An election can be triggered if a vote of no confidence is carried against the Government and, within 14 days, a new Government is unable to carry a vote of confidence, or if two thirds of all MPs vote for an early election. It can also be triggered if everyone agrees on the need for an early election, but that seems extremely improbable. It is difficult to imagine when the idea of two-thirds of all MPs voting for an early election could ever be employed. Parties are hardly likely to vote for an early election if the opinion polls are not propitious. A Government could seek an early election by engineering a vote of no confidence in themselves, but, for heaven’s sake, if that were to be the case—I have had that put forward as quite a serious proposal—it is hardly likely to promote the reputation of, and confidence in, the parliamentary system.

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act says nothing about what happens where a Government implode and then resign but the provisions in the Act are not triggered. We would then be in what has been described as the Belgian situation—Parliament continuing without a Government being in existence. I believe profoundly that the Act is an aberration. I think it is wrong. I think it is undemocratic. I think it requires repeal. I am aware that there is provision for it potentially to be repealed in 2020 under section 7, but it should happen much sooner, and as soon as possible.

13:41

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I realise I am craving the indulgence of the House. I would not normally seek to intervene in a debate when I was unable to attend the opening speeches. I understand, however, that the main protagonists have yet to speak, so I will use this brief opportunity to give my pennyworth in the hope that they may each be able to reply to one or two of the points I will make.

I have been listening to the debate, but I wonder if I could take the House back, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) did, to the beginning and to when the coalition was being formed. When it was formed, I remember it was announced that there were going to be some constitutional changes, including this one. We were told that we were ushering in a new era of the new politics that was going to transform the people’s perception of how we conduct ourselves in this place. It was going to show the parties re-engaging with the enthusiasm of the voters and that, as a consequence, this would be a much happier country. I remember having a conversation with a Minister on the stairs going up to the Committee Corridor. He said to me that politics, after five years of the coalition, would be unrecognisable—that is what he said. If we ask voters today what they think about how politics looks today compared with four years ago, I think they would say that it is all too recognisable.

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stone described—I understand he has had to leave the Chamber in a rush because he is attending to other duties in the House—has turned this place in upon itself even more than it was before. We are even less focused on what the voters think because we have given ourselves tenure. We have given ourselves security. We have given ourselves a fixed-term lease that cannot be challenged. And there is the idea that this was done as some selfless and noble act! I am amazed that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) —I am afraid he is not in his place at the moment—should keep raising the question of how the Prime Minister might exercise his power with regard to partisan considerations. Well, perish the thought that any Prime Minister would ever do anything with partisan considerations in mind! I look back at previous Prime Ministers and think to myself: did Gordon Brown ever act in a partisan manner? No, no, never! Did Sir John Major or Tony Blair ever act in a partisan manner? No, no! The Fixed-term Parliaments Act was obviously yet another selfless Act introduced by a Prime Minister, with no party considerations involved! I think we are being asked to stretch our imaginations a little too far.

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act is one of the most partisan and self-interested Acts of Parliament that has ever been put on the statute book. It did not just provide MPs with tenure; it provided the coalition Government with tenure. It was providing the coalition with security; it was providing them with a five-year guaranteed supply of money from the taxpayer for their Administration. It was self-interested on the part of the Conservative Ministers who wanted to give themselves tenure. It was self-interested on the part of the Liberal Democrats to give themselves tenure not only in this coalition but in a future hung Parliament to guarantee that the only option would be another five-year coalition in which they, the smallest party, would once again have influence disproportionate to the number of votes they received. Even I missed the point about why the Labour party was so happy to give tenure to the coalition. The Labour party knew it was in a mess. It had a deeply unpopular ex-Prime Minister who had just been thrown out of office. It was going to have a long, protracted leadership election process. The last thing it wanted was another general election within six or 18 months. It was in no fit state to fight one, so of course it also supported the Act. This has created a politicians’ paradise. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stone said, it is designed to shut the British people out of the decision about what kind of Government they should be able to choose.

[Mr Syms]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. Equal votes in constituencies for fair representation is one of the fundamentals of politics, yet the boundary review was voted down for narrow party interests.

[Mr Jenkin]

I totally agree. The whole question of House of Lords reform was also being advanced for party political interests.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley asked who should have the power to dissolve Parliament. Should it be the Prime Minister? I put it to him that holding that power is part of the authority of being Prime Minister. As my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms) described it, part of the poisoned chalice of office is that the Prime Minister holds that power. By passing the Act, we have robbed the Prime Minister of part of that authority. We have robbed the Government of part of the authority of office that the Government live on a day-to-day basis, subject to the confidence of the House of Commons. That has been taken away and represents a fundamental change in our constitution.

The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) wants not only a written constitution and the continuation of fixed-term Parliaments, but the separation of powers. Basically, he wants an American constitution rather than a British constitution, but let us look at the American constitution. First, it is paralysed. It cannot get its deficit down and it cannot elect a strong Government. It can elect a President, but the separation of powers means that Congress can defeat everything the President wants to do. I do not think that that is a very good recipe. We do not want to follow that. In any case, the separation of powers is based on a misapprehension of how constitutions work. There is, in fact, no such thing as a separation of powers in any constitution. That was what Montesquieu thought he understood about the British constitution. The need for a separation of powers was the lesson that the American founding fathers thought they had learned from him about the British constitution. However, in the American constitution the President, the Executive, vetoes legislation and appoints the judiciary, and the legislature conducts pre-appointment hearings on the senior people in the judiciary. There is always overlap between the functions of government, and ours is a system of parliamentary government in which the Executive can hold office only with the permission of Parliament.

The Act has fundamentally altered the balance of power in our constitution. English votes for English laws, which many of us, including Labour Members, want, would require only a minor adjustment to Standing Orders and the running of the House, yet people are saying, “Oh, we’ll have to have a constitutional convention.” The Act made a far greater change but without a constitutional convention or any consultation; there was absolutely no debate. It was not even explained to the Conservative parliamentary party before we agreed to the coalition. It only became apparent that there would be a Fixed-term Parliaments Bill when the coalition agreement was published. Well, we have all learned our lesson, and the Conservative party will not be forming a coalition in the next Parliament until we have seen the coalition agreement in draft, and we will want to go through it line by line to ensure that such sleights of hand are not repeated.

[Mr Allen]

I hate to intrude on the private grief between the coalition partners, which this debate has become preoccupied with, but I cannot allow the hon. Gentleman to paint me as just a champion of the American constitution. Unlike him, I believe that the British people are perfectly capable of organising their own constitution, and they do not need him, other colleagues or the Conservative party to tell them what the constitution should look like. I would like them to work it out for themselves, and I have faith that they are perfectly capable of doing so.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am a little mystified by that intervention. If we are to make changes to our constitution, we need a mechanism by which to do it, and that will have to be done by elected representatives—it is called democracy; that is what we believe in—and so it will finish up here. If there was ever to be a codified constitution in this country, it would have to be debated and decided here, if perhaps subject to a referendum. I am mystified by the idea that in the estates, villages, towns and cities, the constitution is going to write itself, like some virtual programme on the internet. I don’t think so.

The Act is a fundamental and dangerous change to our constitution because it threatens the privileges of the House. I do not mean our special, personal privilege; I mean the protection of our freedom of speech from questioning by the courts. Under Article 9 of the Bill of Rights, what is said or done in Parliament cannot be questioned or impeached in any other place. However, the Act could result in the courts adjudicating on what kind of vote has taken place in Parliament, because it provides that the Speaker would have to write a certificate stating there had been a vote of no confidence or a two-thirds majority in favour of a Dissolution before the Prime Minister has the authority to go to the Queen and ask for one. It is possible that those votes could be disputed, and because it proceeds from an Act of Parliament, those disputes about who went through which Lobby and on what basis would end up being argued about in a court. This potentially runs a coach and horses through the very important question of parliamentary privilege.

[Sir Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

During the passage of the Act, did my hon. Friend speak or vote against the measure he now so roundly condemns?

[Mr Jenkin]

Yes, I did. On Second Reading, those of us in the other Lobby were staggered at how few we were—this was in the glowy aftermath of the announcement of the new politics—and I said, “You might feel lonely today, but don’t worry. One day, this whole Parliament will rue the day it passed this Act.” It will either be got rid of or we will find ourselves in the midst of the most almighty and intractable political crisis where a majority wants to dissolve Parliament and have a general election but we cannot do so. That is the prospect held out by the Act.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stone said, we still do not really know what the Act means. It stipulates fixed-term Parliaments, but then it makes provision for shortening Parliaments. We have no idea what uncertainty it will create. The Act, passed to create political certainty, could become a source of the very uncertainty, instability and crisis it was intended to avoid. In that case, I hope Parliament would have the sense to take a Bill through this place and the other place as quickly as possible to clear this off the statute book. I commend the other place for its attempt to respect the wishes of the coalition to fix the term of this Parliament but to include a sunset or renewable clause so that it would have to be renewed at the beginning of each Parliament. At least that would have put the choice in the hands of the new Parliament. As it is, if we have another hung Parliament, we could find ourselves in that crisis sooner than we thought but with no sunset clause to get us out of the crisis.

13:56

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin): his was one of the many excellent speeches given in the past two hours.

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate and to my co-sponsor, my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), for joining me. I am also grateful to those Opposition Members who sponsored the debate, although, sadly, neither of them could be here today. As a humble new Member, I say to the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) that I have views too, and I feel that on this subject many of them are mirrored by those outside this place, although I entirely respect his views.

I believe that democracy is best when it is unleashed and untethered and it rampages around the country like some wild beast. If we chain it, as the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 does, we neuter democracy because we neuter debate. Interestingly, Lord Grocott is doing the same as we have done by bringing in a Bill to repeal the Act. He told me on the telephone yesterday that his views, and those of many Labour Members, mirrored ours on the Government Benches.

Fixed-term Parliaments tend to produce coalition Governments, rather than minority Governments. This being the first, we are in the experimental phase, but we had no pre-legislative scrutiny whatsoever and strong objections were voiced in the other place. I fear that next time we might have three, four or even five parties trying to form a coalition Government for a fixed term. How long would it take to form that Government, if indeed it ever was formed? We have heard today that the electoral period has been extended from 17 to 25 days. If a coalition is formed, and if we mirror what happened in 2010, we will be looking at a period of two months without a Government.

I add one further possibility. What if either coalition party leader is challenged, which is possible? The parties will have to choose a new leader and the Government discontinue in the meantime—in effect, we do not have a Government. Yet here we are saying that Parliament is important.

In forming a coalition as a consequence of a fixed term, principles are sold. Our Conservative principles or those of the Labour party or the Liberal Democrats are sold in the name of compromise, which is necessary for a coalition to be formed. As I said in a speech on Tuesday, this is why I believe this place has been so devalued. No longer do we have clear blue or red water—I will not use the other colour, which I pointed on Tuesday would be rather inappropriate—so the electorate are not so sure what each party stands for. This is where the weakness in the current coalition system lies and it is where I think a fixed-term Parliament would lead us to. I do not necessarily want to pick holes in the Liberal Democrats, which would be ungracious of me.

[Sir Andrew Stunell]

Will my hon. Friend explain how the scenario he outlines would be improved by the possibility of an immediate second general election, which is the logical consequence of the case he puts?

[Richard Drax]

I refer to the quote of Lord Waddington, mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash):

“Is it better for a government unable to govern to go to the country to try to obtain a new mandate or for the same government to spend their time fixing up deals in which the unfortunate electorate”—

the voters out there—

has no say whatsoever?...The people not the parties should decide who governs”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 22 May 1991; Vol. 529, c. 260.]

I hope that answers the hon. Gentleman’s question.

[Sir Andrew Stunell]

I am trying to understand the logic of the argument, in which the electorate decides that no party should have overall control. If there were a second election within a few weeks, as my hon. Friend suggests, and that one produced a very similar result, would he continue to hold general elections until one party had an overall majority. What is the logic of his argument?

[Richard Drax]

That is not the argument I am putting forward. There would be a period of a year or 18 months of a minority Government before that Government would go back to the country.

A fixed-term Parliament gives the junior partner in a coalition more power than it is due. If we had a Conservative Government, much more legislation would be going through Parliament. The junior party, to be fair, has its own views and principles, and it will force compromise on the senior party, potentially leading to lame-duck Governments. I believe that we have reached that point to some extent now, as other hon. Members have argued. A Government naturally run out of steam; they cannot do what they want to do, because the two parties can no longer agree.

Why, then, after the election in 2010 did we not have a gentleman’s agreement? In 2010 my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) said:

“The Prime Minister is giving up his constitutional right to request a Dissolution, and I can understand that that is very important—a matter of honour between himself and the Deputy Prime Minister. It means that the Prime Minister cannot pull the rug from under the coalition, but why do we need legislation or, indeed, a motion to achieve that? Surely the Prime Minister's word is sufficient.”—[Official Report, 25 May 2010; Vol. 510, c. 141.]

Would that not have been a wiser path to choose, with the two parties making a gentleman’s agreement? We see from the history of coalitions that they never last more than two or three years, because of the very nature of coalitions. At some point, two, three or four years in, the two parties could have agreed to disagree, and the Prime Minister would have gone to the country.

I believe that a fixed-term Parliament with a coalition Government as a consequence leads to a complacent Opposition—one of the most dangerous aspects of all. What have we heard from the Opposition about their policies, what they are going to do to sort out the economy and their approach to all the major issues and problems our country faces? They are happy, rightly, to sit on the sidelines and snipe at a fixed-term Parliament. They maintain a poll lead of 1% or 2%, so why should they stand up and say, “This is what we are going to do to sort out the deficit”? It leads, as I say, to a complacent Opposition, who can wait until the very last minute because they know the election date.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex said, it is the Prime Minister’s right to call a general election when he or she chooses. This must keep Parliament, the voters and all of us on our toes, and it keeps the Opposition on their toes. The Opposition do not know what is coming, although they can make a guess. They have to tell the British people what they stand for and what their policies are, perhaps two or three years into a Parliament. If, for example, the polls indicate that the Conservative party is well ahead, the Opposition have to tell the British public what they would do in the event of an election. If the Prime Minister and the Government are doing well and are ahead in the polls, why cannot they go to the people? The people are saying, “We are pleased with what you are doing; we like what you are doing; you are doing what you said you would do.” If we then went to the country and won, the people would be pleased; they have had a choice, without having to wait for five long years. Otherwise, a Government who are not achieving what the electorate want can remain in power, which is surely not in the electorate’s interests.

[Sir Andrew Stunell]

I appreciate my hon. Friend’s generosity in giving way, but I am afraid that the logic of his argument escapes me again. If a party is very unpopular in power, that is precisely when it will not call a general election. Equally, it could be said that if a party were popular, perhaps by accident and not so much because of its policies as because of the vagaries of the economic climate, it might try to take advantage of that situation—quite inappropriately.

[Richard Drax]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex so wisely said, perish the thought that parties are partisan or non-partisan in these events. Of course they are. If the economic climate warrants the Prime Minister going to the country in the belief that he or she will win, I find that perfectly pertinent. I see no problem with that whatever. As I said, it keeps everybody on their toes.

This tinkering with the constitution, which is what we did, was not thought through and not much debated. The electorate certainly did not have a choice on fixed-term Parliaments. I believe that we tinker with the constitution at our peril. I admit that I voted for the measure at the time, but I was green and naive in those days, and I would not vote for it now. We are, as a consequence of this Act, stuck in a situation that does not satisfy Parliament or the parties and certainly not the electorate.

Over the last two or three days of debate, we have heard many Members saying how awful they think the public think we all are. I disagree. My view is that we should stop self-flagellating and get on with our jobs. We should stand up for what we believe in and tell the country exactly where we stand on issues. Sadly, in a coalition partnership, it is difficult to do that.

Finally, I would have liked the Fixed-term Parliaments Act to contain a sunset clause, but sadly it did not. As Members have said, it is to be reviewed in 2020. When the Minister makes his winding-up speech, I would be grateful if informed us where exactly the Government stand on this issue. I am sure that the shadow Minister will do exactly the same.

[Sir William Cash]

With respect to the question of whether people outside know what we are doing, does my hon. Friend believe, as I do, that they are now much more in a fog than they were because of the identity of the Conservative party being lost in this amorphous coalition—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. There have to be short interventions. Sir William, you have already had a speech. We do not want you to make another one. A short intervention was all that Mr Drax needed.

[Richard Drax]

I always enjoy interventions from my hon. Friend the Member for Stone. I could not agree with him more. It is far thicker than a fog. Unfortunately the electorate cannot see what we are doing at all and they feel disfranchised. We are stuck in this place pontificating about things that we can do nothing about, whereas a single Government, Labour or Conservative, could. I do not believe in some mythical, old-fashioned system whereby we all popped off to go shooting pheasants or hunting, as the hon. Member for Nottingham North rather cynically suggested. Dare I say that perhaps one or two of us pop off to go shooting or hunting, but that is neither here nor there and has nothing to do with the constitution of our country. That is the point.

We have tinkered with the constitution at our peril. I feared when I voted for the Act that if we did it, the Opposition might do something similar or even worse. I know that the hon. Member for Nottingham North did not mean a 10-year tenure but it certainly sent shudders through my spine. Ten years of Labour would be a reason for leaving the country, in my view. No, I speak in jest. I know that the hon. Gentleman did not mean that. [Interruption.] I would have to turn the lights out.

I would be interested to hear whether the Government have any intention of repealing the Act. We will be calling for a vote and we very much hope that the Government will back us and that Labour will support us. For the sake of democracy, it is important that it does. Many Labour Members in this House and in the other place, despite their laughter now, want this Act to be repealed.

When we secured this debate I emailed about 50 Opposition Members seeking their views on the issue and asking whether they would participate. I had one reply: “You’ve had five years. We want it too.” This is precisely what I feared would happen. This is not democracy. This is a massive fix. For the sake of the electorate and this place, it must be solved with the repeal of the Act.

14:12

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and the other Members on both sides of the House on securing the debate. It is a debate of great constitutional significance, as we have heard. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 repealed an important and long-standing aspect of the royal prerogative which allowed Prime Ministers to dissolve Parliament when they saw fit. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen). I found myself in agreement with pretty much everything he said this afternoon and I will do my best not to repeat it.

[Sir William Cash]

The hon. Gentleman has just referred to the repeal of the prerogative. Does he believe that if the Act were repealed, either under the motion or in 2020 under the provisions of section 7, that the prerogative would revive? I imagine that he has had a chance to look at that issue.

[Stephen Twigg]

I will return to that issue, which relates directly to a point that the hon. Gentleman made. He referred to the review, and I welcome the fact that there will be a review, but I am certainly not persuaded by anything that I have heard today that it would make sense to do what the motion says and repeal the Act. I would like to set out the reasons why.

The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) suggested that Labour had supported a fixed-term Parliament because of our predicament following the general election in 2010. The problem with that argument is that it was in our manifesto prior to the 2010 general election. Labour was committed to a fixed-term Parliament. Our view was to have a four-year fixed-term Parliament, and we were persuaded by our review of policy in preparing our manifesto of the democratic case for having a four-year fixed-term Parliament.

[Mr Jenkin]

The problem the hon. Gentleman has is that I was told by a member of his party’s Front-Bench team that they were delighted that we were putting the Act through, because it meant that Labour would not face an early election for which it was completely unprepared.

[Stephen Twigg]

The fact is that we fought an election in 2010 on a manifesto commitment to move to a fixed-term Parliament. That was a long overdue reform and I am delighted that my party committed to that in 2010.

[Sir Andrew Stunell]

Will the hon. Gentleman also acknowledge that the commitment was in the Liberal Democrat manifesto, which is why it was in the coalition agreement?

[Stephen Twigg]

Absolutely. I wonder whether the motion should have been worded, “That this House supports the repeal of the coalition agreement”, because most of the speeches from Conservative Members seem to be more about rehearsing debates about the coalition than the issue before us.

Fundamentally, this debate is about the power of the Executive in Parliament. I believe that the Act enhances the role of the House by removing the ability to dissolve Parliament whenever a Prime Minister saw fit. That seems to be the absolutely central argument in favour of a fixed-term Parliament. The hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) talked about voter choice, but the system prior to fixed-term Parliaments did not give voters more choice; it gave choice to the Prime Minister and the leader of the party in government. That is not a democratic argument at all. In a modern democracy we should not accept that form of unaccountable power. The Act imposes constraints that give more power to this House versus the Executive.

[Sir William Cash]

It is the pressure exerted at the point we reach a confidence motion that demonstrates what is going on outside as well as inside. Had there been a similar situation over, for example, the Maastricht treaty, I have no doubt that there would have been a resurgence of voter opinion at that time. I think it is democratic, not the other way round.

[Stephen Twigg]

As the hon. Gentleman said in his speech, the Act retains the ability of the House to pass motions of no confidence in the Government of the day. That safety valve to which he refers still exists.

[Mr Jenkin]

The hon. Gentleman is making a case for transferring the prerogative power to this House. What is the basis of the argument in favour of a two thirds majority requiring a Dissolution? Surely that is taking power away from the House and giving the Executive tenure?

[Stephen Twigg]

I do not accept that. However, if the motion were to say that we should review that aspect of the Act, it would have a stronger basis. The motion says that we should repeal the entire Act. I have not heard an argument that persuades me that we should do so.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stephen Twigg]

I will give way one more time but then I need to be able to make my argument.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am very grateful. If the hon. Gentleman accepts that the two thirds majority could be reviewed, is he not accepting that the Act does not work? As soon as it is a normal majority, the Government of the day have the ability to call an election whenever they want.

[Stephen Twigg]

I simply do not accept that, because there is still the provision within the Act for confidence motions on the basis of a simple majority. We are only at the tail-end of the first Parliament in which the Act operates. It makes sense to say, “Let this run its course for this Parliament and the next and then have a review.” That is a sensible way of making constitutional reform.

[Mr Jenkin]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stephen Twigg]

No, I am not going to give way again.

The previous position gave the Prime Minister and the party of the Prime Minister an enormous advantage. Opportunistically timed elections allow Governments to ask voters to assess their performance at the time most favourable for that party. Research shows very clearly that British Prime Ministers from both main parties have made extensive use of this power, to time elections for reasons of partisan advantage. Just under 60% of our post-war elections in this country have been called early by the Prime Minister of the day.

It is inevitable under that previous system that partisan advantage played a part in prime ministerial decisions about when to call an election. When a Government party has been confident of its re-election, the Prime Minister would usually go to the country after four years, rather than five. As I said in an intervention, Margaret Thatcher did so successfully in 1983 and 1987 and Tony Blair did the same in 2001 and 2005. Of course it does not always work, as was pointed out. Harold Wilson went to the country in 1970 expecting he would make use of his lead in the opinion polls and be re-elected, and he was not. Nevertheless, his intention was to go early because he thought he would win.

Parties that are less confident of their electoral position have tended to continue into their fifth year, leaving their reckoning with the electorate until the latest possible date. We saw that happen in 1997 and in 2010. It cannot be right that the governing body, of whatever party, has this massive in-built advantage.

Research from Oxford university suggests that strategically timed elections have allowed governing parties to achieve a bonus in elections over the past 70 years of about 6% in public support. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act creates a more equitable electoral playing field among the parties of Government and those of Opposition, which can only be healthy for our democracy.

It is now nearly 40 years since Lord Hailsham warned of the dangers of an “elected dictatorship”, with powers increasingly centralised with the Executive. Fixed-term Parliaments are one—only one—of the ways we can counteract that, by taking away the Prime Minister’s greatest chip: the ability to threaten a recalcitrant minority coalition partner, their own Back Benchers, or troublesome Opposition parties with the Dissolution of Parliament. That can be done at the behest not even of the party of Government, but of the leader of that party, the Prime Minister.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North that in the longer term there is the possibility— I do not put it any higher than that, as I am a realist—that fixed-term Parliaments can help contribute to a different style of politics. A greater responsibility of the Executive to Parliament demands a more pluralist style of governance. Some, like the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), clearly do not like the idea of pluralism. The idea that not all the knowledge and wisdom lies in his own party is clearly alien to him, but I think there are many in the British public who actually quite like the idea that people can sit down together and work together in the national interest. People get very frustrated with politics when we fall into petty tribal battles, and prefer grown-up debate about the issues.

[Mr Jenkin]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stephen Twigg]

No, as I have given way to the hon. Gentleman already.

More often in this place, we can work together to try to find more common ground. Fixed-term Parliaments will make that more likely.

There is a legitimate debate to be had on the right length of a fixed-term Parliament. As my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) reminded us, in the 19th century the Chartists wanted annual elections and Parliaments; it was the one Chartist demand that was never implemented. Our manifesto in 2010 committed to four years, and, as my hon. Friend said, the length of time in New Zealand is three years. However, I think there is a good case—my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North made this case very powerfully—that a term of five years can have a stabilising effect on our politics, ensuring that Governments can make some important strategic and long-term decisions in the national interest, so I think it is right that we allow the five-year fixed-term Parliament to bed in. We can review it after two Parliaments, as the legislation allows, but it is far too early for us to consider repeal of the legislation.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

So if Labour gets an overall majority, it will not repeal the Act and it will stay in for the full five years.

[Stephen Twigg]

Absolutely. We supported fixed-term Parliaments in our manifesto in 2010, and our policy remains one of support for fixed-term Parliaments. We are not committed to the repeal of this legislation, which is why I am speaking against this motion, and why I will vote against it if there is a Division.

Yes, let us have the review that is promised. It makes sense to have that review, but I have heard nothing today that persuades me that there is a case to repeal what is actually a very important and long overdue piece of legislation that rebalances our constitution and takes power away from the Prime Minister of the day and gives it to this House. That is a positive reform and I urge the Minister to stick with it.

14:24

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

We have had some great contributions from both sides of the House. There were seven Back-Bench speeches, from my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms), the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), and my hon. Friends the Members for Stone (Sir William Cash), for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) and for South Dorset (Richard Drax). They all made some thoughtful and insightful points about the Act. The arguments put forward can be summed up as follows: the Act is an aberration, it is a political stitch-up and it strengthens the Executive over Parliament and the public, and that it therefore should, in the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough, be reviewed and repealed. I will address each of those points in turn.

First, on the issue of review, which my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset explicitly asked about, it will be for the next Government, whether of a single party or of coalition parties, to evaluate how the Act has operated in this Parliament, and what, if any, lessons can be learned, and how they can make best use of their own fixed term. Not only will such an appraisal assist the next Government in their planning, but it can help to inform any amendment that might be needed to the Act.

I turn to the case that was made for repealing the Act. There has not been consensus about whether the argument is about having a shorter fixed-term Parliament or not having any fixed term at all. It is interesting to note that the right length of a Parliament has been debated in this House over centuries, which should come as no surprise in our 800-year-old democracy. It is striking how, at different points in our history, the case for shorter, and indeed longer, Parliaments has been made. In the 17th century—in 1641 and again in 1694—we had Triennial Acts requiring Parliament to be called every three years; I am sure the hon. Member for Great Grimsby would agree with that. From 1716 we had the Septennial Act, setting the maximum duration of a Parliament at seven years. That was amended in 1911, to set the maximum at five years, and finally repealed in its entirety only in 2011.

[Sir William Cash]

In my hon. Friend’s historical survey, has he noticed that the reason why the Triennial and Septennial Acts were passed was to suit the convenience of the Government of the time? In the case of the Septennial Act, it was also to do with the Jacobites and the rest of it, but it has always been for the convenience of the Government. That is the purpose of such Acts; there is no great constitutional principle.

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank my hon. Friend for his point. There were, of course, many other times when Parliament has considered whether we have the right balance for our time. During the era of the American revolutionary war, a Bill for annual Parliaments was moved year after year by a small but committed core of Back-Bench supporters. In response to my hon. Friend, I would say that our debate today continues the fine tradition of probing our constitutional arrangements, and, yes, it is right to continue to probe and to ask the right questions, but he and his colleagues’ concern about the fixed nature of this Parliament is not new in our democracy.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I have a mild disagreement with my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash). I think it is worth recalling that the Septennial Act was introduced because of the cost of elections, particularly the cost of bribing the electors, and it was thought better to have it once every seven years than once every three, to lower the cost to the pockets of Members of Parliament.

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent intervention. Parliament has had this debate several times, and there have been several reasons to alter the length of a Parliament. Sometimes it has been done in the national interest, and sometimes—some would argue—for naked political reasons. The situation that we face today is certainly not an aberration in the history of our democracy.

The genesis of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 raises a number of questions, many of which have been mentioned today, especially by Members on my side of the House. The Act had its genesis in the coalition, which was an historical anomaly. It is therefore important to separate the concept of a fixed-term Parliament and the value that it could have for the British public from the concept of the coalition, although both came together. A single party could have passed the Act if it had had a majority in this Parliament to do so. By the same logic, a single party could repeal it on a simple majority if it so wished. Fixed-term Parliaments are not inextricably bound to the idea of a coalition.

Four years down the line, it is easy for us to forget that when the coalition was formed, words such as “secure and stable government in the national interest” seemed like the punch line to a joke, but this fixed-term Parliament has been able to deliver exactly that for this country. My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset said that democracy should be a wild beast that could rampage around the country. I would hazard a guess that this Parliament has been anything but predictable. It has been unpredictable at every twist and turn. The fact that it has been a fixed-term Parliament has not neutered our democracy; indeed, it could be argued that it has invigorated it in a number of respects.

[Richard Drax]

I do not agree with the Minister on that last point. Our country has faced far greater dangers than the ones we faced in 2010, yet we saw no need to change our constitution on those occasions.

[Mr Gyimah]

I was incredibly nervous when our country was on the brink of financial and economic collapse after 13 years of a Labour Government, and we needed to take the necessary action to get the country back on track.

Having listened to the arguments today, I believe that the Government remain unconvinced of the need to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. It is too early to assess the full benefits of having a fixed election timetable, but it is clear that there are advantages to a system that is transparent, consistent and fair. This Government came to power at a time when faith in our political system was at an all-time low. Political and constitutional change has been part of tackling that. It cannot be right for key decisions about our democratic process—perhaps the key decision: the timing of an election—to be decided by the Executive on the basis of political advantage.

Many have argued that the Act somehow strengthens the Prime Minister. I argue that it weakens the Prime Minister’s position, because he cannot decide the timing of an election by his own fiat. It was Roy Jenkins who said that a Prime Minister who lost an election had, ipso facto, called that election at the wrong time. By fixing the date of the general election, we have significantly weakened the Prime Minister and given strength to Parliament and the public.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

If fixed-term Parliaments were such a good idea, why did we not put them in our manifesto?

[Mr Gyimah]

There are many good ideas that were not in our manifesto; it is important that we, as politicians, are able to adapt and to reflect the times.

It is not the case that the Fixed-term Parliaments Act was introduced simply to maintain the coalition. The previous system, whereby prerogative power was exercised over a democratic process for political advantage, served the wrong interests. Imagine Gordon Brown sitting in Downing street in 2007 chewing his fingernails and trying to decide whether that was the right time to call an election so that he could have another five years in government.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

The Minister means “the right hon. Gentleman”.

[Mr Gyimah]

I meant to say “the right hon. Gentleman”. I stand corrected.

By setting out the general election timetable in legislation, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act removes a Prime Minister’s power to call a general election. Removing that power from the Executive and giving it to Parliament enhances the transparency of our democratic system and represents a significant surrender of political power. Fixed-term Parliaments also provide a number of practical benefits to both Parliament and the Government. They provide greater certainty and continuity and enhance long-term legislative and financial planning, as the hon. Member for Nottingham North said. They also afford greater political stability by giving future Governments foreseeable terms.

Some of the arguments that we have heard against fixed-term Parliaments are that they are inflexible, that they were conceived in a hurry and that the consequences were not fully thought through. That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone. It is also argued that fixed terms prevent a Government from ending and Parliament from dissolving when they reach their natural end, when it would be most beneficial for a new Government to take the reins. But as I have said, there are benefits to stability, certainty and transparency, and to those inside and outside Government being able to plan.

The question of flexibility has been raised in the context of the Scottish referendum and the need to change the timing of the next general election. Under the Act, the Prime Minister of the day is able to lay an order before both Houses to extend the date of a general election by a maximum of two months to deal with unexpected developments, although they must spell out their reasons for taking that step. The Act also provides for early elections to be called if a motion is agreed by at least two thirds of the House or without Division, or if a motion of no confidence is passed and no alternative Government are confirmed by the House of Commons within 14 days. I do not believe that that limits voter choice.

Prior to the Act, a party could change its leader midway through a Parliament and that new leader would become Prime Minister. In that situation, the new Prime Minister would be under no obligation to call a general election for five years. Under the terms of the Act, however, the leader could still go to the country, although a vote in the House in favour of so doing would require a two-thirds majority. It is unlikely that the Opposition would withhold their support, for reasons of political consensus.

[Mr Allen]

The Minister is making a thoughtful and cogent speech. Now that we have a fixed-term Parliament and we know the date of the next general election, does he accept that that knowledge is the property of the British people? Does he agree that, if any incoming Government sought to repeal the Act and give powers to a Prime Minister who had not been directly elected by the people, that would create a real crisis of legitimacy and be seen as a power grab by the party that had won the election?

[Mr Gyimah]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the convention in this country is that a Parliament cannot bind future Parliaments. If a future Parliament wanted to repeal this Act, made the case and had the votes in this House, it could repeal the Act. The more substantive point, which has been made a number of times, is that in a five-year Parliament the fifth year is wasted. The truth is that be it a five-year, four-year or three-year Parliament, it is always possible to make the case that the last year is spent electioneering, so that point does not necessarily follow from having five-year fixed-term Parliaments.

The final point I wish to deal with is the idea that the Government have run out of steam. In the Queen’s Speech, we announced a full legislative programme; there were 16 main programme Bills, including five carry-over Bills and three draft Bills. That compares with 13 main programme Bills, including three carry-over Bills and two draft Bills, in the last Session of the previous Parliament. Our programme includes legislation dealing with serious crime, trafficking and modern slavery, improving access to finance for small business and pensions.

The hon. Member for Great Grimsby invoked Oliver Cromwell and his words to the Long Parliament:

“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing.”

I would say that the Labour Government were here too long for any good they could do and, be it on the economy, welfare, health or education, this five-year Parliament is doing a lot to get our country back on track.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Can the Minister explain why passing a lot of laws is a good idea? Have we not got enough laws already?

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that point, which comes as no surprise to me. He would agree that when we got into government we had to fix an almighty mess and rectify a big mistake—the last Labour Government—hence the legislation that we have had to pass in this Parliament.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

For up to two minutes, I call Sir Edward Leigh.

14:39

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am very grateful to everyone who has taken part in this thoughtful debate. I am grateful to the Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, who seemed to be arguing for a vigorous Parliament—we all agree with that. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) for quoting Oliver Cromwell. At least this Parliament is not going to run for 20 years like the Rump Parliament did—we are at least agreed on that. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) for saying that we believe in a rampant and vigorous democracy. I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Poole (Mr Syms) and for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) for the points they made about putting these matters to the people. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), the Opposition spokesman, for reminding us that a fixed-term Parliament would ensure that we would have a five-year Labour Government if they get an overall majority.

Finally, I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that he has made a wonderful job of defending fixed-term Parliaments, but what a pity we did not argue this before the general election. We all know that this was a short-term stitch-up, and there should be a proper debate. We have started to have that, and sooner or later I hope we will make the point that it is the people who should decide when is the right time to have a general election, when a Government are weak and running out of steam. General elections should not be set at an arbitrary date, and so we will not be withdrawing our motion.

Question put.

14:41

Division 61

Ayes: 21

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Conservative: 18
Labour: 2
Democratic Unionist Party: 1

Noes: 68

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Labour: 61
Liberal Democrat: 4
Conservative: 2
Democratic Unionist Party: 1

Oral Hormone Pregnancy Tests

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

09:30

Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab): I beg to move,

That this House notes that children were born with serious deformities due to hormone pregnancy test drugs taken by expectant mothers between 1953 and 1975; also notes with concern that as the surviving victims enter their forties and fifties many of them face a host of new problems as their bodies continue to suffer; further notes that no official warnings were issued about these drugs until eight years after the first reports indicated possible dangers; further notes that some doctors continued to prescribe the drugs for pregnant women after official warnings from the Committee on Safety of Medicines; calls on the Secretary of State for Health to fully disclose all documents relating to the use of Hormone Pregnancy Tests held by the Department from the period between 1953 and 1978; and also calls on the Secretary of State to set up an independent panel to examine these documents.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, and all my colleagues for supporting me. I will be pushing this motion to a vote at the end of the debate.

My constituent Nichola Williams contacted me more than two years ago to tell me her emotional and agonising story. Nichola was born with life-threatening internal congenital deformities in her stomach, spine, heart and womb. Her first operation was when she was seven days old. Since then she has had a lifetime of visits to hospital as an in-patient and an out-patient. She has had to struggle to lead a normal life. She said:

“My stomach is on the wrong side. I have seven spleens. Throughout my life, I have had to have a number of operations to correct my stomach. I was born with a number of adhesions and obstructions. I have spinal defects.”

Some may argue that Nichola’s condition could be a fact of life and that some people are simply born with abnormalities, but that is not the case. Nichola was tested, and she does not have faulty chromosomes or faulty genes. She has two healthy brothers and three healthy children, so her condition is not an act of nature.

Nichola was born in 1971. When her mother suspected that she was pregnant, she visited her GP and was prescribed primodos, a hormone pregnancy test. Primodos was a hormone-packed pill manufactured by the pharmaceutical giant Schering, now owned by Bayer. Its ingredients were similar to oral contraceptives, or the morning-after pill, but much stronger—40 times stronger, in fact. The test was supposed to work by inducing a period in a woman who was not pregnant.

During the past few months, campaigners have discovered a number of files in the National Archives and brought them to my attention. They are official Government documents; letters exchanged between Government officials, doctors and scientists. They show that gynaecologists and paediatric research departments raised serious concerns that primodos could affect the foetus or even cause the child to abort. Some of those files were classified until 2010 and so have only recently come to light.

In 1967 the then Committee on Safety of Medicines was contacted by a paediatrician at Queen Mary’s hospital in London, Dr Isabel Gal. Dr Gal had found a link between hormone pregnancy tests, such as primodos, and spinal congenital malformation in newborns. The Minister of State at the time said:

“she had produced prima facie evidence that foetal abnormalities might be associated with the use of hormonal pregnancy testing.”

The same year, a letter from the Medical Research Council stated:

“It looks like in fact this could be another thalidomide story”.

The Royal College of General Practitioners then produced figures for Schering showing the high rate of miscarriages, stillbirths, infant deaths and abnormalities of babies whose mothers had taken the hormone pregnancy test. The report’s author, N.B. Dean, concluded

“that the drug should be withdrawn.”

In 1968 the Royal College of General Practitioners sent a letter to Dr William Inman of the Committee on Safety of Medicines, stating that 10% of abortions recorded after primodos were unlikely to be due to a chance. The same year, Schering’s lead UK scientist wrote to the parent company in Berlin, stating:

“It is extremely disturbing, that the results of statistics, human studies, and other studies all point clearly to the possibility that Primodos may interfere with a Pregnancy.”

Despite all that, the drug remained on the market. Why? Given the gravity of the severe congenital abnormalities, surely the drug should have been immediately suspended, pending full clearance by the committee. Ironically, and sadly, this happened soon after the thalidomide tragedy. But no, there was hesitancy and incompetence. As a result, 1.5 million pregnant women were placed at unnecessary risk by being prescribed these drugs. Thousands of children were damaged, suffering from dreadful disabilities. Many are brain damaged, some have spina bifida, and others have heart and limb defects, cleft palates, deafness and other horrible disabilities.

Instead of taking action, the Government did nothing. The Committee on Safety of Medicines began a belated pilot study only in 1969 and undertook no full study until 1972. It was clearly a leisurely affair, even though the suggested link between congenital abnormalities and the drug was found to be supported. But it was not until 1975—eight years after the first reports—that the committee published an official warning.

However, from the documents that we have uncovered, it seems that time and again the evidence presented by Dr Gal was dismissed by the Government watchdog, the Committee on Safety of Medicines. In a very interesting letter to his colleagues, the senior medical officer, Dr Inman, writes:

“I have had an Exhausting meeting with Dr Isabel Gal… She believes she should have had more funding for her research, and that a large number of abnormal babies may have been born in the time that has elapsed… we are defenceless, in the matter of the 8 year delay”,

He goes on to say:

“Isabel Gal is an intelligent, dedicated but RATHER SAD little person… I dealt with her sympathetically, but I do not believe we have heard the last of this matter”.

In a paper produced in 1975 even the World Health Organisation questioned why research on such a critical issue, published in the late 1960s, was not followed up for so many years.

A Sky News correspondent, Jason Farrell, who has also been investigating the issue, found that in 1970 primodos had lost its licence for use as a pregnancy test drug, but the Committee on Safety of Medicines had failed to warn doctors until 1975, in a letter that suggested that

“it may cause congenital abnormalities”.

Not until 1977 did it state that the “Association has been confirmed”. Bayer, which now owns Schering, confirmed to Sky News that the drug had not been licensed as a pregnancy test after 1970, and that anyone using it would have been doing so “off-label”—that is, not according to instructions.

Why, given that the drug has been withdrawn as a pregnancy test, is it still being given to women for use in pregnancy? That includes Nichola’s mother and thousands of other women. Why did this warning not appear on the drug packet until 1975?

“Not to be taken during Pregnancy. A possibility exists of an association between the use of Primodos during early pregnancy and an increased incidence of congenital abnormalities. Because of this possible hazard, Primodos must not be taken unless it is certain the Patient is not pregnant”.

Everyone else knew about this—the medical profession knew, and the Committee on Safety of Medicines knew—but the people whom they were supposed to be protecting knew nothing at all. In 1967, when the prima facie evidence was presented to the Government of the day, they should have advised all doctors about it and stopped prescribing the drug. They should have said that the drug should be suspended until there was further evidence of its safety. If the Government had taken that action, thousands of babies would not have been damaged and disabled. Government attitudes have been curious—and I do not refer to any particular Government; it seems that all Governments have failed to do anything.

When the late Lord Ashley asked about the issue, the attitude of the then Government was certainly curious. They admitted that there was an association between hormone drugs and congenital abnormalities, and that that was supported by a study published in 1975—they even admitted that those conclusions had been confirmed in 1977—yet, at the same time, they continued to deny that it had been proved that such drugs caused malformation. The Government, Lord Ashley observed, had said:

“The study showed only a statistically significant difference between the number of malformed babies born to mothers who have taken the drugs, when compared with controls.”

He added:

“‘only a statistically significant difference’? They might equally say that there is no evidence that cancer kills; there is merely a statistically significant difference between those who have and those who have not got cancer.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 26 May 1978; Vol. 950, c. 2004.]

I ask the Minister to answer these questions. Does it not matter to him that there are documents stating that studies supported the association between these drugs and abnormalities as early as the 1960s? Does it not matter to him that drugs were withdrawn so suddenly by the manufacturers? Does it not matter to him that the Committee on Safety of Medicines did not inform doctors for many years that primodos could no longer to be used as a pregnancy test drug? Does it not matter to him that doctors continued to prescribe such drugs after 1975, and that there is evidence of malpractice on a large scale?

Earlier this year, I met one of the Ministers in the Department—not the one who is present today—and he said that he would look into it. Following that meeting, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, which has replaced the Committee on Safety of Medicines, published a report in which it said:

“No causal link has been proven”.

In other words, “Forget about it and go away.”

Since then I have approached Ministers again, and I have raised the matter during Prime Minister’s Question Time, but no one has bothered to ask to look at the papers involved. I have a bundle of documents, which they ought to go through properly. If they did so, they would all be standing up and saying that there should be an inquiry.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

My constituent, the wonderful campaigner Marie Lyon, has doggedly pursued this issue, and I think we can fairly say that that has led to my hon. Friend getting this excellent debate. I am aware of two constituents who have been affected by this drug. Mr and Mrs Tilley’s son Stephen was born with brain damage, and when they asked for Mrs Tilley’s medical records, they found they were missing. This is not the first case I have heard about of records being lost or destroyed in this regard. Is my hon. Friend as concerned as I am about this apparent cover-up?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend about the cover-up.

We have recently discovered another document in the Kew archive: a letter from the 1960s about the minutes of a meeting of the General Medical Services Committee, in which Dr Inman was involved. It says that there was worry about a request by the Committee on Safety of Medicines that doctors should be monitoring adverse reactions to medication. Doctors were a bit concerned about that in case they might be liable for negligence actions. The minutes say that doctors should stop recording adverse reactions, and, even more significantly, that those who have recorded any such evidence should have it destroyed. That fits in with the constituents, including mine, who have said that when they, as parents, have gone to their doctors to get their records, they are somehow mysteriously missing.

A British medical director of British-based Schering Chemicals, which is a subsidiary of Bayer Schering in Berlin, urged the withdrawal of the hormone pregnancy drug primodos in 1969, but his plea was rejected by the company. In the same year, the author of a survey for the Royal College of General Practitioners also recommended the withdrawal of the drug, but he, too, was turned down. Until this day, Bayer has refused to take any responsibility.

Jason Farrell, the Sky News reporter I mentioned, has met the statistician, Dennis Cooke, who was contracted by Schering in the ’60s. In a report, of which he still has copies, he compared the increase in the sales of primodos with the number of recorded deformities in newborns, which, he says,

“show a rather alarming direct and strong correlation.”

Schering stopped promoting primodos in 1970, and prescriptions fell from 120,000 in that year to 7,000 by 1977, when it was withdrawn. National statistics show that birth deformities declined during that period as well.

Another person I want to allude to is Professor Briggs. Many times, whenever it has been contacted about this, Bayer has referred to the court case of 1982. It is important to explain to the House that the damage claims brought by the victims were discontinued in the 1980s because some of the medical witnesses defected to the defendants, Schering Chemicals, so the case had to be withdrawn. Some of the victims say that the so-called experts who went over to the Schering side had an interesting story. One of those was Professor Briggs. Some years after the case collapsed, The Sunday Times published an interview with Professor Briggs by Brian Deer, a journalist, in which he accepts that he had in the past “fabricated” studies and carried out

“scientific fraud on a large scale”.

That is on the internet and can be read by anyone.

On a CD that has been kept under lock and key—there is an injunction on it—Professor Briggs is heard confessing:

“Difficulties would be encountered if doubts expressed about hormone pregnancy tests were made public. These were exactly the same hormones as the contraceptive pill and would have cast doubt on the safety of hormones which would extend doubt on the safety of the Pill. This would have a major influence on worldwide family planning which could be a real human disaster. It could cause panic among millions of women worldwide which could result in thousands of pregnancies.”

Later he claims:

“Drugs such as these would never be allowed to be on the Market today, given what we ‘now know’ and following what we know about Potential Hazards to the developing Foetus.”

Those comments were made in a documentary called “The Primodos Affair”, which has never been aired because Schering took out an injunction. Why did it do that? What did it have to hide?

There is further curious evidence regarding other witnesses. Dr Smithills approached a drug company for which he was doing research work on the drug Debendox. He suggested that he would approve the drug and that a funded research project would be an appropriate reward. Dr Inman opened a research centre soon after the case, after he left the Committee on Safety of Medicines. And guess what? Professor Briggs also opened a research centre in Australia soon after the case.

I have no hesitation in saying that those witnesses were bought off by Schering. It is amazing how all of them ended up opening research centres, which, as everybody knows, costs money.

Obviously, the situation is not this Government’s fault, but no Government have taken action over the years. Given the weight of evidence, why did the regulators not warn the doctors? According to internal correspondence from the Committee on Safety of Medicines, it admits that it has

“no defence for the 8 year delay”.

Interestingly, the authorities in Sweden, Finland, Germany, the USA, Australia, Ireland and Holland issued warnings and took action on the drug as early as 1970, five years before any warning was issued in the UK, despite the fact that the first group that knew about the problem was the Committee on Safety of Medicines.

One of the things thrown at the victims is the claim that there is no link, but there is a link: so many statistics show a correlation and so many doctors saw what happened. There seems to have been a complete failure on the part of the body appointed to monitor medication. It could have taken action but failed to do so, so the Government of the day were culpable.

Interestingly, Schering discontinued the product and stopped using it for pregnancy tests. Surely that suggests that something was wrong with the drug; otherwise, it would not have been taken off the market.

It is said that justice delayed is justice denied. We have found out in recent years about cover-ups in relation to so many tragedies, including thalidomide, Hillsborough and the sexual abuse of children in care homes and institutions. The 1960s and ’70s seem to have been an era of cover-ups, wherever we look, and victims in those cases campaigned for years and years to get an inquiry. The case under discussion has been going on for 30 to 40 years. Is it not about time for the victims—there are thousands of them—to get the justice they deserve?

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on the work she has done to secure this debate and her work with campaigners. She is drawing a contrast between this and previous cover-ups. To support her point, I should like to point out that, in this new age of transparency, we seek not a public inquiry but an independent panel, which should be well within the Government’s gift.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I thank him for all the support that he has given me and all the work that he has carried out in the campaign on behalf of his constituents.

I want to end by paying tribute to Marie Lyon, who has already been mentioned, and the victims association for all its work, as well as hon. Members who have given their help and assistance. I want to name-check two hon. Members who, because of their positions, are not able to speak in the debate: one is my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), who is in the Chamber; and the other is the Minister for Government Policy and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin), who is not here today.

15:15

[Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi). I pay tribute to her for her work on the all-party group on oral hormone pregnancy tests, and for securing this debate. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for making time to debate such an issue in the Chamber. Once again, the Committee has highlighted the House’s ability to work on a cross-party basis. I was particularly impressed by the fact that the hon. Lady’s speech was non-partisan in condemning all previous Governments, rather than just one Government; that has been much appreciated.

I have come to this debate late in the day, but after a constituent of mine informed me about the impact of the issue on her life and her family, I was lucky enough to be briefed by the campaign. The campaign should be congratulated on the work that it has done in talking to Back-Bench MPs to ensure that we are willing to speak on the issue.

It is important to point out that my constituent Mrs Margaret Roberts has provided a fantastic example of why lobbying your MP does make a difference. To be perfectly frank, if it had not been for her persistence and the fact that she came forward to explain the impact of what happened to her family, I might not have spoken in this debate. People complain that MPs are too easily lobbied, but I argue that when constituents lobby their MP, it is often an essential part of our democratic process. I am very pleased that Mrs Roberts made the effort to come to talk to me.

Having read Mrs Roberts’s testimony and listened to her talk about her experiences, it is difficult not to be moved. As a parent, I found it difficult not to be moved when I heard about the joy, grief and guilt she has felt because of the impact of the drug on her son Garry. It is worth touching on such issues because, ultimately, we need to try to shine a light on what actually happened. Nothing can change the impact of what has been done, but it is important to recognise that people want to understand exactly what happened.

In speaking to Mrs Roberts about her son Garry, it was very apparent that he brought immense joy to the family. Despite the fact that he had severe disabilities from birth, he battled on for 37 years. He was born in 1964, but passed away in 2001. What is remarkable in Mrs Roberts’s testimony is that somebody with such significant disabilities should live such a fulfilling life. Wherever he went, he clearly touched the lives of other people, not least those of his three siblings and his parents, and he had a significant impact on his carers, whether they were care in the community support staff or hospital staff. It was difficult to listen to all her testimony without feeling moved by the impact that somebody with such severe disabilities can have on others for the greater good.

What also came through was the grief of a family who expected their first-born to be healthy, but who knew within a few hours that something was wrong. I could not help but feel very affected by that. As a father who had twin boys born at 30 weeks, I know what it feels like to see one’s children taken away to be given special care. I am lucky that they came back and that they are healthy and fit.

It was hard to hear the testimony of somebody who knew that something was wrong for months and years. They have never been given a full explanation of what exactly did occur. The joy that Garry brought to their lives is clear from Mrs Roberts’s testimony, but so is the grief of knowing that they were the parents of somebody who suffered the constant visits to the hospital and the constant need to talk to the medical establishment. Throughout all that, no explanation was given of the cause of the significant health problems that he faced.

Finally, I want to touch on the issue of guilt. That is the reason why this debate is so important to people such as Mrs Roberts. She went on to have three healthy children, so she constantly asks herself whether her decision to take the tablets back in 1964 was the cause of the suffering of her son Garry. Does she need to blame herself or was it beyond her control? She needs an explanation of exactly what happened. That is why this debate is important.

We have an obligation to highlight the information that is available to Government, and to ensure that it has been looked at carefully and taken into account. We must also have the ability to look at that information afresh to see whether mistakes were made, where they were made, why they were made and how we can avoid them in future. That is the key point that comes across from the campaign group. Of course they want answers, but they want answers to ensure that such a situation does not happen in the future.

Having spoken about the issues that my constituent and her son have faced, I think it is important to associate myself with the cause made by the hon. Member for Bolton South East. We need to ask why the evidence that was collated was not acted on at an earlier date. We have heard testimony that the authorities in the United Kingdom were aware of the issues before the authorities in other countries, yet it appears that other countries acted to ban the substance before the United Kingdom. We need to know why that was.

Now that so much information has come to light from documents that have been released under the 30-year rule, why can we not instigate an inquiry with a panel of experts to evaluate what went wrong and how it can be rectified for the future? It would not have to be a far-reaching inquiry. Most important, an expert panel of the nature envisaged by the hon. Member for Bolton South East and the all-party parliamentary group would be able to tell people whether they were in any way responsible for what happened. I suspect the answer is that they were clearly not, but if that information was provided by reputable experts who had looked at the information afresh, it would give people like Mrs Roberts a degree of closure. People who are suffering the effects of what they believe to have been the ill-advised use of the hormones would also be able to understand what happened and why they have suffered.

I call on the Government to make good the mistakes of previous Administrations by taking seriously and giving due consideration to the simple request that an expert panel be put together. I am hopeful that the Minister will say that the Government will, in the interests of transparency and honesty, appoint such a committee.

15:23

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to succeed the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb). I think that the whole House would like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) on securing this debate and to commend the work that she and the hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) have done.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate. It is a demonstration of the work of that Committee and of committed MPs at its very best. I had the opportunity to lead a debate early on in the activities of the Backbench Business Committee on contaminated blood, which is not a million miles from this issue, although it is bigger in many ways. More people were affected and a clear link has been established between the mistaken use of contaminated blood and the terrible suffering that it caused. It is still a running sore because people cannot get closure.

I will come in a moment to the limited and modest nature of the request in the motion. I think it is contained and measured appropriately because the Government are still denying any causal link between the drugs and congenital abnormalities. First, however, let me say why I am taking part in this debate—indeed, a similar individual case sparked my deep interest in the issue of contaminated blood.

I have a constituent who suffered from the problem under discussion, and with your indulgence, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will read briefly from a letter she wrote to me. Her name is Mrs Christine Pettifer of Ladbrook road in Coventry North West, and she has given permission for me to mention her name and cite her case in this debate. She wrote:

“I went to my GP…and he gave me Primodos—”

the hormone pregnancy testing drug in question—

“to see if I was indeed pregnant. I was a bit worried about taking the tablets, but he assured me that if I was pregnant, nothing would happen. If on the other hand I was not pregnant, it would bring on a normal period.”

We can all guess the terrible consequences. In her case they were as follows:

“When my baby (Lynda) was born on 26 January 1969 the staff thought she looked a bit blue, and took her away to the nursery. I tried to breastfeed her, but she seemed sleepy all the time. At that time, all babies were put in a nursery for the night. In the early hours of the morning on 29 January, I was woken by a nurse to the terrible news that Lynda had died. I have the post mortem, which in layman’s terms stated that her heart was the wrong way round.”

I cannot claim that there is a direct cause between that and primodos, but we hope that the Minister will address the modest nature of the request we are making to the Government.

Let us be clear. As late as July this year, a Minister from the Department of Heath stated:

“The MHRA has considered the key evidence and concluded that the data are not sufficient to support a causal association between the use of hormonal pregnancy tests and congenital abnormalities.”—[Official Report, 15 July 2014; Vol. 584, c. 668W.]

The MHRA assessment was published on its website in 2014, and that remains the Government’s position.

We have raised this issue because of the situation of my constituent and that of the hon. Member for Aberconwy, but why are we pushing for an inquiry? It is because people want closure on this issue—it is like relatives of those who have died in an air crash or at sea. People want closure; they want to find the evidence and a reason for what happened, just as with all issues that involve the public sector in one way or another, as clearly this one does. As far as I am aware—nothing has come to me—these people want no apology or financial compensation such as that appropriate in the case of contaminated blood, but they want closure in their own minds. They cannot get that until they have a statement from the Government, which must follow a proper inquiry, and that is what we are asking of the Government today.

Let us be precise about what is being asked of the Government. We are all aware of the great pressures on Government time, particularly specialist time. They may look back and say, “This affects a relatively few number of people.” Indeed, this is not the fullest debate we have had in this House, but for those affected it is of deep concern, and they cannot rest until they know what happened. That is why I am so pleased to support the motion of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East.

The motion is to the point. It simply

“calls on the Secretary of State for Health to fully disclose all documents relating to the use of Hormone Pregnancy Tests held by the Department from the period between 1953 and 1978”.

Members will remember that the case I cited came right in the middle of that period, when already some indications—no more than that—had been raised by Dr Gal. They had been dismissed and there was no clear, massive statistical correlation between what was happening in a certain number of cases and the use of the drug. Fair enough—but the issue was not being taken as seriously as we would have liked, and it went on far too long.

My hon. Friend indicated how lax and slow the predecessor agencies to the MHRA and the Government were in reacting to the situation. As late as July this year, the Secretary of State for Health said that there was no evidence for these claims. If so, let us have the documents. The motion also

“calls on the Secretary of State to set up an independent panel to examine these documents.”

Nothing more, nothing less. It is as simple as that—a limited request to the Minister on an important topic to bring closure to certain individuals. If the will is there, Ministers can find the resources. I urge the Minister, as do other hon. Members, to accede to our requests in the name of our constituents who cannot otherwise reach closure, and to announce that he will set up that panel as soon as possible.

15:30

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson). He may be troubled—or pleased—to know that I have spoken after him on more occasions than I have any other Member, which means that I have probably listened to more of his speeches, and he has had to listen to more of mine, than absolutely necessary.

It is a pleasure to support this debate and the case made by the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi). I know that she has made considerable efforts in this very distressing matter. With all the cynicism about politics today, if we ever need a reminder of how active constituency MPs can play a positive role for their constituents, the evidence of this debate makes the case better than anything else I could say.

A constituent of mine, Chris Gooch, approached me some time ago about this issue and her daughter, Emma-Victoria. I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) said—that the sense of responsibility that parents feel in such circumstances is magnified by the fact that they cannot as yet even be certain that the decision that they took in good faith, fully trusting the medical authorities and the drugs manufacturers and confident that regulation would protect them, has had such a dramatic effect on them and, more importantly, their offspring.

Chris Gooch made this point to me: “When I went to the GP, I did not ask for medication. I went to get confirmation of pregnancy. I knew nothing of what tests were available, but have since found out that a totally safe urine test was already available. So why was I given something that had been raising concern among professionals for many years and with no warnings given to GPs?” That sums it up. How is it possible that people can have gone with confidence to a GP they trusted, hoping for confirmation of a joyous event in their lives, and been handed two pills, without prescription, that had a legacy that will live for ever? I hope that the House will be able to make a contribution to lifting the veil of secrecy over this issue by persuading the Government to hold an inquiry.

Let us remind ourselves about that drug. One dose of primodos equates to 13 morning-after pills or 157 oral contraceptive pills. I am no medical expert, as many will testify, but it strikes me as somewhat perverse that a pill with such high levels of medication should be used as a pregnancy test. Surely that is a cause for concern.

Our motion is very simple and the hon. Member for Coventry North West has been kind enough to spell it out. We understand the constraints on government but we hope, particularly as this Government have been determined to shed transparency on so many issues that have been clouded for decades, that this relatively simple and reasonable request for an independent panel to look into the paperwork, history and documentation not in the public light will be accepted. Let me try to anticipate some of the points that might be raised in objection.

The question of causal link, which I am told scientifically may be the case, should not be a barrier to an independent panel. Many scientists and experts have raised the possibility of a large question of doubt. Let us face it: in this place we have made policy on the basis of less evidence than that which has been put forward by panels of experts who raised significant doubts about the treatment that was available and freely given to unknowing patients.

Without running through the whole list, two or three striking pieces of evidence have stuck with me. On 4 November 1966, a consultant pathologist from Sheffield said

“The test is unreliable. It may well have been dangerous”.

On 23 June 1967, the Medical Research Council said:

“It looks like it could be another thalidomide story.”

Schering’s own specialist advice in the UK raised doubts.

Our job in this House is to reflect the wishes, concerns and priorities of our constituents. I find myself at one in asking the Government’s help to navigate through these documents and this history. It becomes very complex for all but the most persistent. It is with that in mind that I pay tribute to the campaigners, because they have not been daunted by that task. They have not been daunted by the conflicting evidence. They have not been daunted by the lack of funding, or the availability and sudden loss of witnesses to legal cases in the past. They have persevered ruthlessly to try to obtain documentation, despite having the full weight of the establishment against them so frequently and so often, that I feel the time is right for us to champion transparency. Let transparency be championed across the House, albeit that we need the Executive branch of government to implement it.

[Mr Robinson]

I have been briefed fully by campaigners outside this House. Marie Lyon, whose daughter was born with a very foreshortened arm, came to see me with her husband yesterday. She has been indefatigable in her briefing of MPs and we should pay tribute to her for that.

[Nick de Bois]

Indeed we should. I echo and support those sentiments, as I am sure we all do across the Chamber. They reflect the courage and determination of every sufferer in every family. Their bravery in confronting this and in facing the future should be honoured by the setting up of the independent panel that they rightly seek.

I want briefly to press three issues: the conduct of the manufacturer; the conduct of previous Governments; and the conduct of the profession. I believe they build a compelling case for uniting behind the motion.

In 1978, when this issue was first raised, a former Labour Member, Jack Ashley, championed the cause in Parliament. It was reported in The Times that he pressed the then Health Minister to hold a public inquiry—this was after an intolerable eight-year gap between the first doubts being raised and a warning being issued by the Committee on Safety of Medicines—but unfortunately his response set the tone for the future. He said that nothing new would learned from holding an inquiry—as we now know, thanks to the diligent work of campaigners, there was lots more to be learned, and there probably still is—and that it was not worth following up because most cases would have been dealt with. I submit that this approach—expediency over justice for victims of primodos—was not necessarily the right one to take. His tone was reflected in later ministerial statements, but Jack Ashley pressed on, and I am sure he would have been proud of the hon. Member for Bolton South East for showing the same diligence.

We need to explore what the committee did between 1967 and 1975, and it is right that we now give members of the action group the opportunity to understand what happened. What government records are lurking about? It is right that we finally establish how many people were put at risk. Where was the duty of care in government, the profession and the regulatory body? In 2014, we can at least make a modest effort to make up for the then Government’s failure to consider those points.

What of the profession? In 1967, the Medical Research Council made it clear that primodos could have been another Thalidomide—so far, so good—and warnings were expressed about the high proportion of pregnancies in 1968 following use of the drug. This should have been sufficient for the profession to press for more to be done. We know that the committee was prepared to publish information letting the profession know of its concerns, and it even concluded in a letter in 1967 that if its concerns were made known, it could reduce its use by GPs, and that this would have been no bad thing. But nothing happened. In fact, the committee referred it to a GP survey for two years, until 1969, despite being fully aware of the warnings, and nothing happened until the matter was exposed by the media in 1975. This led to warnings, and subsequently the manufacturer put a warning on the box.

In 1975, the World Health Organisation asked why nothing had been done for so long. I cannot judge what was going on at the time, but I think we will be judged on how we deal with this issue in this present time, and I hope that will be sufficient to drive the Government towards the independent panel. The company was completely aware of warnings—not just from the profession and the regulatory body with which it was in communication, but from its own staff.

I freely refer Members to my declaration on the Register of Members’ Financial Interests because I worked with medical companies before coming here. I am aware of much of the excellent research and development that has come from within this sector, but let that not cloud our judgment on this issue. We must hope that it is not just our Government and our NHS who buy into transparency; it must be the role and responsibility of our pharmaceutical companies to do so wherever they may be. We are not selling a consumer good here; we are selling a product that must secure the absolute trust and absolute faith of both the profession and the users. We should never be in the position of having to say that there has been the potential for deliberate mismanagement of information from, in my opinion, right across Government, manufacturers and regulatory bodies, leading to this most distressful and distasteful situation for people who are suffering now as a result of some of that conduct.

I hope that Schering, now Bayer, will embrace the mood of this House and voluntarily come forward with as much information as possible. In this age, that would bring more benefit than harm to corporations that are understandably concerned with their image; above all else, however, such action would enable them to fulfil a moral responsibility that has clearly been lacking in this case.

I would be grateful to know that today, notwithstanding all the other issues we can argue about and the things we could do, we can take a moral and justifiable stance to help secure justice for campaigners who have been worried, troubled and wronged for far too long. I hope that the Minister will listen favourably to that request.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I suggest to remaining speakers that in order to ensure that everyone gets into this important debate in the time we have left, each speaker should take no more, which means less, than 10 minutes. That will share the time fairly and enable us to hear what the Minister has to say at the end.

15:38

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) on securing this important debate and thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. I would like to thank, too, my hon. Friends for setting up the all-party group, which has been so helpful in supporting campaigners on this issue.

In common with my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) and the hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois), I have come to this issue via my constituents, and I shall talk in greater detail about the experience of Mr and Mrs Chapman in a few moments. When they came to see me at a surgery a few months ago, I approached the issue, as have most hon. Members, with a certain degree of incredulity that a situation such as that experienced by that family could have gone on for so long without any action being taken, particularly without any serious examination of why so many babies were born with serious deformities between 1953 and 1975 or of the relation between those deformities and the hormone pregnancy drug that so many of the women had taken.

We know that the most common abnormalities identified include neural tube defects, cleft lip and palate, limb reduction defects, general cardiovascular defects as well as many more. It is believed that 1.5 million women took primodos and the effect of the drug much depended on the stage of pregnancy, but in addition to many women having children with defects, it is thought that in many more women the drug caused miscarriage.

In a written parliamentary answer in the previous Parliament, the number of those affected in the longer term by primodos was assessed at about 3,500. Most campaigners think that that figure is too low and that the real figure is much higher. We know that the drug company simply discontinued primodos and never looked back, but the victims, their parents and their wider families continue to live not only with the birth defects, but with uncertainty over what has caused them. Mothers are unable to forget the guilt for using the drug. Their children, now grown up, continue to look for answers as to why they were born with abnormalities. It is up to us in the House today to try to ensure that those people get the answers they have been seeking for many decades.

We know from sales statistics that many thousands of women used primodos as a pregnancy test between 1970 and 1977 even though it was not licensed for use in that way. We know that there was a huge delay in putting information into the public domain about the possible dangers of using the drug; indeed, information did not appear in the public realm until eight years after the first reports indicated possible dangers. That seems to be an extraordinary delay and, again, one for which no real explanation has been given.

Similarly, and despite the weight of evidence, regulators did not warn doctors and patients about the possible dangers of using the drug until much later than in other countries. Authorities in Sweden, Finland, Germany, USA, Australia, Ireland and Holland issued warnings on the drug as early as 1970 to 1975. That was many years before any warning was issued in the UK, despite the fact that the Committee on Safety of Medicines was the first medical authority to know of the hazard, as other Members have said. We know that some doctors continued to prescribe the drug to pregnant women even after official warnings from the Committee on Safety of Medicines had been given. We need some answers as to why doctors kept on prescribing the drug even when it was known that there were some dangerous consequences of using it.

We also need to ask why the medical community and indeed the committee that was licensing medicine did not take on board much earlier information, especially in the academic medical community, about the potential harm that could be caused by taking the drug. As early as 1967, as Dr Isabel Gal discovered, there were warnings that primodos potentially caused spinal congenital malformations in newborns. The Medical Research Council picked up on that the next year and said that it could be another thalidomide story. Yet no real action was taken to remove the drug until 1978. Some explanation for that delay would be very helpful.

We know that the drug companies and the MHRA are now saying that it is very difficult, given the passage of time, to do anything about this dreadful situation. We have to reject that notion very strongly. There are data available. They may not be in the public domain at the moment, but those data need to be examined and that is the purpose of the motion. The issue needs to be examined very carefully to provide some answers and to see whether a causal link can be confirmed. If not, other answers must be given to the people who have for many years considered primodos to have been the cause of the birth defects they experienced.

I will try to stick to the 10-minute ruling on speech length, so finally I will talk about the case of Mr and Mrs Chapman. I have their full permission to talk about their situation. It is truly heart-wrenching. Their daughter, Margaret, was prescribed primodos—two tablets were the instructions—simply to confirm a pregnancy. It was not her first pregnancy. She was surprised that she was being given medication to assess whether she was pregnant, and queried it, but the doctor said there would be no side effects, so she trusted the doctor and took the tablets. After her baby was born in March 1975, she noticed that her baby was blue, called the midwife and the baby was rushed to Newcastle general hospital. The baby was diagnosed as having a deformed heart and they were told she would probably not live very long. She was given emergency surgery in a specialist heart unit and, despite dedicated nursing at home by her mother and wider family, lived only for 18 months. That dreadful situation has stayed with that family for many years. It is heart-wrenching, and they desperately want some answers.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West said that these families desperately need closure. I agree, and I hope we make a decision today to set up an independent panel, and to have all the relevant documentation put in the public domain. These families have been extraordinarily patient—we must pay tribute to how they have kept campaigning year after year, despite not really being listened to—and I hope today we listen to them and start the process that will perhaps give them some answers.

15:57

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) on having secured this important debate. I will keep my comments brief because, unlike many other Members present, I come to this subject quite late, and solely through a constituency interest; one of my constituents contacted me. I congratulate the hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) on her in-depth knowledge; sadly, I will not be able to add much to that.

I simply want to comment on the contact I have had from my constituent, who first approached me on this issue back in the summer. He desperately wanted to come to the launch of the all-party parliamentary group—I congratulate those Members who have set it up, perhaps particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois), who has worked tirelessly on this issue—but could not attend because his daughter, Vicky, was in hospital. She remained in hospital for 11 weeks. She underwent three major operations, and very nearly died during one of them. All that was entirely due to the fact that her mother had taken an oral hormone pregnancy test some 42 years ago. I know it is 42 years ago, because it particularly struck me that Vicky was born in the same year as me, 1972, which is well after it was known that there were problems with oral hormone pregnancy tests. That information had not been communicated to GPs.

We all know how quickly information now spreads, particularly via the internet, so if there are ever any concerns about medication or medical treatment, we very quickly learn about them. It seems incredible that in 1970 there were known to be problems, yet that information was not communicated to GPs until 1975. Vicky was born during the five-year window when the problems were well known and the drug had had its licence removed but it was still being prescribed by practitioners.

Vicky has a phenomenal raft of problems that were caused by the drug. She was born with an ectopic bladder and malformations of her feet and legs. She also has an incomplete pelvis and significant spinal problems. She is doubly incontinent, and for the past 24 years she has been confined to a wheelchair. She is unable to walk at all. I have met her several times, and when I first met her I had no idea what had caused her disability. I just knew her as a really lively, bubbly, enthusiastic member of the Romsey disability forum. It was not until her father contacted me and explained how her problems had come about that I began to appreciate what had caused her disability and how preventable it was. She could have been born completely healthy, had her mother not been given those drugs.

Vicky’s family have been quite amazing. They are really courageous and brave, and they were determined to hear the issue debated on the Floor of the House of Commons. They are pleased that it is being discussed today. What they and many other families want is the transparency that other Members have been calling for. They want to know what is in the documents that have not yet been made publicly available, and they would like me to urge the Minister—as many other colleagues have done today—to ensure that they are made available.

The family also want closure, and I do not think that that is unreasonable. We have heard from other Members that closure is critical to these families. The family support the calls for an independent panel to examine the documents, to come to an understanding of what went wrong and to give them the answers that they so desperately seek. I do not think those are big asks. In fact, they are really very modest and reasonable, and I sincerely hope that the Minister will be able to grant the wishes of the many families who have campaigned for so long, and give them the answers they are looking for.

16:01

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

People often ask what an MP does. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) and the hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) have demonstrated what a good MP does. They have taken an issue that has been brought to them by their constituents and pursued it until they achieve an end result. I hope that we will see such an end result today. I congratulate them on what they have done.

I was contacted by my constituent, Mr Kulvinder Sidhu, who asked me to attend and participate in today’s debate in order to secure the establishment of the panel and the full release of all the documentation. I do a radio show each week on Hayes FM, our local community radio, and I recently interviewed Mrs Valerie Williams, the former chair of the Association for Children Damaged by Hormone Pregnancy Testing. She succinctly explained the background to this scandal, and it was an extremely moving interview. She described some of the appalling human suffering that has taken place, and it was really shocking.

This seems to be a worrying hangover from the past. We thought, after the thalidomide inquiry, that we had put issues such as this behind us. We thought that in such issues, there would subsequently be full transparency, openness and decisive action by Governments. Today will test whether that is the case, and whether we will see decisive action. I do not think the general public would understand if there were a continued refusal to release all the papers, or if there were resistance to the establishment of an independent panel inquiry. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East has already said that we are mopping up the scandals of the past, including Hillsborough and Bloody Sunday. The hon. Member for Enfield North said that we are now living in a different era, with more openness and transparency. This debate will test whether that is really the case.

It is difficult to understand how we have arrived at this situation. We have to address the issue of the pharmaceutical industry’s relationship with the medical profession and with the Government. Big pharma, as it is now called, has insinuated itself into the decision-making and policy-making processes of successive Governments for the past few generations, and I believe that it has had an undue influence not only on Government decision making but on some of the professional institutions that regulate the medical sector. Big pharma is one of the most powerful lobbies in government of any industrial sector. This case is another example of where one company has used the clout of its financial resources, through the legal system, to silence critics and even those who have researched the information and tried to publicise it. That was demonstrated by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East in respect of the denial of not only access to information, but of someone even being able to publish or to produce a film that would have demonstrated to the wider general public exactly the scandal that is taking place. For too long, the pharmaceutical industry has dominated Government policy in a number of areas, including this one.

So I say to the Minister that this is a test case about who governs this country in the area of drugs safety and about the medical safety and security that we offer our constituents. I see no reason for the Government to deny the full publication of all the documentation and I also see no reason why we cannot have an independent panel inquiry. If such a panel is set up, I hope that not only will it be fully resourced, but those who will want to provide information to it will also be resourced, and that includes the campaigning organisation that has been fundamental to delivering today’s debate. Anything less than that will compound the scandal, because we now know much more than we did in the past about the cover-ups that have gone on, the sacrifices that have been made by individual families and the need for Government action today.

16:06

[Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) on securing this Back-Bench business debate, which is a great example of such debates being used purposefully to pursue a passionate commitment of a Back Bencher. I also congratulate all the hon. Members who have applied for this debate and participated in it on the basis of constituency experience. What has emerged palpably is a deep sense of injustice, and Nichola’s story, mentioned by the hon. Lady, is telling in that sense. These families’ lives have been marred by a sense of not knowing, of grief and, in some cases, of guilt, as was mentioned by the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb). Clearly, there is a strong belief that oral hormone pregnancy tests—primodos and others—taken between 1953 and 1975 did lead to children born with serious deformities.

It has been interesting to hear the evidence that has been gradually ferreted out of the system. It has been reluctantly given but persistently chased by those who believe that a deep injustice has been done. Some of the material that has come to light from the national archive as the relevant periods of time have elapsed demonstrates that. The hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) and others have cited it, but it is worth saying that the director of the Medical Research Council—that is who this person was, so we are not talking about a small, insignificant organisation—said in June 1967:

“It looks as if this could be another thalidomide story”.

That should have rung alarm bells at the time, and it raises questions as to why if the bells did ring, they did not get heard and why the necessary steps were not taken for a considerable time after that.

It is interesting to look at this April’s report by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. Although it acknowledges that a number of the studies do identify concerns about an association between hormone pregnancy tests and abnormalities in children, it goes on to dismiss them, and that is a cause for concern. I was struck by the fact that the Committee on Safety of Medicines in the 1970s—the independent body that advised at the time—did advise on the safety of these drugs, albeit slower than many others when it did so. It advised that pregnant women should not be using these drugs. We have heard compellingly about how other countries acted sooner, presumably on the basis of the same evidence, and it behoves us to try to understand why we did not act sooner. We know from freedom of information requests that the MHRA did write to doctors in the 1970s—in 1975—warning GPs of its concerns about the congenital defects.

The MHRA made it clear that primodos was not licensed as a pregnancy drug from the early 1970s, so it was being prescribed off licence. If we look at the current codes of conduct within the General Medical Council about prescribing off-licence drugs, it is very clear what needs to be done. Extra obligations are placed on those prescribing, and I cannot believe that those obligations did not and should not have applied in the 1970s. That alone warrants this panel having a chance to ask questions. Thousands of prescriptions were still issued right through to 1977 despite the warnings and those extra obligations on doctors when they prescribed off-licence drugs.

In April, the review of the 36 studies that have been undertaken concluded, rather disappointingly, that the evidence was inconsistent and not sufficient to reach a conclusion. I cannot help feeling that there is something missing from the MHRA’s work. Indeed it says itself that something was missing. All it could rely on was the available published evidence. My question today is: what about the unpublished evidence—the evidence that sits in the vaults of the companies that manufactured the drug? I hope that, as an act of good faith, those companies that protest their innocence in all of this are now prepared to put into the public domain and fully disclose all of their information about trials, so that that can be taken into account as well.

The motion that has been tabled today is perfectly reasonable—some might say almost too reasonable—in what it is asking for. It is not an unreasonable request of the Government to have a panel to examine the evidence and to look at what is in the national archives, the MHRA files and the Department. I hope that Bayer, the pharmaceutical company that owns Schering, which manufactured the drug, co-operates as well. This is about learning lessons, ensuring that these things cannot possibly happen again and shining a light on to a very dark period in our medical history and understanding that even things that happened a long time ago continue to have real consequences in people’s lives today. Although I fear that action will not bring closure, we should at least take it because it might, and I hope that the Government will listen to the representations that have been made today, because the case for a review is compelling.

16:12

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) not just on securing this debate along with the hon. Members for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) and for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), but on her determined campaign on behalf of her constituent Nichola Williams. It is a measure of the success of this recent campaign that we are talking about this matter in the House and that there is rapidly increasing public awareness. Marie Lyons has also contributed to the campaign. In Scotland, my constituent Rose Stallard has been campaigning on the matter. Recently, she featured in an article in the Daily Record talking about her family and their experience.

Long before today’s commonly used urine-based pregnancy test, women were reliant on their doctors and the Government to prescribe what they believed to be safe oral pregnancy tests. One such test was primodos, which came in a small green packet of two small pills containing hormones. Patients were advised to take one tablet and then, if they did not bleed, a second 12 hours later. But in the 1960s and 1970s, the concentration of those strong hormones was extremely high. One dose of primodos equates to 13 morning-after pills or 157 oral contraceptive pills, which seems unbelievable given our increased knowledge now.

It is not yet clear how many people have suffered as a result of this drug, but at least one family in my constituency has been affected, and I suspect that there are many more. Mrs Stallard was one of the 1.5 million women who were prescribed primodos, which we now believe had such terrible consequences for their children, which included being born with under-developed limbs and facial deformities and many other medical problems, some of which we have heard about today.

Members are here today to represent their constituents and highlight the impact on their lives of the disabilities that resulted from their mothers being given that tablet, but we must remember that the drug is also suspected to have caused many miscarriages. I hope that that will be included in any review or inquiry resulting from the campaign and, indeed, from today’s debate.

Mrs Stallard told me that she was offered primodos by her GP when she thought that she was pregnant back in 1969. Having taken the test and bled, she thought that she was not pregnant after all, but she soon realised that she was indeed pregnant. She had a very normal pregnancy and gave birth to her third child—her first and only daughter—to her delight and that of her husband, Bobby. Unlike other cases we have heard about today, it was not until Elizabeth was over a year old that Rose noticed something was wrong, as Elizabeth was not developing at the same rate as her niece, who was the same age, and indeed her other children. Despite that, the family were advised that there was nothing wrong with her.

Eventually, when Elizabeth was three, the family were told by their doctor that she had “slight retardation”. That is the only diagnosis she has ever received, and she is now 44 years of age. She went to mainstream primary school, but it soon became apparent that she needed specialist help and she was transferred to a school that could provide it. At 15 she began to experience physical impairments. Only recently was she eventually given a brain scan, which showed that parts of her brain are now shrinking.

I want to highlight the fact that Elizabeth is now 44, so she has lived for more than four decades without any diagnosis, treatment or support. I also want to highlight that that is the age of the people affected. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), who highlighted the fact that one of the main purposes of the campaign is to gain closure for the families affected. It is also about getting support for those men and women. They are now in their 40s and 50s and really need the care and support that can be provided by a full inquiry and compensation. Their parents, who are providing their care needs, are also getting older and are increasingly concerned about the future for their children. For more than four decades Rose has had to live with the aftermath of having been prescribed those pills.

What angers me most is the fact that the evidence now available suggests that serious concerns about the safety of primodos were already being expressed years before Rose, and thousands of other women, took the test. It should have been taken off the market when those concerns were first expressed, and doctors should not have been prescribing it after the warnings were given. All those affected deserve to know exactly why that was not the case. Why was it not taken off the market and why did it continue to be prescribed in our NHS?

Back in 1968, Schering’s lead scientist wrote to the company’s headquarters in Berlin and made it clear that he was deeply disturbed by the evidence he was seeing of the impact the drug was having on children. Indeed, it is deeply disturbing not only that those effects were apparent, but that they were not acted upon immediately. If that research had been published then, rather than only recently, Rose and thousands of other women might not have given birth to children with life-limiting disabilities or might not have miscarried.

Let us be clear—this point has not yet been made—that primodos was not a necessary medication. The risks and benefits of new medications have to be weighed up, and there can be debate over whether the benefits outweigh the risks. Although knowing for certain whether a woman is pregnant is helpful, and for some it is definitely medically helpful, it is not essential. I suspect that most women, if not all, presented with the risks of that test would rather wait a few weeks to know for certain whether they were pregnant. These women did not get the opportunity to make an informed decision, because they did not know about the risks at the time, even though they were known to others.

The hon. Member for Enfield North mentioned the work done in this place by the late Jack Ashley, who was the Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent South. When I was doing my research before the debate, I read a response that he had received to a written question in 1977. He was told by the then Secretary of State for Social Services:

“In 1975 the Committee of Safety of Medicines advised the Health Departments that hormonal preparations, including Primodos, should not be indicated for pregnancy testing and that a warning about a possible hazard in pregnancy should be inserted in all promotional literature.”—[Official Report, 13 December 1977; Vol. 941, c. 152W.]

More than 30 years ago, in the House of Commons, this drug was declared to be hazardous. I find it hard to understand why the need for an investigation of something that was deemed hazardous, and was taken by many women on whose pregnancies it had hazardous effects, is still being debated in the House. Furthermore, it was revealed over the summer, in response to freedom of information requests to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, that letters had been written to GPs warning them about

“an increased incidence of congenital abnormalities”

in babies born to women who took the drug. Yet it was not until 1975 that the drug company finally placed a simple warning on the packaging.

Let me put to the Minister some of the questions that have been raised by me, by other Members who are present, and by our constituents. Mrs Stallard and the many families who have been affected are very clear about their need for answers to these questions. Why were papers not published when research was being conducted in the 1960s that would have shown the dangers of primodos at the time? Why did it take until this year to publish the documents? What other related documents are being held by the Government, and indeed by Bayer, and are yet to be published? Will the Government undertake to publish immediately every single document that is available to them? Why was primodos not removed completely from use until 1975—or, according to some reports, 1978—years after the dangers were known? Most important, why was it still being prescribed after the Committee on Safety of Medicines had issued official warnings?

I ask the Government to commit themselves today to establishing an independent panel to examine those documents. I also ask them to acknowledge the need for an independent inquiry if a review by the panel reveals that it is required.

This morning I was visited by my aunt, who asked what the day held for me. I told her about the debate and about primodos, its suspected impact, and the fact that we were campaigning for and requesting an independent panel review. She simply looked at me and said, “I do not understand. Why does this require a debate? Why will the Government not agree to it immediately?” I could not agree with her more, and I hope that the Minister agrees with her too.

16:23

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) and the other sponsors of the debate for ensuring that the House discusses an issue that has been ongoing and unresolved for 40 years. I greatly admire my hon. Friend for her tireless campaigning on behalf of the families, who have never received the answers they deserve. I thank other Members for their thoughtful contributions, which are testimony to how much the issue has moved those in all parts of the House. I also pay tribute to Marie Lyon, chair of the Association for Children Damaged by Hormone Pregnancy Testing, who has never given up what has been a real struggle to get to the bottom of what happened and why. I had the privilege of meeting Marie and hearing her own story.

Today I speak not just on behalf of my party’s Front Bench and as a member of the shadow health team, but in my role as a local constituency MP. I was visited in Liverpool by my constituents Pat and Terry Hughes, who told me their story, which I have their permission to share with the House. Pat had taken the oral hormone pregnancy test, primodos, in 1971, and her daughter Katherine was born by caesarean in October of that year. When Pat came round from the operation, she was told that something had gone horribly wrong. Katherine had been born with no gullet and no back passage. She had kidney problems and disfigured feet. Very tragically, Katherine survived for just two hours. Pat and Terry never had the opportunity to see their baby. I was incredibly moved to hear that story about Pat, Terry and Katherine’s experience, and about Pat and Terry’s immense bravery, but also about their determination to find out why Katherine was born the way she was.

As we have heard, Pat and Terry Hughes are not alone. Many hon. Members in all parts of the House have shared their constituents’ stories. It is worth reminding the House of how many stories we have heard. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East about Nichola Williams. The hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) told us about his constituent Mrs Roberts and her son Garry. My hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) shared the story of Mr and Mrs Tilly and their son Stephen. My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) talked about Christine Pettifer. The hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) spoke on behalf of his constituents, Chris Gooch and her daughter Emma-Victoria. My hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) spoke on behalf of Mr and Mrs Chapman and their daughter Margaret. The hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) talked about her constituent Vicky. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) spoke on behalf of his constituent Kulvinder Sidhu. My hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) spoke on behalf of her constituent Mrs Rose Stallard and her daughter Elizabeth.

Those are just some of the many hundreds of individuals and families who have endured for more than 40 years not just the disabling physical conditions but an overriding sense of injustice. We are here today to determine whether there is a case to answer, whether there are unanswered questions, and whether there is information out there that might help fill in the gaps. I think that the case is clear.

Let me summarise the points we have heard. We have heard about the drug itself. Like the hon. Member for Enfield North, I am not a medical professional, but we do not need to be doctors or scientists for alarm bells to ring when we hear that a drug that was approximately 40 times the dosage of a contraceptive pill prescribed today was then prescribed to be taken by pregnant women twice within the course of 12 hours.

We have heard about the many women who took the pill at the time and who went on to suffer instant miscarriages. Thousands more gave birth to babies with missing limbs, abnormalities in their internal organs, brain damage, and heart defects. Many of those children died before reaching adulthood. Of course, many mothers who have not taken this pill also gave birth to babies with disabling conditions such as these, but the scale of the proportion of women who had taken the drug and who experienced complications gives rise to some serious questions. There were between 500 and 700 UK members of the Association for Children Damaged by Oral Hormone Pregnancy Tests, although it is thought that the true number of alleged victims may be in the thousands. The Government have estimated the number to be 3,500. In Germany, where a primodos equivalent was distributed, another 500 families are fighting for their claims to be heard.

We have heard about the studies on the drug that were undertaken at the time. In 1968, the Royal College of General Practitioners sent a letter to Dr Inman of the Committee on Safety of Medicines stating that 10% of abortions recorded after primodos were unlikely to be due to chance. The committee received a letter from the Usher Institute of Public Health in Edinburgh, which had concerns about its study on rats and abortions. It stated:

“Primodos should be withdrawn from use.”

In 1968, the drug company’s lead UK scientist wrote to the parent company in Berlin:

“it is extremely disturbing that the results of statistics, human studies and other studies all point clearly to the possibility that Primodos may interfere with a pregnancy.”

Those are just some of the studies and warnings that were received throughout the 1960s and early ’70s, and we have heard from many hon. Members on both sides of the House about further representations and studies that were done at the time.

That takes us to the crux of the debate: the significant delays in communicating those warnings. By the early 1970s, primodos was no longer authorised as a pregnancy test. In fact, it contraindicated for use in pregnancy, meaning it was declared that it should not be taken during pregnancy. Despite that fact, primodos continued to be used as a pregnancy test until 1975, when the Committee on Safety of Medicines finally wrote to doctors to warn them that the drug “may cause congenital abnormalities”. A warning was placed on the packet, saying it was

“not to be used during pregnancy...may cause congenital abnormalities”,

but it was not until two years later, in 1977, that the committee wrote to GPs stating that the “association has been confirmed”. In 1977, there were 7,038 prescriptions of primodos to pregnant women. A 1975 paper for the World Health Organisation questioned why research on such a critical issue, published in the late 1960s, was not followed up for many years.

It is worth reiterating that the authorities in Sweden, Finland, Germany, the USA, Australia, Ireland and Holland issued warnings and took action on hormone pregnancy tests as early as 1970, five years before any warning was issued in the UK, despite the fact that the Committee on Safety of Medicine was the first medical authority to know of the hazard.

Let me be clear: the point today is not why this drug was ever allowed to be prescribed in the first place, although there are some very serious questions hanging over that. No one is questioning the GPs who prescribed the drug. Why would they question the safety of the medicines and drugs approved by the Committee on Safety of Medicines? The problem is why, after so many warnings, and after it lost its licence to be given to pregnant women, there were so many delays in communicating that information to GPs. It was that delay that meant that so many women continued to take the drug long after it was known to be unsafe. Had the drug been withdrawn when the warnings become clear in 1970, my constituent Pat Hughes would not have taken it in 1971.

Why are we here? Why has this case not been resolved before now? We have heard from many Members that an opportunity the group had to mount legal action—which was supported by Lord Ashley, the then Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent South—against the pharmaceutical company Schering had to be abandoned before it got going, when the Legal Aid Board said it could not continue to provide public funding because it felt the weight of the argument was in favour of Schering.

That case, however, was more than 30 years ago. Just because the evidence we have knowledge of is insufficient does not mean there is not a case for investigating the issue further and trying to find out more. That is why we are here: to call for the full disclosure of all the documents held by the Government relating to this drug.

There are real challenges in obtaining scientific proof of a causal link, but the facts that we do have are incredibly compelling. The drug has been withdrawn, so it cannot be tested on women, and those women who were affected have gone back to their doctors for their records, only to find that they are no longer there, as my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield has said. I will not speculate on why the records are not there any more—I will leave it to Members to draw their own conclusions—but I understand that the BBC has made a documentary to expose that particular issue.

The situation leaves us with a real problem, and not just for those families affected: this is a matter of principle about the integrity of how we do things in this country. Marie, the chair of the Association for Children Damaged by Hormone Pregnancy Testing, explained to me that whenever she visits a doctor now, she questions everything that is prescribed to her. She has lost trust. These families want to prevent this from ever happening again.

The primodos case also raises wider questions about the safety of medicines. It is not acceptable to have such a shadow of doubt hanging over the impact of a drug that was licensed, prescribed and taken by women without due and proper process. If there are documents relating to this drug, it cannot be right that they are not made publicly available.

I want to finish by coming back to Marie Lyon, my constituents Pat and Terry Hughes, and all the other families who are still looking for answers. Feelings of guilt and injustice have followed them throughout their lives. They had 40 years of grieving for the children they lost, or of caring for those who survived. As my hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts said, these families are getting older. The parents are now heading into their 70s, and they are worrying about who will take care of their children when they are no longer here.

The families still do not have any answers. This cannot be right. They need answers not just for themselves, but to ensure that this can never happen again. The petition signed by hundreds of people, which has been handed in to No. 10 Downing street, shows that that goal is supported by people across the country. Today’s debate has demonstrated that Members from both sides of the House are clear about what needs to be done to achieve it. It is a very reasonable request. It is important that the documents are released and that they are reviewed by an independent panel. I wholeheartedly urge the Minister to commit to making that happen. I look forward to his response.

16:35

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (George Freeman)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi)—I pay tribute to her work—and my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) on securing the debate. I also congratulate the Backbench Business Committee. I did not rebel very often during my first four years in Parliament, but I am proud that one of my rebellions was in support of the Committee. The debates it brings to the House are often of the very highest quality, as today’s has again illustrated. I am delighted to have the chance to come to the Dispatch Box and speak on this important subject. I pay tribute to the victims’ association for its work, as well as to Marie Lyon, Jack Ashley and the many hon. Members who cannot be here today but take a very close interest in this issue.

I welcome the opportunity to update the House on the Department’s view of this important issue. I first want to assure all hon. Members that the current Government take very seriously the concerns that have been expressed. I want to take this opportunity to express my and other Ministers’ deepest sympathy to those who believe they have been affected by these products. I absolutely commit that this matter will receive the highest attention that it deserves, although hon. Members will appreciate that this is not an easy issue, given the many years—40-odd years—that have passed since the tests were first used.

We have heard some very powerful speeches from hon. Members on both sides of the House, and I want to highlight some of the points made. The hon. Member for Bolton South East spoke powerfully about the era of cover-ups. We have heard a lot in recent years about the cover-up of medical and sexual scandals—in Rotherham, Sheffield, Mid Staffs and, frankly, other areas—which have not been given the attention that they deserve. I suggest that we now need, and we are seeing, a new era of transparency, and that is all to the good. Medical professionals in the NHS and across the system have a duty of care and, like them, Ministers have a duty of care to the people we represent, and a duty of transparency as part of that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) spoke powerfully about his constituent Mrs Roberts and his experience of premature births in his family, and the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) also spoke powerfully. My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North made an important point about the trust that citizens and patients place in the medical profession and the health system. In return, we owe them a duty of trust and transparency. The hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) made an important point about how those involved in these cases need to receive some degree of closure and to know that the issue has been looked at properly.

My hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) spoke powerfully about her constituents. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) made an important point about the historical relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession. Let me make this point very clearly: this Minister and this Front-Bench team are here to represent only one special interest group, and that is the patients whom the NHS, the health system and the Department are here to serve. I say that as someone who has come from the industry. We also heard powerful contributions from the right hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow) and the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash).

I want to deal with some of the key points made in those speeches. In particular, several hon. Members mentioned the difficulty caused by the lack of retention of medical records. I have personal experience of that. My father died when I was 19—a year after I had met him—and I was not able to get to the hospital or, later, to find out exactly how he died and what he died of. These days, our system is much better at recording information. This problem is one of the reasons why I believe we should support electronic patient records. Once records are recorded electronically, they are much easier to keep and track, so we would not have many of the difficulties that we face today. The Department is not aware of any documents requesting the destruction of papers or records. I am happy to make the commitment to review and action any papers that come to light.

I should point out for the benefit of the House that Dr Briggs, who is deceased, did not confess to falsifying any studies on hormone pregnancy tests.

It has been said that thousands of children were affected. The evidence on that is not clear and it is difficult to find accurate information. There have been various estimates at different times and the best estimate seems to come from the victims’ association. In 2009, it said that by October 1978 it had gathered information on more than 700 children who might have been affected, and that it had received additional responses and inquiries from other parents every time the topic received publicity. Despite the references to thousands of children, it is unclear how many we are dealing with.

I want to highlight an important quote from Dr Sarah- Jane Richards, who is a senior solicitor in medical negligence at Secure Law in Cardiff, that demonstrates that there is still a lack of clarity and no definitive proof of causality. She said that primodos patients need more definitive data, namely medical notes from several hundred subjects, to strengthen their case. She said:

“The facts are compelling… There are snippets of information which are extremely insightful—but at present, there is an abundance of circumstantial evidence and a great insufficiency of scientific evidence. That is a real hurdle when we see a health issue such as handicap, which happens to an unfortunate two per cent of the population anyway.”

Hon. Members would expect the Government to be guided by the best scientific advice, so I wanted to share that with the House.

I want to address a number of points that have been raised in this debate, in earlier debates and in the work of the all-party group, including the eight-year gap between the first reports of a possible danger and the circulation of an official warning; the continued prescribing of the pregnancy tests by doctors in the 1970s; the need for full disclosure of the documents held by the Department; and the need for an independent panel to examine those documents. I confirm that I will be happy to instruct the release of all information that is held by the Department on this case, and the setting up of an independent panel of inquiry. I will say more about that at the end of my remarks.

First, I want to set the scene, because it is complex and difficult. I know that Members will be interested. As Members are aware, we have in the United Kingdom an agency whose sole responsibility is to ensure that all medicines in the UK work and are acceptably safe. That role is underpinned by robust legislation and guidance. In fact, we lead the world in medical regulation. However, we were not always this fortunate. In the late 1950s, when this story has its roots and hormone pregnancy tests were introduced, there was no legislation on the use of medicines in the UK, believe it or not. Unfortunately, it took the thalidomide tragedy in the early ’60s to highlight that serious deficiency, which now seems extraordinary to everyone in the House. Although sweeping changes to the legislation were made as a result, culminating in the Medicines Act 1971, by that time, hormone pregnancy tests were widely used.

The Committee on Safety of Medicines, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North referred, was first established as the Committee on Safety of Drugs in 1963 and took on its later incarnation in 1971. I will refer to it henceforth as the committee. Not long after the committee was established, a study was published by Dr Gal that suggested that there was a link between the use of oral hormone pregnancy tests and birth defects. The study was reviewed by the committee, but considered to be methodologically flawed. At that time, the committee was not aware of other evidence to support such an effect. Nevertheless, the committee undertook its own study to investigate the matter further. Over the next few years, a number of studies were published, but the evidence for an association remained limited and the findings inconsistent. The committee carefully evaluated all new evidence as it emerged and, in 1978, concluded that

“to date there is no proof of the existence of a causal relationship between the use of hormonal pregnancy tests and congenital abnormalities”.

As a result of the campaigning of my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North and other hon. Members, earlier this year the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) commissioned the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency—the lead regulator—to review all the key evidence on this issue and produce a report on its findings, which I believe hon. Members have been sent. The report has also been posted on the MHRA’s website.

Based on studies published between 1960 and 2013, the MHRA’s view is that the results are inconsistent, with some finding no association, some a weak association, and some a strong association. Its conclusion is that the data do not provide conclusive evidence of an association between hormone pregnancy tests and birth defects. As hon. Members will appreciate, the Government have a duty to ensure that they are acting at all times on the best advice available from specialist agencies set up to advise them, which in this case is the MHRA. I believe that in commissioning the report, the Government have listened to and acted on the concerns that have been raised about this drug.

What I believe makes the conclusion difficult to accept is that several studies did show an association that was statistically significant and, of course, many people have visible defects and feel that their lives have been damaged by these drugs. However, there are good reasons why both those observations do not yet constitute the proof that a causal association exists—proof that hon. Members and citizens would expect the Government to acquire before taking action.

As hon. Members will know, it is always exceptionally difficult to know for sure that a medicine taken by a mother during pregnancy is responsible for a defect in the child. It is almost impossible to know whether the condition would have developed regardless of whether the medicine had been taken, and that is especially true for birth defects, which are relatively common and occur in up to four in every 100 live births.

With the studies there is an added complexity in that a statistically significant association is not necessarily the same as a causal association, because limitations in the design of the studies may mean that the results are not reliable. Examples of that include poor recording of what was prescribed by doctors—that, I am afraid, has been all too common; another reason for the digitalisation of health records—as well as biased recall of what was taken by sufferers, the preferential prescribing of pregnancy tests for women who were at higher risk of a difficult pregnancy in the first place, and a number of other complicating factors.

One of the key concerns of the hon. Member for Bolton South East related to the eight-year gap between the publication of the first study finding a link and the committee alerting doctors to a potential risk. Although I appreciate that that may seem an unacceptable delay, it is worth remembering that such a charge assumes that the committee believed there was a causal association. However, the report that I referred to previously suggests that that is not the case, and that the committee at no time considered those pregnancy tests to be responsible for the observed birth defects.

Despite that, in 1969, just two years after Dr Gal’s study was published, the committee took the precaution of asking companies to stop promoting the tests to doctors. As more evidence was published and alternative methods of diagnosing pregnancy became available, the committee considered there to be no reason to use the hormonal methods anymore, and advised doctors of that in 1975. As Members may know, despite the committee’s warnings it became apparent that doctors were still using those outmoded tests, so it issued a further alert in 1977.

At this point I remind the House that guidance provided by the General Medical Council gives doctors in the United Kingdom the freedom to prescribe any medicine if they judge it to be in the best interests of their patient, and they take responsibility for their prescribing decisions. In that respect, I believe the evidence suggests that the committee acted in a proportionate and responsible way given the evidence before it—that is the only test that we can apply at this point.

[Pamela Nash]

The Minister said that the committee had to issue a further warning in 1977. I appreciate what he says about responsibility being with the GP, but why would a GP prescribe those pregnancy tests if they knew and were clear that they were dangerous? Is it the responsibility of the committee that it did not communicate that danger aptly enough?

[George Freeman]

Unfortunately, as I have been trying to explain, in our system the sovereignty for prescribing lies with clinicians. Guidance can be issued and we would expect GPs to comply with it. Today that is more often the case, but we are dealing with a period when things were different. I cannot at this point tell the hon. Lady why a number of GPs did not comply with the guidance provided, but it was given very clearly.

Hon. Members have asked that the Department fully disclose all documents on hormone pregnancy tests held between 1953 and 1978. While I support that request, I remind the House that we are talking about an era that mostly predated medicines legislation and companies were not required even to submit evidence to support the efficacy, quality and safety of their products—extraordinary though that may seem to us today. As a result of that, and the fact that the pregnancy tests were withdrawn from use more than 35 years ago, the Department holds very limited information and what it does hold is already in the public domain. That said, I am happy to confirm to the House this afternoon that I will instruct that all relevant documents held by the Department be released.

The MHRA will of course review any new data that emerge as a matter of priority and seek independent expert advice as needed. I am happy to go further and confirm to the House that I will instruct an independent review of the papers and all the evidence. I suggest that that be carried out by the Medicines for Women’s Health Expert Advisory Group, which exists to advise the Department on such matters. It comprises independent members who are experts in their field, and I am happy to take submissions from colleagues to ensure that the association is properly represented and has a chance to give evidence.

[Mr Robinson]

I apologise for not being in my place for the Minister’s opening remarks. The news that the Minister has just announced is very encouraging and will help to bring closure and reassurance. I am sure that no Member, including my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), will want to press the motion to a Division now. I thank the Minister for his reply and the positive note that he has struck.

[George Freeman]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s comments and I hope that the House has taken what I have said this afternoon in the spirit in which it is intended. I am open to representations from the victims’ association and to ensure that the inquiry panel addresses all its concerns.

I assure hon. Members that Ministers in the Department will continue to monitor the evidence closely and to work with hon. Members and the victims’ association, so that if there is any reason to believe in a causal link, appropriate steps can be taken quickly. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Bolton South East for initiating this debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for providing the time. I am grateful for the tenacious advocacy of Members and many people outside, including many who cannot be with us today. We stand on the shoulders of others. Whatever the cause of the appalling disabilities that some people have suffered, their suffering still exists, and I look forward to co-operating in any way I can to try to shed light on the issue and bring the all-important closure in an era of transparency, so that lessons can be learned and this never happens again.

16:52

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I thank all the hon. Members who have spoken in the debate today. I particularly thank all the members of the all-party parliamentary group on primodos, all those who signed my early-day motion and everybody who participated in the petition that was presented to No. 10 Downing street. I also thank the association.

I should also mention a couple of other people. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) mentioned Valerie Williams, who campaigned on this issue many years ago. When my constituent Nichola Williams first contacted me I went to see her at her home. At first glance, she appeared to have nothing wrong with her. It was only on talking to her that I found out about all the internal damage that she has.

The campaigners have found a raft of documents that I went through with my researcher and my office. We thought that something was very wrong and that there had been a miscarriage of justice, and that is why we started the campaign. I am glad that after two years we have finally received an undertaking from the Government that they will appoint an independent panel to look not only at the documents held by the Department, but all the documents that we have. We have a lot of information that we think shows a medical and legal cover-up.

On the causal link, the Minister said that the victims’ association will be consulted. Every lady who took primodos said that it was the pregnancy during which they had taken that drug that resulted in abnormalities in children. Other children those same ladies went on to have were perfectly healthy—in those pregnancies, no primodos had been taken. This is important research and it needs to be looked at.

The Minister said that the numbers of victims may not be in the thousands. It is fair to say that as the campaign has gone on over the past two years, with limited coverage and publicity in my local newspaper and in the national media, I have received letters and e-mails from more and more people coming forward and saying, “This is what happened to us.” I think there are a lot more people out there. Perhaps this is something the independent panel can look at, because we think there are many more people who are unaware of what is happening.

I thank the Minister for what he has said at the Dispatch Box, which is that he will release and look at the documents, set up an independent panel, work with the victims’ association and also look at our documents.

[George Freeman]

What we might do is set up an expert working group and invite one or two patients’ representatives from the victims’ association to sit on it. If hon. Members are happy, I will write around with a suggestion for how we might do that. I want to just remind the House that those from the Medicines for Women's Health Expert Advisory Group are independent experts in their field. They currently advise the Commission on Human Medicines on issues relating to medicines for women’s health. All members must fully disclose any conflicts of interest and are disbarred from any discussions of issues where they hold a personal interest. I think the House can therefore be confident that these are independent experts. If we set up an expert working group and have patients on it, that should give the House confidence that victims’ and patients’ voices will be properly heard.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I thank the Minister for that reassurance. I am sure that those from the victims’ association who are watching the debate will be reassured too.

I thank the Minister again for what the Department has offered to do. We hope it will be done speedily and that there will be a resolution. As we know, many of the victims are now approaching their 40s and 50s. Their medical conditions are worsening and some have died. It is important that they understand what has been happening. They have never, ever asked for this—they have never even suggested it—but perhaps after the investigation we could think about some kind of financial settlement or compensation. As I have said, this is something that I am saying. I think that that would be only fair after all their suffering.

Finally, I have spoken in the Chamber from time to time, but today is the first time that, when I came into the Chamber, I got a little butterfly in my stomach. It reminded me of when I was a barrister before I became a Member of Parliament. I would have that feeling when going into court for a special case of particular significance. When I came in I almost felt that I was going to present a legal case to ask for—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Does the hon. Lady intend to talk her own proposal out? If not, perhaps she should allow me to put the question now.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House notes that children were born with serious deformities due to hormone pregnancy test drugs taken by expectant mothers between 1953 and 1975; also notes with concern that as the surviving victims enter their forties and fifties many of them face a host of new problems as their bodies continue to suffer; further notes that no official warnings were issued about these drugs until eight years after the first reports indicated possible dangers; further notes that some doctors continued to prescribe the drugs for pregnant women after official warnings from the Committee on Safety of Medicines; calls on the Secretary of State for Health to fully disclose all documents relating to the use of Hormone Pregnancy Tests held by the Department from the period between 1953 and 1978; and also calls on the Secretary of State to set up an independent panel to examine these documents.

Cyber-bullying and Digital Anonymity

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Mel Stride.)

16:59

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I wish to raise the matter of cyber-bullying and the abuse of online anonymity. I know that there are hon. Members for whom this is of deep concern, so I am happy to take interventions, and, if there is time, for colleagues to make short speeches, if that would be in order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Hate-tweeting trolls make people’s lives hell. They have got out of hand on social media, and we need to tackle them, but to paraphrase Tony Blair, we cannot just be tough on hate tweeting; we must be tough on the causes of hate tweeting. I suggest that we consider targeting the anonymity that hate tweeters use to harass people online. It is all too easy to set up a bogus account online and viciously stab at people from behind the curtain; ensuring that people could not set up anonymous accounts at will would force hate tweeters to be responsible for the hate they spew. They would be identifiable.

There is a deeper point. We need to promote kindness, courtesy and being yourself. When we bump into somebody on the street, we exchange pleasantries; when we engage in banter down the local pub, we have a fun time, generally; what we do not do is pretend to be someone else or hurl abuse and make threats without consequence. Why, then, does anyone think that that is okay on the internet?

I am particularly concerned for our young people, for whom cyber-bullying is a rising issue. According to ChildLine, 4,500 young people talked to the charity about online bullying last year, representing an 87% rise on the year before. The anti-bullying charity Ditch the Label surveyed more than 10,000 young people aged 13 to 22 as part of its annual cyber-bullying report in 2013 and found that 69% had experienced cyber-bullying at some point and that 37% had experienced it frequently. Most dishearteningly, 20% had experienced extreme cyber-bullying on a daily basis. Young people are twice as likely to be cyber-bullied on Facebook as on any other social network, with 54% of young people using Facebook reporting that they had experienced cyber-bullying. Facebook, Twitter and Ask.fm are the most likely places for cyber-bullying.

It is not just about the high-profile cases involving celebrities, people who have suffered great tragedy, such as the McCanns, or Members of Parliament who have been attacked. Well-known people are more likely to be reported on, but the problem is much more widespread than just a few famous people, and sometimes it ends in tragedy. In some cases, people have been so harassed online that they have been driven to take their own lives: Callum Moody-Chapman, in Cumbria; “Nadia”—the name given by the Italian media—in Italy; Erin Gallagher, in the Republic of Ireland; and Ciara Pugsley, also in the Republic of Ireland. It is important to make it clear that suicide often has many complicating factors, but we ignore these trends at our peril.

I have referred to well-known cases in the media of adults being cyber-bullied. There was the case of J. K. Rowling during the Scottish referendum; Emma Watson just for making a speech to the UN on feminism; and of course Judy Finnigan and Chloe Madeley. It is simply unacceptable. There are three pieces of relevant legislation: the Malicious Communications Act 1988, the Communications Act 2003 and the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. The legislation focuses on dealing with trolls when they have done damage, but we need to prevent that damage in the first place. Another problem is that the international reach of the internet makes it hard to tackle criminal acts in our justice system. The police need to be more proactive and effective in tackling the problem in a more organised fashion.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

Is it not true, however, that even when the police are proactive and organised they are often met with the obstacle of large corporations, frequently based in the States, reluctant to hand over the information that would enable the police to identify and prosecute these trolls?

[Charlie Elphicke]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. That is one barrier; the other one, of course, is that people can just set up new accounts at will. They can do that through the dark net, and they can hide their IP addresses to make it harder to locate who they are. That is why I am coming to the point of saying that perhaps we should think about making people identify themselves if they want to set up an account, just as we have to do in so many other walks of life.

I recognise that the international nature of the internet makes it hard to tackle the criminality in this country, but I suggest that the police should make much more use of the Harassment Act 1997 rather than view this as a separate online problem. The behaviour is what they should go after. If behaviour is criminal, we cannot allow more latitude for it on the internet. There is not. Such behaviour should be subject to the same tests as if someone is confronted on the street with nasty face-to-face remarks.

I welcome the fact that the Justice Secretary has set out plans for serious cases of cyber-bullying to go to the Crown court and be subject to a sentence of up to two years. That is a welcome and encouraging start—a step in the right direction, saying that cyber-bullying is unacceptable. Nevertheless, let me set out three areas where we could go further.

First and most fundamentally, people need to take responsibility for their actions and not have the option of anonymity. We have cracked down on poison pen letters. Some of us may remember the problem of deep breathers—those who would pick up the phone and start calling random numbers and deep breathing at people to terrorise them down the line. Call logging put a stop to all that stuff, but now we need to deal with trouble caused when characters use anonymity to spout vitriol online. Anonymity, then, is the first issue.

Evidence suggests that people’s behaviour becomes worse when they are given anonymity, which is why it needs to end. Social media providers should ensure that they know people’s identity to discourage hate-filled attacks. If it is known who they are, people will not go around doing this sort of thing and neither will they be able to create multiple social media accounts to further their hate campaigns.

Some say, “We cannot do this; it undermines the principle of free speech. I should be able to say what I like.” I believe they are wrong to say that because the principle of free speech was dearly bought. People can state their own views in their own name. Mrs Mopp of Acacia avenue can say, “The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition are completely hopeless and not up to their job”, but the secret police will not come for them in the middle of the night. That is what free speech is about. It is not a right to go around anonymously terrorising and harassing people. That is an abuse of free speech. It is not free speech; it is pure cowardice, and it should not be tolerated. Neither should we confuse the issue of privacy to surf the internet, which we all believe in, with the idea of privacy in aid of anonymity as a means of launching attacks on people. There should be no hiding place for trolls.

Secondly, there is the issue of educating children on digital responsibilities. We cannot protect children simply by blocking access to the internet and social media. That will not work. Young people are at the forefront of technological change, so we need to educate them to understand that their online behaviour will be judged just as much as their behaviour in real life. Just as we teach citizenship and British values in our schools, so we should educate our young people about their online responsibilities and the importance of respect there, as well.

Thirdly, international action is important. The internet is international: it knows no borders and it is changing all the time. Social media has existed for barely a decade, and the law needs to keep up with this rapid change. That is why we need international co-ordinated action. An organisation such as the OECD could play a serious role in co-ordinating what we all do collectively in the global village in which we live. Rogue nations that harbour trolls and online criminals can be tackled more effectively with international co-ordination.

To conclude, it is becoming increasingly clear that it is time to strip people of their anonymity on social media.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Before my hon. Friend concludes, I want to say that I think he will have an uphill struggle in managing to persuade people on an international basis that identity should be disclosed when people abuse the internet. He might find it rather easier, however, if firms were required at least to take down and block persistent abusers; and he might find it easier to get search engines to block firms that fail to do that. Perhaps he should include some of these more modest aims in his programme.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I agree that enforcement is a massive problem because of the international nature of the internet. The starting place should be to raise the issue and say that anonymity is the problem. It is the nature of the curtain that one could be stabbed from behind that we must look at and, having done so, we must ask how we pull back that curtain. First, we must get big social media organisations such as Facebook and Twitter voluntarily to make sure that they identify their users and take the actions suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis). Secondly, we must have international action to make sure that international laws and regulations are co-ordinated so that we can work in lockstep. I realise that this is a new area that will develop over the next five years. I suspect that the issue will increase in importance rather than decline.

I want to put ideas out there for us to consider. We need to look at anonymity. We need to educate our children about digital responsibility and hammer home the message that hate tweeting is wrong and that if anyone abuses others anonymously from their keyboard, they will be found out. That would stop in their tracks the people who con, who threaten and who terrorise. We must take back the internet from the weirdos, from the trolls and from the cowardly.

17:11

[The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Mike Penning)]

It is an honour and a privilege to respond on behalf of the Government this evening to this very important Adjournment debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) not only on securing the debate but on getting colleagues to come in on a Thursday evening and support him.

I apologise because I am probably not the lead Minister who would normally deal with this debate, but it is important that my Department—I sit in two Departments—which has responsibility for part of the work that needs to be done to address this important issue is represented at the Dispatch Box. The cross-governmental responsibilities here include the Department for Education, the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Home Office and the Cabinet Office to name a few. There are probably other Departments that feel they have responsibilities, not least given the Prime Minister’s interest in recent years.

An Adjournment debate this evening will not allow the issue to have the time it deserves. Far be it from me to suggest what the Backbench Business Committee should and should not do, but this is a very important debate that needs more air time than an Adjournment debate in the House can give.

It is also my belief, and that of the Government, that there is no difference in law between what one does online and what one does in public: what one does face to face is identical within law to what is done online. My hon. Friend quoted at least three Acts. My officials think that five Acts may be in place to help with the issue: the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, the Malicious Communications Act 1998, the Communications Act 2003 and the Defamation Act 2013. They all apply to online trolls.

Perhaps I can address early on some of the specific points that my hon. Friend raised, particularly education. Education is very important. Since September 2014, not so long ago, e-safety has to be taught at all four key stages within the curriculum at our schools. It is massively important that young people have the education and knowledge that they need reinforced at every key stage going forward so that while they use the wonderful new media as much as possible, they understand the problems and dangers of internet bullying.

As my hon. Friend suggested, there are no boundaries or borders in this type of abhorrent behaviour. The internet is a wonderful thing, but I know as Minister responsible for child protection how dangerous the internet is in particular to young, vulnerable people.

I was in Washington at the beginning of the week before last, where I attended the global alliance conference on child online protection, and it was very obvious where the problems occur. It is an international problem; that is the case not only with trolling, but also with some of the other abhorrent things we see on the internet these days. People are earning huge amounts of money out of other people’s grief and poverty, and just getting a kick, frankly, out of abusing people online.

May I therefore reiterate again that in law there is no difference between standing in front of someone and abusing them and doing it online? That is very important, and we have seen some significant cases coming before the courts recently to make sure everybody understands that.

Let me touch briefly on three points, and in particular the anonymous nature of trolls. It is an obvious thing to say that someone should have their anonymity removed—or should they not have it in the first place? In the international spectrum, however, I do not want people living in Syria to have their anonymity taken away. I want people around the world who are living under repression to have the ability to tell the rest of the world what is going on in their countries—what is happening to them, to their families, to their political parties—without fear that their identity will be known.

In saying that, the police do have a way of finding out very quickly where such a communication came from. I know that myself as, sadly, my bank account was hacked fairly recently, but the IP addresses were made available enormously quickly by my internet bank to the police and subsequently arrests have been made. They cannot hide, therefore: “If you abuse someone using the internet, no matter what technology you use, invariably you will be discovered, and if you break the law, you will be prosecuted.” What we must do, however, is ensure people have the confidence to come forward, not necessarily directly to the police every time because it can be very difficult for young people to do that, but to someone they trust within their school or family or community, to tell them what is going on so we can prosecute.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Is not the problem that this would be regarded by the police as a pretty low priority unless it had reached a level of great seriousness, and therefore is not the solution, as I suggested before, that the main companies must have easy ways of reporting abuse before it gets to that level and that they should be likely to block it irrespective of whether or not the person’s identity is known?

[Mike Penning]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and he has touched on a point I was coming to in the next few minutes. On his first point, this sort of offence can now be heard in the High Court and it does carry a penalty of up to two years. That is relatively new, but that actually happens. Standing here not as a Justice Minister but as the police Minister from the Home Office, I can say that the police should, and will, deal with this in the same way as they would deal with an offence offline. That is vitally important, and perhaps a message from the Dispatch Box from the police Minister to the police on that point this evening will not go amiss.

This country leads the way in working with these big companies. While I was in Washington the American Administration said to me that we have a rapport and a relationship and get things done with the big companies in a way that they do not. We need to use that relationship, and of course in early December there will be a global conference here in London, headed by the Prime Minister, on online protection of children and these sorts of issues will be discussed.

Trolls need to know that they will be prosecuted and that the action that will be taken is international. I can assure my hon. Friend that I will have international meetings in this difficult area. I will also let the Ministers in all the different Government Departments know what I have said at the Dispatch Box today, and tell them that we are coming together as a Government to ensure that we do this in a departmental way and that the lead Department leads the process. I can assure my hon. Friend that we are doing something about this.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

I should like to thank the police in Merseyside for taking an online hate crime against me very seriously. This resulted in a conviction last week. What more can the Minister do, along with colleagues in other Departments, to encourage as many people as possible across the country to report any hate crime that they might experience, confident in the knowledge that the authorities will do something about it?

[Mike Penning]

I reiterate that that is exactly what we want people to do. We want them to have the confidence to come forward. In a perfect world, everyone—particularly young people—would have the confidence to go directly to the police. However, some people might not have the confidence to do that, and they might instead share the problem with their teacher, their tutor or their parents.

We have not touched on the responsibilities of parents. I speak as the father of two young ladies who would probably tell me that they are now much too independent to be given advice by their father. That does not mean that they are teenagers; they are slightly older than that. It is important that everyone takes responsibility for knowing what is going on. Earlier today, a victim was talking to me about this issue. The only reason that the problem had come to light was that her mother had noticed a sudden change in her behaviour. She had become quiet and secretive, and she was not as extrovert as she used to be. Her mother then found a diary that revealed what was going on.

I am conscious that many Departments need to pull together on this issue. We also need to pull together internationally. This is an enormously difficult subject for many people, whether they are famous and in the public arena or not. This also affects the forgotten ones, the youngsters and the little ones at school who are being abused by cyber-bullies. It is not acceptable and we will do everything in our power internationally and at home to ensure that cyber-bullies are removed from the internet.

Question put and agreed to.

17:22

House adjourned.