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Overseas Voters Bill
(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
It gives me great pleasure to move the Second Reading of the Overseas Voters Bill. The Bill was brought forward in the last Session of the last Parliament, in the run-up to the general election. At that stage, I had a very helpful response from the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah) who was then Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office, who said that the Bill’s key element would be incorporated in the Conservative party manifesto and implemented after the general election. As a result, we had in our manifesto a commitment to take action on this issue.
I brought the Bill forward because too many British citizens living abroad are not entitled to vote in general elections in this country. Although the Electoral Commission made a big effort towards the end of the last Parliament, in the run-up to the general election, to register overseas electors, an answer given to me on 5 February by my hon. Friend the Minister—he is on the Front Bench today—showed that only 105,845 overseas electors were registered to vote in May 2015. He said it was not possible to say how many of those who were registered actually voted. I know that a number did not vote because they did not receive their ballot papers in time; indeed, I have had complaints about that from erstwhile constituents who now live abroad.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing this Bill to the House’s attention. I am listening to his very good speech with huge interest. He said that 105,000 overseas electors are registered. What is the total number who could be registered were they all identified, as his Bill suggests they should be?
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)
Just to clarify, the figures are a little unclear, as my hon. Friend says. It looks as though about 2 million may be eligible to vote at the moment, and another 3 million or 4 million on top of that might be enfranchised were we to get rid of the 15-year rule in due course. However, as I suggested, all figures should be treated with a degree of caution, because this is so uncertain.
Mr Chope
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. What he is saying is that, of the 2 million who are eligible at the moment, we registered only 100,000, and many fewer than that actually voted. There is potentially a pool of a lot more who could be registered if the Bill went through and we were able to allow all British citizens living overseas to participate in our democracy.
That, of course, is what happens in a lot of other countries. Some of those countries organise—indeed, facilitate—voting by their overseas citizens at embassies, consulates and other such places. In the recent Turkish elections, the President of Turkey, in a neutral capacity, spent a lot of time visiting other countries in Europe—mainly countries with a significant number of Turkish expatriates—to speak directly to them to encourage them to participate in the election.
So what would be the benefit of this? Apart from the benefit to democracy, it would assist in campaigns such as one that I very strongly support, which is the campaign for an end to the discrimination against British pensioners living overseas. It would mean that those who are campaigning to ensure that there is equal treatment between British pensioners living overseas and those living in the United Kingdom would have more clout. At the moment, there are a handful of these people in each constituency able to vote, and they cannot really make a difference in the general election, but if more of them were eligible to vote, and did vote, they would be able to lobby much more effectively and we might find that the Government were more responsive to their concerns than they seem to be at the moment.
Mr Hollobone
The campaigns that my hon. Friend is mounting for electoral justice and pensioner justice are legendary. I am glad that he managed to persuade the Government to include in the manifesto a commitment on electoral justice. With regard to British pensioners living overseas, presumably Her Majesty’s Government know who these people are and where they live, and they are in receipt of at least some element of their pension. Therefore, given the terms of this Bill, it should not be too difficult for the Electoral Commission to put them on the list and get them registered.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a really good point; as he says, it should not be too difficult. In the run-up to the previous election, I encouraged the Foreign Office to try to get people registered. I also tried to get information out of the Department for Work and Pensions about enabling it to communicate directly with pensioners. The 15-year rule makes it more difficult to run these registration campaigns, because the DWP does not know whether an overseas pensioner has been living overseas for more than 15 years, and removing the rule would make it much easier for it to campaign effectively. When I was at a meeting discussing these issues with a member of our embassy staff in Berlin, he told me of the efforts being made to try to get expats living there to participate in voting, and I am sure that such efforts were made. However, as is apparent from the figures, there is an enormously long way to go. When my hon. Friend the Minister responds, I am sure he will say that this Bill is premature, as most of my Bills are, but I hope he will also say what the Government are going to do about implementing their manifesto commitment.
It is currently a cause of a great deal of frustration for British overseas residents that they are going to find it very difficult to participate in the European referendum. Some cynics have said that it would be better if we did not allow large numbers from overseas to participate in that referendum, but I think it would be desirable for the maximum number of British citizens to be able to do so. After all, we are going to allow Commonwealth citizens and Irish citizens living in this country to participate, so why were the Government unable to bring forward the Bill to facilitate the extension of the 15-year rule sooner in this Session so that it could have had a part to play in the referendum eligibility campaign?
Mr Hollobone
Surely the whole point about electoral registration is that we register people who we believe have the right to cast their ballot. We never register people on the basis of which way we think they might vote in a particular election or referendum.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Too often, we allow cynics outside to misrepresent our policy positions. I think that all democrats would say that the maximum number of British citizens should be entitled to vote and encouraged to participate in our democracy, and that, in essence, is what this Bill is about.
Clause 3 deals with internet voting. This is a controversial subject, but I think that if we are ever to go down the road of internet voting, the starting point should be people living overseas.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
My hon. Friend and I have been very close friends for some while, but I am concerned that internet voting could be open to fraud. How would he seek to deal with that issue?
Mr Chope
Fraud is rife in most electronic transactions, but despite that, a very large number of people are prepared to trust their banking arrangements to being dealt with online. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is now going to make it more or less compulsory for small businesses to do their tax returns online on a quarterly basis. My hon. Friend makes a perfect reasonable point: there is always scope for fraud. That is why I would not suggest massive internet voting on a universal basis from the outset, but it would be sensible to start off with a reasonable experiment. For example, we could perhaps start with members of our armed forces who are serving overseas. We might be able to develop a secure system for dealing with them.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman not think it odd that he wants to make it a lot easier for people living abroad to vote, but this Government want to make it a lot more difficult, through individual registration, for people to register to vote in this country?
Mr Chope
I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s premise. The Government are keen to ensure that we have individual voter registration so that there is less identity fraud at polling stations and through postal votes. I supported that when I was a member of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the previous Parliament.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We are not debating UK domestic issues. I know the hon. Gentleman would not want to drift away from his point.
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. I am intrigued by his proposition on internet voting. As a fellow member of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the previous Parliament, I can bear testament to his prowess and knowledge. He rightly mentioned utilising the armed forces in an experiment on overseas voting. Perhaps Skyping could be used as a method, because face recognition on computers is now very sophisticated; indeed, we use it in airports across this country and in Europe. Does he agree that this could be a way ahead for internet voting by armed forces in overseas territories?
Mr Chope
I have to admit to not being an expert in this area at all. If my children were here, they would say to me, “When did you last Skype?”, and the answer would be, “Never.” I know that there is such a thing as Skyping, that other members of my family participate in it, and that it is a very inexpensive way of communicating with friends and family overseas. I imagine that it would fall within the term “internet voting”. However, I do not have the expertise to be able to answer my hon. Friend’s question about whether it would be possible to secure a system of Skyping that would be proof against fraud or misrepresentations. I leave that to the Minister and his officials.
In clause 3 I do not try to set out a prescriptive arrangement for internet voting. That is because this is a really good example of where regulations should be brought forward by the Government using their expertise rather than relying on albeit gifted amateurs to do the job for them. The clause says that the Government “shall bring forward regulations”, and, in subsection (2), that they
“shall include provisions to prevent identity fraud and to ensure that only those eligible to vote can vote.”
Mr Hollobone
I anticipate that clause 3 might cause most difficulty when the Bill goes into Committee. Is it not the case that it has never been easier to register an individual to vote and that increasingly that is being done over the internet? That will be of great encouragement to overseas voters, because they should be easily able to register themselves in this country.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Clause 3 addresses internet voting rather than internet registration, which is an important distinction. It is already possible to register on the internet, which, as my hon. Friend says, is a popular form of registration. A lot of young people used the internet to get themselves on the electoral register in the run-up to the last general election.
This is a short and relatively simple and straightforward Bill, and I commend it to the House.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on promoting this Bill. I for one appreciate his determination, having promoted a similar Bill last year. Like that Bill, this one has three main provisions. First, it would require the Electoral Commission to register overseas voters; secondly, it would remove the limit on how long British people can live overseas before they lose the right to vote; thirdly, it would allow internet voting for overseas voters.
It is good that the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues are so eager to make progress on internet voting, but the Trade Union Bill, which is currently passing through the Lords, shows that the Government are wholly opposed to any suggestion of internet voting for the trade union movement. I say that merely as a point of clarification.
I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s interest in extending the franchise and in modernising the electoral system. However, given the Conservative party’s record on excluding voters through the rushed implementation of individual electoral registration and, indeed, its opposition to votes for 16 and 17-year-olds, I am somewhat perplexed that he has not done more to challenge his party on those particular issues.
Labour consistently warned the Government of the dangers of removing the last Labour Government’s safeguards for the introduction of IER. We also warned of the dangers of bringing forward the date of the point of transition—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. As I said earlier, unfortunately this is about overseas voters. I can understand that we want to go over different ways of voting, but we have to remain on the issue of overseas voting. That is what the Bill is about.
Ian Lavery
That is absolutely first-class advice, Mr Deputy Speaker. On the parliamentary process and attempts to get individuals to vote, the latest Office for National Statistics figures and Electoral Commission data, which were published only this week and are really important, show that more than 1.4 million people have fallen off the electoral register since the introduction of IER.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I am trying to be as helpful as I can. If the hon. Gentleman could combine that point with the number of overseas voters who have not been registered—that is the issue—and compare the two, that would be a way forward.
Ian Lavery
As ever, I accept your advice, Mr Deputy Speaker. I wish I did have the figures for those living abroad, but, as has been said, it is very difficult to ascertain them. The only figures we have are those for individual voters in the UK, but I fully accept and understand what you have said.
Elections in May will include those to the devolved institutions in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh, the London mayoral election, and the police and crime commissioner elections in England and Wales. Then—just in case somebody has missed this—at the end of June we will have a rather serious referendum to decide whether this country will continue to be a member of the European Union. The Electoral Commission will play an important role overseeing all those elections. Personally, I do not think it would be wise for this House to say that, in addition, the commission should make the registration of overseas voters a priority. I hope and expect that the commission will continue its grand efforts of previous years in encouraging British people living overseas to register to vote, which is so important, but if there is to be a priority, surely it must be to ensure that all prospective voters who live in the UK are on the list.
The figures I have cited are alarming, but I will not mention them again, for fear of being pulled up by you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is important, however, to recognise the changes taking place in our democracy. We have to understand that the voting process is a central plank of our democratic process, both at home and abroad.
Clause 2 proposes abolishing the current 15-year limit on an overseas voter’s ability to participate in UK elections. We have no objection to reviewing the time limits on eligibility. There is nothing sacred about the 15-year limit. It has not always been 15 years: it has been 20 years and five years in the past, but now it has settled at 15 years. As the hon. Gentleman has said, there are different rules in different countries. However, if we are to consider changing the limit, or even removing it completely, as has been argued, I do not believe that that should be done in isolation. It should happen as part of a wider review of how we can increase participation in elections in general.
The Conservative party made a manifesto commitment to abolishing the 15-year rule, and we are still waiting for the votes for life Bill to be introduced. Although we have no objection to that in principle, if we want to extend the franchise the Government should look again at giving the right to vote to 16 and 17-year-olds in this country. We should learn the lesson of what happened in Scotland, which enthused people and brought them into the parliamentary process. They felt that they were valued. We should take a leaf out of the Scottish book.
Clause 3 would give overseas voters a chance to vote online. We need to do more to make sure that our electoral process better reflects the busy lives that people lead. That could and should include trialling electronic and online voting. However, I am not wholly convinced by the hon. Gentleman’s arguments about why overseas voters should be the first to try out such a system.
We are unable to support the Bill, for the reasons I have given. I am sceptical of some of the clauses and the priority given to overseas voters, because of all our other concerns about electoral matters.
Mr Chope
I understand that this is the hon. Gentleman’s maiden Front-Bench speech on a Friday; he is making a very good fist of it, if I may say so. He says that he does not believe the Bill to be a priority, but does he not think there is something really wrong with our democracy if some 6 million British citizens are not able to participate in it? Surely that should be a top priority.
Ian Lavery
I fully understand that, but I would not categorise it as a priority. Some 7.5 million people in the UK are not registered, and since the introduction of IER a further 1.4 million people have dropped off the register. The Opposition fully agree that we need to look at encouraging participation in voting, but we do not see overseas voting as a major priority. It should be part of a concerted effort to get as many people as we can to vote. I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman and I are too far apart on that, other than on the question of what should be a priority.
David Morris
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his first occasion at the Dispatch Box for the Opposition. Is the Opposition’s standpoint that they would like to see internet voting come online in the mainstream, not only in the UK but abroad?
Ian Lavery
The Labour party’s position is that we would like to investigate the potential for that. As I have just said, it is important to remember that people have busy lives and they work. As well as online voting, there are other options that we would like to look at, which could play a major role. We have to try to open it up. Perhaps we need to look at polling day. Why is it on a Thursday from 7 am until 10 pm? How long has that been the case? It is generally accepted across the Chamber that we need to look at more innovative ways to encourage people—whether overseas or in this country—to vote and to take part in the democratic process. I do not think the hon. Gentleman and I are too far apart on those issues. It is perhaps, as I mentioned to the hon. Member for Christchurch, just a case of why one should be a priority and others not.
We need to look at the question collectively and try to come up with a way to encourage people to get out there and vote. As politicians, that is really what we want. There are 5.5 million British citizens living abroad, and I think the hon. Gentleman said that only 100,000 of them were registered to vote. To be honest, the figure that I have is 20,000, so it was news to me that that number had somehow multiplied by five. I am encouraged by that, but we need to encourage people into the process, and we can do that together across parties.
John Penrose
On a point of clarification, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the figure was closer to 20,000 about a year or a year and a half ago, before the last general election. In the run-up to the last general election, a huge effort was made to drive up the level of overseas registration, and it was pretty successful. The trouble was that we went from an absurdly low number to a pathetically low number. We are still only on about 5% of those who are eligible to vote. The figure is massively better and we should celebrate it, but we still have a heck of a long way to go.
Ian Lavery
I thank the Minister for that point of clarification. I thought I had got my figures wrong. We have, as the Minister correctly points out, some way to go. That is the case not just overseas, but here in the UK. Millions of people who are eligible to vote are not even registered. It is an electoral crisis, and we need cross-party agreement on how we can deliver something much more democratic than what we have at the moment.
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that extending the franchise is no good for democracy if, in so doing, we encourage or allow fraud to take place? Does he agree, therefore, that in any widening of the franchise or in any proposal to bring forward internet use, we must make sure that it is copper-bottomed certain that fraud cannot take place?
Ian Lavery
The right hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point, which was also raised by the hon. Member for Christchurch. If we are to look at an alternative means of voting in whatever type of election, it has got to be copper bottomed. It has got to be so secure that it contains no mechanism for failure. It is an innovative idea and a new vision, but we have got to get it right. People feel more secure now about internet banking and lots of other things that they do on the internet, and they have to feel secure if they are to participate in that way. It is really important that we get security right from day one.
As I mentioned, the hon. Member for Christchurch is to be congratulated on raising these issues, many of which will undoubtedly come back to the House in time. In reality, the Government do not have a good record when it comes to making changes to our democracy, and with the changes to the parliamentary boundaries, I fear that that record will only deteriorate. However, as I have explained, we in the Opposition should look to work together with the Minister and his colleagues in a cross-party way to ensure that when people go to vote, they feel that they are participating in a genuinely open and fair process.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I rise to support the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope). I am grateful to him for allowing my name to appear as one of his supporters on the back page. I commend him for his excellent speech, but I want to condemn his remark that he feels as though his Bill is premature, because I do not think it is premature at all. He has introduced the Bill to advance a manifesto commitment in a week in which the Government seem to have backtracked on several manifesto commitments, especially with regard to our pledges on the renegotiation of our settlement with the European Union. I congratulate him on the fact that his Bill is commendably short and therefore highly understandable and digestible for everyone.
Sir Greg Knight
Is my hon. Friend aware that support for the Bill goes beyond the list of names that are printed on the back of it?
Mr Hollobone
My right hon. Friend demonstrates that by his presence here today. I know that the subject of the Bill is being talked about in the pubs and clubs of Yorkshire, and he has brought the concerns of the people of Yorkshire to the House. On the south coast, where my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch comes from, the subject is the talk of the town. It is an extremely serious issue. The figures that my hon. Friend has revealed to the House will shock the nation.
Oliver Colvile
I have been down to the south of France quite a bit to talk to members of Conservatives Abroad. Believe me, this is quite a big issue for them.
Mr Hollobone
My hon. Friend’s speaking tour of the continent is famous, and I am sure will become legendary as time goes on. I have to disappoint him, however, because hedgehogs are not included in the Bill.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I hope that the hon. Gentleman is talking about continental hedgehogs or world hedgehogs, not UK hedgehogs; otherwise he is going off the subject.
Mr Hollobone
Hedgehogs overseas will not be eligible for registration, but I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) is committed to the issue of overseas voter registration, as I am. He will share my shock, on behalf of our constituents, at the figures that have been revealed to the House today. Will the Minister be kind enough to intervene on me in a moment to give us the total number of electors in this country, so that we can establish the proportion represented by the 6 million potential overseas voters as a percentage of the total UK electorate?
John Penrose
I think the figure is roughly 44 million. If I get more precise divine inspiration, I may help my hon. Friend out a little more, but it is that sort of ballpark figure.
Mr Hollobone
I am most grateful for that intervention, and that is the sort of figure that I had in mind. We are now aware that there are potentially 6 million British voters, in addition to the 44 million who are currently registered, who could take part in UK general elections but who are unable to do so because they are not registered. That is a shockingly large figure, and I am surprised that the Government are not giving the issue more priority. Surely, with our traditions of empire and of spreading good government and democracy around the world, we would at the very least want to encourage those 6 million British citizens who are living abroad to retain their franchise in this country and their ability to participate democratically in the future of what is still their nation. I think the nation would be very surprised by the fact that there are 6 million people living abroad whom most of us would like to take part in UK elections.
Clause 1 of this excellent Bill would enable those 6 million British citizens to take part only in
“United Kingdom Parliamentary elections if they were registered to vote”.
Although the provision is fantastic, I would want to take it further. It seems to me that it is important that British citizens living abroad should be able to take part in local government and mayoral elections if they want to do so. At the moment, an EU citizen living in this country quite rightly cannot take part in UK parliamentary elections, or at least they cannot do so yet—that may change if we decide to remain in the European Union—but they can take part in local government elections. It seems to me that British citizens, whether they live in this country or abroad, should be able to participate in all elections at every level of the democratic franchise. If I had the good fortune to end up on the Public Bill Committee, I would seek to amend clause 1(a) to extend the franchise to local government elections.
Oliver Colvile
Does my hon. Friend not recognise that local government is about delivering local services? If people do not physically live in the place where those public services are delivered, it seems to me rather strange for them to vote in local elections.
Mr Hollobone
My hon. Friend makes a fair point. However, overseas voters do not physically live in this country, but that does not mean that they are not interested in its future direction. It is true that they do not receive specific local government services where they last lived, but they would still be interested in the future direction of their former local area. Many overseas voters also have close family relatives living in the same local government area.
That leads me to another point, which is about where overseas voters should be registered. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch will have received, as I and I am sure most Members have received, correspondence from British pensioners living overseas about the fact that they are not entitled to the full uprating of the state pension in some countries, which is an extremely important issue. I always go back to those who contact me to ask, “Can you tell me if you were previously a resident in Kettering, because I am not sure why you’re contacting me?” For those who say that they used to live in Kettering and give me their former address, I have been very happy to take up their cause with the appropriate Minister. When overseas voters are registered, it is very important that they are registered in the last place they lived in this country. It should not be too difficult to ensure that the system works in that way.
Hon. Members have spoken about clause 3. I have concerns about internet voting. However, it is quite clear that it has never been easier to enter oneself on the electoral register on the internet, and that should be encouraged for British citizens living overseas.
I was interested in the remarks of the Labour spokesman, the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery). I congratulate him on his debut performance on the Front Bench. How refreshing it is to see that a man of his calibre—he is closer than most of his colleagues to the beating heart of the Labour party outside the Chamber—has made his way on to the Front Bench. It seems to me that there is hope for the Labour party when Members of his quality can represent it in that way, and I think that trend should be encouraged.
On all these electoral issues, we must make sure that as many people as possible who should be able to vote actually end up doing so. We should not try to predict which way people are going to vote on any particular issue. The important point is that British overseas voters should be able to fulfil their civic duty in retaining their right to participate in the British franchise. The Bill seeks to encourage that. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is not premature in bringing forward the Bill. I hope that the Government will respond positively to his crusade for electoral justice, and I am sure we all look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)
I join in the chorus of congratulations for my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on introducing the Bill. I completely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) that it is not necessarily premature. I prefer the adjectives “forward-thinking” and “far-sighted”, if I may put it that way, because my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is absolutely right to observe that it was a manifesto commitment at the recent general election.
My hon. Friend is therefore heading in a direction that we would wholeheartedly endorse. I will take issue with the details of how he proposes to do it—I have concerns about the practicalities—but we are absolutely on the same page about the principle and about not dilly-dallying and shilly-shallying, or generally not according it a high priority. I want to reassure him that a great deal of work is going on at the moment. I can tell him that parliamentary draftsmen are even now beavering away at high speed on a Bill with all sorts of different possible working titles, including the overseas electors Bill and the overseas voters Bill. We are definitely not hanging around; we are moving forward with it. As he will appreciate—he will be more aware of this than most, having introduced this private Member’s Bill—many important details need to be got right if we are to enfranchise this important group. My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering is quite right to observe that this is a tremendously important extension of our franchise that will in many cases extend democratic rights to those whom people would think or expect to have the vote.
I should say up front that I was delighted to hear that the Labour party is very happy at least to consider, and has no objection to reviewing, the question of whether the rule should be set at 15 years. The hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) is absolutely right to observe that other countries set that time limit at different points. In fact, our country has set it at different dates in the past, so there is not necessarily a right or a wrong moment. The figure of 15 years is quite arbitrary, so I am encouraged by the fact that he is willing to participate constructively in a review.
Oliver Colvile
I thank my hon. Friend for saying that the Government wish to introduce such a Bill, but what is his timetable for producing legislation that might support much of what our hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) is proposing?
John Penrose
I am afraid that I must fall back on the response “in due course”, to use that timeworn parliamentary phrase, rather than give my hon. Friend a firm date. However, I assure him that work is going on right now and that we are not hanging around. I will have to leave it at that, but I hope to be able to provide further clarity—in due course.
Mr Hollobone
I am enjoying the Minister’s speech hugely and I am encouraged by what he has said so far. Will he do the House a service by placing the 15-year limit in context? We have not yet heard where it comes from, who imposed it and why. There is growing consensus that it needs to be abolished.
John Penrose
As the hon. Member for Wansbeck acknowledged, the 15-year rule is a bit of a hybrid. The limit has been as low as five years and as high as 20 years. Successive Governments have extended it or narrowed it over time. I do not want to be too specific about its history. The point behind the observation of my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering is that, because the line has been moved about several times under successive Governments, it is inherently arbitrary to choose a particular length of time that people have been away. The Government made a manifesto commitment to enfranchise all British citizens, no matter how long they have been abroad, because we think that choosing 15 years, as opposed to 14 or 16 years, is inherently like sticking a dart in a dartboard. We need to say that if British citizens maintain British citizenship that brings with it rights, obligations and a connection with this country, and that that should endure.
I am encouraged by the Labour party’s view. I welcome the fact that it is willing to embark on a review of the 15-year rule. I also welcome the hon. Member for Wansbeck’s comments about the need for a cross-party approach to driving up registration among all under-represented groups, regardless of where they live—whether they are resident in the UK or abroad. He is absolutely right to point out that there are a succession of groups who are less represented and less registered than others. His colleague, the hon. Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero), wrote to me recently about students. They are one of the less well-represented groups. Some black and minority ethnic communities are also less well represented. Ex-patriots are the worst of all in terms of the percentage of rates of registration—down at about 5%, as we have heard from earlier speeches. They are probably the least well represented of all the under-represented groups.
My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and others made the point that we cannot—we would all, as politicians or democrats, be diminished if we did—proceed purely on the basis of narrow party political advantage. It is far better, as the hon. Member for Wansbeck observed, to proceed on the basis of what is right for democracy. We must proceed on a cross-party basis without working out which particular groups might be more likely to favour his party or mine. If we all drive up registration in all groups on that basis, we will improve our democratic credentials and reduce voter cynicism very dramatically. That cynicism is perhaps one of the more corrosive influences not just in reducing levels of voter registration but levels of voter turnout—people who are registered but choose not to exercise their vote. We are all familiar with that problem, and cynicism about politics, the political process and politicians is a key driver of it.
One thing we are trying to do, in improving both the registration process and the reasons for encouraging people to register, is to make registration more convenient, simpler, easier, cheaper and more efficient—what we call the plumbing of registration. We want to make it less of a hassle to get registered.
Sir Greg Knight
Will the Minister confirm to the House that he is not looking at the possibility of introducing an Australian-type requirement that people have to vote?
John Penrose
I am happy to confirm that to my right hon. Friend. He is absolutely right. That has not been part of our democratic tradition in this country. It could, of course, be decided and introduced after debate, but it was not in our party’s manifesto and it is not part of our current plans.
Mr Hollobone
On registration, a point I have made many times—it fell on deaf ears in the coalition Government; I hope that will not be the case today—is that those in almost all under-represented groups will have had some contact or multiple contacts with Government agencies of one sort or another, whether in relation to benefits, passports, applications for this or applications for that. Why can we not have a simple cross-governmental rule that every time somebody comes into contact with a Government agency they are asked the question, “Are you on the electoral register?” If the answer is no, they could then be told how to register.
John Penrose
My hon. Friend gave a good example with regard to pensions, saying that the Department for Work and Pensions will inevitably have a list of people to whom it is paying pensions. That one cogent example should therefore allow an opportunity to provide the kind of nudge he talks about. I can confirm that we have trialled a series of links on various Government website pages to do what he describes. We are currently investigating whether that can be extended more broadly across more Government services, so that any time anybody living abroad or in a domestic under-represented group comes into contact with the British state we can provide a nudge for them to get registered. We are looking at that extremely carefully, as it seems like it could be a very sensible way of proceeding. It may not be the whole answer—in some cases it may not be a very effective answer and in others it may be highly effective—but it is certainly something we want to pursue.
Oliver Colvile
As my hon. Friend may know, I represent a naval garrison city with a large military presence. How can we ensure that more military personnel are registered? I have to say that I have found registration levels to be very disappointing.
John Penrose
Special registration arrangements for service personnel and Crown servants are already in place. Special registration systems allow them to register in a slightly different, and I hope more convenient, way than other ex-patriots living in other parts of the world.
What we have encountered, not only in relation to service personnel and Crown servants but other ex-patriots, is that for those people living abroad who are registered to vote and have also enrolled for a postal vote, which they need to do as well, the two processes are not necessarily as linked up as they might be. They may be registered to vote but not automatically registered for a postal vote, even if they thought they were. Sometimes postal vote forms have arrived too late, depending on where they are in the world and the efficiency of the postal service. What we have tried to do more recently, therefore, is change the guidelines, in conjunction with the Electoral Commission, to ensure that postal vote forms are sent out earlier, with sufficient postage on them and so on, and that the overseas postal vote forms can in future be sent out among the earliest batches in each local constituency to make sure that the chances of them arriving in time in every part of the world are maximised. All those measures will help to drive up both registration rates and voting rates.
This issue is not just about the plumbing of registration and voting. Those things are important and I am sure we can make significant improvements to them and get more people in under-represented groups to register and, with any luck, help them to vote. This is not just about plumbing, however; it is also about poetry. There are some groups who are not registered, not because it is inconvenient or because they have not got around to it, but because they view the political process with cynicism or suspicion. Again, this is where a cross-party approach to try to enthuse, convince and persuade people that the answer to their cynicism about the way politics and the democratic process works is to get involved, not to avoid the whole process. If one party tried to do that on its own, it would be far less effective than if we joined hands. Indeed, it is not just up to politicians. We need to joins hands not just across the political spectrum but with civic society groups right the way across the spectrum. We are already doing some of those things. Incidentally, the Electoral Commission is also trying to work in this fashion, too. I welcome the Labour party’s offer of a cross-party approach. I absolutely and would dearly like to pursue that with it if I can. I have already mentioned this to the hon. Member for Wansbeck’s Opposition Front-Bench colleague. The hon. Member for Ashfield is not here today, but she and I have had conversations in the past. It is absolutely the right way to go.
The Electoral Commission understands the importance of not just the plumbing but the poetry, if I may use that analogy. For example, it announced in the course of the past week a collaboration with the writers of “Hollyoaks”. I understand—I hope I am not acting as a terrible plot-spoiler here, Mr Deputy Speaker—that they intend to blend through the storyline of that soap an encouragement to register and information about why it is important to register, how to register and so on. That is something I would hope we all support.
Oliver Colvile
Does my hon. Friend also recognise that “The Archers”, and not just “Hollyoaks”, has a significant part to play? It is a very good soap opera, and would it not be wonderful were it to start talking about people abroad?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I think it is time I joined in. Whatever we do, we are not going around the soaps. We are talking about overseas registration, not plots about registration in the UK.
John Penrose
You are absolutely right, Mr Deputy Speaker, although I would observe that many of these soaps are also watched by overseas and expatriate voters living abroad, but I shall move on before I try your patience any further.
The Bill also deals with internet voting, which is potentially a very important area. It is interesting that we all increasingly take for granted the use of the internet for more and more things. If someone said 10 years ago that a large proportion of us—if not yet a majority—would be using internet banking or shopping, people would have been very surprised, yet here we are, and it is increasingly a part of normal life in this country. If online voting is not already happening—some, like my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, are already asking the question—it will certainly start to happen in due course. People will start to ask, “Why can we not vote online?” The trade union movement has already asked the question, while other organisations are starting to use internet voting for some issues.
That said, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) rightly asked about the fraud issue, and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has built this into clause 3. There is an important point here about fraud prevention. While we are increasingly used to online banking and shopping, and those sorts of things, if, in those cases, something goes wrong, broadly speaking, the bank or credit or debit card company—or whoever it might be—will usually stand behind the transaction and take the risk from the consumer. That is perfectly acceptable for commercial transactions. The difficulty is that it is extremely hard to work out whether a vote has been intercepted and potentially subverted—switched from a vote for Labour to a vote for the Conservative party, or from an aye to a no in a referendum—especially given that we have secret ballots, which are an essential part of our democracy. At the same time, the stakes could not be higher. Clearly, stealing the government of a country is an incredibly serious issue, and one that it would be extremely hard to unpick afterwards, in the way we can unpick a faulty commercial transaction, make good the money and undertake a forensic analysis.
I am not saying we do not expect online voting to happen in due course, but I believe that the fraud issues are not yet resolved. I am sure that the technology will continue to advance and be ready at some point, and that we will have a robust and transparently solid political and democratic process that will allow this to happen, but we are not yet there. However, given the way the world is moving—it is happening in more and more areas of our lives—it would be a brave man who said it will never happen, even if, like my hon. Friend, they are not that familiar with Skype. I suspect it is a question of when, not if, but I am afraid that, at the moment at least, the answer is, “Not yet.”
I compliment my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch on introducing the Bill, and I reassure him that we are working extremely hard and hope to bring forward a Bill that will do many of the things that his proposes, including getting rid of the 15-year rule and enfranchising British citizens living abroad. In parallel to but separately from the Bill, we are trying to drive up registration among under-represented groups, including expatriates.
Sir Greg Knight
Will the Minister clarify the remarks he just made? Is he saying that internet voting is not part of the proposals the Government are currently preparing?
John Penrose
I will clarify that: it is not currently part of our proposals, because we do not yet think the technology is safe enough. We will keep the technology under continual review, and at some point there might be a democratic consensus that it has become safe enough, but that moment is not now.
To conclude, we welcome the intention behind the Bill and remain committed to the manifesto pledge. We will introduce our version of it, which I hope will be different in technicalities but congruent in direction with getting rid of the 15-year rule and therefore enfranchising all missing voters. In parallel, we will introduce new measures, on a cross-party basis if possible, to find those under-represented groups, whether they are overseas or domestic voters, and to drive up registration wherever we can. With that, I hope that my hon. Friend will be reassured and feel able to withdraw the Bill, while he waits for our Bill to arrive, which I hope will not be too much longer.
Mr Chope
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for his response, and I am delighted to hear that, even as we speak, parliamentary counsel are struggling with the detail of what I hope will be not just a Government Bill, but Government regulations to go with it, so that there is not a long gap between the Bill and the regulations. It is often much better if the draft regulations can be produced at the same time as the Bill. If that is the reason for the delay, I will be prepared to accept that, because it is much easier for the House to consider a Bill when it has the regulations—the detailed implementation scheme—before it. I can understand that it has not been possible to do that. I was disappointed with the expression “in due course”, but I can assure him that, if we have not made progress by the time of the next Queen’s Speech—whenever that might be—I shall seek to resurrect the Bill in the next Session and to keep the pressure on the Government.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) for his generous remarks, but I am not sure I agree with his views about extending clause 1 to local government elections. That would involve a complex interaction, because, at the moment, EU citizens resident here can participate in local elections—the trigger is their residence here. If we said that non-British people not resident could participate in local government elections, that would be a significant extension and might have serious implications. Before we knew it—although this will, I hope, be sorted out on 23 June—we might find the EU suggesting that its citizens should be able to participate in our general elections, which would be completely wrong.
With those remarks, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Motion and Bill, by leave, withdrawn.
Off-shore Wind Farm Subsidies (Restriction) Bill
Order for Second Reading read.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 4 March.
EU Membership (Audit of Costs and Benefits) Bill
(8 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
I call Mr Chope to move the Second Reading debate on behalf of Mr Bone.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I apologise on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) for his being unable to participate in this debate. He has been waiting for the opportunity for a long time, and it is only because of a series of supervening events that he cannot be here to move the Bill’s Second Reading himself. In those circumstances, he asked me, as a co-sponsor, to move it on his behalf, which it gives me great pleasure to do.
You may be aware, Madam Deputy Speaker, that this Bill, or a Bill very similar to it, has had a long gestation. It was back in the 2007-08 Session that I brought forward a Bill, supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough and other colleagues. It was entitled the European Union (Audit of Benefits and Costs of UK Membership) Bill to
“establish a Commission to carry out regular audits of the economic costs and benefits of the UK’s membership of the European Union; and for connected purposes.”
That Bill had almost a full day’s debate here on 20 June 2008.
As we start today’s debate it is worth recalling some of the comments I made when opening the previous debate. The Bill was narrower than this one, in that it dealt only with the economic costs and benefits of the UK’s membership of the European Union. I started by referring to the preface to an excellent work by Ian Milne, “A Cost Too Far?: An Analysis of the Net Economic Costs and Benefits for the UK of EU Membership”. In the foreword to that pamphlet, which was published in July 2004, the former distinguished and late Speaker Lord Weatherill stated that when he was the Conservative Government’s Deputy Chief Whip in 1972, he supported entry into the European Common Market
“on the assurance of the Prime Minister, Mr Edward Heath that ‘joining the community does not entail a loss of national identity or an erosion of essential national sovereignty.’”
Lord Weatherill went on to say that things had moved on a bit since then, and that what was important was that
“Parliamentarians now have a sacred duty honestly to explain the pros and cons of our developing relationship with the European Union. Only then can the people make an informed choice.”
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on putting forward this magnificent Bill and I thank him for giving me the privilege of being one of his co-sponsors. In the debate of 2008 and in the research by Ian Milne, was any prediction made that in 2016 we would be faced with a £62 billion annual deficit of trade with the European Union?
Mr Chope
The short answer is no. I do not think it was ever envisaged that the European Union would be such a manifest failure as an economic entity and would be unable to maintain its share of world trade. We know that since 1972, the EU share of world trade has declined significantly. We know, too, that the EU has not been growing in economic terms in the way people thought would be possible—even to the extent that we now face a situation in which half the new jobs being created in Europe are being created in the United Kingdom, while the other half are being created in the 27 other countries of the EU. When we first joined, the share of trade that the EU had with the rest of the world was significantly higher than it is now, despite the fact that at that time it had many fewer member countries. As the EU has got larger in numbers, its influence over trade in the rest of the world has declined. I do not think that any of that was anticipated by Mr Milne in his pamphlet.
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
Does not the Bill have a serious drawback if it is seeking to educate the public? Clause 6 seeks to set up a commission that will report within 12 months. If we are supporting this Bill, is not the inescapable conclusion that we are, in effect, arguing for the referendum to be put back two years?
Mr Chope
My right hon. Friend is a lawyer, so he knows that he is absolutely correct. The Bill was brought forward back in June and we did not know then what would happen. We did not know when we would get a referendum. Now we know that we are going to get a referendum so I will not ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading today. It has been overtaken by the welcome fact that we are getting our referendum on 23 June. I hope that when that happens, we will be able to have an objective assessment of the costs and benefits of our membership, although I must say that on the basis of recent events, I am rather concerned about whether there will be such an open and objective assessment by the Government. Still, I live in hope.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
Is my hon. Friend proposing to withdraw the Bill or is he going to carry on with it?
Mr Chope
The answer to my hon. Friend is, as always, that I am going to wait and see what the Minister says in response to my Bill. I am not going to anticipate that. Discussing the Bill provides us with a chance to look at the various issues surrounding information, or lack of it, on the costs and benefits of our membership of the European Union.
Today, I am delighted that Lord Howard—Michael Howard, as he was when he was a Member of this House—has decided to join the leave campaign. I had the privilege of serving with him as a junior Minister for several years in the late 1980s so I know what a great supporter he is of the idea of Europe. What he has shown today by his decision, however, is that he is very much against us continuing to be members of a European Union that is increasingly out of touch with the needs of the people of Europe. That is a really important move, following so soon after the decision by Lord Owen to join the leave campaign.
As a further response to the point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight), let me say that I tabled a parliamentary question to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 1 June 2015. It said:
“To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will commission an independent audit of the economic costs and benefits of UK membership of the EU.”
Do you know what answer I got, Madam Deputy Speaker? I shall read it to the House. It said:
“The Government has a clear mandate to improve Britain’s relationship with the rest of the EU, and to reform the EU”—
I emphasise that point—
“so that it creates jobs and increases living standards for all its citizens. The Government will hold an in/out referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU by the end of 2017.”
What was the answer to the question—I hear you saying, Madam Deputy Speaker—about the economic costs and benefits of UK membership? There was no answer. Why was there no answer from the Treasury Minister? Why did the Treasury not want to answer the question? It knew that if it said “no”, it would be ridiculed; and it knew that it did not want such an audit, so it was not prepared to say yes.
Mr Hollobone
Is it not the case that Her Majesty’s Government have always been frightened of an independent objective analysis of the costs and benefits of our membership, which explains why they were so worried about the answer to my hon. Friend’s question? Only today, we have heard the latest spin from Her Majesty’s Government that, were we to leave the European Union, the pound would fall and holidays would be more expensive for those going to Europe. I always thought it was the convention of Her Majesty’s Government, and in particular the Chancellor of the Exchequer, not to comment on the future direction of exchange rates, so does this not demonstrate that we are now in an era of spin because they are frightened of independent objective assessment?
Mr Chope
As ever, my hon. Friend has made an important and, indeed, fundamental point. I would just add that it is even odder that the Government should comment on sensitive issues relating to exchange rates at the same time—on the very same day—as saying that they were not prepared to answer questions about the disparity between the number of people from the European Union who registered for national insurance numbers last year and the number of people who are alleged to have come here from the European Union to work. I believe that more than 600,000 asked for national insurance numbers, but the Government say that only about 250,000 came here in that year. When the Government were asked to explain the difference between the two figures, their answer—it is in the papers today, so it must be correct—was that it would be wrong to answer the question, because it might influence the forthcoming referendum. I am sure that the Chancellor, the Prime Minister or whoever it was who said that we would all have to pay more for our holidays did not do so in order to try to influence the outcome of the referendum.
Mr Hollobone
I disagree with my hon. Friend. They said that deliberately to try to mislead people into thinking that their holidays would become more expensive. The truth is that exchange rates go up and down, and are very difficult to predict. However, if the Government are going to start commenting on the future direction of exchange rates, should not they at least do so in a balanced way, and point out that were the pound to decrease in value, that would be extremely good news for hard-pressed British exporters who are seeking to sell more of our products abroad?
Mr Chope
Absolutely. That is another side of this very important argument.
I referred extempore to what the Government were reported to have said yesterday about the disparity between the figures, but let me now give the exact figures. A total of 630,000 EU citizens registered for national insurance numbers entitling them to work or claim benefits in Britain last year, yet it is said that there were only 257,000 new EU migrants. Incidentally, 209,000 of those national insurance number registrations came from residents, or citizens, of Romania and Bulgaria.
Jonathan Portes, of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, sought an explanation for this extraordinary disparity, but was told that the Government were not prepared to give more details because
“it might prejudice the outcome of the EU referendum.”
Mr Chope
Well, it depends what the answer was, does it not?
This illustrates the problem that we have with the unequal use of resources and statistics. Having refused to answer the simplest of questions from me last June, the Treasury is now refusing to inquire further into what is, on the face of it, an extraordinary disparity, while at the same time making the scaremongering assertions to which my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) has referred.
The purpose of my Bill is to introduce some objectivity and independence into the whole process of evaluating the costs and benefits of our membership of the European Union. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie), the Chairman of the Treasury Committee, has launched an inquiry into the economic costs and benefits. He is doing a lot of good work, and I look forward to the publication of the report, but, having read much of the oral evidence, I note that the answer given by a great many experts, whether pro or anti-EU, is that it is extremely hard to be sure one way or the other.
During the forthcoming referendum campaign, we might be well advised to note the information that is set out so ably in House of Commons Library briefing paper 06091, which was published in January this year. According to chapter 6,
“There is no definitive study of the economic impact of the UK’s EU membership or the costs and benefits of withdrawal. Framing the aggregate impact in terms of a single number, or even irrefutably demonstrating that the net effects are positive or negative, is a formidably difficult exercise.”
Why is that?
“This is because many of the costs and benefits are subjective or intangible. It is also because a host of assumptions must be made to reach an estimate. If the UK were to leave the EU, assumptions must be made about the terms on which this would be done and how Government would fill the policy vacuum left in areas where the EU currently has competence. If the UK were to remain in the EU, assumptions would need to be made about how policy in the EU would develop.”
That is a very important point. We often hear—and we heard from the Prime Minister this week—words to the effect that there will be no leap in the dark if we decide to stay in the European Union; it will all be as plain as a pikestaff. However, the House of Commons Library briefing clearly states that we do not know how policy in the EU would develop if we chose to remain:
“Estimates of the costs and benefits of EU membership are likely to be highly sensitive to such assumptions.”
If the Government, whose current robust line is that we must at all costs stay in the European Union, start presenting figures and data, how shall we be able to assure ourselves that those figures and data are objective? I think the answer is that we shall not be able to do that, because the figures and data will come from a biased source.
Mr Hollobone
It seems to me that, rather than trying to present independent and objective statistics and data to the British public, Her Majesty’s Government are putting increasing emphasis on spin. For example, the claim that 3 million British jobs depend on our membership of the European Union is trotted out by all those who are campaigning for us to remain in the European Union, although any objective, independent assessment demonstrates that it is a complete myth.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is only one of the figures that have been strongly criticised in evidence to the Treasury Committee. It has now been ridiculed, but can we be sure that it will not be replicated in the Government propaganda leading up to the referendum?
The House of Commons Library briefing states:
“Open Europe (2015) The Consequences, challenges & opportunities facing Britain outside the EU estimated the effect on UK GDP in 2030”—
some 15 years from now—
“of leaving the EU could potentially be in the range from -2.2% to +1.55% of GDP. However, the study argued that a more realistic range was between -0.8% and +0.6% of GDP.”
In other words, there is no significant difference either way. Yet between now and 23 June, I predict the Government will be suggesting that it is all one way and it will be an economic disaster if we have the courage and conviction to take responsibility for our own lives and our own destiny and leave the EU.
The other part of the Library paper I want to mention is a reference to a May 2014 report by Civitas on trade advantages of the EU. It found that the trade benefits of EU membership were exaggerated. Based on a study of UK exports since 1960, Civitas found that UK trade with European nations outside the EU had increased dramatically, while the UK’s trade with other EU members accounted for no more of its trade with leading economies than in 1973. That goes back to a point we were making earlier.
Mr Hollobone
Yes, we were making that point earlier, and when we joined the EU—the Common Market as it then was in 1972—we did not have a £62 billion annual trade deficit with our EU partners. Over the 44 years of our membership, the trade deficit has grown. To put this in simple terms, the EU nations are selling to us £62 billion-worth every year more than we are selling to them. So our trade with our EU partners has deteriorated over the past 44 years, not improved.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is absolutely right and the figures he quotes are almost identical to those in this House of Commons Library briefing paper, which quotes figures from the Office for National Statistics balance of payments statistical bulletin. They show exactly the effect my hon. Friend describes. I wonder how much of that information we will see in the Government’s leaflets in the forthcoming campaign.
Mr Hollobone
Can my hon. Friend also confirm that, as a result of our EU membership, we have lost Britain’s seat at the World Trade Organisation? That means that we have lost our sovereign ability to negotiate friendly free trade arrangements with other countries around the world. So, for example, a country as small as Iceland has negotiated a friendly free trade treaty with an economic superpower like China, yet we are forbidden to do exactly the same thing because of our membership of the EU.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend again makes a telling point. I was going to come to it later, but as he has raised it now, let us put on the record, for example, the concern many of our constituents have about TTIP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership being negotiated between the EU and the United States. A legal opinion has been circulated to a number of us over the last 24 hours saying if TTIP goes ahead as proposed, it would potentially be disastrous for our national health service. I do not know whether that is correct or not, but there is an opinion saying that that could be the impact. Why are we relying on the EU to negotiate a trade deal with the US? Why do not we, as the fifth largest economy in the world—English-speaking, committed to free trade—make our own trade deal with the US? The short answer is that we are not allowed to do so until we leave the EU.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I wholeheartedly agree with what my hon. Friend is saying. On TTIP, does he agree that the following is an interesting factor in any cost-benefit analysis? We are always told that if we want a free trade agreement with the EU, we will have to accept free movement of people. Does he think America will accept the free movement of people—of all EU citizens—into the United States when it signs its free trade agreement with the EU?
Mr Chope
As my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) suggests, North America has its own North American Free Trade Agreement, which brings Canada, Mexico and the United States together. However, as Donald Trump and many others would bear witness, under that there is no free movement of people between Mexico and the US or between Canada and US, but there is still a free trade agreement.
Sir Edward Leigh
More than that, Canada has an agreement with the EU on trade and there is no free movement of EU nationals into Canada.
Mr Hollobone
My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point about TTIP. He will have received letters and emails from constituents, as have I, expressing very real concern that the 28 additional words we need in the agreement to protect our NHS are not in the draft TTIP terms. Just to make it crystal clear, were we to leave the EU, we could negotiate such an agreement with the US and include in the agreement, under our new sovereign capabilities, those crucial 28 words that all the TTIP campaigners would like to see.
Oliver Colvile
Will my hon. Friend just explain then how long he thinks that might take given the time it has taken to get to the position we are in at the moment?
Mr Chope
That is interesting. I was at a meeting the week before last with a group of people from the US Senate and Congress who were interested in the subject of TTIP. I was invited to take the chair of this gathering, and one of the first questions I asked was how many of these people thought TTIP was going to be resolved by the end of this year. The answer was zero.
What we were told when the Prime Minister launched this initiative in 2013 was that we would get this sorted out before the end of the Obama presidency; it is absolutely clear we are not going to get it sorted out before then. So I then asked the same gathering of people how many of them thought it would be sorted out by the end of next year. Again, nobody thought that. Basically, the message coming from these people who are very well connected on Capitol Hill was that TTIP is very much in the long grass as far as the US is concerned because of the difficulties being put in the negotiations by the European Union, which is trying to maintain the protectionism that is still espoused by so many members of the EU and that is not compatible with what the US wants. So in answer to my hon. Friend’s question about how long a resolution would take, my view is that we would get a bilateral trade agreement between the UK and the US one heck of a sight quicker than we are ever going to get a trade deal between the EU and the US.
Mr Hollobone
To extend that principle into a future where Britain is outside the EU, given that we are already 100% compliant with all the EU obligations, should it not be possible to negotiate a free trade agreement between Britain and the EU in double-quick time after our EU exit?
Mr Chope
Absolutely. The fall-back position if we did not negotiate such a deal would be that we would have a continuing relationship on WTO rules, which are signed up to by the EU. So any suggestion that there would be a complete curtailment of trade between us and the EU when we leave is absurd. Why would the EU not want to sign up very quickly with the UK? They are selling us more than we are selling them, so it must be in their interests to try to maintain those connections. Tellingly, and disappointingly, in addressing this point in Monday’s statement the Prime Minister did not talk in absolute terms. Instead of facing up to the fact that we sell less to the European Union than it sells to us, he started talking in percentage terms. That is completely misleading because we are but one of 28 countries in the EU, so if we start talking about the percentage of EU exports that come to us compared with the percentage of our exports that go to the EU, we will present a distorted picture. It was very sad that the Prime Minister chose not to use the absolute figures and instead resorted to such misleading percentages.
Philip Davies
We are also told that if we had a free trade agreement with the EU, we would still have to have all our laws decided by the European Union. When my hon. Friend had his discussions with his American friends, did he become aware of whether the Americans were going to accept their law being changed for them by the European Union, by qualified majority voting, when they entered into their free trade agreement with it?
Mr Chope
We did not get down to that sort of detail, because the feeling was that we are a long way apart on this. There is also a feeling that there is a lot more commonality between the British people and the people of the United States; we share a common language, the common law and a common heritage, and that is very different from the approach of so many other EU countries. On the basis that we have this special relationship with the US, we would be able to prosper and develop our trade together through bilateral open trading arrangements far more effectively than is being done at the moment with the EU. That is an important factor to take into account when assessing the costs and benefits of membership.
I am conscious of the fact that a number of other people wish to participate in this debate, so I will not say much more now. I merely wish to point out that the Bill proposes terms of reference, whereby the independent commission that would be set up to examine the current costs and benefits would be
“taking into account the impact of membership on the UK’s—
(a) economy (including consideration of public expenditure and receipts resulting directly from membership”).
Of course, we know that in round figures we are paying in about £10 billion more than we get back every year. Interestingly, in yesterday’s statement on the EU solidarity fund and flooding the Minister made much of the fact that we would be applying to get some money back from the fund, but he did not think this would amount to anything more, at best, than about the equivalent of one day’s net contributions to the EU. He admitted that even getting back one day’s net contribution would involve an enormous amount of bureaucracy on both sides, which typifies the costs at the moment and how unfair it is that our people should be paying £10 billion net a year to the EU.
Sir Greg Knight
My hon. Friend made a prediction earlier. Will he comment on my prediction that if this country is misguided enough to vote to remain in the EU, within a few months our contribution to the EU will go up, because it is totally incapable of keeping within existing programmes and budgets?
Mr Chope
I agree absolutely with my right hon. Friend, who brings an enormous amount of experience, not only as a former trade Minister, but as a former Deputy Chief Whip. I am delighted that he is playing a key part in the leave campaign. What is happening in Europe to deal with the migration crisis is breath-taking in its incompetence. We are talking about a major cost; this crisis will potentially cost the EU a fortune. Who will have to contribute to those costs if we remain in the EU? It is none other than the British taxpayer. I think my right hon. Friend’s prediction is right, but I hope we will never see whether it comes to pass because by then we will have left the EU.
Mr Hollobone
Ten billion pounds sounds like an enormous figure, and it is, but people often struggle to deal with figures when they get so big, so let me place it into a local context. In Kettering, we are struggling to get £30 million for an improvement to Kettering general hospital and the development of an urgent care hub on the site there. That sum is less than one day’s subscription to the EU but we are having a really difficult job getting even that small a sum out of the Treasury. Imagine what we could do with £10 billion to spend on important public services across our country, providing hospitals, schools, doctors, police officers and nurses.
Mr Chope
I am not commenting on that, but we will have plenty of £30,000 sums to spend when we leave.
Clause 5(b) talks about taking into account our
“competitiveness and ability to trade freely (including consideration of the UK’s restricted ability to negotiate trade agreements and to engage in free trade with other countries)”.
I have already covered that. Subsection (c) then deals with the issue of
“national security and defence (including the UK’s ability to decide which non-nationals should be allowed to reside in the UK)”.
That is a very big subject and I suspect some of my colleagues will wish to go into it in a bit more detail. At the moment, we do not have any control over non-nationals from the EU coming into our country. The figures published yesterday show a massive increase in net migration—it was again more than 300,000 in the year to September 2015.
We all supported the Prime Minister and the Conservative party manifesto on the promise in 2010, in a pledge repeated during the last election campaign, that we would bring net migration in the UK down to the tens of thousands. I looked today in the press to see what the Prime Minister’s response was to the latest net migration figures, which show that more than 300,000 people came in that year period, 257,000 of whom came from the EU. If we were going to get the figure down to the tens of thousands and even if we prevented anybody from coming to this country from anywhere other than the EU, we would still have to reduce the number of people coming from the EU by about two thirds—from 257,000 to just less than 100,000. With the most heroic assumptions, how is it possible to say that the very modest measures contained in the package that came back from the negotiations in Brussels could ever deliver a reduction of 157,000 EU migrants a year?
Mr Hollobone
Is this not the crucial point for people who voted Conservative at the last election on the basis of that manifesto pledge to cut immigration to tens of thousands? The truth is that that objective will simply be unattainable while we remain a member of the EU, so the only way to solve this is to vote to leave on 23 June.
Mr Chope
Exactly. If we ask whether the Government have any idea how we could achieve that without leaving, I am sure we will be told that we cannot have any more information because it might prejudice the outcome of the referendum.
It is not just the numbers; there is also an associated cost. I refer to the document called “The best of both worlds”. There is a problem with the title of that document. I believe in one world, and the people who are defending our position in the European Union seem to be under the illusion that there is more than one world. There is just one world, and we can be the masters of our own destiny in that world if we are released from being in the European Union.
Mr Hollobone
Maybe some members of the Government are living on a different planet.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes the point in his own inimitable way. Perhaps that should be the subject of a parliamentary question in due course.
The document entitled “The best of both worlds” refers in paragraph 2.103 to the costs of the migration coming in. It has been pretty difficult to get hold of this information, but it has at last been wrung out of the Government. The document states:
“On average, families with a recent EEA migrant claim almost £6,000 per year in tax credits”.
If a million EU migrants have come in during the past four or five years, as we know from the latest figures, and over 40% of those are claiming tax credits, the cost of that is 400,000 multiplied by £6,000 per year. That is a lot of money, and that is just the cost of in-work benefits to non-UK citizens from the European Union. That creates pressure on our public services, such as health and schools. I saw in the Evening Standard last night how many people will not be able to get their children into the school of their choice in London in the coming year because of the increased population.
All the issues have a bearing on the question whether it is in our best interests to leave the European Union. Having done research such as I have, I am in no doubt that it would be in the best interests of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. The purpose of this Bill is to ensure that the Government put forward objective figures in relation to the issue, rather than figures that are based on prejudice.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) who, as ever, has put his case persuasively. I did not need much persuasion, as it happens, but if I had, he would certainly have persuaded me of the case that he made.
I shall focus on a few aspects of the Bill. One part that needs stressing is the independence that the Bill asks for any cost-benefit analysis. My fear is that over the next few months we will hear the Government say—we may even hear it from the Minister today—that they will do a cost-benefit analysis of our membership of the European Union, and, as we have been calling for that, we should be placated by that assurance. But we are not asking just for the Government’s cost-benefit analysis of our membership of the European Union. We already know the Government’s view of that, and I have no confidence at all in the Government producing an objective cost-benefit analysis. They will resort to all kinds of dodgy figures, spin, presumptions and so on, and we will no doubt end up being told that the benefits of being in the EU are enormous and the costs are negligible, and vice versa were we to leave.
I have no doubt that that is what the Government would do. We have only just started the referendum campaign and already some rather strange arguments have started to develop. I will come on to some of those shortly. The key part of the Bill, which I hope the Minister will take away with him for when the Government pull their cost-benefit analysis out of the hat, relates to the appointment of the commission that carries out the analysis. The Bill calls for a balance between those members of the commission in favour of remaining and those in favour of leaving the EU, with an equal number on either side. The chairman should be broadly neutral, and no member should be or have been a Member of the European Parliament or an employee of the European Commission, whose pension would therefore be dependent on our membership of the European Union.
Those are not unreasonable proposals. Most people would say that that is a reasonable basis for carrying out a cost-benefit analysis. If the Minister thinks that saying that the Government intend to conduct a cost-benefit analysis will satisfy us, it will not. We want some guarantee of the independence of the people involved, and only at that point will I be satisfied.
I was intrigued by what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said about the questions that he has posed to Treasury Ministers, and not getting an answer to the question, but a different answer altogether. Funnily enough, I asked the Chancellor a question in the Chamber a while ago. I thought it was quite a patsy question. As far as I could see, I was giving him a great opportunity to sell the benefits. I asked him in June last year to outline what exactly we get from our £19 billion membership fee to the European Union. Here was a great opportunity for the Chancellor to stand at the Dispatch Box and reel off a huge number of benefits that we get for our £19 billion membership fee. I could not have asked a more helpful question.
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that £19 billion is an inaccurate figure? It has recently been reported in the press that our membership of the EU costs up to £120 billion. The point of this debate is to try to find out exactly what our direct membership fees are to the EU and what benefits we get back from it.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right. I have taken the figure from the Office for Budget Responsibility, which publishes the figures in the Treasury Red Book. It states that our gross contribution is around £19 billion a year. The EU generously gives us back some of that money—a very small amount—as a rebate. That has been a diminishing amount since the Labour Government gave up much of our rebate for nothing in years gone by, but the gross figure that we hand over each year is £19 billion.
In answer to my question, the Chancellor said:
“I certainly commend my hon. Friend for his consistency. I remember that in his maiden speech he made the case for Britain leaving the European Union, and he will of course have his opportunity in the referendum. I would say that this is precisely the judgment that the British people and this Parliament have to make: what are the economic benefits of our European Union membership, such as the single market, and what would be the alternative? That will be part of the lively debate, and as I say, the Treasury will be fully involved in that debate.”—[Official Report, 16 June 2015; Vol. 597, c. 165.]
As far as I could see—people can make their own interpretation of the Chancellor’s reply—he could not give one single example of what we got back for our £19 billion membership fee. He knows, presumably, as he is a canny kind of fellow, that he could not say that we get free trade for our £19 billion a year, because he presumably knows, just as the rest of us know, for the reasons set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, that given that we have a £62 billion trade deficit with the EU, we would be able to trade freely with the EU if we were to leave.
David Morris
Hypothetically, if we did come out of the EU, what would happen to the £62 billion trade deficit? Does my hon. Friend have any idea how we would be able to pay Europe back, or vice versa?
Philip Davies
I suspect that, in the short term, not a fat lot would happen to the £62 billion trade deficit with the EU, as we would pretty much carry on in the same way. We would keep trading with it, and it would keep trading with us. I tried to check that out. I asked the Prime Minister, after one of his European Council meetings, whether he had had any discussions with Angela Merkel that would indicate that, if we were to leave the EU, she would want her country to stop selling BMWs, Mercedes, Volkswagens and Audis free of tariff to the UK. The Prime Minister did not say anything at all about that, so I presumed that he had not heard anything. Given his determination that we should stay in the EU, I am sure that, if he had had any inkling at all that the Germans were not going to continue selling us their cars free of tariff, he would have been more than happy to put it on the public record. As people can see from his answer, it appears that he had had no such indication from the German Government that they would stop trading freely with us.
Sir Edward Leigh
The answer to my hon. Friend’s question is simple: if we left the EU, we would not have to pay a £10 billion a year subscription just to have a £70 billion a year deficit.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. At the end of the day, what this boils down to is people’s confidence in their negotiating abilities. I used to work for Asda, and I fear that, if some of my hon. Friends had been our buyers and had used their negotiating skills, we would have gone bust. In effect, what many of my colleagues are saying—and what Labour Members are saying—is that we have a £62 billion trade deficit, but we do not think that we can negotiate a free trade agreement without handing over a huge membership fee every single year. That is the easiest negotiation known to mankind. If they cannot negotiate that deal, what on earth can these people negotiate? If the Prime Minister were to claim that he could not negotiate a free trade deal with the EU based on that trade deficit every year—I am sure that he will not say that because he claims to be a good negotiator—he would not be fit to lead this country into those negotiations. That is what I would say to anybody who aspires to such a role.
Mr Hollobone
Is not my hon. Friend’s point exactly right and enhanced by the fact that we already by definition meet 100% of the EU’s requirements for a free trade deal because we are part of the single market? Once we are outside the European Union, it should be relatively straightforward, given that we are the fifth largest economy in the world, to come up with terms.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The point he makes is self-evident, and I am sure that it will be self-evident to the British public.
When we look at the terms of reference of our cost-benefit analysis, the areas that the Bill asks the Government to consider are the economy, trade, national security, further regulation, and sovereignty.
David Morris
What I want to clarify is this: if we are the fifth largest economy in the world, how much is that down to trading with Europe, and how much does that contribute to us being the fifth largest economy in the world?
Philip Davies
It is not a question of “if”—we are the fifth largest economy in the world. That is a matter not of hypothesis or aspiration, but of fact. We are the fifth largest economy in the world, and therefore, clearly, we are in a very good position to negotiate trade deals. I am not sure that there is any country in the world that would not want to have a trade deal with the fifth largest economy in the world.
Interestingly, the people who are so anxious for us to stay in make what they think is the killer point that 44% of our exports go to the European Union and that only a very tiny proportion goes to the emerging economies of the BRIC—Brazil, Russia, India and China—nations. We should not boast about that; we should be deeply concerned. The fact is that we have got ourselves shackled to a declining part of the world’s economy. That is the problem for the remain campaigners. According to figures from the House of Commons Library, when we joined the European Union, the countries that make up the EU now account for a third of the world economy. By 2020, that will be 20%, by 2030 17% and by 2050 13%. We should bear in mind, too, that we are 4% of the world economy. If we were to leave the European Union we would take off the 4% that we represent, which would mean that the EU would be 9% of the world’s economy. Some people think that it is great that so much of our trade is dependent on being shackled to such a group, but I think that is something that we should be deeply concerned about. It is a matter of great shame that we have such a low proportion of trade with the growing parts of the world economy, which is why it is so important that we leave the European Union. We need to leave this declining market and start building up our trade with all the growing parts of the world economy. That is what we should be doing.
Mr Hollobone
The world’s largest economies in order are: China, America, Japan, Germany and Britain. Were we to leave the European Union, there is every chance that we could overtake Germany and move into fourth place. We could negotiate on our own terms, with our seat back at the World Trade Organisation, friendly free trade agreements with growing economies such as China and India, and all those old Commonwealth countries that we effectively abandoned in 1972.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. We are always told that the EU is the biggest single market in the world. What is not said is that it would not be if we were to leave. It is only the biggest single market in the world largely because we are a member of it. If we were to leave it, it certainly would not be. Nobody ever mentions that particular point.
Interestingly, a briefing from the House of Commons Library said that if we were to leave the European Union, the UK would be the EU’s single biggest export market—bigger than China, America and anywhere else in the world. Why on earth would the EU not want to do a free trade deal with its single biggest export market? Of course it would. Anybody who tries to suggest otherwise is either completely crackers or is deliberately misleading people. It is palpably clear that that would not be the case.
The case in terms of the economy and trade is very clear. Competitiveness is one of the key points. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch touched on that when he said that staying in the EU was a leap into the dark. Of course, it is just that. We pool our sovereignty in many areas because we sign lots of treaties, but when we sign treaties with other countries, that treaty agreement tends to stay the same; the nature of it does not change in any shape or form unless we agree to it. That is how treaties tend to work. But our membership of the European Union is based on a treaty that does not work like that. What happens is that, every so often, the European Commission, which is completely unelected and unaccountable to anybody, proposes new legislation. We think that it is completely ridiculous. In any other normal kind of treaty relationship, we would not be susceptible to it unless we agreed to it. With the EU, we are being asked to sign up to changes on a monthly basis based on qualified majority voting where we get outvoted in the Council of Ministers. If we vote to remain in the EU, we are not signing up to the status quo; the European Union does not do the status quo. The EU is always trying to introduce new regulations, new burdens on business, and new protectionist measures to protect its failing businesses, to protect French farmers and all the rest of it. Effectively, we are signing up to something about which we know little. We have no idea where it ends and what measures will be introduced as a result of it.
David Morris
As far as I am aware—I have been out to Brussels and done battle with the bureaucrats there—the problems are to do with not what Europe gives to us, but how ineffectively it is scrutinised when it comes here. A lot of the problems that we have are lost in translation. For example, there was a proposition to stop women wearing high heels in hairdressing salons, and that legislative measure spread to town halls, and perhaps even to shiny floors here in Parliament. When we drilled down into the detail, however, it was a mis-translation that eventually got the whole thing thrown out. Does my hon. Friend agree that more scrutiny should be given to European issues in Parliament and in Committees, and that more Committees should be set up should we vote to stay in the EU at the referendum?
Philip Davies
There is not much point in spending hours and hours scrutinising legislation that we have no ability to amend or change in any way. It does not matter how much time we spend scrutinising it; we are still susceptible to it, so I cannot see that there is a great deal of point in doing that. If my hon. Friend is right and a lot of the problems in this country are created by bad translations of European legislation, that is another good reason why we should leave the European Union, so that all our laws can be decided in this place and written in English so that we understand them. I am pleased that he has given us yet another reason—one I had not thought of—for leaving the European Union. His intervention is welcome.
Mr Hollobone
An extension of that argument is the imposition of VAT on key products in this country, and a lot of fuss has been made about the fact that we cannot cancel the 5% VAT on domestic fuel, which has a big impact on low-income households. Recently, a very big fuss was made about VAT on women’s sanitary products. The British Parliament and Government are unable to remove VAT on those items without the consent of the European Union. If people want such situations to change, surely the message is clear: vote to leave on 23 June.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right, and we have a ridiculous situation. We are supposed to be a proud nation, and in that debate on sanitary products, everybody in the House agreed that it was inappropriate for VAT be levied on them. If we were a properly sovereign nation outside the EU, that could be mended in a flash in the forthcoming Budget. In mid-March, the Chancellor could announce that VAT on sanitary products will be ended, and that would be the end of the situation. Instead we are left as a proud nation that resorts to a Treasury Minister saying, “I will commit to go and ask the EU if it will give us permission to do something. It will be hard. It might not want us to do this, so I cannot promise anything, but I will do my best and have a word.” What a situation we are in when we in this country are unable to make such decisions for ourselves.
My constituency suffered terribly from the floods over Christmas, and one of the worst affected places was the Bradford rowing club, which has to spend tens of thousands of pounds repairing the damage. It has to pay VAT on those repairs. I wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and said that given the extenuating circumstances, it would be a decent gesture for him to waive VAT on the repairs caused by that flooding. What was the answer? That the Chancellor’s hands are tied and he does not have the ability to waive VAT because that matter is decided by the European Union. Therefore, 20% will be added to the bill of my rowing club for the repairs from the flooding, and we cannot make decisions on VAT ourselves because they are decided for us by the European Union. It is funny how we never hear that from the remain campaigners. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) will defend that situation.
David Morris
I will defend that because VAT is the sole domain of HMRC and not the Chancellor of the Exchequer—I know because I had a similar problem in my constituency. Perhaps my hon. Friend will consider the point about sanitary products. I agree that we should not be paying VAT on them, but because of our special relationship in Europe, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince)—sadly, he is not in his place today—found a way around that VAT going to Europe, so that it now goes to charities. Does he agree that that was a good move?
Philip Davies
That had nothing to do with a special status, and neither does it benefit the consumer who still has to pay VAT on the sanitary products that they buy. Where the money ends up is of no benefit to the consumer whatsoever; it just means that it does not benefit the Treasury directly.
Mr Hollobone
As I understand it, VAT is still paid on the sanitary products and it still goes to Brussels, but the Chancellor is paying the equivalent sum of money to charities. We are effectively paying twice as much as we would if we had sovereignty.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend makes his point well, as always, but we should not be in this situation. Such decisions should be taken in this House for the benefit of our constituents, but they are not.
We are signing up to a treaty, and the EU is saying to us, “You sign the treaty, and if we want to change things against your wishes, we have the freedom to do so through qualified majority voting.” If I said to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, “Let’s sign a deal on something, but by the way, I can change the terms at any time, and there is nothing you can do to stop me”, I do not think you would sign up to it—nobody would sign up to such a deal, but that is in effect what we are being asked to sign up to in the EU referendum if we vote to remain.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend has not mentioned the part of the deal that states that we will now lose the little influence that we had in the past in relation to the deeper integration of the eurozone. For example, we will not be able to argue that Greece would be better off outside the eurozone, or have any influence on the consequences of a sclerotic eurozone being uncompetitive, and the result that that leads to of more people from the eurozone wanting to work in our country.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right. I have already covered economic and trade matters and regulations, and I know that other people want to speak so I shall not go on for too long. National security and immigration are crucial issues that are mentioned in clause 5 of the Bill. National security is a key area, and the remain campaign seems to think that it is one of its trump cards, and that we are more secure and safer from terrorist attacks within the European Union. I would love them to go and tell the people of Paris how much safer they were from terrorist attacks as a result of being in the European Union, but I suspect they would not get particularly far.
Last night in a debate at York University we hit a new low in the tactics of the remain campaign. I was making the point that we cannot stop people coming into the UK from the EU if they have a valid EU passport, and that that applied to everybody, whether law-abiding people or criminals. But would you believe what the remain campaign announced last night? Perhaps the Minister can confirm it. I am on the Justice Committee, but I was not aware of it. It emerged last night during the debate that, apparently, when an EU national comes to the UK, our robust border controls mean that we check who people are. Apparently, when passports are scanned—this was a new one on me—it flags up whether or not a person has criminal convictions in their home nation, which enables us to stop them entering the United Kingdom. If only that were the case. The most generous thing I can say about that claim is that it is an absolutely blatant lie, because no system exists across the European Union to scan passports, trigger a huge list of criminal convictions and enable us to stop people coming into the country. That claim is simply untrue—I cannot be any clearer than that. The Minister may want to confirm or deny that when he comments, but let us please have an honest debate about these things. That system does not exist.
Philip Davies
I invite people to look at the transcript of what I said—I am not sure I did say that terrorism came only from other parts of the European Union and that it could not be home-grown. Of course it can be—it is both. We cannot stop British people from living in Britain, and I do not think that anybody has ever proposed that we should, but the fact that we have home-grown terrorists is surely no reason to let in people from other countries who may want to cause us harm.
If people think that this robust system is in place, perhaps they would like to explain why so many crimes in the UK each year are committed by EU nationals and why the UK prison population of EU nationals has gone through the roof since we had free movement of people. The reason why it has gone through the roof since we had free movement of people is that a lot of those people have taken advantage of that arrangement to come here to commit their crimes. That is the fact of the matter; it may be an inconvenient fact, but nobody can deny that that is what has happened.
Every quarter, the Ministry of Justice publishes the prison population figures broken down by nationality. I invite anybody to look back over a few years at the figures for each nationality, because they will see a huge increase in the number of EU nationals in our prisons. That is because these people are coming to the UK under the free movement of people to commit crimes. As a result, we are creating lots of unnecessary victims of crime in the UK. People who want to remain in the EU should be honest about the fact that that is one of the downsides. They should not pretend that there is some miracle passport control system that stops these people coming into the UK, which, as I say, is a blatant lie.
David Morris
I wish there were a passport control system that could vet these people coming into the country, but does my hon. Friend not agree that the Prime Minister, in his renegotiations, has secured easier ways to deport these criminals and, may I add, to stop them coming into the country?
Philip Davies
No, I do not accept that at all. The Prime Minister has done absolutely nothing to stop these people coming into the UK—literally nothing. There is nothing in place to stop them; there are a few people on a watch list whom we can stop coming into the UK, but they would be on a watch list whether we were in the EU or outside it. We need to develop a watch list for people from around the world, because this is not an EU issue. We can already stop those people coming to the UK, and we would always be able to stop them coming to the UK, if they are on a terrorist watch list. I am talking about the thousands and thousands of criminals who are unknown to the British authorities, who come through every week on an EU passport to commit their crimes. When I was out with West Yorkshire police a few years ago—this might seem fanciful, and it seemed fanciful to me when I first heard it—they told me they had a problem with people getting a short-haul flight from other EU countries to Leeds Bradford airport, going out into Leeds city centre and committing high-value crimes and robberies, and then being back on the plane out to their country of origin before the police have even finished investigating the crime. I had not even thought that that type of thing could happen, but West Yorkshire police told me that that was a serious concern for them.
Of course, it is easy for people do these things while we are in the EU—there is nothing to prevent them from coming here. They are known to their own national law enforcement agencies, so they are at risk of being apprehended in their own countries. It is much easier for them to commit crimes in the UK, where they are not known to anybody—they can come in and go out in a flash. We have to be aware that these are problems.
Sir Edward Leigh
To be absolutely fair—we should be fair, and that is why we need an independent audit—our own crooks can presumably do the same in those other countries?
Philip Davies
Yes, indeed. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The problem is that there are much richer pickings in the UK than in some of the countries these people come from.
The other aspect of this is that, even if these people run the risk of being caught, they would, I suspect, much prefer to spend their time in a British prison than in a prison in their home nation. So this is a win-win, given their chances of being caught and what happens when they are caught. I am afraid that that does not quite work the same in reverse.
Mr Chope
When I visited Denmark with a Select Committee in the last Parliament, we heard directly from the Danish about the problem they have with eastern Europeans coming into Denmark and committing crimes. If those people are convicted of those crimes, they will earn more in prison than they would have been able to earn in their home country, so there is no deterrent.
Philip Davies
That is another interesting point I had not factored in. I will bow to my hon. Friend’s superior knowledge. I have visited prisons in Denmark, and that is not something I was aware of, so I am grateful to him for putting that point on the record.
Suggesting that our national security is enhanced by being in the EU, when we let thousands of EU criminals in every year, is fanciful in the extreme. Being susceptible to crime from such individuals is doing nothing at all for the security of my constituents.
Mr Chope
May I give my hon. Friend an example of where our security is much worse as a result of being in the European Union? People from outside who come into the European Union at the moment often do not give their fingerprints, as they should. I suggested that we take DNA samples from people coming from outside, but I was told that that is unlawful under the Eurodac regulations, so we cannot take that precaution.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. I very much agree that people wanting to come and live in the EU should have to give their fingerprints and DNA, so that if they do commit a crime, it is easy to track them down, convict them and deport them. As he says, however, that is not what happens. The best the Government have come up with so far is that if somebody comes into the UK and commits a crime, the police can go through some burdensome procedure of asking other EU countries whether they have a fingerprint match for a crime that has been committed there. If those countries ever manage to get back to us, which they probably do not half the time, Lord knows what may happen on the back of that. However, that is not the same as stopping people who are criminals coming into the UK.
David Morris
I am listening intently to my hon. Friend’s eloquent arguments about letting people into the country. Will he clarify whether these are people coming into the EU from nations outside the EU? As I understand it, the security systems between the EU bloc and Great Britain are seamless and can interface with, say, the databases of the French and the German authorities, but where people are coming into the EU, we have to get the co-operation of the country they are coming from. If we came out of the EU, would we have to do the same procedure in reverse?
Philip Davies
I am not entirely sure what my hon. Friend is driving at. At the moment, if somebody comes to the UK from outside the EU, we do not have to let them in, whereas if they are an EU citizen, we pretty much do have to let them in. It does not matter how suspicious we are of their motives—that is irrelevant. I want the more robust immigration policy that we are allowed for non-EU nationals to apply to EU nationals too. Nobody is saying that we do not want anybody to come into the UK from the EU, but I would rather we had some choice as to who we allow in. It is a great privilege to come into the UK. We should make sure that it is indeed a great privilege and that we are not just letting any old person into the country, which is the situation at the moment.
On sovereignty, it cannot be right that people making so many of our laws are unelected and completely unaccountable to anybody. The remain campaigners say, “Well, of course we have a European Parliament to scrutinise all these laws.” First, Members of the European Parliament who represent the UK are a tiny proportion of the total, so even if every single UK MEP voted against something, there is no guarantee that it would make any difference whatsoever. Secondly, if, in this country, the Government were permanently in office and the only people elected were the MPs scrutinising the decisions they were making, that would be a bizarre situation and there would be uproar. Yet the justification for having the European Commission, unelected and unaccountable, initiating all the legislation, which is the role of Governments in most national Parliaments, is that MEPs are elected. It is unbelievable that anybody can justify that kind of democratic situation. When we sign treaties with other countries, that is the end of it—the position does not get changed every five minutes by qualified majority voting, with things being imposed on us against our wishes. That is not how treaties work, but it is how our relationship with the European Union works.
We are told that we have a lot of influence in the EU. That argument was completely demolished by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) in his contribution to the Prime Minister’s statement on Monday. He pointed out that a freedom of information request showed that over the past two decades there had been a definitive vote in the European Council 72 times and that we had been outvoted 72 times. So on Monday the idea that we are wielding this huge influence in the European Union was clearly demolished. It was shown to be a complete load of old codswallop. It is an illusion of influence. We do not have any influence; we are having discussions around a table and being outvoted at every single turn, as Ministers who attend these things know to their cost.
We are told that the US wants us to stay in the EU and that that is a reason why we should. I do not doubt that it is in the United States’ best interests that we stay in the European Union, because we add a bit of common sense to it and it does not want the French, who are very anti-American, having even more power. If it is so important for the Americans that we stay in the European Union, perhaps they will pay our £18 billion membership fee each year for us. I look forward to President Obama making that offer when he comes to campaign in the referendum. I am sure that amount would be a drop in the ocean for the United States.
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Let me bring to my hon. Friend’s attention the fact that the person representing the United States Government who has called for us to stay is John Kerry, a former senator, who in the 1980s showed himself to be no friend of the United Kingdom but a sympathiser with the IRA when he held up a treaty allowing for the deportation of IRA activists from the United States to the United Kingdom, saying that the justice system in Northern Ireland did not work effectively. He is no friend of Britain and has been in the past a terrorist sympathiser.
Philip Davies
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing that to the House’s attention. With friends like that in the United States, I suspect we do not need many enemies.
I am prepared to accept that it may be in the best interests of the United States that we stay in the European Union. I am not going to question that for one minute, and I am sure that if I was an American I would probably be arguing the same. However, we should be making decisions that are in the best interests of the United Kingdom, not of the United States, which is big enough and bad enough to look after its own interests.
I look forward to a truly independent cost-benefit analysis that takes into account the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has made and some of the points that I have made. Any cost-benefit analysis that ignores those points that have been raised today is not worth the paper it is written on. I say to the Minister that, if anybody in the Government is working on some bogus cost-benefit analysis that they think is going to work in hoodwinking the British public, I hope he will insist that it takes into account the points we have raised today.
Crucially, the membership of any committee that puts together a cost-benefit analysis must correspond to that insisted upon by this Bill, which calls for a balance of people who are in favour of and people who are against the UK’s membership, a neutral chairman, and for none of them to be a current or past Member of the European Parliament or the European Commission. Only if those criteria are met will we have a truly independent and worthwhile cost-benefit analysis. However, given the Government’s reluctance over many years to publish such a cost-benefit analysis, I am afraid that any decision to rush one through now will be treated with a great deal of cynicism and scepticism, not just by me, but by many people across the House and, more importantly, by the British public.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) for promoting the Bill. This is an interesting debate. I am not sure that anybody could rationally oppose the idea of an independent cost-benefit analysis run by independent people. If somebody, including the Minister, wishes to intervene on me and deny the rational basis of that argument, I would be interested to hear what they had to say.
We had a debate about Europe yesterday. I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker, because this is the third time this week I have wearied the House with my views: I spoke yesterday, I questioned the Prime Minister on Monday and I am also speaking today. However, this is such an important issue and, frankly, it is our job to be here, even on a Friday morning, to hold the Government to account. I make no apology for that.
You were present for some of yesterday’s debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I recommend that you read it in its entirety in Hansard, because some very interesting arguments were made. I knew that my hon. Friend was going to promote this Bill today, so I asked the Foreign Secretary directly why we could not have an independent cost-benefit analysis of our membership of the EU so that we could decide whether we should stay. He said that that would not be possible because there were so many uncertainties involved in what leaving the EU would amount to. That is an interesting point of view, but it has not stopped many groups—I will refer to them in a moment—feeling that it is possible to have, or at least possible to make a decent fist of having, an independent analysis of what the decision either to remain in or to leave the EU might mean.
It is extraordinary that, while the Government tell us, quite rightly, that this is the most important decision we will take in our lifetime, constituents are already writing to me, asking, “Please can we have all the arguments laid out?” Most people in this House know their views, but millions of people in the country want an informed debate and would welcome some independent analysis of what this most important decision would mean. Apparently, unless there is going to be an announcement today—I doubt that that is going to happen—we are not going to have an independent analysis.
The question we need to direct to the Minister, therefore, is whether the Government are going to produce their own analysis. He and the Prime Minister are completely honourable people—they would never, ever wish to deceive the British public—but they are arguing for a certain point of view. Therefore, civil servants produce documents that argue a certain case. As the Minister has indicated, the Government’s viewpoint is absolutely clear: under its rules, the civil service works according to Government policy. Government policy is that we remain in the EU, so civil servants will defend that policy and produce briefing papers, analysis and all the rest in terms of that policy. Of course, civil servants would not consciously lie or deceive in any way, but we want to know from the Minister exactly what analysis the Government intend to produce over the next four months, what form it will take and what will be the nature of its independence.
The question that I put to the Foreign Secretary was this. I said that during the years when we were in opposition, we accused Gordon Brown, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, of making assumptions before the Budget that were influenced—let us put it as gently as we can—by the direction in which he wanted to go. That is why we created the Office for Budget Responsibility, which is one of our foremost achievements, apparently. I agree that it is an achievement. The assumptions that lie behind the Budget are now in the hands of a genuinely independent body.
When I was Chair of the Public Accounts Committee during those years of Labour Government, the moment the Chancellor stood up and started his Budget speech, a messenger would deliver to me on the Back Benches a fat envelope containing all the assumptions on which the Budget was based. The trouble was that they were assumptions written by civil servants who were working towards Government policy—the policy of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. That is why we created the Office for Budget Responsibility. The question that I put to the Foreign Secretary, which he did not answer and which I repeat to the Minister, is: if this is the most important decision that we are going to make, why can we not depute the OBR to produce an analysis?
My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has suggested a different format. Because this is a private Member’s Bill, it is, as we know, for all sorts of reasons unlikely to become law, but he has at least raised the question. It is now incumbent on the Minister to answer my hon. Friend. I am sorry, but I think that my hon. Friend’s creation is unwieldy, calling as it does for us to find an equal number of people who are in favour of leaving and of remaining. There may be perfectly justifiable arguments for that, but the Government already have independent bodies, such as the OBR and the National Audit Office, which could do the work. The NAO, which is well respected, would perhaps not be expert at dealing with issues of sovereignty, but it could certainly deal with other issues mentioned by my hon. Friend such as “burden of regulation”,
“economy (including consideration of public expenditure and receipts”
and “competitiveness and ability”. The Government already have in their hand a body or bodies that would be capable of producing such an analysis.
It is deeply worrying that Ministers who have decided to campaign to leave the EU are denied any civil service briefing on the matter. They are immediately thrown into purdah this week, and yet Ministers who are campaigning to remain in the EU have the full benefit of the civil service, which can apparently for weeks churn out propaganda. I do not use that word in a derogatory sense; propaganda simply means putting one’s point of view forward. The situation seems to me to be fundamentally unfair. Surely, the British way of doing things, particularly in referendums, is that we are fair.
We had a vote on purdah in the autumn, and my hon. Friend and I got into a bit of trouble for voting in favour of it, but we thought it was important. We thought that once the referendum campaign started, the Government should not be able to use its machine—its civil service—to argue for a point of view, because that does not happen in a general election. Perhaps we will learn from the Minister today when that purdah will actually start. Obviously, the Government are not in purdah at the moment. Civil servants are fully briefing, and the whole machine is churning out papers all the time.
All this is important because the referendum is supposed to bring a degree of closure to this subject, is it not? To do so, it must be seen to be absolutely fair. It is very important that both sides of the arguments are properly aired. Speaking for myself, if the British people decide by 55% to 45%, or whatever the figures are, to remain in the EU—after all the arguments have been properly put, and the no and yes campaigns have spent broadly the same amount of money—I will just have to accept that point of view.
However, this is a very complex area and the whole nature of the Government’s case is that leaving is all too risky. I made this point yesterday, but it is an important one: we should bear in mind that the Government are not approaching the referendum campaign with the sense of a great visionary movement in favour of the EU. The Prime Minister is saying, “Look, I am as great a Eurosceptic as you are, but I’m sorry, it’s all too risky.” When he says it is all too risky, he presumably means the costs of leaving in terms of national security, which is mentioned in the Bill, and particularly the very detailed debate on our competitiveness, the decisions of European Council meetings and the rest of it.
I want to emphasise that I see no rational argument against the Government commissioning a genuinely independent cost-benefit analysis. As I said in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), our membership of the EU means paying a subscription of £10 billion a year in order to have a £70 billion a year deficit with the EU. Normally, when someone pays a subscription to a club, they do so to have a benefit: they are prepared to pay the cost because they get something back. Frankly, given that there is a deficit of £70 billion—I agree that it exists now and will almost certainly remain if we leave the EU, because of the strength of German engineering products or French food and drinks products and all the other reasons—that is quite a big subscription to pay for it.
We want an independent study. To go back to yesterday’s debate, the Minister for Europe said in his summing up, “I’ve sat through this debate, and those who want to leave the EU have not given any sense of their vision.” That is quite true, and it is incumbent on us—it could be done as part of such a study—to give the people and the House some sense of where we want to take the nation if we leave the EU. I accept that argument—the Minister for Europe kindly added that he said that “with the exception of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough”—and I tried to give an alternative vision yesterday.
Such alternative visions need to be tested. I just have a point of view—I believe it is reasonable, but other people may say it is a prejudice—but there is no point my standing up in the House of Commons and articulating my alternative vision if there is no independent analysis of it. That is surely what the British people want and demand. I am asking them on 23 June to take the risk of leaving, and they therefore have the right to come back to me to ask such questions.
If we left the EU, I believe it would be quite exciting—I represent a rural area—to reclaim control of the common agricultural policy. In that context, I recommend the speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), the former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to the Oxford farming conference. He made a detailed analysis of what leaving the EU would mean for farming policy. He made the point that although food and agriculture is a huge and massively important industry—it employs more than 3.5 million people and accounts for £85 billion of GNP—agriculture policy is entirely determined by the EU. On that, this House has very little, or virtually no, independence from the EU. He was putting forward his view and arguing that alternative subsidy arrangements could be made. For instance, he argued that we should broadly spend on subsidies what we are spending now, but create a different subsidy system. He argued that we could divert more agricultural subsidies away from lowland farming to hill farmers in difficult farming environments.
I have been trying to wrestle with an understanding of farming policy for the 30 years I have been in this place. It is immensely complex, but again we have had virtually no detailed debate or analysis to inform our farmers on how they should vote. This is desperately important to them. There are hundreds of farmers in my constituency and tens of thousands of farmers throughout the country who want an answer, because they, for better or for worse, depend on the subsidy system.
Oliver Colvile
Does my hon. Friend recognise that it is not only the farming industry but the fishing industry that needs to be taken into account?
Sir Edward Leigh
I will come to the fishing industry in a moment.
Farmers are genuinely worried. I suppose the Government have got quite an easy task. They can just say, “Don’t worry. You don’t like the present system. You’ve been complaining for years that it is regulatory and burdensome, and that for years you were paid by the EU to rip out hedges and now you’re paid to put them back. You have to spend all your time not out on the land but sitting in your office in your farmhouse dealing with farming subsidies. It’s regulatory, burdensome, late and difficult but,” I suppose the Government would argue, “at least you are supported.” There is an implication on the part of the Government that if we were to leave the EU, the subsidies would vanish.
The Vote Leave campaign is absolutely explicit about that. I am absolutely explicit about it and I give this pledge. One should be quite careful what one says on the Floor of the House of Commons, but if we leave the EU the level of subsidy to the farming community will remain exactly what it is now. That is a pledge. I cannot give a pledge on behalf of the Government, but I cannot believe that anybody would resile from that. We have no idea. We have no independent analysis. We have had no real attempt, apart from by a few right hon. and hon. Friends, at detailing how the subsidies would change.
My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) mentioned fishing, which is even more important. I referred to this subject yesterday. I think I was the only one to mention it. This was the great debate we had on Europe this week with the Foreign Secretary and the shadow Foreign Secretary: we were limited to very short speeches and I had time to say perhaps one sentence about fishing. There was no detailed analysis yesterday of what leaving the EU would mean for our fishing industry, yet it is of absolutely massive and crucial importance.
People forget that in the final days of the negotiations conducted by Mr Heath, way back in 1971, he was worried that the talks were stumbling. In the final days, he handed control of our fishing industry to the European Commission with disastrous results for the port of Grimsby, which is close to my constituency, and for our entire fishing industry. I would argue that if we left the EU, it would be extraordinarily exciting to reclaim control of our fishing fleets and fishing industry, given that we are an island and that we sit surrounded by some of the most productive fishing grounds in the world. Again, there has been virtually no intelligent, thorough and informed debate of how we could manufacture or create an alternative fishing policy.
Sir Edward Leigh
Of course. I give way to somebody with far greater expertise in this area than me.
Oliver Colvile
The Plymouth marine laboratories were set up—I think in 1870—and they analyse whether we are overfishing our seas. If my hon. Friend wants, he could come and talk to them, but most certainly he might want to give them a ring.
Sir Edward Leigh
I would be delighted to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency. Perhaps I could sail there in my boat from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, where it is moored. But obviously we are deeply serious about this, because the last 30 years have been a traumatic experience for our fishermen. It is a matter of immense importance. Again, we need an independent audit.
Mr Chope
Bearing in mind what my hon. Friend said about Ministers, is there not an issue with the fact that the fishing Minister, who has all this expertise and is keen that we should leave the EU, will not have the support of his civil servants in doing what needs to be done to ensure a strong and independent UK fishing industry after we leave?
Sir Edward Leigh
Exactly. It is extraordinary, given that we have this great industry and are a proud island race, and that much of our past and present is tied up in our fishing fleets, that the fishing Minister has already been put in purdah by his own civil servants and cannot talk about this subject at all. It beggars belief.
Apparently, the Government are not going to do any independent analysis over the next four months of what leaving the EU would mean for fishing. Presumably, at some stage or another, a Minister will make a claim—perhaps a fairly wild claim—and there will be no comeback, because the fishing Minister has been put in the corner, like a naughty boy with a dunce’s hat on his head, and told to keep silent. It is amazing. This is the most important decision we are going to make—yet silence.
In trying to answer the Minister for Europe, who asked, “Why don’t the leave people give an alternative vision?”, I have talked a bit about fishing and agriculture, but what about trade? I have quoted Winston Peters, a former Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary of New Zealand—no slouch—who has talked in public about leaving behind the “betrayal” of 1973. Yes, we did betray them. We betrayed our friends in New Zealand and Australia, who, in two world wars, had come to our aid. He says there is the exciting prospect of recreating free trade between Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. It is an exciting prospect. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley made a good point about the declining proportion of world trade taken by the sclerotic, over-regulated and overtaxed EU. There is another world out there—the world of the burgeoning growth of China and India.
I will go into more detail about the Government’s case in a moment, but I would be quite happy for them to say, “This is all just pie in the sky—a romantic illusion—and it’s not going to happen. You wouldn’t have any influence on the world trade body, because you’d just be one voice out of 130.” Well, we have very little voice at the moment, because we are one vote out of 28—at least we would be there on our own—but I accept that the Government can make these arguments. Given the importance of this issue, however, surely we want at least some independent analysis, so that the people, before they cast their votes, know what the realistic prospects are of a United Kingdom outside the EU being able to negotiate good trade deals with the rest of the world. But we have nothing.
That was my introduction, Madam Deputy Speaker. I now want to go into more detail about the history of this independent audit and analysis. People now argue—there is some lazy thinking on this—that way back in 1957 when the treaty of Rome was being signed, we were casual in our decision not to join it. A sort of myth has been created, particularly by my personal friend, Michael Heseltine, now Lord Heseltine, and others that this was an enormous wasted opportunity. Actually, people in government at the time were attempting a reasonable audit and analysis of what joining the treaty of Rome would mean. This debate has therefore been going on for a long time.
One cause of worry in 1957 was article 3 of the European Community treaty, which would
“eliminate…customs duties and quantitative restrictions on imports and exports”
between member states, establish a common tariff and “common commercial policy” and
“abolish obstacles to freedom of movement for persons, services and capital”.
When we were having these debates in 1957, the view taken by the then Conservative Government was that that was a risk too great and particularly, showing the importance of objective analysis, too great a risk to the Commonwealth.
My personal view is that that was a right conclusion. Unfortunately, during the 1950s and ’60s, there was a lack of confidence in our future as an independent nation. We should bear it in mind that we were dealing with a generation scarred by the second world war—I accept all the arguments about that. The hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), who is going to reply to this debate on behalf of the Labour party, spoke most movingly yesterday about the scars of two world wars, and I can understand how that was an influence on people at the time. As I said, there was a lack of confidence, not just about peace in Europe, but about our own nature and the resilience of our manufacturing and service industries. That led directly to Harold Macmillan’s failed bid to join the then European Economic Community.
As we know, of course, we eventually joined the European Economic Community. What then happened after we joined it? We were told at the time that it was going to be primarily a trading mechanism. The British people were never really made to understand and appreciate that under articles 2 and 3, it was much more than that. This was effectively the end of the sovereignty of this House. It was completely different from any other treaty that we had ever signed. Those arguments were made by Tony Benn, Michael Foot and Enoch Powell at the time. To its credit, Labour tested this in the referendum, and the British people decided to join.
Let me move on to the treaty of Nice. Although there had been a reasonably detailed debate, as I mentioned, in the mid-1950s about the benefits or otherwise of joining, this is where I believe the debates got rather weaker and there was less and less independent cost-benefit analysis of whether we should take this ever closer union further.
Article 3 of the treaty of Nice created an explicit common policy in fisheries, when it had previously been included under agriculture. An environmental policy was also created. Under the guise of strengthening competitive industry through the promotion of research and technological development, the EU acquired competence. The EU was authorised to establish and develop trans-European networks. I was here and I may be wrong, but although I certainly know that no independent analysis was done, I am not aware how much analysis of any kind was done on the costs and benefits of these very important matters that furthered the integration of Europe and our involvement in it. The treaty of Lisbon completed the process by making all remaining pillar three matters subject to EU justice-making procedure.
There was a steady increase in the area of EC and EU activity, and thus a steady increase in the number of pieces of legislation until the 1990s. Until we set up the Scrutiny Committee—which is now under the distinguished chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash)—there was very little analysis of the vast plethora of legislation that was pouring out.
In a paper published by the Robert Schuman Centre, Professor Carol Harlow, of the London School of Economics, noted:
“On the regulatory side, an average of 25 directives and 600 regulations per annum in the 1970s rose to 80 directives and 1.5 thousand regulations by the early 1990s”.
In a study of the evolution of European integration, EU academics Wolfgang Wessels and Andreas Maurer observed that the increase in legislation had been accompanied by an increase in the EU’s institutional structures and sub-structures. While all that was proceeding apace, there was virtually no debate in the House of Commons or, I suspect, within the Government.
My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and I were Ministers at the end of the Thatcher Government and in the Major Government. We remember going to the Council of Ministers, and we remember, as we sat there all night, a vast tide of more and more pieces of legislation which was subjected to very little, if any, independent analysis. Output peaked in 1986 with the single market legislative programme. It fell slightly after that, but it continues apace. Meanwhile, apart from the analysis conducted by the Scrutiny Committee, very little detailed analysis of what the directives involved mean for our country is available to Members of Parliament—if, indeed, they are interested, given the complexity of many of those directives.
David Morris
The figures that my hon. Friend is citing are truly frightening. Does he agree that there should be more Scrutiny Committees, and perhaps even a larger Scrutiny Committee whose members could operate a shift system when European regulation comes our way?
Sir Edward Leigh
I agree with that entirely. If we were to remain in the EU, we would need—and this would require the sort of analysis that would arise from a measure such as this Bill—to create much more impressive, comprehensive structures in order to deal with the continuing tide of legislation. People who want to remain in the EU assume that it is a static organisation. We apparently have an opt-out from ever closer union, but the European Court of Justice does not refer to ever closer union because it does not need to. If we remain in the EU, this wave of legislation will go on and on and on.
Rulings by the European Court of Justice have also given rise to a number of amendments to United Kingdom laws. One of the most significant cases in this regard was the Factortame case, which concerned the UK’s obligation under EC law, and the terms of the 1985 Act of Accession whereby Spain joined the European Community, to allow Spanish fishermen to fish in UK waters within the prescribed EC quotas.
We need much more analysis, much more control, and a much more intelligent debate about what is going on, because most people in the House of Commons are blind to it. Naturally, as Members of Parliament, we are all much more interested in the great debates about assisted dying, gay marriage or hunting, or even about whether to stay in the EU or leave it, or whether to bomb Syria. We are much more concerned about those issues than about the detailed nitty-gritty of what is going on under our noses. However, it does not stop. It does not rest. The machine keeps grinding on, with very little control from Ministers and virtually no control from the House of Commons.
Let me now deal with the cost of EU membership.
Mr Chope
Before my hon. Friend does that, may I ask whether he recalls—this is an example of what he has just been talking about—that in October 2000, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who is now the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, assured the world that Europe’s new charter of fundamental rights would have no greater legal standing before EU judges than a copy of the Beano or The Sun?
Sir Edward Leigh
That sort of casual statement is quite worrying, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for telling us about it.
I was about to deal with the cost of EU membership. The following information is taken from various papers that I have been studying. The cost is set to be £3.1 billion higher over the next five years than forecast before the 2015 general election. This is not a static process, therefore. That change is due to a reassessment of the size of Britain’s economy relative to the rest of the EU, thus penalising the UK for its economic success. The bigger and more successful we get, the greater a magnet for migrants we become and the bigger the sub we have to pay, despite the fact that the deficit carries on much the same as it always has done.
Philip Davies
On that point, is it not ironic that the Prime Minister trumpets the fact that he has managed to get a cut in the EU budget but did not mention that as a part of that cut the UK’s contribution to the EU budget went up, not down?
Sir Edward Leigh
I am astonished that in this great negotiating triumph no attempt has been made to address the issue of the rebate, and I will give a few details on that in a moment. This was considered to be one of the most important issues—such as when Mrs Thatcher secured the reduction—but no attempt has been made to deal with it.
For 2016 the UK will pay £9.5 billion. It was only expected to pay £8.2 billion. Everybody casually rolls off the figure of £9 billion now as if we always thought it would be £9 billion, but it was not always going to be £9 billion; it was going to be £8.2 billion. It has suddenly gone up and nobody in the Government or elsewhere complains about that to our partners. I remember that when my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and I were Ministers everybody talked about our “European partners”. This Government seem to have dropped that; they have dropped all the visionary case for Europe in terms of partnership and so forth. They all claim they are great Eurosceptics, but they do not tell us the casual little fact that we were expected to pay £8.2 billion and that has now gone up to £.9.5 billion. We are now estimated to pay just under £250 million per week for EU membership.
Civitas has debunked the Government claim that the EU makes each household better off by £3,300 per year. The Government can argue against Civitas and have an analysis of its case, but they do make that claim. It would be nice to have some analysis of where they get those figures from, but we have not been given that.
According to Open Europe, the top five costliest EU regulations enforced in the UK are: the UK renewable energy strategy, with a recurring cost of £4.7 billion a year; the capital requirements directive IV package, with a recurring cost of £4.6 billion a year; the working time directive, with a recurring cost of £4.2 billion a year. I appreciate that one of the cases made by the Labour party is that it rather likes the working time directive. That is a perfectly logical, good case to make, and I have no argument with them making it, but I would like to know—perhaps the Labour party, the Government and the people would like to know—whether this figure of a recurring cost of £4.2 billion a year is right.
The next cost in the list is the EU climate and energy package, with a recurring cost of £3.4 billion a year. I am quoting Open Europe, which may be wrong, but the Minister can debunk these arguments if he wishes. Then there is the temporary agency workers directive, with a recurring cost of £2.1 billion a year. These are not insignificant sums—£4.7 billion, £4.6 billion, £4.2 billion, £3.4 billion, £2.1 billion—but how much detailed analysis are the British people being given about any of this?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Is it not also ironic that the Labour party seems to be so enthusiastic for our membership of the EU, yet it comes to the House every month and asks that the Government do more to help the steel industry and the coal industry when it is the policies of the EU that are doing most to obliterate the steel and coal industries in the UK?
Sir Edward Leigh
I have mentioned Grimsby and fishing, but my constituency also abuts Scunthorpe. What about these poor people there? They are also going to be allowed to vote on 23 June, and are being encouraged to do so. They would rather like to know the detailed costs of what the EU means for their jobs and what the possible alternatives are. This is serious stuff for them—it is not just a debate in the House of Commons; it is about their whole way of life and their town.
Sir Edward Leigh
It beggars belief that whole towns can be suffering a possible wipeout and yet we are apparently putty in the hands in the Chinese. We should have stopped this on day one, as it is so serious—this is steel we are talking about.
Sir Edward Leigh
We are impotent; it is not a question of cosying up to the Chinese, as we have no control over this. Whether we like it or not, China will be the greatest, biggest and most important economy in the world within the next 10 or 20 years. Whatever the Minister’s views, the fact that we are part of the EU means that he could do nothing to defend Scunthorpe. I accept that the Government may argue that we get other advantages, perhaps in steel, but let us have an analysis of what it all means.
Open Europe is not some sort of purely ideological campaigning group; it produces fine studies, some of the most voluminous available, and it attempts in a reasonably intellectual way to work out what staying in and leaving the EU involves. Open Europe says that according to the UK Government impact assessments,
“these regulations also provide a total benefit of £58.6bn a year.”
Open Europe is trying to be fair. It goes on to say:
“However, £46bn of this benefit stems from just three items, which are vastly over-stated. For example, the stated benefit of the EU’s climate targets (£20.8bn) was dependent on a global deal to reduce carbon emissions that was never struck…Open Europe estimates that up to 95% of the benefits envisaged in the impact assessment have failed to materialise.”
Where is the Government’s response to that?
Open Europe continued by saying:
“Taking the regulations individually, the impact assessments show that Ministers signed off at least 26 of the top 100 EU-derived regulations, despite the IAs explicitly stating that the costs outweigh the estimated benefits. These regulations include the UK Temporary Agency Workers Directive and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive.
A further 31 of the costliest EU-derived regulations have not been quantified. Between the over-stated benefits, the regulations that come with a net cost and the ones with unquantified benefits, it remains unclear how many of these EU-derived rules actually come with a net benefit in reality, showing that there is plenty of scope to cut regulatory cost to business and the public sector.”
I would echo that. I may be wrong and if the Government want to argue these points in detail, I, for one, would be delighted.
Open Europe went on to say:
“Although the cost of EU regulation too high in proportion to the benefits it generates, it is important to note that these rules can bring benefits including by facilitating trade across the single market, for example in the case of financial services”.
That is an argument in favour. I fully accept that and Open Europe accepts it, but we need a genuine impact assessment of the costs and benefits of all these regulations. Where does this leave us in the total picture? My view is—[Interruption.] I would be grateful if the Whip would not speak too loudly while I am speaking. She is not supposed to be heard, unlike me. She has the real power; I can just speak.
My contention is that people are worrying too much about this decision in terms of the impact on the economy. Again, there have been many studies on this, but I do not believe that the impact on the economy of whether we stay or leave will be as dramatic as has been made out. That is “Project Fear”—that we are all going to lose our jobs and so on. According to Open Europe,
“In a worst case scenario, where the UK fails to strike a trade deal with the rest of the EU”—
thereby having to fall back on the World Trade Organisation rules—
“and does not pursue a free trade agenda”—
fairly unlikely, I would have thought, but this is the worst case scenario—
“Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would be 2.2% lower than if the UK had remained inside the EU.”
So 2.2% lower, which is quite significant, but I am not sure that we would all suddenly lose our jobs.
David Morris
The figure of 2.2% is near enough as much as the economy is expected to grow in the next 12 months. I am certain that if we leave the EU in the next few months, especially with an oil crisis on our doorstep, we could face financial catastrophe. Does my hon. Friend agree?
Sir Edward Leigh
This is the worst case scenario and I am being completely fair in putting it. I think it is unlikely.
Sir Edward Leigh
Does not my hon. Friend want me to go on with the best case scenario? Then I will give way to him.
According to Open Europe,
“In a best case scenario, where the UK strikes a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the EU, pursues very ambitious deregulation of its economy and opens up almost fully to trade with the rest of the world, UK GDP would be 1.6% higher than if it had stayed within the EU.
However, these are outliers. The more realistic range is between a 0.8% permanent loss to GDP in 2030 – where the UK strikes a comprehensive trade deal with the EU but does nothing else; and a 0.6% permanent gain in GDP in 2030 – where it pursues free trade with the rest of the world and deregulation, in addition to an EU FTA.”
These arguments about disaster and millions of jobs being lost are, I think, overstated, but I may be wrong. I keep making this point: the Government have vast resources, such as the National Audit Office and the Office for Budget Responsibility. We would like to know before we cast our vote.
Philip Davies
The Treasury now acknowledges that 3 million jobs depend on trading with the EU, not on being a member of the EU. If that is the case—I am sure there is a lot of truth in it—given our substantial trade deficit with the European Union, does that not mean, therefore, that about 5 million jobs in the EU are dependent on its trade with the UK?
Sir Edward Leigh
Yes, that is the point that was made time and again during the debate yesterday. I am not sure the Government have entirely answered it to my satisfaction.
The Government seem to argue that were we to vote to leave the EU, that would be such a catastrophic snub to our EU partners that there would be a degree of vengeance. I think that is a childlike view of how policy is created in Paris and Berlin. Many people in France—I take a bit of an interest in this—have argued for many years that it would not be an absurd state of affairs for Britain to leave the EU, for all sorts of reasons. However, the Government argue that a dramatic vengeance game would be initiated.
By the way, if our European partners acted in that way, would we want to have anything to do with them? It is a ridiculous argument anyway. They would not behave in that way, because of the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies)—because of our trade deficit with them, particularly with our German friends. They are intimately bound up with us in terms of trade and there is every incentive to conclude a reasonable deal.
Mr Chope
It is not just about the trade issue. The Baltic states, for example, are very dependent on our NATO presence in helping them to defend themselves against the Russian threat. They would never countenance the rest of the European Union taking it out on the UK, when the UK is doing so much to defend their interests.
Sir Edward Leigh
Perhaps I have banged on a bit too much about the economy, and should briefly touch on defence and security, as it is in my hon. Friend’s Bill and is a matter of acute concern. Apart from “Project Fear”, which is based on this false premise of a loss of millions of jobs—Lord Mandelson appears to have made that up on the back of a fag packet—which no one has ever quantified in any great detail, although we wait to hear what the Government say about that, there are all these arguments about security. David Owen, a former Labour Foreign Secretary, who has now come out in favour of leaving the EU, dealt with that matter and debunked it very well on his interview on the “Today” programme yesterday. He asked how the European Union has improved our security by creating, in an imperialist and expansionist way, a new trade association deal with Ukraine, which led directly to Russian fears of being encircled and to the annexation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine. By the way, I do not countenance, approve or support in any way what Russia has done. The fact is that the EU gave President Putin that opportunity.
In a direct answer to my hon. Friend, is it really conceivable that, if the UK decided to leave the EU, our friends and allies in the Baltic states would want to throw us into some appalling doghouse and have nothing more to do with us when their freedom and security depends so much on us? We do have the strongest armed forces in the European Union. France and Britain are the only two countries that are capable of deploying world power. The Minister who is summing up this debate has considerable expertise in this matter because, as a Back Bencher, he spent years talking about it.
Although I cannot speak for the French Government, I do regularly speak to people in France, and I can assure Members that France has no interest or desire in not continuing to co-operate in an ever closer way, in terms of an ever closer union of sovereign states, in military policy. This whole argument that, somehow, the peace and security of Europe would be endangered if we were to leave the EU does not hold water. I will not repeat all the arguments that have been made many times before about our peace and security depending not on remaining in the EU, but on NATO. That is not a point that can be directly summed up in any cost- benefit analysis, but it needs to be articulated. We Eurosceptics are not nationalists. We love Europe; we love Europeans; we love European culture; and we want to have the closest possible relationship with our friends in France and Germany.
Let us go back to some of the detailed studies of the cost-benefit analysis. I am very grateful to the Library of the House of Commons for this. In fact, we should pay tribute to it because it is one of the few bodies that has actually attempted, with its limited resources, to collate all these studies. The study by the Institute for Economic Affairs—Minford et al, 2005—“Should Britain leave the EU” estimates a range of 3.2% to minus 3.7% of GDP in ongoing costs. I have dealt with Open Europe. The 2014 study by Gianmarco Ottaviano “Brexit or Fixit? The Trade and Welfare Effects of Leaving the European Union”, the Centre for Economic Performance and the London School of Economics estimated the trade-related costs to the UK of leaving the EU as being in the range of 2.2% to 9.5% of GDP. That is their argument, but it would be nice for it to be tested. In the literature review for “Our Global Future”, the CBI—again, I am not citing people who are naturally friendly to my point of view, but we need to test the arguments—found that the net benefit arising from EU membership is somewhere in the region of 4% to 5% of UK GDP.
Philip Davies
Does my hon. Friend have the figures that the CBI gave for the great benefits that we would have received when it recommended that we join the euro?
Sir Edward Leigh
We should have had more independent analysis of that. Conservative Members often criticise Gordon Brown, but we should never forget that he kept us out of the euro, against the wishes of his Prime Minister, Tony Blair. We were told that disaster would strike by some in the City of London, the CBI and so on, and they used precisely these arguments. Now the Prime Minister goes to the Dispatch Box and says as a great virtue that we are out of the euro, but we were told by all the powers of the establishment that not joining the euro would be a disaster, and many of the arguments used were exactly the same.
Mr Chope
Roger Bootle told the Treasury Committee on 27 October last year:
“A large number of supposedly very highly qualified people argued that there would be a mass exodus of the financial services industry if Britain were not in the euro. It did not happen. In fact, the reverse happened: it was the provincial continental financial centres that suffered, as business concentrated on London”.
Sir Edward Leigh
The Mayor of London and the Conservative mayoral candidate represent, or hope to represent, the powerhouse of the British economy. Presumably they deal with and talk to businesses in London every day, and significantly they have both decided that London would not be disadvantaged by leaving the EU.
I am not necessarily quoting people who are friends of mine, but in evidence to an inquiry by the Lords EU Committee into relaunching the single market on 27 July 2010, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills stated that
“EU countries trade twice as much with each other as they would do in the absence of the Single Market programme”,
That is based on the argument that increased trade with Europe since the early 1980s may be responsible for UK income per head being around 6% higher.
That is fair enough. We accept that we want to recreate the single market in some form. However, the Government immediately replied, “Well, I’m sorry but the rules of the EU are absolutely clear. If you want to be part of the single market, you have to accept free movement of people.” But that is not necessarily true. For example, it does not apply to Canada. As I understand it, Canada has created a good trade deal with the EU, but I am not aware that EU nationals are allowed to travel freely to Canada without a visa—I have some knowledge of this because my wife has a Canadian passport as she was born in Montreal.
The argument about what sort of access we would have in the single market is so crucial that we must have some independent analysis. Otherwise, we are making a decision based not on facts, but on prejudice. Those of us who argue from a Eurosceptic point of view are not in any way trying to convince the British people that they should make this choice in terms of nationalism, although many will, and that is their prerogative. We are arguing that there is a perfectly good, legitimate, intellectual, rational case for leaving the EU, but we want it to be tested by the Government.
I had better sit down as I have probably wearied you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I want to end with a study, which people here will not be aware of, commissioned by the Bertelsmann Stiftung of Munich—so this is not, as far as I am aware, some sort of UK Independence party front organisation, but a well-respected German institution. It is interesting that people around Europe—Stiftung in Germany and think-tanks elsewhere in Europe—are starting to take seriously the prospect of the United Kingdom leaving the EU. They are also writing studies that could form part of the independent cost-benefit analysis we want the Government to do.
In the second and third columns of its detailed analysis of what countries pay into and get out of the EU, the Stiftung demonstrates that Germany, the United Kingdom and France are the biggest absolute net contributors, paying in about 0.5% of their gross national income. Eleven of the 28 member states were net contributors in the 2013 budget, and the Stiftung gives various detailed figures for member states’ gross contributions. In terms of net contributions as a share of GNI, we always come second to Germany.
The Stiftung says:
“Because the United Kingdom benefits relatively little from CAP expenditures (for example, it received only €3.16 billion in 2013 compared to France’s €8.58 billion), Margaret Thatcher negotiated the introduction of a ‘UK rebate’ in 1984. At its core, this contains a refund of approximately 2/3 of the United Kingdom’s annual net contributions to the EU budget. For the years 2011-2013, the rebate averaged around €4.1 billion. A correction in how the rebate is calculated was introduced in 2008, which reduces the rebate depending on the costs of the EU expansion. According to forecasts by the UK’s economic and finance ministry…the rebate will hover around an average of €6 billion”.
The Stiftung provides various detailed figures and illustrates how the UK’s net contribution has risen. It says:
“One key element of the Brexit debate is that net payments have increased sharply since the global financial and economic crisis in 2008…If the United Kingdom exits the EU on January 1, 2018, this will change how the EU budget is financed”—
that must be the understatement of the year. It continues:
“According to estimates by the UK’s economic and finance ministry”—
Her Majesty’s Treasury—
“the United Kingdom will pay a net contribution of £8 billion for fiscal year April 2017-April 2018.”
These arguments are therefore being set out in detailed papers by think-tanks throughout Europe, but here—in the most important decision this country will make, in just four months’ time—the Government are apparently telling us that they do not believe there should be any independent cost-benefit analysis of what that decision will mean for the United Kingdom. Shame on them!
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
This is the first time I have intervened in the European debate, and hon. Members can rest assured that one thing I will not be talking about is the future of the hedgehog, or le hérisson, as I think it is called in French.
This is probably one of the biggest, most controversial issues we will deal with as a country, and I am acutely aware that a number of my hon. Friends take a completely different position from the one that I will espouse during my speech. I would also say that this issue—like the corn laws, free trade and imperial preference—is one of the big issues in British history. Of course, this, too, is a big trade issue, and we have to take that into account.
Over the last 15 years, as the parliamentary candidate for the Plymouth Sutton seat and, more recently, as the Member of Parliament for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, I have always sought to take a rather pragmatic attitude to what our relationship with Europe should be; I do not start from the basis of a set view of how we should proceed. I very much support what the Prime Minister has been able to do in the way of bringing back reform. The big issue of Europe kicked off when Jacques Delors said how important it was that the single market was not just about money but employment regulations and stuff like that too. I want the UK to be in Europe but not run by Europe. Now that the Prime Minister has finished his negotiations and presented his new plan for Europe, I have decided that I will vote to remain in the EU in the referendum on 23 June. I want to make it abundantly clear that I have exactly the same influence as every single one of my constituents or, for that matter, anybody in the whole of the United Kingdom. I have one vote, no more and no less.
To my mind, Britain’s role in Europe is to maintain the balance of power, and that is utterly crucial. Over the course of history, when we have walked away from Europe, we have had to go back in and sweep up the whole mess. We have invested time, money and blood in that relationship with Europe, and now is not the time for us to wash our hands of our allies and turn back.
Oliver Colvile
Well, that is the whole business of politics, isn’t it? My hon. Friend is right to raise these issues, but ultimately this is about the future of our country within Europe and whether we are led back into having wars and things like that. I very much want to avoid that. Believe you me, my heart is for coming out, but my head says that it is not a clever thing to do.
Last week, during the recess, I spent a few days with the Royal Marines and the Royal Navy in Norway doing a survival course. We ended up building a shelter and a fire, and then we had to go and kill a chicken and eat it. Needless to say, I did not get too involved in the killing of the chicken, because I think I would have found that incredibly difficult. I heard at first hand the Norwegians’ real concerns, shared by the Baltic states, about the whole business of Russia potentially invading their country and coming through the north and the Arctic in order to do so. That made me very concerned as well. I therefore believe that our national security should not be weakened at a time of global insecurity.
Philip Davies
I am intrigued by my hon. Friend’s view that everything in the EU is about peace and harmony. Has he seen the rise of the far-right parties across the EU in recent years, including the largest party in France, and the record amounts of barbed wire going up around the EU? It does not strike many people as being about peace and harmony but quite the reverse in many cases.
Oliver Colvile
I fully agree with my hon. Friend that that issue must be looked at and taken into account, and I do, but I am talking about my personal view. This is about trying to make sure that we can maintain peace within Europe. I recognise, though, that other people have significantly different views—some even more extreme than his position might end up being. I have a great deal of time for my hon. Friend.
The EU is far from perfect, but this is not the time to throw away the good progress that the Prime Minister has made in reforming it. I am pleased that we have managed to secure an opt-out from being dragged into an ever closer union with the other 27 member states. In the previous Parliament, he managed to secure a deal that would bring the EU’s budget down for the very first time, and we should most certainly welcome that. I am, however, keen for further reform of the EU, including bringing UK fishing waters back under UK control, for which I will certainly continue to campaign. That would significantly improve the conservation of our fisheries, which I am very happy to support.
I believe that the Prime Minister’s deal will go a long way to restoring British sovereignty and reducing migration to the UK. On future immigration, if we are going to put up the shutters—we do need to control it—I am concerned about what would happen to my local Derriford hospital. If we found ourselves without any nurses from abroad, that would be a significant issue.
Philip Davies
Does my hon. Friend not understand that controlling immigration means that we would be able to allow into the country those we want to allow in and that we could keep out those we want to keep out? If we leave the EU and his hospital needs some nurses from abroad, there would be nothing to prevent us from allowing them to come here. We just would not have to accept everybody from the EU who wants to come here.
Oliver Colvile
My hon. Friend has a point, but it is important that we acknowledge that this country needs people to come here to do those jobs.
Oliver Colvile
I am afraid not.
Businesses in Plymouth rely on the UK’s deep links. My constituency has a global reputation for marine science and engineering research. Representatives from the Plymouth marine laboratory and from maritime organisations have told me that it is important that we continue to have links to Europe. University students in my constituency also want to be able to travel abroad. I am afraid that I have doubts about what the alternative would be if we were to leave.
Babcock, which runs the dockyard in my constituency, signed a letter to The Financial Times, saying that it is very important that we stay in. One of the big boat manufacturers in my constituency explained to me a couple of weeks ago how difficult it is to sell boats to south America. The company has to pay a 15% premium and it is very concerned about what would happen in France and Greece if we left. They would want to protect their own businesses and boat-building industries. That is another reason that I find it difficult to deal with this whole debate.
Britain has a proud history of playing its part in Europe, and I want it to continue to play an important role in reforming Europe while also promoting its interests worldwide. The terms Europhile and Eurosceptic are thrown about quite a bit, but I am neither. I am not Euro-suicidal but a Euro-realist, and that is why I will be voting to remain in the EU.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), who is not present but whose Bill this is, for giving us the opportunity to once again debate the merits or otherwise of the European Union.
I think we should have a cost-benefit analysis of this debate, given that right at the beginning—it has been going for some three hours—we were told that it was highly unlikely that the Bill would be taken any further, because that would require the referendum to be delayed. It is, therefore, a complete waste of everybody’s time and of taxpayers’ money.
Pat Glass
No, but I think it is worth saying. We have sat here for three hours, and we have heard Members talk for at least an hour about a Bill that they do not intend to take any further. As the Bill is about a cost-benefit analysis, perhaps we can have a cost-benefit analysis of this morning for the taxpayers of this country.
Oliver Colvile
My great grandfather was a rural vicar in Oxfordshire. He said that he did not mind his congregation looking at their watches; it was when they started shaking them that he became concerned. I feel that that is something we should take on board.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I assure you that I am beginning to look at my watch.
Pat Glass
That is helpful. As the hon. Gentleman has spoken about his great grandfather, I will talk about mine a little later. [Interruption.] Would the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) like to say something about my great grandfather? I will talk about him later, and perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to intervene then.
Oliver Colvile
I would like the hon. Lady to talk about her great grandfather.
Pat Glass
I will do so later.
We had a long debate on European affairs yesterday. I am sure we would all agree that it was an excellent debate, with many outstanding contributions. The debate has felt a little flat today, because we have returned to the usual suspects with the usual very narrow arguments. However, it gives me an opportunity to talk once again about the benefits of being a member of the European Union. I do not think—this is one of our criticisms of the Bill—that the benefits of being a member of the European Union can be narrowed down to simply an economic cost. The question is much bigger than that.
Labour, as hon. Members know, are united on this issue. We believe that Britain is stronger, safer and more prosperous as part of the European Union.
Pat Glass
No; just a second. We are a proud nation, with almost half our exports going to European countries. Those exports were worth £227 billion last year to the UK economy. We receive, on average, £26.5 billion of investment every year from the EU. Jobs and businesses, large and small, depend on our trading with the EU. Future EU trade could create 790,000 more jobs by 2030 by opening up markets in digital services, energy and tourism.
I will talk a little about my part of the country. The north-east is the only part of the country that has a trade surplus. Proportionately, we are the biggest exporting region in the country. We make things in my part of the world and we export them, largely to Europe. As I said yesterday, we make more cars in one city in the north-east in a month than that great car-building country, Italy, does in a whole year. I invite Conservative Members to go along to Teesport or the port of Tyne and see the lines of cars that are made in the north-east and exported to the European Union. In my region, 75% of our trade depends on being part of the European Union. Hundreds of thousands of jobs in the north-east are directly or indirectly linked to being part of the European Union. That is just one aspect of the benefits.
I will talk about the peace dividend later, but I want to talk a little about the fact that we live in a global world where we face issues such as international terrorism, international crime, war, migration and Russian expansionism. Listening to the debate today, I have not heard anything from Conservative Members that gives me any answers to the big questions facing us. It is not possible to reduce those huge issues to a cost-benefit analysis or an economic cost.
TTIP has been mentioned. I have to say that my blood runs cold at the thought of negotiating a TTIP arrangement outside the European Union. I am quite clear that our public services and our NHS need to be protected in any negotiations about TTIP. Having listened to the libertarians opposite, I am sure that that would not be the case.
David Morris
On negotiating TTIP within Europe, it is my understanding that that point is a non-issue, especially in relation to the NHS, as has been clarified many times during the past three years. Will the hon. Lady elaborate on that point?
Pat Glass
In such negotiations, it is clear that we are much more likely to get a TTIP agreement with red lines around our public services and the NHS as part of the European Union. If we were outside the European Union and negotiating such a treaty directly with the USA, I would not be so confident that that would be the priority of the current Government.
David Morris
For the record, does the Opposition agree that there will be protection for the NHS under TTIP within the European framework as it stands?
Pat Glass
We agree that if there is to be a TTIP agreement, it is much better to negotiate it with Britain as part of the European Union.
We have talked a lot about sovereignty in recent weeks. Many of us would agree that we have in various ways negotiated on our sovereignty in order to be part of something bigger. We have given up part of our sovereignty in defence to be part of organisations such as NATO, and we have done the same with the UN. On a personal level, when I married—I have been married for 30 years—I gave up some of my sovereignty over decisions that I would have made myself to be part of something that I accepted was bigger and better for both of us. The principle is very clear: in order to be part of something better, we sometimes have to give up things we want to hang on to. That is true of our sovereignty. I do not believe that this country has given away our sovereignty. It is very clear that whenever decisions are made in the European Union, they come back to and come under the sovereignty of this House.
On immigration, one of the huge strengths of this country—it has made us one of the strongest, richest, most powerful and greatest countries in the world—has been our ability, over centuries, to absorb and integrate millions of immigrants, migrants, people fleeing oppression and economic migrants. My family were economic refugees who came to this country during the Irish famine in the mid-19th century. Such people came to this country and worked hard for it. They brought up their children in this country, and paid their taxes. They fought for this country and, frankly, some of them died for this country. That is part of what makes this country the great country it is. To the idea that we can close the doors to people who will work in our NHS or our schools, I would say that that is part of what has kept this country rich. This country has got rich and stayed rich on immigration. We need to be very careful when talking about closing the doors to people, particularly those from the European Union.
Mr Chope
I do not think anyone has talked about closing the doors. We have talked about giving equal access on the basis of merit to foreigners regardless of whether they are from the EU or from outside the EU. For example, the hospital in my area tried to recruit nurses from the Philippines because they are well qualified for its needs, but it was unable to do so because priority has to be given to EU nurses.
Pat Glass
If we look at EU immigration, we can see that it is almost the same: 2.3 million people from the European Union are in Britain; and 2 million Brits live in the European Union. Many of them are working in and contributing to European countries and some of them, having worked hard all their lives, have retired and are now living in the European Union. We must be absolutely clear about what “out” would look like for those people. At the end of this debate, I want us to be very clear about that. We know what “in” looks like—we have had 41 years of what “in” looks like—but we absolutely no idea what “out” would look like for jobs and the economy, or for people from the EU working in this country and people from this country working in the EU.
Philip Davies
I am rather interested in the Labour party’s views. I urge the hon. Lady to look up the meaning of net migration. Net migration means the number of people coming in after we have taken out the ones who have already left, and that figure is 325,000. Is her party happy with the net migration figures as they are? Is she not prepared to take any measures to reduce them?
Pat Glass
Once again, another opportunity to tell us what “out” would look like and we do not get it.
We had an excellent debate in the Chamber yesterday, a lot of which centred on the peace dividend. I have not heard anything about that from Conservative Members today. The first aim of the European Union was peace. It was created not as a project or a political union, but to ensure peace in western Europe after the ruins of 1945. We committed genocide on one another in western Europe every 30 years up until 1945. As I said in the Chamber yesterday, for me this is personal. It is not just about politics. I accept that the European Union is not the only reason why young men and women are not lying in graves outside Thiepval and Ypres today, unlike my great grandfather and his brother, two young men from this country aged 22 and 25 who died within six weeks of each other and are lying in unmarked graves in Belgium and France. Great though the loss was to my family, it pales into insignificance alongside the loss suffered by other families. Mrs Smith from Bishop Auckland, a town just over the hill from where I live, lost her husband and her five sons. How can we put an economic cost on that? At the end of the awful wars in western Europe, when we regularly turned our continent into a killing field, the victors and the vanquished said never again will we allow this to happen. I believe that by voting to remain in the European Union we will ensure that this never happens again to the young people of this country.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)
If debating European affairs is your thing, Mr Deputy Speaker, you will have had a great week.
The starting gun to the core of what we are debating today began with the Prime Minister’s Bloomberg speech in January 2013. That was the first indication, by any Prime Minister, to say that he intended to take the opportunity to have a serious conversation with Europe; to say we are not content with our relationship with Europe, that we believe too many powers have been ceded to Brussels and that the EU is not transparent or competitive enough. That culminated in the Prime Minister last weekend debating with other Heads of State and Prime Ministers to establish the changes that he feels need to take place if Britain is to be justified in staying in the European Union.
The Prime Minister returned from those discussions on Saturday. On Monday, he made a statement, saying that his principal recommendation is to remain in the EU. He said, however, that it would not be for politicians but the people to decide on our long-term relationship with the EU. This generation gets to choose. As we now know, the referendum will take place on 23 June. If that was not enough, the issue was raised at Prime Minister’s questions, and there were the launches for the various in and out campaigns, with all their gusto and vim. Then, yesterday, we had a full day’s debate, in Government time, opened by the Foreign Secretary and closed by the Europe Minister. I agree about the repetition in some of our Europe debates—I remember many times just printing off my speech from my hard drive, with the bullet points ready to go, and coming here to give a similar exposé of my views on Europe—but, despite seeing the usual suspects committed to debating Europe, I think that today’s subject matter is different.
I disagree with the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass). Although it is clear that, should the Bill get anywhere, the date of the referendum would have to shift, I believe the debate is useful. Every time we have a debate, in the House or elsewhere, on Europe, more details emerge and more questions arise, and that is healthy. We saw it in the debates leading up to the Scottish and alternative vote referendums. That is important because these are difficult matters for us to get our heads around—there are questions to be raised and challenges to be made. In fact, new questions have been posed today, on both sides of the argument, and, if it helps, I will try to answer some of them.
I agree that this place has not always been brilliant at understanding the EU at its heart. I recall writing a pamphlet in opposition entitled, “Upgrading UK Influence in the European Union”. I think there are only two copies left: the one I have in my hand, and the one proudly owned by my mother, who is the only other person I know who has definitely read it. I flicked through it to remind myself of my frustration that the country did not scrutinise enough of what was going on in Brussels—this was before 2010, when we were in opposition.
The pamphlet asked what Parliament could do to better understand what was happening in Brussels. We spend a lot of time in this place arguing and complaining about the results of legislation coming from Brussels, but how much time do we invest in understanding the mechanisms and processes in order that we might challenge or stop it coming through in the first place?
Oliver Colvile
Does my hon. Friend recognise that we also need to send good-quality civil servants to Europe to argue our case properly?
Mr Ellwood
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I would argue that the civil servants we send there are among the best in the world. It is a huge privilege and honour to work in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, although many of the civil servants in Brussels come from other Departments.
I must say, however, that we are granted 12% of the jobs in the EU, in the various Commission roles and so forth, but, of late, we have not taken them, because there are language exams to be taken, and the language school in the Foreign Office was closed down. There were important top jobs to be had, but because our civil servants could not pass the two language courses required—one at a higher level, one at a more subsidiary level—we could not fill the very roles that would have allowed us the necessary influence in the EU, in the bowels of Brussels, to change, affect and advance legislation.
I am pleased to say that we are changing that—the language school is back in place and able to train civil servants to the correct levels—but when I wrote the pamphlet, before the 2010 election, we were filling only 3% to 4% of those jobs, meaning that 8% of the jobs to which Britain was entitled were going to other countries. One is supposed to relinquish one’s passport—metaphorically—when one becomes a civil servant in the EU, but of course one remains British at heart, or Italian or French, or whatever it is. It was a waste of an opportunity to scrutinise, understand and affect what was going on in the EU. I am pleased to say that the civil service situation has changed, and that we are now far more immersed in Brussels.
Let us look at some of the big ticket items that have been agreed—I shall come on to them in more detail later, if I may—such as the trade deal with Korea or the patent agreement that protects any invention. You might have a small invention that you have pocketed away, Mr Deputy Speaker, and not yet told us about, but you can be assured that you will be able to present it and it will be protected right across the European Union. It was British civil servants who were able to pilot this measure through, and it provides an example of the sort of work they are doing.
To answer my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), our understanding of these matters is important. When I was the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister for Europe, I remember organising cross-party visits for Members of Parliament to make the trip to Brussels so that they could learn about the EU, meet civil servants and understand how the European Parliament and various parts of the Commission work. Most of them were so delighted to get back on the Eurostar at the end of the day that they never wanted to see Brussels again, such was the scale of the bureaucracy. That highlights a challenge, but it perhaps also reflects the absence of a determination to say that we should be turning the situation around. We should not simply turn our backs on it and accept everything that happens; we should try to enhance British influence over what happens in Europe.
That is exactly what our Prime Minister has done in working with our allies and trying to effect change for the better. There are many countries, many Prime Ministers and many statesmen who agree with our free market liberal views on how the European Union should be conducted. They agree with us that it has become too politically empowered and not sufficiently transparent, and that although it is the largest single market in the world, it is becoming overburdened with red tape and bureaucracy. From a social perspective, furthermore, it is the most costly area in the world. Some 50% of social services in the world are found on our own doorstep in the European Union. That means that we are uncompetitive in comparison with other places in the longer term, which is exactly what the Prime Minister was trying to determine in his negotiations at the weekend. He explained what he returned with in his statement on Monday.
I am pleased that we have had yet another opportunity this week to debate these matters, and I am sure it will not be the last time. I am most grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch for stepping in for our hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), who was originally going to articulate his views on the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has done so with the same gusto that he has always shown in previous debates on the European Union. It is a matter of record and knowledge that he is my parliamentary Dorset neighbour, and I look forward to him donning one of the amazing ties that the leave campaign is promoting and going on the campaign trail in Dorset in the run-up to 23 June.
We heard contributions from other Members, including from my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who articulated important questions about the merits of the European Union which need to be answered by those who want to remain in the EU. That is important for the public, many of whom are yet to make up their minds on the merits or otherwise of continuing our membership of the European Union.
The speech of the day was, I thought, given by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh)—not simply because of its length, but its quality as well. He made some erudite points, and I thought he was extremely honest about what the British nation might expect from the leave campaign when it comes to articulating what it would mean if we did leave. He was honest in raising some question marks over what might happen to the common fisheries policy and the common agricultural policy. Many people support these policies now, so it is important for them to understand the consequences of leaving. It was very honest of him to pose those questions, and the nation must hear the answers in a proper debate.
The “Project Fear” label has crept into the discussion many times. We want to win the arguments because people have decided on the merits—the whys and wherefores—of both sides, rather than because they were unclear about the position, or because one side had decided to scaremonger. What worries me is that this might descend into something like an American presidential election campaign, in which the negative overshadows the positives and the educated points of view.
My hon. Friend also raised a number of specific questions, and I shall come to those later.
I am pleased to say that that my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) managed to get hedgehogs into yet another debate, although he was not intending to talk about a subject for which he has become famous. He also made the point that this is one of the biggest debates that we will ever have, and that it is therefore right for us to devote time and energy to looking at all the details.
I am saddened that more Members have not taken the time to join us on a Friday. I do not know where the Scottish nationalists are, but at least the Labour Front Benchers have made it, and I am pleased about that. In any event, I am sure that Members will have further opportunities to debate these matters in due course.
As I said earlier, we had a full and wide-ranging debate on Europe yesterday, opened by the Foreign Secretary. One speech that was pivotal, and stood out, was the speech made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames). It was a powerful oration, not least because my right hon. Friend mentioned his grandfather. As Members will know, his grandfather, looking at the mess of Europe, was concerned about how countries could integrate to the point at which they were no longer independent but interdependent, and would therefore never go down the road towards war again.
Sir Edward Leigh
May I take up that point about history, for the sake of the record? In his own very good speech, my right hon. Friend did indeed refer to his grandfather’s speech. Winston Churchill was always a robust defender of European unity, but he made it absolutely clear that what he foresaw was continental European unity. No one has ever been able to find any quotation from Winston Churchill suggesting that Britain should join a European union.
Mr Ellwood
My hon. Friend has made my point for me. What I think our right hon. Friend was trying to articulate was, “Please do not try to second-guess what would be the view of someone who is not alive today and able to understand the issues of today.” He made the point, very powerfully, that it was disingenuous to try to judge in that way. He was frustrated that people had taken the famous Zurich speech—of which we are now in the 70th anniversary year, and in which Churchill talked of a continental Europe—out of context, and had reinterpreted it in order to make their own points. In fact, it has already been used by both sides in the debate leading up to 23 June. Similarly, people have said of Margaret Thatcher, “I am sure that, if she were alive today, she would say this, that and the other.” I think it unhelpful to lean on great statesmen who are not here today, because today’s circumstances are very different.
It is, however, worth reminding ourselves that from the devastation of war-torn Europe has emerged a union of 28 nations, which are living in peace now, and which have also lived through a ragged period of dealing with the growth and subsequent demise of communism. We have become part of the biggest and most powerful single market in the world, and it is important for us to remember that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough also gives me licence to touch on how this is playing out in other European capitals. Things can be quite parochial in the Chamber, and sometimes the things that we say here do not reach much further, but we are being watched, registered and monitored in other capitals across the world as we have this debate. I have to say from my role as Foreign Minister responsible for the middle east, north Africa and south-east Asia that there is some puzzlement about this debate, as Britain has a legacy of being at the forefront of decision making—being a P5 UN Security Council member, a leading member of the Commonwealth and playing such a pivotal role in NATO, and given that in every international organisation from the World Trade Organisation to the International Monetary Fund to the World Bank, Britain is at the forefront.
Other countries hesitate and look at us to see which direction Britain is looking in, knowing that we have a powerful, strong and important relationship with the US, that we have experience, and that we have an interest in, and understanding of, much of the world around us, yet they also look at us and see that we might want to opt out of one of the largest organisations in the world. The Prime Minister also articulated that point on Monday.
We do not make any reference to the fact that the UK could survive outside the EU. We are a great and powerful nation—the fifth biggest trading nation in the world. The question is the degree of that success. That is what we need to debate up until 23 June. Are we better off out and making decisions separately, or are we more powerful as part of this organisation and collectively exerting more influence from inside? That is pivotal in the debate we will have in the next three months.
Much has also been made about the security concerns and whether Britain’s security status and competence would rise or fall were we to leave the EU. When the starting gun was fired, and the debate opened up and people declared their position, some comments were made about the Paris attacks, saying that they would be more likely to take place in the UK if we were outside the EU. I think those comments were disingenuous; I will not go further than that. We need to have a sensible and measured discussion about security. I certainly do not agree with that sentiment at all, and I urge those on both sides of the argument to be very cautious about making flippant comments and scaremongering. We are of course subject to the pressures of the media and the sensationalism they seem to encourage so that they have soundbites for the evening news or the Twittersphere, but our allies are looking at this and it does not bode well for Britain if we scaremonger in this way.
However, we are living in a very dangerous and complex world, one that is far more complex today than it was a couple of decades ago. The consequences of the Arab spring are still with us, we have an emboldened President Putin—far more unpredictable than ever before—and we have the growing concern of extremism. When the Bali bomb went off in 2002 there were just over 20 listed extremist groups—listed groups of terror. Today there are over 50. These are registered, listed groups recognised by us as organisations of terror. That means that at the moment we are not winning the battle to contain them. Daesh is obviously the biggest, and it is a franchise; other organisations, such as Boko Haram, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis and Ansar al-Sharia in Libya, are joining forces and gaining a franchise from Daesh. We need to think about how we collectively defeat that, and there is a question about the role of the EU in dealing with that.
Much has been said about the role of NATO—it was mentioned today. It is, of course, the cornerstone of our security endeavours, and we also have our strong relationship with the United States, but along with the growth of the European Union comes soft power. These things complement each other, and one does not replace the other. In certain areas where other countries are wanting to pursue a European-style army, we have made it clear that we would not support that, and neither would many other countries. Everybody has recognised that from a kinetic perspective NATO is the cornerstone of our security, but soft power comes with the ability to provide political leverage in introducing sanctions, and it is the work of the European Union that started the ball rolling in getting sanctions built up against Iran. Those sanctions eventually forced Iran to curtail its nuclear programme, come to the table and agree a long-term solution which denies the Iranians the ability to build a nuclear bomb. EU sanctions and EU discussions led to the P5+1 talks, which involved other countries such as China, Russia and the United States. That gives us an indication of the role the EU can play, and the counter-piracy operations off Somalia are another great example of this work, which can complement what NATO is doing.
We also need to consider the bilateral operations that work underneath the umbrella of the European Union, for example, the Border Force capabilities in Calais. One could argue that if we step out of the European Union, we could negotiate these things one by one, but carrying out bilateral talks with a number of countries is a lot more complex. The question is: would such an approach be as efficient as going to a single organisation—Interpol, Frontex or the European border forces—and at these meetings having a say not just in bilateral arrangements, such as those we have with France, but collectively? Internationally, what is the European Union’s view on the situation in Libya, with the movement of refugees and with the criminal gangs exhorting funds from refugees who wish to make the perilous journey across the Mediterranean? My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley posed the question as to the impact of extremist parties in Europe, as it could be argued that that has been a consequence of the movement of refugees. But the only way we are going to sort that is by dealing with the problem at source—by addressing what is happening in Syria. Again, I would argue that the EU can put far greater emphasis and might into providing a challenge and looking for solutions by working collectively, not only on managing the refugee crisis, but on addressing the challenges at source in order to mitigate what is going on.
Philip Davies
Everyone would agree that the Minister is making a balanced and good speech, but I am surprised that he seems to be talking down the ability of the mighty Foreign Office, of which he is a part. Is he really saying that if, after we had left the EU, the UK and the EU thought that sanctions should be imposed on Iran, the Foreign Office would have no mechanism for discussing that with the European Union, and coming to that decision and agreement? Is he saying that those discussions can take place only from within the EU? Since when has the Foreign Office been so pathetically powerless around the world?
Mr Ellwood
My hon. Friend will not be surprised to know that his description of the Foreign Office is not one I agree with—
Mr Ellwood
It is not my description. Provocatively, my hon. Friend is putting words in my mouth. We can step back from this particular issue to all the other issues, saying that in each case Britain would have the ability—in fact, we would have the obligation—outside the EU to step up and do all that work as well, whether it be on sanctions on Iran or any other relationships. The question is: on our own, can we exert greater leverage on a country such as Iran, which continues to have a proxy influence in Bahrain, Damascus and Syria, Baghdad and Iraq, and Yemen and Sana’a, or would we have more leverage and power by leading from within the EU? That applies right across the board.
Mr Chope
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the way in which he is responding to the debate. May I ask him about the Syrian refugees? I think our Prime Minister and our Government have the right idea in saying, “Let’s take the refugees from the area of the theatre, rather than encouraging them to make the dangerous journey to Europe.” Why does my hon. Friend think the European Union has not been prepared to listen and respond positively to that common-sense approach from our Government?
Mr Ellwood
I am not sure that is quite correct. Federica Mogherini, who leads on these matters for the European Union, is very much in alignment with that view. We discussed these things in Rome recently when we looked at Syrian and Iraq matters. My hon. Friend is right to say that there are a number of challenges—first, the genuine Syrian refugees caught up in the region. We should pay tribute to Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other countries, for the massive burden that they have taken on. We have chosen to support those refugees who are most vulnerable. The challenge that has come across Europe comes not just from Syrians. Mixed in with them are Afghans and others from Africa, taking advantage of the patterns of migratory flow. We have said that if we open our doors to them, we are likely to encourage more. That is why we have been very firm.
The consequence is that thousands are still coming in across Europe every day and we need a solution to deal with that. If my hon. Friend visits Greece now, he will see the scale of the challenge there. On beaches that should be for holidaymakers, there are migrant camps and individuals everywhere, some in transit and some having put up a temporary home. EU countries are affected by that, which is why collectively we need a better solution.
Central to that is solving the problem so that people do not feel they want to turn their back on their country, thereby making it all the weaker. Many of the people who can make it and are making it to Europe are the ones with mobile phones, the ones who are fed and have a family. I do not doubt that they are going through an horrific time, but many of them are educated and if they depart from Syria, they deny it the doctors, nurses and engineers that will be needed once the guns fall silent and the country starts to rebuild itself.
Sir Edward Leigh
May I say that the Minister is replying to the debate extremely well? It just shows that sometimes there is an advantage in having to wait a bit before one gets on to the Front Bench because one understands this place better.
May I ask my hon. Friend a serious question about the refugees from Syria? I put this point to the Prime Minister and I am not sure I got an adequate reply. I want the Minister to try and deal with it. I am not so worried about east European migrants to this country because they work hard and integrate. I am extremely worried about the millions pouring in from the middle east, including Syria. I said to the Prime Minister that Merkel’s million would all have a right to come here once they get passports. The Prime Minister said that only 2% of people coming into Germany get passports.
The Minister cannot give me an answer now, but will the Foreign Office do some more work on this? Based on history, I think a much higher proportion of those pouring into Germany now will get passports. I would like the Foreign Office to keep an eye on this because those people would have a right to come here and it is an important issue.
Mr Ellwood
The first thing that has to be acknowledged is that the normal processes in place across Europe for dealing with refugees applying for status are going to be tested, because of the scale of the migration that we are dealing with. Under Germany’s current rules, they would have to wait a number of years—eight years, I think, but I stand to be corrected—before they can gain a passport. If they have a criminal record, they will not get a passport. So there is automatically a delay in the process of securing a passport. The German analysis is that in such a time frame, many will hope to return home or to remain in Germany. We need to keep the problem in context. If they are in Germany, have a German passport and receive benefits there, why would they want to come to the UK? These are big questions, but they are for further down the line. They should not be ducked. The scale of what we are dealing with is unprecedented since the movement of populations after the second world war.
I should just mention that much of the focus of the Syria conference that took place in the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre was on some of those questions as well. We raised an unprecedented amount of money—$11 billion was pledged in one day—from the international community. I spoke at one of the non-governmental organisation conferences, and much of the energy was focused on how the European Union deals with such challenges. If I am honest, the EU could be regarded as a fair weather organisation: when economies are doing well, that is all fine and good, but when something such as Ukraine comes up, that is when the mechanics of bringing countries together to achieve consensus has yet to be tested. That is where the European Union is having to learn far faster than NATO, which, from a security perspective, had the machinery in place to be able to react to these events on a more regular basis. None the less, my hon. Friend raises an important point.
I just want to talk a little about the consequences of exit, which is what this Bill is all about. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, we would have to delay the referendum. There is a trigger notice in article 50, which would prompt negotiation. A country cannot simply walk out of the European Union, nor can it tear up its membership card as one can do, presumably, with a political party. It needs to apply to leave, and in the good old European Union way there is a process to be followed. That process can last up to two years. It also requires the support of the 27 members, and that can take time. With all this, there is a question for those who are advocating departure: if the process were to last more than 24 months, what happens to businesses and where do they fit in? What will happen to deals, negotiations and reputations? How does the City of London continue to attract business if there is a question mark over the departure date—and that is before we have even considered what we might be entering into.
Michael Howard’s comments were referred to this morning. He talked about renegotiating to get back in. So, let us say that a country manages to get out of the EU in two years, it then might have to begin negotiations to get back in again. It took Switzerland eight years to consolidate its deal. That is time consuming. Arguably, the process can be faster. We are a far bigger country than Switzerland or Norway, so the process could be expedited. Again, there will be delays. There is a question mark over where we actually stand and what our relationship is.
It is just worth mentioning article 49, which does not get as much press as article 50 in the European treaty. It says:
“Any European State which respects the values referred to in Article 2 and is committed to promoting them may apply to become a member of the Union.”
Article 49 is all about what a country does to regain its membership. It says:
“The European Parliament and national Parliaments shall be notified of this application.”
All the national Parliaments then have a debate and discussion about a future British application.
“The applicant State shall address its application to the Council, which shall act unanimously after consulting the Commission and after receiving the consent of the European Parliament”.
So the country needs unanimous support. If one country were to say to us, “No, you can’t come back in on those terms” then we are stuck. Also, anybody who knows the European Parliament knows that it has myriad views.
It goes one to say that the European Parliament
“shall act by a majority of its component members…The conditions of admission and the adjustments to the Treaties on which the Union is founded, which such admission entails, shall be the subject of an agreement between the Member States and the applicant State.”
I could go on, but I think that the message is clear. There are an awful lot of hurdles to clear to complete the process. It is not a simple process.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend seems almost pleased to paint such a grim and complex scenario, but does he accept that that is only one possible scenario? Can he tell us what contingency plans the Government are making at the moment so that leaving the European Union after the vote on 23 June is much more straightforward and that there will not be all the problems that he is talking about?
Mr Ellwood
We will have to wait until 24 June to see whether what that crystal ball says is correct. I am not painting a scenario; it is in article 49 of the Lisbon treaty. That is what we must honour and what we signed up for. We do not have a choice in that matter—that is how it is.
Mr Ellwood
I will contemplate and reflect on what my hon. Friend has said, but my immediate reply is that we must honour the international law to which we have signed up. A nation must first consider article 50—that is about departure and getting out, which I always said is not an easy process—and then article 49, which states how we can get back into the treaty.
Let us pause for a second and think of the countries that are queuing up to join the EU. I was involved a little in encouraging Bosnia to meet the necessary requirements to be accepted into the European Union, and there is also Serbia and other countries. There is a long list of countries that want to become members of the European Union, or have some kind of status—it does not have to be full membership; it could be something similar to the arrangements of Norway or Switzerland. One argument could be that Britain has to get into line—
Mr Ellwood
My hon. Friend shakes his head. I hope that were that horrible scenario ever to take place, recognition would be given to Britain’s place in Europe, but other countries could quite rightly say, “Hang on a minute, We have dedicated teams looking at us. Why should Britain jump the gun?”
Sir Edward Leigh
Why is the Minister spending so much time arguing about a process for how we will get back in the European Union when we will have just left it? I am confused.
Mr Ellwood
Because as I understand, the heart of the argument from the leave campaign recognises that some aspects of the European Union are welcome, such as the single market and some aspects of the security situation, and that there would be a desire for re-entry so that we could have that relationship. [Interruption.] What I heard on the radio this morning is that we would renegotiate aspects of our relationship with the European Union—I have heard that again and again. If my hon. Friends are saying, “No, we will have no truck with the European Union whatsoever”, that is a new direction of travel that I have not heard before, so I am grateful that the debate has clarified what the leave campaign has been after for all this time.
Philip Davies
Is the Minister aware that many countries have free trade agreements with the European Union without being members of it, an example being the agreement that America is seeking to make at the moment? The future for the United Kingdom is to have free trade with the European Union from outside it, in the way that many other big countries do. Does the Minister understand that?
Mr Ellwood
I will heed the advice and encouragement, because other issues have been raised that we must also touch on. Let me be clear: there is a fair bit of bureaucracy to be gone through, but even securing a free trade agreement with the European Union would require a process to be followed and would not happen overnight.
Mr Ellwood
Let me come on to free trade, because those issues were raised in the debate and perhaps I can answer my hon. Friend’s point. The European Union is our main trading partner and, as has been said, that trade is worth more than £500 million a year. That is half our total trade in goods and services. However, we can still trade with the rest of the world as well, and the EU has free trade agreements with more than 50 countries—that is alongside the 28 countries in the single market. Around 45% of Britain’s exports are designed for the single market itself, while 56% go to the single market and to countries the EU has free trade deals with. [Interruption.] I will give way to somebody if they would like to give me a break so that I can clear my throat.
Oliver Colvile
Could not failing to go through the right procedures end up delaying our exit from the EU because the issue would need to go the various courts? It is a bit like when a planning application goes wrong and someone is not happy with the process.
Mr Ellwood
I am grateful for that intervention—from a number of angles—and my hon. Friend makes an important point.
We have dealt with the delays, so I will move on to TTIP’s impact on the health service, which hon. Members raised. Many hon. Members have received emails on this subject questioning what the situation is. I should make it clear that TTIP poses no threat to the NHS whatever. It cannot force the UK to privatise public services, and any suggestion to the contrary is irresponsible and, indeed, false. The Prime Minister, the European Commission and the US Government have made that clear. The NHS—indeed, public services—will not be privatised through the trade deal, nor will the deal open NHS services to further competition or make irreversible any decisions on the provision of NHS services that are taken by the UK Government. I hope that that makes the position clear in answer to the many emails many of us have had on this issue—in fact, there might even be a 38 Degrees campaign on this.
Mr Ellwood
That is why these debates are helpful. I can only make clear what the Government’s position is. I can also ask the Minister for Europe to place a letter in the Library to set out in more detail what the consequences would be. Given the number of emails, there is clearly huge interest in this matter across the country, so I am pleased to have this opportunity to address it.
Guidance to the civil service was mentioned. The example was given of the fishing Minister’s dilemma in being unable to participate fully in the debate on the European Union. Of course, he can participate fully, but to clarify—the Prime Minister also responded on this issue at Prime Minister’s Question Time—the Government have a clear position, which is to recommend to the country that people vote to remain members of a reformed European Union.
Quite exceptionally, Ministers are being allowed to depart from the normal rules on collective responsibility, in order to dissent from the official Government position on the referendum question. However, the civil service exists—we cannot get away from that—and it is there to support the Government of the day and the policy agreed by the Government of the day. The letter published by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, and subsequently extended by formal guidance from the Cabinet Secretary to civil servants, does no more than give effect to that.
Mr Ellwood
I am coming to that shortly, when I will go into the details of the timetable, but I just wanted to clarify the position, because it may be raised again in relation to other Ministers who have different views as well.
Philip Davies
The Government’s view seems to be that we should stay in the European Union. I presume that even they would concede that being a member of the EU is disadvantageous in some ways, although their view overall is that it is better for us to remain. If their view on fishing, for example, is that it may be to our disadvantage to be in the EU, and the fishing Minister wanted to use the Government machinery to come up with something better, would he be allowed to do so, or are we in the ridiculous situation where every Minister has to pretend—whether it is true or not—that every aspect of EU membership is in our interests?
Mr Ellwood
The Prime Minister returned from the European Council having managed to secure the changes necessary for him and the Government to confirm the position that a reformed European Union is in the interests of British membership. From that perspective, there is a collective responsibility to support it. The reason for the change is the unique situation of having the vote. It is absolutely the case that individual Ministers can dissent, but people cannot pick and mix—they cannot take out a slice and say, “I don’t agree with that”, because that would make a mockery of participation and involvement in the European Union.
I was going to wait until the part of my speech dealing in detail with the timetable before I answered the question on purdah, but because of the lack of time, I am pleased to confirm that it will begin 28 days before the vote. I hope that helps my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough.
Several hon. Members have discussed VAT on sanitary goods. In our view, EU member states should have the flexibility to apply a zero rate of VAT to sanitary products. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury has written to the European Commission and other member states setting out the Government’s view that EU member states should have full discretion over the rate of VAT they should apply. The Financial Secretary has been informed by the Commission that its action plan may put forward options to allow member states greater flexibility in the application of the reduced and zero rates of VAT. I am sure that he will make more statements on this in due course.
We have touched on the trade deficit, which is an important issue. The Office for National Statistics’ “Pink Book” with data for 2015 and 2014 confirms that UK total exports to the 28 nations of the EU were £229 billion, and UK imports from the 28 states were £291 billion. The UK’s trade deficit with the EU 28 was therefore £62 billion. However, it would be disingenuous to use that figure on its own because of the difference between goods and services, of which hon. Members will be aware. We are far stronger in the services aspect. With the reforms that are coming through, that is where the single market is likely to grow in future, and where we are likely to be in surplus rather than in deficit. It is very important to recognise the opportunities for Britain in remaining in the European Union as a result of that.
Passports have been mentioned. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley talked about what happens when an individual from the European Union enters our borders and has their passport swiped. There is a watch list system used by Home Office staff for the purposes of border and national security, and the detection and prevention of crime. During business as usual, 100% of passengers arriving in the UK have their identity documents scanned against the watchlist, so somebody on it will be identified and can be detained if need be. The Government’s strategic objective to enhance border security and militate against organised criminality and terrorism risks has led to a requirement to check arriving passengers against the Schengen information system at the border. This is another great example of “what if?” If we were to depart from the European Union, would we have to renegotiate ourselves back into the ability to use SIS II, as it is called?
Philip Davies
Will the Minister confirm that, contrary to the assertions made in yesterday’s debate, when somebody comes into the UK from the European Union their entire criminal record does not flash up before the Border Force, and we do not then cart them off to kick them out of the country on that basis? Will he confirm that that was a wholly false assertion?
Mr Ellwood
I was not privy to the exact point in the debate when that comment was made, but I will ask the relevant Home Office Minister to write to my hon. Friend to clarify exactly what does happen. I am now mildly curious to find out those details myself.
Mr Ellwood
I feel an element of consensus breaking out in the Chamber, which is a rare thing.
As I bring my introductory remarks to a close, may I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch on promoting the Bill, and my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough, who has been an astute advocate of debating these matters in more detail? The issue of Europe is not only topical, but of the utmost importance. It received a full day’s parliamentary debate yesterday and we will have further debates leading up to 23 June.
The British public made it clear that they were not happy with the status quo, and the Prime Minister sought to address that, so last November he wrote to Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, setting out in detail the four areas in which he sought change to the European Union, namely economic governance, competence, sovereignty and immigration. At the February European Council he achieved a deal covering each of those areas.
As the Prime Minister has said, we said that we would get Britain out of ever closer union and give national Parliaments the power to work together to block unwanted EU laws. The deal we have delivered means that we will never become part of a European Union superstate.
We said that we would make Europe more competitive, and we have delivered that in this deal as well, with commitments to cut red tape, in particular for small businesses. That means we can create more jobs and security for working people in Britain.
We said that we would protect Britain as the eurozone continues to integrate. We have delivered that in this deal, which means that British taxpayers will never be required to bail out the eurozone and that British businesses can never be discriminated against because we are not part of the euro.
We said that we would put an end to the “something for nothing” welfare culture for EU migrants so that we can control immigration from Europe, and we have delivered on that as well. EU migrants can no longer claim full in-work benefits for four years, which some people said would be impossible to achieve, and child benefit will no longer be sent overseas to Europe at UK rates. We have already delivered our commitments to require EU migrants to leave Britain after six months if they have not found work and have no genuine prospect of finding a job, and to stop EU migrants being able to claim universal credit while looking for work.
This is a legally binding and irreversible deal that delivers for Britain. It means that we will never join the euro, never join a European army and never be part of the Schengen borderless zone.
Soon the people of Britain will have their say on the UK’s membership of the EU. The Prime Minister has announced that he intends to hold the referendum on Thursday 23 June, and that must now be agreed by both Houses of Parliament. We have already published information on the outcome of the Government’s negotiations on the UK’s membership of the EU, as required by the European Union Referendum Act 2015. In time, we will publish information on the rights and obligations resulting from the UK’s membership of the EU, as well as examples of countries that are not members of the EU but have other arrangements with it.
This will be a once-in-a-generation moment to shape the future of our country. Ultimately, it will be for the British people to decide, but the Government have made it clear that we support continued membership of a reformed European Union. I want to set out in more detail the Government’s thinking on renegotiation, but first I will explain some of the benefits—I am sure that Back Benchers will appreciate this—of our membership of the EU.
The Government’s long-term economic plan is delivering economic security for families and businesses, underpinned by sound public finances, by investing in the UK’s future, addressing the productivity challenge and rebalancing the economy towards trade and investment. With turbulence in the global economy, membership of the EU supports that plan by giving British businesses access to the free trade single market and dozens of trade deals across the world. The Government’s deal keeps the EU moving firmly in the right direction. It hardwires competitiveness into the decision making of the EU and commits the EU to pursuing more trade deals with non-EU countries. We contribute a huge amount and get a huge amount in return. We cannot be a force for good in a reformed Europe if we are not at the heart of what is going on. We are a major player—
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(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Planning Rules
(8 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker. My apologies for the fact that this debate means that you, the Minister and I will have to spend the last half hour of this parliamentary week together.
I want to talk briefly about some of the planning issues that are impacting on a particular part of my constituency, Haughton Green. For the benefit of the Minister, I will explain that Haughton Green is an urban village. Had he visited the place 60 years ago, he would have found open countryside separating Denton and Haughton Green. That has gradually been filled up, mainly by the creation of a Manchester City Council overspill estate in the late 1950s and 1960s, to the point where there is very little open space separating Denton and Haughton Green, although Haughton Green still classes itself as a village and is proud of its historical identity as a village.
The plan-led system has, in part, protected places such as Haughton Green, but Haughton Green now feels under siege. I first became involved in planning issues in the mid-1990s, when I was successfully elected as a member of Tameside Council representing the Denton West ward. Back then, there was a controversial proposal to build a business park on some open space between Denton and Gorton called Kingswater Park. It was so controversial that the application was called in by two Secretaries of State: the noble Lord Heseltine in 1990 and the noble Lord Prescott in 1998. Ultimately, the planning application never saw the light of day, thankfully.
Let me set the scene in respect of how the people of Haughton Green feel badly let down by the planning system. That started in 2008 with the application for the demolition of the old rectory. The Minister probably will not appreciate that the old rectory is part of a collection of significant Victorian architecture across Denton. It was part of a collection of quirky and unique buildings designed by James Medland and Henry Taylor, who were two of the most important architects at work in the Manchester area during that period. We are very fortunate to have a number of Medland and Taylor buildings in Denton. They were responsible for the grade I listed church of St Anne in Haughton, the grade II* listed rectory of St Anne in Haughton, the grade II* listed extension to St Lawrence’s church in Denton and the grade II listed St Mary the Virgin church in Haughton Green.
Sadly, the old rectory of St Mary the Virgin church in Haughton Green never made it on to the register of listed buildings. English Heritage initially decided not to recommend the building for listing, but—as result of representations by the Denton Local History Society and local residents, led by my friend Margaret Smethurst, and the Manchester Victorian Society—the Department for Culture, Media and Sport asked English Heritage to look again at its recommendation. Sadly, English Heritage refused to reconsider the building for listing, citing the many changes that had been made to the internal and external structure over the years. However, I believe that enough original features were left to warrant listing the building in its own right, and certainly to do so as part of the collection of Medland and Taylor buildings in and around Denton.
The application for the redevelopment of the old rectory site was passed by Tameside Council, and the application to demolish the old rectory was approved on 30 June 2009. We now have the blight of a derelict site in Meadow Lane, the most beautiful of locations in Haughton Green, because the site has never been brought forward for redevelopment. As a result, we have a lost some pretty significant local architecture.
Local residents, not wanting to lose any more of the unique heritage of the Meadow Lane area, the historic core of the old village of Haughton Green, applied for the grant of conservation area status. The Minister will not know that everybody who goes down Meadow Lane appreciates its beauty and historical character, particularly in the urban area of Denton. Tameside Council was very sympathetic to its becoming a conservation area, but at the time it had what I can only describe as a pretty useless conservation officer. Unless a property was a Cotswolds, chocolate box cottage that had not been in any way altered throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, let alone the 21st century, she came up with every reason why it could not be protected or listed. She pretty much blocked the Meadow Lane area becoming a conservation area.
All has not been lost, however, because Tameside Council found a way around that. It is in the process of consulting local residents about designating the area under a supplementary planning document. I hope that that will offer some residents a say in how the Meadow Lane area, the historic core of Haughton Green, is permitted to develop in future, not least because we still have the blight or eyesore of a big gaping hole where the old rectory once stood. I will work with local residents to make sure that Tameside Council gets that SPD right for the people who live in Haughton Green.
That brings me to the devolution agenda. As the Minister will know, I have raised this several times because I have real concerns about how the Greater Manchester Combined Authority has gone about the initial, so-called public, consultation for its spatial framework. I and my constituents feel that we have been locked out of the process. The GMCA had a call for sites and identified those that were suitable for new housing development across the whole of Greater Manchester. Significantly, however, a very substantial number of infill sites have been identified in and around Haughton Green.
The deadline for public consultation was 11 January. Sadly, I only found out about that not because I was contacted as a Member of Parliament—I was not—but because I noticed that I had retweeted something on Twitter that I thought was linked to health devolution in Greater Manchester. It turned out to relate to this planning process. When I saw it I just about had enough time to put in my own comments. After the consultation deadline passed on 14 January, I raised in business questions whether we could have a debate on the approach of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority in respect of its flawed public consultation.
I would argue that nobody is against future development. Greater Manchester needs it as much as anywhere. However, there has to be sufficient public buy-in and there has to be a sensible release of sites across Greater Manchester. Whole swathes of sites are suitable for housing development. Some of the sites in the Haughton Green area may be suitable for the future housing development needs of the people in Haughton Green. The wodge of paper I have here are all the sites that have been identified by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority as being suitable for future housing development. These differ in sizes from one extreme, the school playing fields of the former Two Trees secondary school, which have been identified as being suitable for 237 new homes, right the way down to small sites such as a patch of land on Keats Avenue, which has been identified as being suitable for six new homes. In total, in Haughton Green alone, these sites would amount to 423 new homes. I say to the Minister that that is fine, but we need the infrastructure to be able to cope with that. We need to ensure that Haughton Green can cope with the additional new properties.
I urge the Minister to familiarise himself with the “Manchester A-Z”. He will see that Haughton Green is in a cul-de-sac. It is at the end of two country lanes that are now urban roads: Two Trees Lane and Mill Lane. They are the only ways in and out of the entirety of Haughton Green, including the massive Manchester overspill estate that was built in the 1960s. Already, those two lanes are log-jammed at peak times. I urge him to think very carefully about how we pay for the infrastructure if we are going to use all these infill development sites. None of the developers for those individual sites is going to say that they will pay for a new access route into Haughton Green, with the massive capital cost that that would incur. It is reasonableness by degrees, but if we put all the developments together, it is fairly certain that the existing road infrastructure into and out of Haughton Green will not be able to cope. It is struggling as it is. If we are going to use these sites—and I have issues with a number of the sites proposed by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority—we need to think about how we do so without generating traffic chaos.
The Haughton Green Methodist chapel is a very early example of a Methodist chapel. It opened in 1810 and is the oldest place of worship in the village. In 1791—I do not know if things have changed that much—the authorities agreed that the district of Denton and Haughton was one of the most uncivilised parts of England. A Wesleyan society was established and the church remained in use from 1810 to 2010. It then moved across the road to the newly refurbished Sunday school building, and this is where the Methodist church still meets to this day.
The old Methodist chapel was bought by a speculative developer who did nothing with the old historic building, much to the frustration of local residents, and it quickly fell into dereliction and the churchyard became overgrown. It was put up for auction last year and bought by new owners. As the Minister and other Members will appreciate, when a building goes up for auction, the rumour mill starts as people wonder what is happening, and some of those rumours led to local concern.
For that reason, a month or so ago, I, together with councillors Claire Reid and Mike Fowler, and George Newton, a local community activist, met the new owners in my constituency office. They confirmed that some of the rumours were correct and that they intended to convert the building to a community centre and a new place of worship. As the Minister will appreciate, that is acceptable for a class D1 property—it was a place of worship and will still be a place of worship—and so no planning permission is required.
I want to drill down into the community centre side of the issue. Nearby, we have the Haughton Green centre, the Oasis centre, the Green Park centre, Haughton Green Methodist church, St Mary’s church and St John Fisher Catholic church, all of which have community rooms, buildings and facilities. There is no need for another community centre in Haughton Green, unless it is for a community that does not currently reside in Haughton Green, and that is where there are concerns. It has been confirmed that the Methodist church is to become an Islamic community centre and place of worship.
I have no interest in extending some of the views expressed by some of my constituents, but there is a large degree of concern, because it potentially means lots of people coming to Haughton Green to use a community building that is not for the community of Haughton Green. I will briefly detail the ward profile: Denton South has a population of 11,230; 98.2% is white; 77.7% is Christian; and 0.5% is Muslim. As sure as anything, the people using the community centre and place of worship will be coming from outside.
The church is on Two Trees Lane—one of the two lanes I told the Minister were already gridlocked. If the Methodists were coming to Haughton Green, in the year 2016, they would almost certainly not get planning permission for a Methodist church on Two Trees Lane without parking facilities. There is obvious frustration and concern among local residents about traffic, but local councillors are working to see whether traffic regulation orders can be put in place. There is also a concern about the graves. The council will almost certainly not permit the new owners to remove the graves from the churchyard. Furthermore, the new owners have put in a new mezzanine floor, suggesting it will be used by an awful lot of people. I have contacted the county fire officer to see whether fire safety regulations can invoke the need for a planning application.
I have raised those three issues, because, put together, they have left the people of Haughton Green feeling locked out of decisions about how their village is developing. Given the relaxation of planning rules and regulations, I fear this will become a growing problem across every constituency. Unless residents can buy into the planning system, unless their voice counts and unless their vision for their community matters, I fear that the disconnect between politicians and the public will just widen. That is why I urge the Minister to listen to the concerns of the people of Haughton Green. I will do my bit to ensure that their views, their voice and their concerns are raised at every appropriate level from local government right up to the Minister. If we believe in localism, we need to make sure that local people have a say in how their towns and villages develop in the future.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Brandon Lewis)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) on securing the debate. I want to pay tribute to his clear and energetic campaigning on behalf of his residents. As we have seen here today, he is fully committed not just to urban regeneration but to ensuring that we see the right kind of environment and community for his residents—something we all want to see right across the country. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that for reasons of propriety, as the Minister for Housing and Planning, I cannot comment on particular planning proposals or draft local plan documents. I am nevertheless happy to respond in general terms to the issues that the hon. Gentleman has aired today. I hope to suggest some possible ways forward for his constituents.
Having listened to what the hon. Gentleman has said, it seems to me that his concerns relate more to policy, both local and national, than to rules. This Government’s expectations of the planning system are set out in the national planning policy framework. It is an important document and one of its important objectives is to promote the highest standards of architecture and design as well to ensure that the historical environment is allowed to play its part in place-making.
This is not just a matter of ensuring that conservation areas and buildings listed for their architectural and historical interest are safe. The character and distinctiveness of our villages, towns and cities are often dependent on townscape features that are not designated as heritage assets, as the hon. Gentleman outlined very well. Buildings, for instance, have clearly accrued over time and tell us about our history; they have varied texture and human-scale design; and they avoid the “sameness” that in reality spoil too many of the town centres and developments that we have seen over the last few years.
Local authorities, of course, must ensure that appropriate roads and other hard infrastructure are there to support the developments they approve, but green infrastructure matters, as well. Trees and open spaces, whether or not protected by designation, play a vital role in place-making and promote public health. New infill development that shows care and respect to a town or village’s character and context can not only raise the spirits, but help to attract visitors and businesses and increase property values. The framework also makes it clear that local authorities should prioritise suitable brownfield land wherever practicable.
Whatever the development planned, it is best to make sure that the community is involved early on and is clear about its ability to get involved. Local residents have three main opportunities to have their say about future development: plan-making, neighbourhood planning and directly through planning applications. I shall touch on those in turn in the next few minutes.
Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council is in the early stages of scoping a supplementary planning document for the area. The council has already engaged planning and design consultants to lead early community engagement. I think that is a good thing, but we need to make sure that that engagement goes forward. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will urge his constituents to contribute their views through the plan-making process.
One of this Government’s ambitions in determinations for localism is to make sure that local people feel empowered and if possible take the lead on the approach to designs adopted in their area. If there is concern that buildings have not been listed for their architectural or historical interest, and that they are vulnerable, a community can use its local plan to create a local list of heritage buildings so that their merit is not ignored. Local people can also investigate a new design toolkit, which has been launched by the Prince’s Foundation and is entitled “Beauty-In-My-Back-Yard”. I commend it as something for the hon. Gentleman and his constituents to have a look at as providing a possible basis for dialogue with Tameside council and developers.
As the hon. Gentleman rightly outlined, there is the wider context of the Greater Manchester spatial framework. The 10 authorities of Greater Manchester have a long and successful history of working together to drive economic growth. The devolution deal provides further opportunities for that. At the local level, each individual authority will have to sign up and be accountable in the local area. Each authority must consult and involve the local area so that local people will have a say over development in their areas. I encourage all the hon. Gentleman’s constituents in Haughton Green to take part in the consultation, and I hope that they will consider engaging in neighbourhood planning as well, because that would be a massive step forward.
Andrew Gwynne
I agree with everything that the Minister has said so far, but local people need to know that a consultation is taking place. That is the problem that we had with the call for sites.
Brandon Lewis
That is a good point. It is important for local authorities to work hard to engage their local communities. However, neighbourhood planning allows people to have a direct say in the development of their areas. Not only can they work on the design of the plan, but every resident in the neighbourhood has a vote in a referendum. I am pleased that, so far, 88% of people have voted “yes” in neighbourhood planning referendums. If people are interested and involved, they will have confidence in the process and get behind it.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned parks and similar areas. We feel that people should be encouraged and empowered to have a say in what happens to assets of that kind. The community right to bid allows pieces of land, and buildings such as churches, to be listed as assets of community value when that is appropriate. I should be happy to give the hon. Gentleman further details of the listing process, which is extremely straightforward and simple, and can prove very successful in protecting assets. It is necessary to ensure that the right assets are protected, and the community is best placed to do that. We need a localised, flexible and reformed planning system that is driven by communities, and enables them to make decisions that are right for their areas. The people who know best are the people who live in those areas, and that is what neighbourhood planning, and assets of community value, are all about.
The people of Haughton Green, like those elsewhere, have statutory opportunities to comment and criticise when a local plan is revised, when a spatial plan is developed, and every time a planning application is made. Even if land is allocated for development in the spatial framework or local plan, a particular planning application can still be refused permission in response to evidence and well-argued objections. That brings me back to something that the hon. Gentleman has heard me say at the Dispatch Box a few times before. We want more homes to be built, but we also want them to be the right homes, in the appropriate places and for all tenures.
There are many opportunities for local people to have their hopes and concerns reflected in our modern, reformed planning system, especially if they have volunteered to work on a neighbourhood plan that is brought to a successful conclusion and adopted following a local referendum, and there are many ways in which to secure well-loved and useful local buildings and protect them from unnecessary loss. I hope that the hon. Gentleman’s constituents will take those opportunities on board, have confidence in their ability to use them, and enjoy success in the future.
Question put and agreed to.
House of Lords
NHS (Charitable Trusts Etc) Bill
(8 years, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to sponsor this Bill and present it to your Lordships today and seek your support. It is an honour to follow the passage of the Bill in another place, where there was unanimous and enthusiastic support. The debates were led ably and sympathetically by Wendy Morton, MP for Aldridge-Brownhills. It is entirely appropriate that a Bill involving Peter Pan should be introduced by an MP called Wendy. I thank the Minister and Wendy Morton for meeting me, and Department of Health officials for their excellent guidance. I thank also Great Ormond Street Hospital and the Association of NHS Charities for their help. Most importantly, I thank the Library for its most useful briefing pack.
I very much look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Bird. We have discussed the Bill and I know that he is committed to its principles. I also look forward to the Minister’s response. I know that he has connections of long standing with Great Ormond Street. I am delighted that my noble friend Lady Blackstone is taking part today. She has been significant in ensuring that issues relating to NHS trusts are reconsidered. She is of course now the chair of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust.
The Bill may seem complex but it is, in fact, fairly simple and its aims are clear. It seeks to do two things. First, it makes provision to remove the Secretary of State’s powers to appoint trustees for NHS charities linked to NHS bodies in England, and makes consequential amendments to the removal of those powers. Secondly, it makes provision to amend sections of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to transfer to the new Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity, to be known as GOSH, the right to a royalty in relation to performances or publications of the play “Peter Pan”. There are other related and transitional provisions.
At the moment, the right is in the hands of special trustees appointed by the Secretary of State, and I will go into this in greater detail in a moment. It is worth adding that when the NHS was established there was no Charity Commission, and structures for charities were quite different. All that we seek now is a level playing field to improve the ability of charities to work more efficiently to raise money and spend it to the advantage of children, in the case of Great Ormond Street, and of clients generally.
Noble Lords will know that JM Barrie, the author of “Peter Pan”, made a bequest in 1929 to Great Ormond Street Hospital so that it might benefit from royalties. As I reread “Peter Pan” over the weekend I realised that it is actually a political thriller, set largely in Neverland and full of idealism, revenge, rescue and battles. We probably have a number of potential cast members here today. Who would play Peter Pan, who Wendy and who the Lost Boys? Would the Minister fancy himself as Captain Hook? Will Tinker Bell suddenly alight on the Dispatch Box? How would the doorkeepers deal with the ticking crocodile?
I shall not go into the Bill in minute detail—noble Lords will be aware of its implications—but I shall set out the main thrusts. I shall give a brief history and then look at the policy issues for the two components of the Bill. First, I shall discuss issues relating to the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity, GOSH. Since 1929, Sir James Barrie’s gift has provided a great deal of income to the charity, which, as we all know, provides superb services for sick children and their families.
In 1987, the former Prime Minister Lord Callaghan successfully proposed an amendment to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, giving the charity the unique rights to royalties from the publication or performance of “Peter Pan” in perpetuity. However, there were problems, and my noble friend Lady Blackstone raised the need to amend legislation to benefit from the Barrie bequest during the passage of the Deregulation Act 2015. The Government agreed to introduce legislation, which is what the Bill is all about. The problem is that the so-called Peter Pan rights are vested in special trustees appointed under NHS legislation for Great Ormond Street Hospital. The Department of Health made an agreement with the hospital whereby the existing NHS charity transferred most of its undertaking to an independent charitable company limited by guarantee. That new company was also appointed as corporate special trustee of the existing NHS charity under the Act in 2006.
At present, the GOSH charity is unable to fully complete the conversion to an independent charity as the NHS charity has to be kept in existence until the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act is amended. This complication, according to GOSH, presents a huge risk that legacies to the charity may fail, thus significant charitable donations could be lost to the provision of healthcare at Great Ormond Street Hospital. I know that the GOSH charity has adopted a five-year strategy, aiming to raise £500 million in that period to benefit patients, their families, the hospital and research. If the Bill were not passed, the charity would not be able to complete its move to independence. The hospital would therefore have to run two charities, one the independent arm and the other the existing one, into which royalties from “Peter Pan” would be transferred. This is clearly a waste of time, energy and money, with more duplication of effort and more bureaucracy. That is why the Bill is so important.
I will now briefly go into issues for NHS charities in general. NHS charities are those regulated by charity law but which are linked to NHS bodies and bound by NHS legislation. They are charitable trusts. Their trustees are an NHS body such as a foundation trust, or trustees appointed by the Secretary of State for an NHS body. The Secretary of State has statutory powers to transfer trust property held by NHS charities. Such charities are distinct from independent charities established solely under charity law, and funds donated to the NHS must be held separately from Exchequer funding provided by the taxpayer. NHS bodies can hold properties on trust for any purpose relating to the health service. Charitable funds can be held by NHS trusts, special health authorities, foundation trusts, clinical commissioning groups and NHS England. Boards act as corporate trustees of the charitable funds.
Since 1973, the Secretary of State has had powers to appoint special trustees to manage charitable property on behalf of hospital boards. In 1990, powers for the Secretary of State to appoint trustees to NHS trusts were enacted and are now extended to other NHS bodies, as set out in the National Health Service Act 2006. The NHS Trust Development Authority oversees the appointment and removal of trustees. Separate trustees can be appointed if a business case can be made. The situation, as noble Lords will see, has become complex and somewhat unwieldy.
In 2011, the Department of Health conducted a review and consultation on NHS charities. In consequence of this review, the department announced its intention to allow NHS charities to move, with safeguards, to independent status and be regulated by the Charity Commission. There is detailed guidance on this, which I will not go into.
The bottom line of the Bill is that the Secretary of State will no longer appoint trustees, although he or she can, by order, appoint trustees to hold trust property in respect of certain NHS bodies. Clause 1 sets out the removal of the Secretary of State’s powers; Clause 2(1) discusses supplementary provision; Clause 3 discusses the transfer of the rights to the royalties from the play “Peter Pan”; Clauses 4, 5 and 6 detail the extent, commencement and the Title of the Bill; and there are two schedules. Thus, although the Bill is short, it is significant. It will sweep away bureaucracy, clarify and simplify the position of trustees and NHS charities and will give charities more freedom to operate.
In the film “Peter Pan”, Peter Pan says:
“To live will be an awfully big adventure”.
The Bill will ensure that trusts, such as the Great Ormond Street Hospital trust, are freed from undue bureaucracy to spend more of their charitable donations on patients and, we hope, allow more children to live for that big adventure. I recommend the Bill to your Lordships, I thank all noble Lords who have stayed for this Friday session, and I look forward to their speeches and to the Minister’s reply. I beg to move.
Lord Crisp (CB)
My Lords, I have very little to add to that extremely eloquent and clear speech, which sets out precisely what the Bill is about and why it is so important. Indeed, the Bill is sensible, practical, simplifying, and in essence we should just get on with it in your Lordships’ House. However, I will say a little about NHS charities and their importance, although I will not detain your Lordships’ House for too long.
All of us in this House will be familiar with the work of some of these charities and the way in which they provide facilities; however, they are also able to do things which the NHS cannot do as regards making improvement and change. I will pick out three particular areas. Charities can very often fund innovation in ways which the public sector cannot always do. Secondly, they can support staff, which is incredibly important, particularly at times like now, when the NHS is under such pressure; and they can also do what the great charity across the water from us here, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity, does, which is not just to look at the hospital but at the community itself as well, to develop and support innovation and community service. Those are all ways in which charities have modernised and innovated in recent years, and this Bill is very important in bringing about less bureaucracy and more scope for them to do those things.
There is one other way in which charities are moving in this direction globally, nationally and, I hope, within the NHS. When I am not in your Lordships’ House, I am quite often engaged in development activities in Africa. We are very well aware that charities are extremely important in Africa, but alongside those charities it is equally important to enable people, giving them the tools to look after themselves and develop their own solutions to their problems. I hope that in future NHS charities will go even further by developing the way in which they help the NHS to adjust during this current massive period of change.
I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Bird is to speak in this debate. I wonder whether he will have something to say about the very important question of how people can do things for themselves rather than just rely on charity. I think that the two things go together. This Bill will be a great help in ensuring that NHS charities have the freedom to use their imagination and creativity to support the development of health and social care in this country.
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as the chairman of the Great Ormond Street Hospital board, and I want to give the reassurance that I am not Captain Hook in disguise.
I thank my noble friend Lady Massey of Darwen for taking forward this Private Member’s Bill in this House. I especially thank Wendy Morton, the Member of Parliament for Aldridge-Brownhills, for introducing the Bill in the House of Commons and for her very hard work in helping the passage of the Bill through the other place.
In advance of what the Minister is to say, I also thank him and the Government for their support for the Bill. I say that in particular since, as my noble friend Lady Massey of Darwen has already said, back in 2014 I attempted to make an amendment to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, but without success. So it is a great pleasure that it looks as though as we are going to be successful today.
I want to say a little bit—I feel that I am obliged to do so and I want to do so—about the enormous value of the charity to the hospital’s work. It cannot be overstated. I thank the charity and its special trustees for the enormous amount of hard work that they put in to raise funds. Its current strategy is to try to raise £500 million over the next five years, and I want to say a bit about how vital this is by giving a few examples of the support that the charity gives the hospital.
We are now working to complete what will be called the Premier Inn Clinical Building. It will fit seamlessly with the Morgan Stanley Clinical Building, which was opened in June 2012, to complete what we call our Mittal Children’s Medical Centre. It is truly state of the art. It houses a new surgery centre, a high-specification respiratory ward and a high-dependency area, where the most unwell children can be carefully helped back to better health. The cost to deliver this is scheduled to be around £300 million, and the charity is still working to raise the final amount to make that happen.
Research is absolutely fundamental to everything that a hospital like Great Ormond Street does. If we have to be innovative, we have to be not just the hospital that does research but a research hospital. I shall give one example, which had some publicity last year, of a world first. One year-old Layla was cured of her leukaemia thanks to a gene editing technique developed and used by Professor Waseem Qasim. He designed a new treatment that uses what are called molecular scissors to edit genes and create designer immune cells programmed to hunt out and kill drug-resistant leukaemia. Research like this is made possible only thanks to charity-funded specialist laboratories dedicated to gene therapy research. Our new centre for research into rare diseases, which will be completed in 2018, will take forward a lot of that really innovative, life-changing research. Again, the money for that is being raised through the charity.
The charity also helps the hospital by securing extremely expensive equipment, such as a 3T magnetic resonance imaging machine and scanners that allow us to take much clearer and more detailed pictures of children’s bodies than was ever possible before. That allows faster and more accurate diagnosis, followed by better treatments for the children.
Treating children at home is something that we are also trying to develop at the hospital. Every parent with a very sick child longs for that child to go home, and every very sick child longs to go home. If we can release them from hospital and get them home faster, that makes a huge difference to them. One example of this is that we are now able to allow home dialysis to take place—again, thanks to charity funding. We have been the first hospital in Europe to offer home dialysis for children with serious kidney conditions. Before that, children had to come into the hospital a minimum of three times a week, spending four hours having dialysis. Home dialysis allows them hugely greater freedom and has dramatically improved their quality of life. Those are just a few examples.
I want to finish by asking a question of the Minister. I wonder whether he can clarify the details of the commencement of the provisions of the Bill. As I understand it, a number of NHS charities are still in the process of converting to independent charities. How long will it take for these conversions to be completed, and is it or is it not correct that they have to be completed before Clauses 1 and 2 and Schedule 1 can come into force? I would be really grateful if he could clarify that.
I end by thanking the many supporters of the charity—some of whom, indeed, are probably in this House—from the corporate sponsors to the big celebrity donors, but, above all, the many, many members of the public who support us by giving regular donations over many years.
Last of all, in his absence, I should thank JM Barrie for his extraordinary legacy when he donated the copyright to the hospital in 1929. “Peter Pan” has raised large sums of money, which has been put to wonderful use. It is now important that this legacy is safeguarded by passing this Peter Pan and Wendy Bill.
Baroness Barker (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for introducing the Bill today with such clarity. In preparing for today’s debate, the words “history” and “innovation” kept coming into my mind. The charitable sector is full of some wonderful historical stories, and the legacy of charity law is that from time to time one comes upon them.
Back in a previous century, when the first ever law was passed requiring a charity to have a board of trustees, one Dr Barnardo thought that he had better be in compliance with the law. He gathered together a few of his friends and acquaintances for a meeting. These august people resolved that they would meet again upon the death of Dr Barnardo, and they duly waited until this great social innovator, who did remarkable things in a wholly independent way, was not there to be hidebound by a board of trustees upholding the law.
It is interesting to think about that on a day when we are to hear the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Bird. As those of us who work in the charitable and voluntary sector know, he has been at the forefront of bringing about innovation and change, not just in what charities and the charitable sector do but in how they do it. He has been at the forefront of bringing to the world of philanthropy and good deeds the disciplines of business. In so doing, he has made it very clear to the sector that some of the old strictures under which charities used to work need to change and, in particular, that we must have different forms of organisations in order to pursue what we need to do. I am very much looking forward to hearing what the noble Lord is going to say.
The legislation talked about by the noble Baronesses, Lady Blackstone and Lady Massey, is, in a sense, historical. It arose when there was a limited form that a charity could take and when there were very strict laws about the ways in which charities could hold property. If they belong to a charity that is an unincorporated association, noble Lords may know that special holding trustees have to be appointed to hold property in trust. So it is quite right today that in trying to bring about the best of business and to free charities up to pursue what they do in the most effective way, we should begin to make the sorts of changes that are in the Bill. It is, I know, very technical stuff, but it means in practice a great deal, and it will make a great difference to the ability of a body to do its basic job.
I want to make one other point that I think is important at the moment. It has been a terrible year for charities. Charities have been in the firing line right, left and centre—sometimes quite fairly but other times not. Being a trustee at the moment is really difficult and I imagine will become more difficult, because, when money is tight, people begin to look in even greater detail at what charities do. There has never been a more important time to support trustees in their governance of charities. Charities and trustees play an important part in our civic and social life and, therefore, anything that helps and supports trustees to do their job properly is to be welcomed. In this Bill, sorting out the anomalies between a charity and the bodies with which it works can be only to the good.
I want to ask one technical question of the Minister. It is a question that has been around before; it arose in your Lordships’ House when the Bill setting up foundation trusts and so on was going through. A certain noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, was at the Dispatch Box when we bowled him this question from opposition: will this Bill in any way affect the reporting, and particularly the accounting, burden on charities? NHS charities have always had a double burden of accounting: they have to account for their work as charities but they also have to account for their income and expenditure within NHS accounts. If the Minister could supply an answer to that, I would be very grateful. This is a Bill for the future, as much as a Bill that takes account of anomalies in the past. I wish it well.
Lord Bird (CB) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I know it is normal to declare an interest, but I have to declare an ignorance: I am not too hot on charitable trusts around hospitals. But I am hot on some things.
In 1991, I started a project called the Big Issue. The reason I started it was that the provision from government, and from charities, was completely and utterly lacking in one area, which I will refer to later. I support this Bill which gives trustees their head, the belief that they can make changes and the opportunity to spend money wisely. The very idea of a Minister of State overseeing charity trusts is a situation that I would want to end. I would like to use the opportunity of my maiden speech to get behind freeing up charities and encouraging them. But, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, said, charities themselves need to go through some pretty thorough work. When we started the Big Issue, we ran into enormous problems with virtually all the charities that acted in and around homelessness.
I am also interested in the subject because, even though I have never used Great Ormond Street Hospital, I am from west London, where Paddington Green kids’ hospital was where we went when we harmed ourselves. Unfortunately, it is with us no more. But I was born around the back of where JM Barrie wrote “Peter Pan”—I am a Notting Hill-Bayswater boy, and the swings that the Llewelyn Davies children played on in the early part of the last century are the same swings I was playing on just after the Second World War.
I should give the House an introduction to who I am. Thank God I am in the House; I am really pleased, and I think noble Lords will become aware of that. I would like to thank my probation officer. When I was 10, my probation officer stood beside me and, instead of chastising me as a post-war statistic, encouraged me to read and to write, even though it took me many years to master those arts, and encouraged me to look upon myself as not simply an underclass boy who, at the age of 10, had already been banged up for a few things, put on probation and fined. They were silly little things for which, today, they slap a child’s hand and say, “Don’t do that”. But in the good old days after the Second World War and in the 1950s, they trod on you hard.
I would also like to thank a wonderful woman, Baroness Wootton. Baroness Wootton was a marvellous woman who, when I was 10, put me on probation; when I was 12, made me a ward of court; when I was 13, put me in a remand home; when I was 14, sent me for a short, sharp shock; when I was 15, took me from a boys’ prison and put me back into a reformatory so that I could learn to read and write. Baroness Wootton is very important to this House: in 1958, she became one of only four women who were allowed to sit in this House and broke the male domination of the House—we should be thankful for that. I would love to think that, if she were alive today, Baroness Wootton—who would be now 118—would come running over to me and give me the biggest hug of my life.
I want to pause for a moment and go back to the Big Issue. When we started the Big Issue, I was rather aggressively anti-charity because I saw a situation where there were 501 organisations in London alone working with the homeless. They supplied you with everything from auricular acupuncture to a place to wash your undies and a shoulder to cry on, but one thing they did not give poor people was the opportunity of making money. One of the reasons they did not give them the opportunity to make money is that the laws around charities meant that you could give all sorts of things but you could not give opportunity in the form of work.
I was born in the slums of post-war London, brought up a Catholic racist—I am not having a go at the Catholics. I was brought up to hate black people, Jewish people and even English people, because we were London-Irish. I was brought up with all that poison. I was sent to all sorts of institutions, I slept rough and I stole. Someone asked me how I got into the House of Lords, and I said, “By lying, cheating and stealing”, because if I had not gone through that terrible self-defeat, I would never have been able to get out and learn to read and write in a boys’ prison at the age of 16.
Then I had a period of being a Marxist-Engelist-Leninist-Trotskyist—I would not recommend that to anybody—which lasted a considerable time. I tried becoming a working-class Tory, but that did not work very well. I tried everything. But eventually, I realised that I had got out of poverty. I had got into the middle classes, and the most exciting thing about being in the middle classes, which sounds remarkably rude, was how clean their beds were, the fact that they had clean underwear and that they were nice to each other. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be good if I could get some of the people I grew up with and who I knew and morph them into the middle class”, but how could I do that? I could not do it politically. There was no party that could get the underclass out of the grief—the long-term unemployed, the drug users and the drunks whom I knew. There was no conceivable way.
When I was 21, I had the misfortune—and the fortune—to be hiding from the police in Edinburgh of all places. I was begging, and I can tell noble Lords that it was not a very good place to beg—that is no reference at all to our Scottish colleagues. I met a very large-nosed Scotsman called Gordon Roddick, who had no money. We became friends. Then he met a young lady called Anita. They got married and they started the Body Shop. I did not see them for 20 years, but 20 years later I saw them on the telly. My son Paddy was with me and I said to him, “I know that big-nosed bugger”—excuse my French. I got hold of him and we became friends again and he said to me, “Are you one of those persons who crawls out of the woodwork when someone becomes incredibly successful?”. And I said, “Yes”. He said, “Well I know where you’re coming from”.
In 1990, Gordon Roddick was walking through New York and a very large man whom he described as looking like a wardrobe came towards him. Gordon blessed himself and thought, “This is it”. The bloke said, “Excuse me Buddy. Would you like to buy a copy of a street paper?”. Gordon said, “Yes, how much is it?” He said, “It’s $1”. Gordon said, “That’s brilliant. I’ll buy it. How does it work?” .The bloke said, “I buy it for 50 cents and sell it for a dollar”. Gordon said, “Why are you doing this?” The bloke said, “Well, I’ve been in and out of prison and I come from Brownsville”. That is where Mike Tyson comes from and you do not get out of Brownsville without being a sportsman or having a criminal record. That was how predictable the failure rate was for that particular part of New York.
The bloke said, “I’ve got a drug habit. If I go back to where I come from, I’ll be banged up again and they will throw the key away”. So Gordon said, “This is brilliant. What you’re doing is working and poisoning yourself, but you’re not harming anybody else”. The guy said, “Yes. I don’t rob old ladies to feed my habit. I’m like everyone in Manhattan who works in the finance industry. If they want some drugs, they just ring up their dealers”, which is brilliant. So Gordon came back here and tried that. He got the Body Shop Foundation to do a feasibility study, and every one of the homeless organisations said exactly the same thing: “What do you want to give money to homeless people for? They will only drink it all, shove it up their noses or stick it in their arms”. That was that.
Gordon came to me in the early part of 1991 and he said, “Why don’t you do this free paper? First of all, you have been homeless. Secondly, you’re a printer and you know about magazines and, thirdly, you are a cheeky sort of chappie and a great beggar and ponce”—which is a subdivision of begging. He said, “Also, you do not have one sentimental bone in your body for the poor”, and I do not have one sentimental bone in my body for the poor. I look upon the poor as people who should use poverty as opportunity, which it was intended for. There is nothing wrong with poverty so long as you can get out of it. You will be stronger and fitter and better. You do not want all this always stopping you and impeding you from getting out of poverty. You only have to scrape the surface and the patina of most people in Britain today and go back a few generations to see someone who burnt the candle at both ends so that they could get out of the grief, and they passed that on to their children. That is what we need to replicate and duplicate.
We started the Big Issue and we ran into all the problems. We stood up and we said, “Look, what we want to do more than anything is give people the opportunity to make their own money”—a hand-up, not a hand-out. Later on, we started a charity and we melded those together. We helped them to get ready to become capable of finding the means to help themselves. But many people could not get to self-help, so we held their hands, and we keep on holding them.
My wife is now telling me to wind up, so I should listen—I guess that must be the only reason for that sign. I will wind up. But I end on one point. The simple fact is this. We need to prevent people from falling down, but once they fall down, we have to have the means of getting them up as quickly as possible. The Big Issue has invested in 320 businesses—social businesses around Britain and charities—to prevent the next generation of Big Issue vendors and the next generation who are using drugs and falling through the net filling up our prisons and our A&E units. I thank noble Lords for their patience.
I was going to go on for another hour and a half, a bit like Ken Dodd, but I will not. Thank you and God bless you all.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, I know why noble Lords are all laughing. I have to follow that. Many a bigger man than me would have found that difficult. It is a privilege to follow my noble friend Lord Bird, and I thank him on behalf of the House for his remarkable, moving, humorous and rather unusual maiden speech.
Lord Patel
It will go down in the records of maiden speeches. I do not know what words will be used—astounding, eccentric, and I hope not to be repeated. My noble friend has educated noble Lords in words they have not heard for many a decade; they will have to go and look them up in the dictionary. My noble friend is also a truly remarkable person. Today really is a Big Issue day.
My noble friend’s personal story is, as he described, also remarkable. If I can encapsulate it in one sentence, I would say that it is poverty to purpose.
Lord Patel
Brought up in a slum, raised as an orphan, illiterate to start with and sleeping rough, my noble friend Lord Bird went to jail several times. But he has inspired millions. He is a trailblazer. He is a social entrepreneur. He has a mission to provide a hand up to thousands of people who are too often forgotten by society.
My noble friend was awarded an MBE in 1995 for services to homeless people and he is a doctor, holding an honorary doctorate from Plymouth Business School at the University of Plymouth. He also tried to stand as Mayor of London—there is a vacancy coming up. Then, as he told us, in 2010 he was asked what his guilty secret was. He said, “I am really a working-class Tory”. He also said that he would actually like to be a Liberal because they are nice people, but that that would be too much like hard work. I cannot repeat what he said about being a socialist. Noble Lords will have to look it up because the language he used cannot be repeated here.
He was also asked whether he has any ambitions, to which he replied that he would like to write a book; I hope that that is correct. The book was to be a different version, or a replacement, of Fifty Shades of Grey. I do not know how many here have read the book; it is an education in itself. Noble Lords might not be surprised to learn that the title is Why Drawing Naked Women is Good for the Soul. I have given the noble Lord a plug for his book because I am sure that the sales will now go up by millions.
I welcome my noble friend Lord Bird to this House. We look forward to many contributions from him. They are obviously going to be challenging, colourful and, dare I say it, enjoyable.
I now move on to my contribution to the NHS (Charitable Trusts Etc) Bill. Before I do so, I hope that the whole House will join in me congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, not because she is introducing this Bill but because today is her and her husband Les’s 50th wedding anniversary—I have let the secret out, Doreen, and I offer my congratulations.
Lord Patel
I support this Bill wholeheartedly. As has been said, it was previously introduced by Wendy Morton, the Member of Parliament for Aldridge-Brownhills. I support the two main aspects of the Bill. It will allow for greater independence of NHS charities, which has to be welcomed. Many NHS charities have expressed concerns about demonstrating their independence when they have to fulfil the governance requirements of both NHS and Charity Commission legislation. The arrangements as described in the Bill will also help to remove the perception widely held by both individual and corporate donors that when they donate money to an NHS charity, it simply adds up to a bit more for the healthcare budget. It is important to remove this perception, and I believe the Bill will do that.
We are all familiar—no more so than the likes of me, who worked in the NHS—with the tremendous support given by the NHS charities and the people who work in them. As the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, mentioned, they provide funds that are often not available, particularly for early phase research and equipment. Research councils do not provide funds for the earliest stages, and I personally have benefited on several occasions from such funding. They support individual volunteers and charities like the network of League of Friends for hospitals. What they give to local communities is tremendous and valuable. I am very familiar with the work of such organisations and I declare an interest: I have the great honour to be the current president of the charity Attend. Many other noble Lords are familiar with it because several are past chairmen, presidents, vice-presidents or have served on its governing body. Attend responds to, respects, and gives care. It is an umbrella organisation representing more than 29,000 volunteers who give their time to health and social care issues. Last year, Attend volunteers provided more than 4.3 million hours of their time, equivalent at the minimum wage level to around £21 million. In addition, they raised some £41 million for health and social care needs in local communities. The contribution to making other people’s lives better cannot be measured only in money terms. Attend also brings about effective partnerships with organisations like the League of Friends and others. I hope the Bill will give further publicity to the valuable work being done by such charities and the individuals within them, thus encouraging more people to offer their support to their local NHS charity—not just financially but by getting involved personally.
The Bill will allow NHS charities to grow and develop their charitable activities, and in my view it will also act as a catalyst to bring about greater engagement by the public with their local health providers. In conclusion, I strongly support the Bill.
Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)
My Lords, I am pleased to be supporting the “Peter Pan and Wendy” Bill, which concerns royalties from “Peter Pan” for Great Ormond Street Hospital. The Bill was ably taken through another place by Wendy Morton, Member of Parliament for Aldridge-Brownhills; this seems to be such a happy coincidence of names. The NHS (Charitable Trusts Etc) Bill was strongly supported by Members of another place.
The Bill has been very well explained by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, who for many years has been the chairperson of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children. The noble Baroness is very experienced in the needs of children. Legislation is needed to enable the right to those royalties to be given to the new independent Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity, to which the current NHS charity is in the course of being converted. There was a consultation and the outcome was that NHS charities should be allowed to convert to independence if they so chose, and that the Secretary of State for Health’s powers to appoint trustees to NHS bodies under the National Health Service Act 2006 be removed at the earliest legislative opportunity.
JM Barrie was one of the most generous donors in the history of Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity. The charity is keen to take advantage of the opportunity to move to independent status. Specific legislation is required to provide for the rights to “Peter Pan” royalties to be given to the new charity. This is a unique situation and a unique solution is required to enable the rights to the crucial royalties to be given to the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity so that Great Ormond Street Hospital can continue to benefit from the generous JM Barrie bequest.
Many of your Lordships will have experienced heart-rending situations with ill children, some of whom will have recovered with the help of specialised medical care, which is what Great Ormond Street Hospital can give, but some will not have made it. Recently, I had a young cousin who developed neuroblastoma, an aggressive children’s cancer. He was one of the bravest and most resilient young people I have ever known. His parents did everything they could, as did the medical teams, which included a trip to America for treatment, but at the age of eight the cancer won and Jamie died.
Children’s hospitals need all the help they can get to treat such children and to continue their research for cures where there is none at the moment. I wish the Bill a speedy journey back to another place and on to the statute book.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I would like briefly to pay my tribute in the gap—I have given notice—to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and to add my congratulations on what is clearly a double golden day for her. I said that I would like to speak in the gap because I noticed there was no voice from this side of the House on the speakers list other than the Minister’s. I thought it would be appropriate to underline what general support there is for this small but very important and far-reaching measure.
When I came to the House this morning, I thought I knew what being given the bird meant. A new meaning has been brought today by an extraordinary Member, who encapsulates the importance and worth of your Lordships’ House. It is highly unlikely that he would have gone to another place, but here he is, able to contribute from a unique perspective to our deliberations. He is warmly welcomed by us all and we look forward to more hilarious and pertinent speeches, for which I suppose there is only one exclamation, which is GOSH. When the noble Baroness spoke about the charity having that name—a sort of Wodehousian name, rather than a JM Barrie one—I thought, “Oh dear, not another abbreviation that we’ve all got to remember”. But it is a memorable word. I am delighted that the noble Baroness introduced the Bill with her usual quiet skill, and we all pay tribute to a real Wendy in another place for what she did. I am delighted to give my strong support to this small but important measure.
The Lord Bishop of Bristol
My Lords, I am grateful for this opportunity to speak in the gap. For reasons I do not fully understand, my name was missed off the list. I am pleased to stand on behalf of these Benches to say how warmly we support the Bill. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, on her introduction of the Bill, and her ability to take some of the detail of the legislation and, to quote Garrison Keillor, put the hay where the goats can get it. I am most grateful to her for that.
I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for his remarkable, spontaneous, interesting and engaging maiden speech. I wonder quite what volume he might muster when his throat recovers.
As I said, I am glad to speak in favour of the Bill. I am in favour both of the principle behind it and of its practical application, as many in your Lordships’ House have said, in relation to Great Ormond Street Hospital, which is a remarkable hospital. These charities—260 of them, I believe—have been of huge significance in the NHS in helping to raise funds for research and for other things. I support the principle of giving those charities that wish it the ability to avail themselves of the provision to release themselves from the oversight of the Secretary of State so that they might grow their work.
The particular issue is the Barrie legacy to Great Ormond Street Hospital. We may not all be famous authors, industrialists or entrepreneurs, but I believe that we can all play our part in getting behind the Bill and supporting its important provisions. I was interested to read that Great Ormond Street Hospital opened in 1852 with 10 beds and a nursing complement of one. This is remarkable, given that in 1845, if my memory is correct, of the 2,400 in-patients in hospitals, only 26 were children, despite the fact that overall deaths in London that year were 50,000, with 20,000-odd being children. Great Ormond Street has not just been excellent in care, hope and research but has played its part in the advocacy of the rights of children.
Many noble Lords will recall in Barrie’s wonderful children’s novel that Peter explains to Wendy that the Lost Boys are lost as they have no one to tell them stories and that they will never grow up because they will not have any stories to hand on. Today, we have an important opportunity to get behind the Bill and make sure that the great, ongoing story of National Health Service trusts, in particular Great Ormond Street, continues. I hope that your Lordships will feel able to support this wonderful piece of legislation.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I am highly indebted to my noble friend Lady Massey for introducing the Bill. I congratulate her on a remarkable 50th wedding anniversary today. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bird, on his remarkable maiden speech. The noble Lord, Lord Patel, was so right when he described it as extraordinary, inspiring and heart-warming. As the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, rather subtly put it, it is a great advert for the benefit of an appointed House of Lords.
The point raised about the message to trustees of charities is important. The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, rightly described the last 12 months as being a very difficult time for charities. One does not need to go through the various issues that have arisen. It is clear from what she said—I very much agree with her, certainly in the context of the Bill—that the role of charitable trustees over the years has become ever more onerous and transparent. It has sometimes brought considerable pressure on those trustees. In supporting the Bill, it is right to pay tribute to charitable trustees, but also to say to the Minister that at a time when it is easy to criticise those trustees, the Government need to look at ways trustees can be collectively supported in the very difficult job that they are sometimes called on to do.
The first part of the Bill has arisen mainly from representations from the Association of NHS Charities and a number of individual NHS charities that have called for reform. I very much support the change that would be made. My understanding, and maybe the Minister could confirm this, is that there is a view that removing the current ministerial involvement in the appointment of trustees may encourage donors rather more in the future than in the past. I do not know whether the Minister agrees with that, but if it is true it is certainly to be welcomed.
I can only support Clause 3, on the transfer of rights to “Peter Pan” royalties. We all see Great Ormond Street as a hugely important national and international institution. The more it can be supported the better. My noble friend Lady Blackstone eloquently described the reason for the Bill, and the Opposition are wholly in support.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)
My Lords, I preface my remarks by saying upfront that the Government wholeheartedly support the Bill. That is to remove any element of doubt over what I might subsequently say. Almost everything that needs to be said about the Bill has already been said. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for how she introduced it. She did so with huge clarity. I have a long version and a short version of my speech. All noble Lords will be pleased to know that I can revert to the short version because of the extremely good speech made by the noble Baroness.
I shall give a few acknowledgements. First, I acknowledge my honourable friend Wendy Morton, MP for Aldridge-Brownhills, who steered the Bill through the other place. She has been an MP for only a year. Many MPs go through a lifetime in the other place without ever getting a Bill through; she has done so in her first year, so many congratulations go to her. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, whose dogged determination for almost two years has been the driving force getting the Bill through both Houses; I give great thanks to her.
I have a tendentious personal association with GOSH through my father, who some noble Lords will know is still a Member of this House. He was chairman of the Wishing Well appeal in the early 1990s when GOSH raised £54 million, an astonishing amount of money which is just an indication of the extraordinary reputation that Great Ormond Street has, not just in the UK but throughout the world. I was chairman of trustees of the Norfolk and Norwich charitable trust and I echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that there is no doubt that being independent can actually make it easier to raise money, because people otherwise feel that it is part of the NHS and, therefore, why give additional money to it? I think that the Bill will help some trusts to raise money.
I would also like to mention Audrey Callaghan, who was chairman of GOSH in the 1980s at a time when the JM Barrie bequest came to an end after 50 years. She kept it going at that time and her husband, the former Prime Minister, Lord Callaghan, managed to amend the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to ensure that Great Ormond Street continued to receive that money. Finally, their daughter, the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, who would like to have been here today but unfortunately is abroad on business—in America, I think—is chairman of Bringing Research to Life, a joint venture between Great Ormond Street and UCL; that is a very important role.
Of course, it would not be right if I did not mention the extraordinary and very powerful maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Bird, which made a huge impression on all of us. His muscular approach to charity—a hand up rather than a handout—was very powerful. The noble Lord, Lord Patel, got the mood of the House absolutely right in how he recognised that remarkable maiden speech.
The Bill will complete the reform of the regulation of NHS charities begun by the government review in 2011. It will revoke the Secretary of State’s powers to appoint trustees to NHS bodies, which are no longer needed now that NHS charities can become independent. In response to the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, about timing, the Department of Health has said that the provisions removing the Secretary of State’s powers will be brought into force in April 2018. That allows charities with trustees appointed by the Secretary of State a generous period of grace. I can give the noble Baroness more detail outside the House if that is not sufficient.
The Government support the Bill, which is fully consistent with our policy of giving NHS charities the opportunity to become fully independent where the charities are satisfied that this is in the best interests of their current and future beneficiaries. Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity was eager to take the opportunity to become independent. It became partially independent on 1 April 2015 but is unable to complete its conversion to an independent charity. This is because the original NHS charity has to be kept in existence until the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 is amended in order to avoid its statutory rights to the “Peter Pan” royalties being lost. The Bill will confer those rights on the new independent charity for Great Ormond Street Hospital, thereby by allowing the charity to complete its conversion.
Retaining the NHS charity only to receive royalties from “Peter Pan” causes a number of complications for Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity. Most significantly, running the two charities side by side creates the risk that legacies to the charity may fail. It also duplicates the governance arrangements, requires the production of separate accounts and may require the submission of duplicate returns to the Charity Commission. In response to the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, about potential extra costs, it should actually reduce costs, because the charity will not be regulated both by the Charity Commission and by NHS legislation. I will double-check that with officials, but I think she can take it from me that it will reduce rather than increase costs.
To conclude, the Bill delivers, broadly speaking, what NHS charities asked for. It will remove the Secretary of State’s right to appoint trustees to NHS bodies. Those NHS charities that wish to do so can free themselves from dual regulation by becoming independent charities. As the House has heard, a number of NHS charities have already converted and more are actively considering the option. The Bill amends the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to change the beneficiaries of the rights to the royalties from “Peter Pan”, so that Great Ormond Street Children’s Charity can complete its conversion to full independence. This change has the complete support of the charity, which is eager to see this change become law. The Government wholeheartedly support the Bill.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, when I told my husband of 50 years—and I took a long time to say this to him—that as part of our wedding anniversary today I would be leading a Bill in the House of Lords, he said a lot of things. I can only repeat some of them. One of them was, “How can anybody do that on a wedding anniversary?”. Of course, I pleaded parliamentary timetabling, and I think I am forgiven, so I look forward to another wonderful day today and a lovely dinner in peace in our home town of Lewes. However, I am actually glad to have been here today because I have enjoyed myself. I have had great support from the House for the Bill, and I shall come on to the Minister’s comments in a moment, but I have also learned a lot, not only about charities but also about some of the people in the House.
I feel for the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, who said that it has been a terrible year for charities. I have worked in charities and been a trustee of several. Charities constantly have to look at themselves and embrace reform, without losing sight of their charitable objectives and what they are there for, which is to benefit clients. The Bill is part of that process, certainly for Great Ormond Street, but also for other charities which will be affected by the Bill. Some important issues have been brought up today and I will run through a few.
The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, talked about the importance to charities of innovation. Charities are good at innovating, but as was said later, they actually need some framework on which to be innovative. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, for her work on this issue over many years. She paid very moving tribute to GOSH and gave examples of supporting the charity and what it gives the hospital. The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, reminded us of the work of Barnardo’s. We should never forget Dr Barnardo, a great social innovator who talked about the need for reorganisation and reform of charities.
What can I say about the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Bird? A lot, but I will just say one or two things. It was extraordinary, inspiring and enthusiastic. It emphasised serious points about the need for governance and opportunity. His many wise words made me think about how, yes, you can use poverty as opportunity, giving a hand up, not a handout. He is a very good example of this initiative—triumphing over background. We talk about social mobility a lot in this House and today we have seen it and I thank the noble Lord for that.
The noble Lord, Lord Patel, in his short but, as ever, effective speech, spoke eloquently about the work of charities, particularly children’s charities. I am so glad that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, spoke in the gap with his usual wisdom and charm. He and I share two passions: one is the House of Lords and its work; and the other is frustration over abbreviations. We both sit on a committee where we fume at the number of abbreviations with which we are presented that we do not understand.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol talked very aptly about passing on stories and themes. This is a story and theme about sick children which is very relevant and important to all of us, and on which Great Ormond Street and other children’s hospitals in this country—we must not forget the other hospitals—do superb work.
My noble friend Lord Hunt talked about the role of trustees. One must not forget either that trustees do an amazing job of holding charities to account and together, and supporting them.
I thank the Minister very much not only for meeting me before this Bill came to your Lordships’ House but for his unequivocal support for it, which he stated today. I realise that he has many personal contacts with GOSH, which he shared with the House. I thank him for his support.
Criminal Cases Review Commission (Information) Bill
(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, it is a very real pleasure and privilege to be asked to introduce this Private Member’s Bill, which was so admirably introduced in and taken through the other place by William Wragg, MP for Hazel Grove. I thank him and his staff for their careful briefing, before passing on responsibility for its passage through this House to me. I also thank the Chief Whip and his staff in the Government Whips’ Office for their early tabling of the Bill, which I know enjoys strong government support. Finally, I thank the chairman of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, Richard Foster, and his staff for the trouble they have taken to brief me on the Bill.
The purpose of this Bill is to correct an anomaly in the drafting of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995, by which the Criminal Cases Review Commission was created. The task of the commission, an independent public body sponsored and funded by the Ministry of Justice, is to investigate possible miscarriages of justice, following the 1993 report by a royal commission into the circumstances of the mishandling of the cases of the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six. The commission investigates convictions on application by an offender or, if an offender has died, at the request of relatives. All applications are free. The commission’s remit covers only England, Wales and Northern Ireland, as do the provisions of the Bill.
If the CCRC concludes that there is a real possibility that the Court of Appeal will overturn a conviction, it can make a referral and send cases back so that an appeal can be heard. Sentences cannot be increased as a result of a defendant’s application for review. The commission, whose annual budget is £5.5 million, receives between 1,000 and 1,500 applications a year, of which, in 2015, only 39 were referred back for review. This very low ratio of referrals to convictions indicates how uncommon it is for a sufficient weight of relevant, accurate and compelling new evidence to be put forward to justify an overturn. I put it to the House that it should be taken as an indication of the rigour and fairness of our justice system. It is, however, essential that whenever mistakes are made, they be redressed as quickly as possible. That is why it is so important that any barriers in the way of the public body responsible for investigating these mistakes be removed.
Under Section 17 of the Criminal Appeal Act, the CCRC has the power to obtain any relevant information held in the public sector—an essential weapon in its investigatory armoury. Provided that the power is used reasonably, it is not restricted for any obligation of secrecy or other limitation on disclosure, and includes information relevant to national security and personal information held by the police, prisons, the NHS and the Department for Work and Pensions. It can also request CCTV information from local authorities.
However, thanks to the drafting anomaly which I mentioned earlier, the CCRC does not have the same power in respect of material held outside the public sector, and has to rely on co-operation and favourable responses to requests for voluntary disclosure of relevant material from individuals and organisations. Although voluntary disclosure is not uncommon, an increasing number of organisations are citing a number of reasons why they cannot assist, including recent trends in statutory data protection. Furthermore, voluntary disclosure often only follows protracted negotiations, which cause lengthy and expensive delays in the case review process. The CCRC cites four situations in particular in relation to the private sector which tend to disadvantage an applicant: inability to obtain information from a private individual; inability to obtain information from a private sector organisation; provision of partial information or a summary, which the commission is in no position to scrutinise or verify; and lengthy delays in the case review process caused by protracted negotiations within the private sector. What is particularly unfortunate is that the CCRC has experienced significant or repeated difficulties with some organisations or types of organisation, which has forced it to accept that further pursuit of information from them would be fruitless. This situation could have resulted in its inability to remedy a number of miscarriages of justice.
This problem has become much more acute in recent years because responsibility for much of the required material held by public bodies when the 1995 Act was enacted has now been passed to private sector bodies. Such organisations include some prisons; probation services, the majority of which are now contracted out; forensic science services, following the abolition of the official Forensic Science Service; private health clinics; and charities, including those treating substance misuse. Other private sector bodies from which material is sought include law firms, expert witnesses, campaign groups, news agencies, banks, private schools, public transport companies and shops and department stores.
The distinction between private bodies, from which the CCRC does not currently have statutory powers to compel disclosure, and those in the public sector, from which it does, is arbitrary because it could be a matter of luck or personal circumstance as to which one holds the relevant information in a case. For example, medical records that are statutorily available if an alleged victim is treated in an NHS hospital are not available if they are treated in a private clinic. Similarly, the CCRC can demand external CCTV footage from a public sector jobcentre on one side of the street but not from a shop on the other, possibly denying it important evidence. I could give many other examples but the point is that this arbitrary, random and unintended distinction should not be allowed to impede the justice system.
It is even more regrettable that a CCRC inquiry into a miscarriage of justice should be impeded by the refusal of a private organisation or witness to provide material, and the inability of the CCRC to compel disclosure of all relevant information can result in a flawed decision for and against an applicant. The victim of a miscarriage of justice could be made to suffer continued imprisonment and the social consequences of a criminal conviction. Conversely, the absence of all relevant information which could have persuaded the CCRC to turn down a case could result in an expensive referral to the Court of Appeal. In either case, unnecessary distress is caused to the victims of the crime in question.
The CCRC has long recognised that the ability to conduct case reviews is detrimentally affected by its lack of afforded legal power to obtain material held in the private sector, recognition of which was officially supported by the 2013-14 CCRC triennial review. There is already a precedent within the United Kingdom because the power the Bill seeks to give the CCRC was granted from the outset to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission under Section 194I of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995. Under this legislation, the SCCRC is entitled to apply for a court order requiring a private individual or organisation to provide relevant material. In practice, the SCCRC finds that a reminder that it has the statutory powers to apply for a court order is usually sufficient to secure voluntary disclosure. Indeed, only one case in 15 years has led to contested court proceedings.
The granting of similar powers subject to similar legal safeguards was recommended by the Justice Committee in another place under the distinguished chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Beith, whom I am delighted to see in his place. Its Twelfth Report of Session 2014-15, published on 25 March 2015, included the following:
“The extension of the CCRC’s section 17 powers to cover private bodies is urgently necessary and commands universal support. It should be a matter of great urgency and priority for the next Government to bring forward legislation to implement the extension of the CCRC’s powers so that it can compel material necessary for it to carry out investigations from private bodies through an application to the courts. No new Criminal Justice Bill should be introduced without the inclusion of such a clause”.
This is that new criminal justice Bill.
To help the House, I will explain briefly how the proposed new power would work in practice. If passed, the Bill would be inserted into the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 as a new Section 18A, enabling the CCRC to obtain a court order requiring a private organisation or individual to disclose a document or other material in their possession or control. As with the current power over public bodies, disclosure requirements will apply notwithstanding any obligations of secrecy or other limitations on disclosure, including statutory obligations or limitations. This means that organisations will not be able to claim exemption because of the Data Protection Act or security classification. The new section will also apply to cases arising from courts martial, which the CCRC has been involved in investigating since the Armed Forces Act 2006.
The CCRC intends that even after the Bill is enacted, it will always attempt to obtain information voluntarily before reverting to a court order. This will result in better relations with the private organisation or individual concerned, and is likely to be quicker than a court application. Except in very specific circumstances where a problem in the criminal justice system requires a proactive trawl for information, the CCRC is a reactive body, responding to applications and not going out to seek custom. It estimates that it may need to request private body material on about 70 occasions a year, of which only 10 are anticipated to require an application for a court order. Those who refuse to respond, including journalists, will have to recognise that such action will amount to contempt of court, not contempt of the CCRC.
Although the British criminal justice system works well for the vast majority of cases, mistakes do occasionally happen. Prisons are not nice places, nor are they supposed to be, but a civilised society, which we contend to be, should ensure that there are adequate safeguards to prevent people being sent there who know that they are innocent or that the system has made errors against them. The chairman of the CCRC has admitted that miscarriages of justice have gone unremedied because of the lack of the power to obtain information from both public and private sources. We have a duty to ensure that this situation is eliminated so that when mistakes are made, they can be investigated swiftly and thoroughly without hindrance. That is what the Bill seeks to achieve and I beg to move.
Lord Beith (LD)
My Lords, what a privilege it is to follow the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and to see a change that the committee I chaired recommended only a year ago being implemented. We are grateful to have his authority in taking the Bill through this House. I record also my appreciation of Mr William Wragg MP for taking the Bill through all its stages in the House of Commons, and I thank Ministers for the support they have given the Bill. February has been rather a good month for the committee I used to chair, with the Supreme Court successfully addressing joint enterprise—another of the issues we brought forward—and redefining the law very helpfully.
The chairman of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, Richard Foster, said in evidence to the Justice Committee that,
“you can be confident that there are miscarriages of justice that have gone unremedied because of the lack of that power”;
namely, the power to compel the disclosure of material from private organisations. That was a pretty serious statement. The Criminal Cases Review Commission exists to remedy miscarriages of justice. We know they occur and we know how wrong it is that someone should serve a long term of imprisonment or have hanging over them a strong sentence for the rest of their lives for something they did not do.
Of course, the problem has become more acute, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, pointed out, because a number of services that used to be in the public sector are now provided by the private sector or the non-governmental sector, such as the forensic science service and significant numbers of probation and prison services. Interestingly, in evidence to us the CCRC cited the fact that there was a large charity, mainly publicly funded, from which it had proved extremely difficult to obtain material that the commission believed it needed to deal with a case. Then there is a wider range of private sector organisations—transport companies, commercial suppliers, CCTV operators—which may have material that is necessary to establish whether a case should go to the Court of Appeal. These bodies can all be and are approached on a voluntary basis and in most cases co-operation is secured on a voluntary basis, but without some ultimate sanction we will continue to have a very serious problem.
The kind of material that the commission seeks can be crucial in surmounting the “real possibility” test. One reason the Justice Committee reviewed the work of the CCRC was that there was a deal of frustration about cases which do not get past the CCRC—people who believe they are innocent—but the CCRC does not take to the Court of Appeal cases which it does not believe the Court of Appeal will consider justified to bring forward, such as cases in which there is no new evidence. The “real possibility” test is applied. The new evidence may be in the form of material which can be verified only if the kind of information referred to already is obtained from private organisations.
That being the case, and it being an anomaly, we may wonder why it has taken so long to put it right. The usual argument was about the lack of a legislative vehicle, which I found particularly unpersuasive when we have had about two criminal justice Bills every year for as long as I can remember. The chairman of the commission said of that phrase that it,
“is something that well-meaning officials have been telling us since 2006”.
I am glad to say that wiser counsels have now prevailed. The Government have given assistance to the Bill and support for it is widespread.
There are some questions on which I hope the Minister can help us when he contributes to this debate. One that has been put to me is: are there sufficient safeguards for information to be protected when there is another principle at stake, such as legal privilege, medical information which would be damaging to the patient without materially assisting the appeal case, or journalists’ sources? That issue was raised with my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill, who cannot be here this morning. He passed on to me a letter from the News Media Association, which wrote to one of the Justice Ministers, Dominic Raab, on 16 February about this. At Third Reading in the Commons, Mr Raab said there are “safeguards”; I presume that he was relying on the fact that a Crown Court judge, upon whose authority the disclosure is to take place, would certainly have in mind proportionality, necessity and a long-established understanding of the importance of confidentiality in some of the spheres that I have mentioned.
A further point is that where disclosure to the CCRC is found to be necessary, we also rely on the commission’s care in the handling of documents. Its record in that respect is very good. In evidence, the commission told us that security and intelligence organisations, which have every reason to safeguard confidentiality, co-operated with the commission because they felt safe that its document-handling procedures were good enough.
I should add that some recommendations which the Justice Committee made do not feature in the Bill. One was a provision for timely compliance in the public sector, where there is quite a lot of variation. Requests made to the courts have 92% compliance with the timetable but in local authorities it was only 67%, according to the evidence that they gave us. The Government wanted to see more evidence from the CCRC before they would be convinced that this provision was needed. The ball is therefore in the CCRC’s court to demonstrate whether it has been able to secure an improvement in that sector or whether, at some future point, we need to give attention to that.
Secondly, the Government agreed with our recommendation that the CCRC should develop a system of feedback so that all parts of the criminal justice system get a better understanding of how and why miscarriages of justice take place. The Government offered to assist and facilitate this process, which is obviously sensible. After every major miscarriage of justice case we all say, “This really mustn’t happen again—we must look at the kind of factors that led to it happening”. Indeed, the setting up of the CCRC followed just such a reaction. Does the Minister think that progress in getting feedback is happening? I hope that he will encourage it. It does not need to be in the Bill but it is important.
The third thing that the committee recommended was that the CCRC should have a significant addition to its resources. Of course, we made that recommendation when securing more resources for any public body was particularly difficult. The CCRC has had to live without any significant uplift to its resources but, in the context of the Bill, one has to ask: given that some more cases will probably be pursued because access is obtained to disclose material, will the commission have the resources to enable it to do that?
Although there were other recommendations, as I have mentioned, the recommendation which the committee believed was so urgent and overdue that no criminal justice Bill should pass through Parliament without its inclusion was the one which this Bill addresses. We now have the opportunity to put that matter right.
Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)
My Lords, I strongly support the Bill, which was so effectively and comprehensively introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. Any miscarriage of justice is a travesty in human terms and in its impact on the reputation of justice, and it is right that we have the most effective measures in place to assist those seeking to redress wrongs. I have only one point to make. It relates to the protection of journalists’ sources, which the noble Lord, Lord Beith, mentioned just now. I must declare my interest as executive director of the Telegraph Media Group and draw attention to my other media interests in the register.
The proposed extension of the commission’s power to obtain documents is understandably very broad. The reasons for that have been set out absolutely cogently, but we in this House should always be wary of such sweeping changes by scrutinising them properly and ensuring that they do not cause mischief later on. In doing so we should consider whether, in a small number of sensitive areas, such a power should be subject to some clear safeguards. One of the most obvious, as the noble Lord, Lord Beith, said, is access to journalists’ sources of information, given that the Bill—as was made clear in another place—extends to news agencies and,
“journalists and legal departments of newspapers”.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/2/16; Col. 1243.]
In this House, I do not need to dwell on the importance of the protection of sources, which is a vital component of press freedom and indeed of the proper functioning of democracy. But given that the Bill gives the CCRC a right to access sources and therefore potentially undermines that, we should be careful to legislate in a way which minimises the possible damage. Sources are of course already under assault, not least from the misuse of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. The same issues are being robustly debated in the context of the new draft RIP Bill that is before Parliament. We should not do anything that adds to those burdens. This is especially true in the case of the CCRC because, paradoxically, the investigative journalism which has uncovered many miscarriages of justice can be so easily undermined where the confidentiality of sources is called into question. New evidence which could be of real help to the commission in its vital work could be less likely to come forward if people, including whistleblowers, know that their identity might be revealed.
I should make it clear that I am not proposing in any way that journalists and media organisations should somehow be exempt from the Bill. If it is to apply to every private individual and private organisation, reporters and publishers cannot and should not be excluded from that. But we need to see some safeguards which go rather further than the slightly inchoate ones that the Minister in another place put forward. There should be clear requirements on the face of the Bill that orders for the production of material made against private individuals and private organisations where the right to freedom of expression is engaged—and other fundamental rights may fall into that category—should be subject, at the very least, to the same safeguards required under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act procedures for journalistic material. That means that, before any order can be made, the court must consider: whether the material is of substantial value to the matter under investigation; that it is impossible to obtain it by other means; that the specific disclosure would be in the public interest in the context of the investigation; and the circumstances under which it is then held by the person in possession of it. In those circumstances, the media should also have prior notice of the application for the disclosure order and the right to make representations to the court.
Such a measure would ensure that the CCRC was still able to do its job more effectively in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, set out, and as this important Bill envisages. It would also ensure that the vital issue of the protection of sources, and therefore the importance of press freedom, is always taken into account before any potentially damaging decision is made. In my view, it is simply a question of balance. Are the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and my noble friend the Minister prepared to look at such issues during Committee to ensure that we do not do anything that undermines robust, investigative reporting in the public interest?
Lord Trefgarne (Con)
My Lords, I have no particular views as to the merits of the Bill itself, although it sounds admirable to me, and I hope and believe that it will soon reach the statute book, which would be a good thing. However, I would just ask my noble friend whether he has any news about the case of Sergeant Blackman, which is currently before the Criminal Cases Review Commission but seems to have been stuck there for some time. Sergeant Blackman was a Royal Marine serving in Afghanistan who was charged and convicted of certain offences relating to his service in that place. His case, as I say, has gone before the Criminal Cases Review Commission—rightly so, in my view—but appears to have got stuck. Does my noble friend have any news on that particular matter?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)
My Lords, like everybody else who has spoken in this debate, we on this side of the House warmly welcome the Bill and will give it every support. We hope it gets on to the statute book as quickly as possible. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, both for his support of the Bill and for the clarity with which he explained it to us. I also pay tribute to Mr Wragg in the other place, who promoted it through all its stages and to the noble Lord, Lord Beith, who drew attention to it when he was the chair of the Justice Select Committee in the other place—all bearing fruit very quickly. I also pay tribute to the Government, who have unreservedly supported it throughout.
On one view, the Bill is quite a small change, but it is a quite important change. Mr Selous in another place identified a number of examples where it would be important: first, where the issue was whether a complainant in a sexual assault case had been paid by a media organisation; secondly, where a bank could give evidence in relation to payment; thirdly, where a shipping company could give evidence about when material came into the country in the context of a drug importation case; and, finally, in relation to the forensic service, which has been privatised, where the notes that experts make could be relevant to correcting miscarriages of justice. Those are powerful examples of where this will make a difference.
I support the Bill and support the width of the power that would be given to the courts. However, I also strongly support what the noble Lords, Lord Beith and Lord Black, said about the need for safeguards. The width of the power in the Bill would go beyond powers in other areas, and the two big examples are in relation to legal professional privilege and journalistic sources.
It is not possible to override legal professional privilege in the ordinary investigation of crime, but under this power it would be. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, the power already exists in Scotland. There is no evidence that it causes a problem in Scotland, although I note that the noble Lord said, I think, that there has only been one application under it in Scotland. We need to address in Committee whether there need to be safeguards in the Bill, in particular that the judge, in considering whether to make an order, should have specific regard to the extent that legal professional privilege should be placed in the balance—not because a judge would not do that but because by putting it in the Bill the judge would have to especially think about and refer to it, and be aware that there would need to be a reason if he or she was going to override legal professional privilege. The justification for the power being so wide is that, where somebody is in prison and may be wrongly convicted, exceptional powers may be required.
The second area where we may need to look at putting something in the Bill is in relation to journalistic sources, which the noble Lord, Lord Black, referred to. The courts very recently, in R (David Miranda) v Secretary of State for the Home Department, said that in order to protect people’s rights to freedom of expression, the freedom of the press and the provisions under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, there needs to be a power that journalistic sources should only be required to be handed over to the state where there is a prior judicial process that can balance the interests of justice—for example, whether a miscarriage of justice has been caused—against the possible “chilling effect” of making an order for the disclosure of journalistic material. The argument was that, if a court can override protections of confidentiality —the Miranda case goes beyond sources—that would have a chilling effect on journalism. Interestingly, in this particularly area, it is journalistic activity that very often is the beginning of the process by which miscarriages of justice are identified.
The noble Lord, Lord Black, referred, in my view correctly, to the special provisions of Section 9 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, which specify that an order which may involve the disclosure of journalistic sources can only be made after an inter partes hearing before a Crown Court judge. As I understand it, an order under the new Section 18A of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 proposed in this Bill can only be made by a Crown Court judge—so the first bit is satisfied—but there is no express provision in relation to the need for an inter partes hearing, as there is under Section 9 of, and Schedule 1 to, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. I may be wrong in saying that is the best way to deal with this, but again there needs to be some provision in the Bill to deal with it. I do not believe for one moment that there will be dissent around the House as to how we do it or that it will delay the Bill, but it is important that that matter be dealt with.
I will say only in passing that in the incredibly helpful notes on the Bill prepared by the Ministry of Justice, which are in every single respect excellent, paragraph 15 on compatibility with the European Convention on Human Rights says:
“As this is a Private Member’s Bill, no statement under section 19 of the Human Rights Act 1998 is required. Nevertheless, the Government considers the provisions of the Bill to be compatible with the Convention rights, including the right to respect for private life under Article 8, the right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions under Article 1 of Protocol 1 and the right to a fair trial under Article 6”.
However, there is no reference to Article 10, which was specifically referred to in the Miranda case. I am absolutely sure that this was not because the department did not consider it, but it would be worth while to hear what its views are in relation to that.
I conclude by strongly commending the Bill to the House. It will have the support of the Labour Party in its passage.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)
My Lords, I add my congratulations to those of others who have applauded the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for bringing the Bill forward and for his very lucid exposition of the reasons behind it and the history of legislation which gives rise to the need for this significant change. He has made my task much easier, and I hope I will not repeat too much of what he has so helpfully said about the circumstances in which we in this House consider the Bill.
The Bill inserts a new section into the Criminal Appeal Act 1995, which will mean that the Criminal Cases Review Commission will be able to obtain a court order requiring a private individual or a private organisation to disclose a document or other material in their possession. The court will only be able to make an order if it thinks the document or other material may assist the commission in the exercise of its functions—that of course is, of itself, a restriction which courts will bear very much in mind.
Once the court order has been made, as has been indicated, failure to disclose the documents will be punishable as contempt of court. The Government feel that it is likely that these powers will be needed rarely. I note what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said about how rarely this power has been used in Scotland, where it has existed for some time, and how relatively rarely it is anticipated it will be needed in future in this country. Of course it has rightly been pointed out that the existence of the power itself will very much act as an encouragement and an incentive for private bodies to provide the information without a court order. Nevertheless, there will be circumstances in which organisations may feel it necessary for their position to be covered by a court order, notwithstanding that they do not oppose it. They will then not be vulnerable to any criticism or legal action. So there will be occasions on which this happens.
Examples have helpfully been given of particular bodies which may be required by the provisions to give up material. Reference was made to the Forensic Science Service, an example of the increasing privatisation of certain public bodies. A key part of the commission’s work involves re-examination and retesting of material obtained at crime scenes. Much of that material is initially tested and held by private companies.
The restriction of what the Criminal Cases Review Commission can do was rightly emphasised. It will refer matters to the Court of Appeal only where there is a real possibility that a conviction will not be upheld. Several noble Lords made the point that it is a tribute to our justice system that those occasions are relatively rare, but of course the commission performs a crucial function—often, as was pointed out, assisted by journalists carrying out investigative processes. It is something of an irony, to which I shall come in a moment, that those very journalists will be anxious to protect their sources if any order is made asking them to, as it were, disgorge material which they hold.
The Justice Select Committee investigated the work of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, and we are very fortunate to have its former chairman, in the shape of the noble Lord, Lord Beith, with us. As he rightly said, he has had a profitable few weeks in terms of responses to various recommendations of his Committee. He asked me why we were not implementing one of the recommendations: to give the CCRC powers to sanction public bodies—rather than private ones—that do not provide information. We recognise the burden that delay and non-compliance places on the CCRC; we are considering whether any further steps can be taken to improve the situation.
The noble Lord also asked about his committee’s recommendation to give the CCRC more money. As he acknowledged, there is a shortage of money generally. The CCRC is managed within the same spending review process as the rest of the Ministry of Justice. It is right to applaud the performance of the CCRC. For example, it closed 947 cases in 2010-11, a figure which rose to 1,632 in 2014-15 without an increase in resources. I congratulate the CCRC on its work. Of course, it is very difficult to generalise about how much work will be involved in a particular investigation.
However, the committee’s main recommendation has been well and truly taken forward by this Private Member’s Bill. An anxiety was expressed by several noble Lords—quite correctly—about questions of confidentiality. Of course, the individual or private company from whom material is requested will be able to put their case to the court if they believe that the documents or other material need to remain confidential and should not be disclosed. That, of itself, is a safeguard.
The question of legal professional privilege was raised. This matter was helpfully referred to by the report of the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House. It considered the application of the Human Rights Act, among other things, to the difficult process that judges will have to undertake in this context—as they do in many others—of weighing up the potential conflict between different rights under the Act. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, referred to the fact that the Ministry of Justice note did not specifically refer to Article 10. Of course, as a public body, the court would be obliged in any event to take into account all the articles of the convention incorporated into the Human Rights Act, so the fact that it was not expressly considered would in no way prevent someone raising the point if the matter were ventilated in a court hearing.
I entirely accept what my noble friend Lord Black said about the importance of preserving journalists’ sources. The Government and, I am sure, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, will have that well in mind, and so should a court. Of course, the restrictions on the way that documents or material are disclosed should safeguard those sources adequately. The CCRC itself has heavy obligations in its duty towards such material. So far, it has an absolutely unblemished record in this regard, so I hope that provides some consolation. It is a matter that a court should have very much in mind.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, made the point that, in general terms, legal and professional privilege is inviolate. In fact, of course, it is subject to exceptions in any event, referred to, helpfully, in the Constitution Committee’s report on the so-called iniquity principle. It states at paragraph 8 that,
“consultations or communications between a lawyer and his client that are in furtherance of crime or fraud are not protected by”,
legal professional privilege. So it is a rule subject in any event to exceptions, but it is an important rule, and I am sure the courts will be slow to override it unless the circumstances justify doing so. Of course, both journalists and lawyers will know that the possibility of a material injustice being allowed to continue will be a heavy matter to weigh in the balance when deciding whether it is appropriate to make such an order.
The Bill will extend to England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland, as has been said, has a separate Criminal Cases Review Commission, which I think it is fair to say has been a success. The Bill will put in place similar arrangements for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We feel that it will make an important contribution to ensuring that the justice system meets public expectations, and we welcome it.
I should not conclude before referring to the point raised by my noble friend Lord Trefgarne about Sergeant Blackman, which he has helpfully raised on his behalf in your Lordships’ House on a number of occasions. Of course, the CCRC is an independent body, and it is not appropriate for the Government to interfere in what it does. However, I undertake on the Government’s behalf to ask it whether there are any developments in that regard. It will certainly read this debate and will have well in mind the anxiety on the part of Sergeant Blackman’s family that it investigate this matter as expeditiously as possible—as is consistent with fairness to both Sergeant Blackman and the bodies responsible for bringing him to court.
The Government welcome the Bill. We feel that it will very much improve a matter which needs improvement.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his typically helpful and comprehensive response. I also thank all those who have spoken in support of the Bill. In particular, I commend the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Beith. The excellent report produced by the Justice Committee under his chairmanship has been a notable landmark in helping to move things forward. I am very glad that he mentioned the various other aspects, which are really between the committee and the Government rather than for the Bill. There are other things to do with the CCRC that one is anxious to move forward to make it as efficient as possible.
I am also most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, for raising the question of journalists, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Beith, said, was mentioned by the NMA. It is appropriate for us to consider that in Committee, and I hope that an amendment will be tabled to enable us to do so. I am also most grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, first, for his support and, secondly, for drawing our attention to the question of legal privilege, which, again, I hope will be explored properly in Committee.
The impression I get from the CCRC is that it feels that the Bill would enable it to do its job better. That is surely the purpose of getting this thing through as quickly as possible—to enable it to do its job. I look forward to Committee.
Riot Compensation Bill
(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Trefgarne (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to propose this Bill, which would help individuals and businesses to recover from the devastating impact of rioting in our communities. The Bill has been through the other place in the skilful hands of my honourable friend Mr Wood, and it is on that basis that I bring it before your Lordships.
After the 2011 riots, many vulnerable communities were left counting the cost of some of the most destructive public disorder in a generation. The Government should of course provide a safety net to ensure that the victims of riots are adequately compensated, but they should not attempt to act as an insurer. Yet we still have a system that pays out millions of pounds in riot compensation from police budgets to large businesses, most often insurance companies. That, I suggest, was not the intention of the 1886 Act.
The Bill before your Lordships today will achieve the following. First, it will remove the archaic language of the current Riot (Damages) Act 1886, which has led to confusion and uncertainty for both claimants and decision-makers. Secondly, it will set a cap of £1 million for each claim, which will allow the vast majority of claimants to be fully compensated and, at the same time, protect the public purse. Thirdly, it will extend time limits for making a claim and submitting evidence. Fourthly, it will allow for the formation of a riot claims bureau to deal with claims arising from widespread disturbances. Fifthly, it will bring in new entitlements for motor vehicles and compensation to cover the cost of alternative accommodation. The Bill also includes a number of other provisions that would improve the process of making a claim and help to ensure that decisions can be made more efficiently in future.
The Bill balances the need to protect the public purse from unlimited liability, on the one hand, and maintains the responsibility of the Government to help the most vulnerable, and of individuals and businesses to make adequate provisions in respect of insurable risks, on the other. It retains the principle that the police are responsible for maintaining order, provides that local accountability remains in place, and ensures that communities have the right mechanisms in place to recover quickly from serious disorder. These measures represent a vastly improved and modernised scheme, with sufficient flexibility to stand the test of time. The Bill protects, above all, the truly vulnerable. I beg to move.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, for introducing this Bill, which is a welcome reform, so far as it goes, of a very odd area of English law. My interest in the subject derives from having argued a case in the Supreme Court last month on behalf of the London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime resulting from the 2011 riots. The issue was whether the 1886 Act, which this Bill would repeal, permits recovery for consequential losses to the property owner, such as loss of profits and loss of rent. Judgment in that case is awaited. Clause 8 would exclude almost all consequential loss, but I will say no more on that subject.
A bit of history might assist noble Lords. Statutory compensation for riot damages has its origins in the Riot Act 1714, which was enacted to address the widespread riots which occurred on the accession to the throne that year of George I. The 1714 Act made the “hundred”—that is, the local inhabitants—liable for property damage caused by persons who were, as the statute said, and as the 1886 Act repeats, “riotously and tumultuously assembled”. As the noble Lord mentioned, one merit of this Bill is that it will remove such antiquated language. The 1886 Act transferred the liability to local police authorities.
The 1714 Act is the origin of the phrase “reading the Riot Act”, because Section 1 required the local justice of the peace to approach the rioters, as the Act says,
“as near to them as he can safely come”,
and,
“with a loud voice command”,
that, in the words of the statutory proclamation, the King wished them to disperse. If they refused, under the Act, any officer of the law assisting the justice of the peace and other authorities would have no liability for “killing, maiming or hurting” any of the rioters.
The Act also made the local inhabitants liable for any damage to buildings caused by the rioters. The 18th century judgments of Lord Mansfield and other judges explained that the liability of the local inhabitants was designed to encourage them to take action to stop the rioting. That statutory liability has persisted even though, in 1886, the obligation to pay compensation was transferred from local inhabitants to police authorities, which need no inducement to take action against rioters.
The Bill perpetuates an anomaly, because there is no statutory right to compensation in the event of a natural disaster, such as flooding, or in the event of an epidemic. Other public bodies, such as hospitals, have a liability only if negligence can be proved. Under the riot compensation law, the police are liable to pay large sums of compensation whether or not they are at fault. That is particularly striking because the general common-law rule, which was confirmed by the Supreme Court last year in the case of Michael, is that the police generally owe no liability in negligence for failing to prevent serious crime, even if they are at fault. I represented the police forces in that case.
The anomaly is even more strange because the independent Kinghan review, which was conducted on behalf of the Home Office in 2013 to examine the application of the 1886 Act, found that there is no comparable statutory scheme in other countries. Indeed, the anomaly is even worse because the 1886 Act allows insurance companies to claim compensation for sums which they pay out, despite the fact that they have charged premiums to cover the risk. This Bill will perpetuate that right for insurance companies.
The Kinghan review found that many people were concerned that, without this statutory scheme, people might find it difficult to obtain insurance to cover riot damage in some parts of the country, but in this respect Kinghan proceeded on the basis of concern rather than any hard evidence. The Minister may be able to enlighten the House. Is there any hard evidence that this statutory scheme is actually required because people would be unable to obtain insurance against riot damages?
For all these reasons, I am doubtful that we should be perpetuating the legal anomaly of statutory compensation for riot damage. As the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, said, the Bill will limit the compensation to £l million per claimant, but should there be any special right to compensation at all in this area alone?
If Parliament is to retain this statutory scheme, we need to consider the details of its content, and there are some odd features about it. Since 1714, when this statutory scheme was first enacted, the compensation has been confined to property damage. The exclusion of any compensation for personal injuries caused by a rioter is anomalous but is understandable because, in practice, the victim can nowadays claim under the criminal injuries compensation scheme.
However, there is a very important arbitrary distinction in the 1886 Act which is maintained in this Bill in relation to property damage. The statutory compensation is confined to damage to real property—a house or other building—and to any personal property contained within that building. So I am not entitled under the 1886 Act, and I will not be entitled under the Bill, to compensation if a rioter damages my property on the highway. If a rioter comes into my house and smashes my computer, I will be entitled to compensation, but if I am walking home along my street and a rioter grabs and smashes my computer, I have no right to compensation under the Bill. I ask the Minister: why is that?
The Bill extends liability a little way: it will allow for compensation claims for some vehicles on the highway and it will allow compensation for property on land being used for the purposes of a business, but what is the justification for otherwise distinguishing between damage to property done in a building and damage done on the highway? I cannot think of any rationale for such a distinction. There is the same riotous conduct and the same damage. The only possible rationale is a wish to limit the scope of compensation, but the distinction is simply perverse.
I want to mention three other provisions in the Bill. I welcome Clause 1(6) which will exclude compensation for a riot in a prison or similar facility. This provision is necessary to reverse the effect of the decision of the Court of Appeal in the case of Yarl’s Wood Immigration Ltd. The claimants, who maintained and operated an immigration detention centre under contract with the Home Office, applied for compensation under the 1886 Act after it was destroyed in a riot. The Court of Appeal said that in principle compensation was available under the 1886 Act. The Bill is right to remove any such liability. If a company is responsible for a prison or other secure unit, it should bear responsibility for preventing a riot, and it should not be able to claim compensation if a riot occurs on its watch.
I am concerned about Clause 8(3), which will allow the Secretary of State power to make regulations setting out factors to be taken into account in deciding on claims. These matters should, in principle, be in primary legislation so we can debate them and, if necessary, amend them. I appreciate that detail can be in regulations, but surely the principles should be set out in primary legislation. The 1886 Act is more detailed in this respect. Section 4 expressly states some of the factors to be taken into account: any failure by the claimant to take reasonable precautions to protect their property and any provocation offered by them to the rioters.
Finally, I want to mention Clause 9, which will allow a claimant who is dissatisfied with the award of compensation to have both a right of review, which I understand to mean an internal appeal, and a right to appeal, which I understand to mean a right to take the case to court. Again, the detail is to be left to regulations to be made by the Secretary of State. A point of principle arises. I do not see why a claimant should enjoy a de novo appeal right to a court. The decision on the compensation claim is an administrative decision by a public body, and if the claimant is aggrieved by that decision after a review they should be left to their remedy by way of judicial review requiring them to show that the claim has been assessed by an unfair procedure or in breach of the requirements of the statute or in some arbitrary manner.
I hope at least some of these comments are of value to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and to the Minister.
Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)
My Lords, as ever when I find myself following the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, in a debate in your Lordships’ House, I profoundly regret ever having put my name down in the first place. Either he will have said everything that one had thought worth saying or he will have exploded in advance what one had supposed had been the merits of one’s own position. Certainly, from a historical point of view my speech would have been a little more interesting had he not already shot every one of my foxes.
I cannot pretend to any particular expertise in this area of the law, but I have been intrigued by some of the litigation which followed the 2011 riots. Indeed, I have the full 36-page transcript of the Court of Appeal judgment in the Mitsui Sumitomo case in which the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, appeared for the Mayor of London in that court. It makes extremely interesting reading, at any rate for lawyers.
Having noted the basic curiosity under the 1886 Act, and indeed before that in the 1714 Act, that the community as a whole is under a strict liability to pay compensation for the consequences of a riot, whereas of course ordinarily, generally speaking, the police, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has made plain, are under no such tortious liability, even in cases where they can be shown to have been at fault, the court quoted the celebrated Lord Mansfield’s explanation, given in 1776. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has already referred to this but I think that Lord Mansfield is worth a quotation, so I quote him:
“If the act had never been made, the trespassers would have been liable to answer for the whole injury in damages. To encourage people to resist persons thus riotously assembled, and to reward those, who, by doing their duty, shall have incurred their resentment, the same law has made a further provision, that as the trespassers are to be hanged, the country shall pay the damages: And this, by way of inducement to the inhabitants to be active in suppressing such riots, which it is their duty to do: and which being thus made their interest too, they are more likely to execute. This is the great principle of the law, that the inhabitants shall be in the nature of sureties for one another. It is a very ancient principle; as old as the institution of the decennaries by Alfred, whereby the whole neighbourhood or tithing of freemen were mutually pledges for each other’s good behaviour. The same principle obtains in the statutes of hue and cry. It is the principle here”.
The central reason why I refer to the judgment, besides that pleasing piece of historical elegance, is that it overturned the first-instance decision in that case about the range of allowable compensation in these cases. Unlike the trial judge, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, the Court of Appeal held that the claimants were entitled to all their losses, which include consequential losses, loss of profits, loss of rent and so forth. Displeased, the Mayor of London, represented by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, failed to get leave of appeal from the Court of Appeal but got it directly from the Supreme Court. As the noble Lord has said, the judgment of that court, the argument having concluded, is now awaited.
With Clause 8, this Bill would pre-empt that decision, obviously not in respect of cases past, including that particular one, but for future cases. It would provide in Section 8(2) and (3), as your Lordships have already noted, that direct loss only is to be recoverable except in the case of temporary accommodation required by those whose houses are rendered uninhabitable. It is subject to the cap of £1 million, designed, reasonably and sensibly, to ensure that it is really the smaller people, individual householders, shop owners and so forth—the uninsured, for the most part—who will be benefited by this legislation, rather than the large insurance companies and those who can afford the fees of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, who, as he himself points out, will already have obtained premium payments to cover these selfsame losses.
Generally speaking, I find myself rather more supportive of the Bill than it would appear the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, is. It introduces a number of clarifications and improvements. True, as all too often these days, rather more than one would wish is left to secondary legislation, regulation and so forth. It may be that one could improve on those aspects in the course of Committee.
It is of course true that Lord Mansfield’s justification for this particular type of compensation now seems perhaps a little dated; trespassers are no longer removed from the possibility of paying compensation by being hanged. The fact is, though, that there remains, certainly for the uninsured and the smaller people who suffer from these riots, some wish on the part of the wider public that these outrageous incidents of lawlessness should be compensated beyond those in the way of ordinary day-to-day criminality. It is strongly to be hoped, of course, that this Act will seldom, if ever, need to be invoked in future, but if it is I am confident that once it has been through Committee here, it will serve us better than its now obviously somewhat archaic ancestor. In general terms, I wish the Bill well as it progresses further.
Lord Deben (Con)
My Lords, I shall detain the House only for a short period, I feel that that this is another of those occasions where my intention is never to allow the lawyers to have it all their own way. As a non-lawyer, I should point out that Lord Mansfield was of course extremely prejudiced on this matter because he himself had been the subject of a riot. His house was entirely destroyed and his books thrown out in the Gordon riots. He was saved in his major house, Kenwood, only by ensuring that the rioters were liberally supplied with drink as they appeared on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Most of them having drunk enough, they decided it was better to go home than to burn Kenwood House. We owe our present ability to visit Kenwood entirely to the provision of drink by Lord Mansfield.
The only reason I know this is that the house I live in was occupied at the time by the magistrate who called the Riot Act as far as the Gordon riots were concerned. As a Catholic, I understand that those sort of riots were very uncomfortable. His house was marked by the rioters; they would go through in the daytime and mark the house with a cross, and because others were on their side you would not dare rub this cross out. However, he stood in front of the doorway and rubbed it out with his hand behind his back and therefore saved his house, although he was unable to save Lord Mansfield’s.
When we discuss this later we should not do so with too much dependence upon Lord Mansfield, who had every reason to want compensation.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, first, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, for bringing this Bill before the House today. After being on the statute book for 130 years and in that time rarely used, it is not surprising that the Riot (Damages) Act 1886 is no longer fit for purpose.
The riots in August 2011 were a terrible event which I hope will never happen again. They resulted in five people losing their lives, criminality, theft and violent disorder on an unprecedented scale in recent years, and in London alone the damage was estimated to be half a billion pounds. As we have heard, the language of the Act is not what we expect today, which makes it difficult for people to understand and helps no one, as the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, said. There are of course important omissions in the Act; for understandable reasons there is no mention of motor vehicles, no consideration of interim compensation for victims while claims are processed, no consideration of “new for old” replacement of damaged goods, and no powers for the police to delegate the administration of the compensation process.
The present legal framework for compensating victims of riots has simply proved inadequate, so it is right that we carefully consider how the financial burden of any future riot is managed. As we have heard, there is an established principle that the police are liable for damages incurred during riots. The thinking here is of course that there is an implied contract between the public and the police, which again, the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, referred to.
In the other place my honourable friends Mr Steve Reed and Mr David Lammy have worked tirelessly on this issue. Both their constituencies were badly affected by the 2011 riots. Mr Reed used the Freedom of Information Act to show that, three years after the riots, 133 victims in London had yet to receive a penny in compensation from the police. Victims are still waiting for £40 million to be paid, which is unacceptable. The Prime Minister of course promised that no one would be left out of pocket but some of the victims have been waiting far too long already for that promise to be met.
The Government have recognised the problems that people have had in receiving compensation, commissioning the independent review chaired by Neil Kinghan. The Kinghan review was published in September 2013 and made a series of recommendations, including that the principle that the police are strictly liable for damages incurred during riots should be maintained. It recommended that legislation ought to protect insurers so as not to deter people from taking out insurance policies, or to inflate insurance costs. It recommended that payments to insurance firms should be limited to businesses insured with an annual turnover of less than £2 million, and it suggested that legislation should allow the police to delegate the administering of claims to a body made up of insurance professionals rather than having to do it themselves. A further important recommendation was that allowance be made for compensating at the cost of replacement goods; that is, “old for new”, as is the case in many modern insurance policies. It was judged by the review that the Act should be replaced.
While we support the principle that the police ought to be strictly liable for damages incurred during the course of a riot, it is important that our police forces are not asked to promise a blank cheque. It is impossible for police forces to plan and budget for the possibility of having to compensate victims of riots without some understanding of the likely costs they will have to bear. To deal with this problem, the Kinghan review originally proposed that insurers would be able to claim only for businesses with an annual turnover lower than £2 million. The Bill instead of course places a £1 million cap on the total claim that can be made, and removes any reference to company turnover, which we think is right.
As I said at the start of my remarks, we welcome the Bill, notwithstanding the very valid points made by noble Lords in this debate. The present arrangements for dealing with compensation after riots are clearly inadequate and a new legal framework is required. We must not fail victims of any future riots as, unfortunately, so many victims of the 2011 riots have been let down and are still waiting for proper redress today.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, I, too, join noble Lords in paying tribute to my noble friend Lord Trefgarne on securing, bringing forward and outlining the Bill with such clarity today. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, spoke of his profound regret when he discovered that he was to speak after the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, in this debate, such was the noble Lord’s powerful exposition. It is a challenge for me to have to come to the Dispatch Box after the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, and my noble friend Lord Deben’s historical exposition of Lord Mansfield’s conflict of interest. I was led to believe that this would be an uncontroversial Friday morning Bill but of course it has not turned out to be quite like that. I will try to address a number of the issues.
I am sure that we are very thankful that serious rioting continues to be a rare occurrence in this country, but that is not a reason to be complacent. History has told us that a breakdown in order can occur at any time and we should not wait until victims are waiting for assistance before we improve the system to put in place support for them. The Government have used the time since the last serious riots to undertake an independent review followed by public consultation and to use these to create careful and considered new legislation. Her Majesty’s Government wholeheartedly support these measures, which represent the best possible replacement for the outdated and unsuitable Riot (Damages) Act.
The Bill addresses the need to protect public funds from unlimited liability while continuing to offer a vital safety net to communities recovering from the devastating effects of rioting. Based on the experiences of claimants, claims handlers and insurers, the Bill has been drafted in a way which is designed to be more flexible and responsive to the practical challenges that people face after a riot.
It is the Government’s intention that regulations will further enhance the measures set out in the Bill by providing the necessary details for claims handlers to improve consistency in decision-making and allowing flexibility for measures to be updated and adjusted in future. On that point, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that the regulations will of course come before your Lordships’ House. In addition, the Government expect to produce guidance for both the public and claims handlers, as well as publicising these reforms so that potential claimants are well aware of the provisions in place to support them.
Having set out the Government’s position on that, I shall try to address some of the issues that were raised when the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, read the Riot Act in relation to the Bill. First, he made a number of detailed observations about apparent anomalies and differences in the way that highways and other issues are tackled. Rather than attempt to address these points individually, I shall be happy to write to him about them, placing a copy in the Library.
The noble Lord asked whether there was any hard evidence that people may not get insurance. In areas affected by riots, people can get insurance. However, the 2011 riots showed that a number of claimants simply could not afford insurance and, if the Act had not been in place, hundreds—not thousands—of people would have gone without compensation.
On the question of whether to allow the right to a judicial review of a case, the intention is to allow a right of appeal to a First-tier Tribunal. This is simply to enable more people to obtain an independent decision. The ability to take court action through a judicial review would have been beyond the financial ability of many who would have made a riot compensation claim.
In terms of police liability, the independent reviewer concluded that on balance, while the cause of riots can vary, their occurrence indicates a breakdown in law and order, and it is the responsibility of the police to prevent such a breakdown. This is a principle on which the 1886 Act is based and it remains valid today.
The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, then turned to international comparisons, saying that this was without precedent around the world. There is of course comparable legislation in Northern Ireland. The only other country where this legislation is in place that we have been able to come up with is Sweden.
On balance, for all the reasons that have rightly been identified, the Bill seeks to look at the outdated, anomalous and anachronistic legislation covering these important areas and seeks to update it for the modern era to ensure that, on the mercifully rare occasions when law and order breaks down and people’s lives and properties are affected, they have a means of redress which is both swift and fair for their purposes. The Government support the Bill.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I mentioned the victims of the 2011 riots and the fact that my honourable friend Steve Reed has found out that many victims have still not had a penny nearly three years after making a claim. Will the noble Lord confirm that he will talk to his right honourable friend the Prime Minister about that? Frankly, it is outrageous that three years on not a penny has been paid in some cases.
Lord Bates
Some cases are still going through the courts. They are the subject of litigation and controversy, and therefore I am not able to comment on them. Perhaps in the letter that we are going to write in response to some of the detailed points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, we can provide an update on where we are more generally in relation to compensation that is being paid.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
That would be helpful. The noble Lord has used the word “swift” many times. Considering where we are now, I would not say that things have been dealt with swiftly.
Lord Bates
Perhaps that was not the best word to use. I am trying to recall the figure but I think that about 4,000 people have had their claims settled. Whenever there is an occurrence of this kind there will of course be significant disputes, often between the insurers and the authorities, about where liability rests. It may be that an individual has been compensated but the insurer is seeking to recover the amount. However, I will certainly look into that because, if matters have not been dealt with swiftly, the intention is that they certainly should be in future.
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords, especially my noble friend the Minister and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, for their contributions to this debate.
Access to Medical Treatments (Innovation) Bill
(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Saatchi (Con)
My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. These days, the parliamentarians in another place are often an abused minority who receive very little praise. What they usually get is offhand criticism from people who question their motives and behaviour. However, to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, the Hansard reports on the well-mannered and illuminating debates on this Bill in another place bear witness to the fact that the place is occupied overwhelmingly by intelligent and responsible people, honestly striving by their own best light to pursue the aims for which the place stands. I would like to thank, in particular, the MP for Daventry, who kindly invited me to bring this Bill before your Lordships today, and I thank noble Lords for the interest, commitment and time that they have given the Bill and its predecessor.
In the House of Commons, I observed many hours of thoughtful and painstaking line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill. I draw the attention of the House to the definite intent in the House of Commons for a cross-party, non-partisan, non-tribal approach. That is a great credit to Chris Heaton-Harris, who searched for consensus throughout the successful passage of this Bill through the House of Commons. I ask noble Lords to consider, for example, the Conservative Member for Bury St Edmunds, Jo Churchill, who is herself a courageous double survivor of cancer. She spoke with real passion and authority on the power of research and data, and on why we need urgently to develop this new landscape to support the speedier adoption of medicines. Noble Lords should also consider the Labour Member for Torfaen, Nick Thomas-Symonds, who generously agreed to include in this Bill some of the provisions of his own widely supported Bill in another place, which was intended to promote the greater use of off-label and repurposed medicines. They may also consider the SNP Member for Central Ayrshire, Dr Philippa Whitford, a greatly respected medical specialist who has also played an important role in bringing the Bill to this point today.
I would also like to acknowledge the late Les Halpin. He founded Empower: Access to Medicine with a passion that his death should not be in vain and might inspire and motivate others to accelerate innovative medicines being brought to patients. The campaign that was started for him continues to grow and build support for the programme that we are discussing today.
Finally, I pay special tribute to the Life Sciences Minister in another place, George Freeman, whose sincerity and consistency in pursuit of the programme at the centre of the Bill is plain for all to see. As he said:
“I have been determined to work with Back Benchers to reach a solution that the House and the Government could support”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/1/16; col. 593.]
He explained at the end of Third Reading that:
“It is wonderful to see MPs from all mainstream parties … in support of a measure that offers real benefits for patients and front-line clinicians, without undermining the latter’s clinical sovereignty over patients. It is about giving them information, so that they can make the exquisite clinical judgment we all want them to make. I … commend the Bill to the House and … congratulate all those involved, and I am delighted to have done my bit to help strike a blow for joined-up government”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/1/16; col. 598.]
The MPs whom I have mentioned, and others who spoke in earlier debates in another place, did, as the Life Sciences Minister concluded, bring us to a much better place with a Bill that commands and deserves respect and support.
I thank the officials in the Department of Health. Many noble Lords will have seen the excellent Explanatory Notes on the Bill and the professional guidance note, also prepared by the department. The officials I have worked with throughout the passage of the Bill and its predecessor are true exponents of the Northcote-Trevelyan ethic of public service.
I will give the briefest of brief histories. The Medical Innovation Bill was passed by your Lordships’ House on 23 January 2015. The general election interrupted its progress in another place. In the new Parliament, it was taken up by Chris Heaton-Harris, who I am delighted to see is at the Bar, with government support as this Access to Medical Treatments (Innovation) Bill and passed by the House of Commons on 29 January 2016.
The UK Chief Medical Officer and the medical director of the NHS both confirmed to the Secretary of State that the clinical negligence provisions in the predecessor Medical Innovation Bill, as your Lordships had decided, were safe. But anxiety continued about possible unintended consequences, and it was concluded by all that it was best to focus on the strongest, agreed part of the Bill—the database. From the beginning, the aim has been to move forward a culture of innovation, and all agree that the existence of the database of information, sharing knowledge of best practice, could help achieve that, with popular support in the medical and scientific community.
The Bill gives the Secretary of State the power to make regulations conferring functions on the Health & Social Care Information Centre—the HSCIC—which is the body that develops and puts into place databases such as the one we are discussing in connection with the establishment, maintenance and operation of the database for innovative medical treatments. Clause 2 of the Bill provides a regulation-making power for the establishment of this database by the HSCIC. Conferring this function on the HSCIC is in keeping, I understand, with its existing powers under the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which included the establishment and operation of systems to collect or analyse health and social care information. The HSCIC is, I believe, well equipped to handle information of this type, including ensuring the necessary safeguards are in place. It is intended that information relating to innovative medical treatments and the outcomes of those treatments carried out by doctors in England will be passed to the HSCIC through existing national data flows by using national coding structures derived from patient notes. The information will be presented in a consistent way.
I cannot remember such unanimity and intensity of feeling on any clause in any Bill in your Lordships’ House as there was when we discussed this database during proceedings on the original Medical Innovation Bill. It followed an initiative from the University of Oxford that was designed to encourage the creation of such a database. It is why the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, said at Second Reading of that Bill that,
“this is a vitally important Bill … I hope that it will also drive forward a positive culture of putting innovation at the heart of all clinical thinking ”.—[Official Report, 24/10/14; col. 875.]
And it is why the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, arguing that we needed evidence-based medicine, said that:
“Of course there was no evidence; that is the whole point. We have to find ways to generate evidence”.—[Official Report, 24/10/14; col. 878.]
So he strongly supported the Bill. It is also why the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, who is not here today because he has an infection said at Third Reading:
“Science is a collective enterprise. It depends on the accumulation of evidence. It is crucial that that be recognised … as part of the advancement of scientific progress more generally”.—[Official Report, 23/1/15; col. 1583.]
The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, has written to me today saying:
“The radical nature of innovation in medicine today exists because of the overlap of supercomputers, genetics and global data sources”.
That is why he strongly supports this Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, who has been involved throughout this process, said that,
“it is essential that provision is made for collecting and sharing data to ensure that information, both on beneficial and harmful effects of treatment, is captured for the benefit and subsequent use of patients”.—[Official Report, 12/12/14; col. 2061.]
It is why my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay, who also cannot be here today, said:
“If innovative treatment has been successful in a particular case, the details of that case are required to make sure of the extent to which the results might be expected to follow in another case. I regard it as important that that should happen”.—[Official Report, 12/12/14; col. 2061.]
I pay particular tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who took forward in the consideration at Third Reading of the original Medical Innovation Bill the Oxford initiative. He deserves great credit for the fact that we are where we are. The noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, also thanking the noble Lord, said, with the approval of the whole House, that the database would,
“allow colleagues to understand what has been achieved and not achieved … and it will ensure that through transparency we have the best opportunity to ensure the greatest patient protection … The measure enjoys substantial support and will be a vital contribution to this long journey with regard to innovation”.—[Official Report, 23/1/2015; cols 1582-83.]
The Minister for Life Sciences in the Commons took forward the debate from that point, and another place passed a money resolution on 3 November 2015 to provide funds for the creation of this database. The Minister set that firmly in the context of the new field of personalised or precision medicine, in which he said that this country is leading the field. The Minister launched the accelerated access review to look at how we can better integrate and speed up our landscape for the adoption of innovative medicines using informational genomics and informatics so that NICE and NHS England have more freedom to target particular treatments at the right patients. The interim report on the accelerated access review will arrive shortly, and I am sure that my noble friend the Minister will say something about how this Bill fits into the landscape of that wide review.
I am not going to take much time describing the current position in terms of the maintenance of data, but perhaps only to say this. There were attempts throughout the 20th century to maintain registers and records, as that is of course a requirement of those who treat patients. However, owing to the expense of maintenance, then often carried out by hand, the limited information available, which relied on data sheets completed by clinicians in addition to their routine workload, meant that there were always practical difficulties. For example, the most recent figure available for the total number of registers used by the medical professions is from 2002. Back then, the Department of Health commissioned a report into disease registers in support of the White Paper, Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation. The report found at that stage that there were more than 200 disease registers in existence in England and stated that they would not be surprised if there were more than 400 specific registers. That rendered the situation on data collection at best confusing and at worst made finding evidence and navigating through the data almost impossible.
I believe that my noble friend the Minister will say that the database set out in the Bill will provide clarity to the vast web of registries’ information and data that already exist and help clinicians find evidence for innovative treatments simply and quickly. This is now very important because, as we read every day, research has come on in leaps and bounds, meaning that a huge number of new treatments are coming into the NHS and innovative ideas are everywhere. I know also that my noble friend will want to confirm that patient safety and confidentiality are the Government’s priorities to ensure patient trust and confidence, and I know that this is of particular importance to the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, and indeed to all noble Lords.
There is a growing movement of patients, charities and campaigners who want us to accelerate access to innovative medicines. The Minister has described seeing many demonstrations outside his office in Whitehall which are, as he puts it, demonstrations asking for progress in access to drugs not to be slowed down but to be speeded up. He has also said that he has taken part in more debates on the subject of access to innovative drugs than on any other subject in his brief. I am sure that my noble friend the Minister will respond to the request in another place made by the opposition Front Bench spokesman, Heidi Alexander, the Member for Lewisham East, to take very seriously the design of the database and the process of consultation. I know that my noble friend will want to give an undertaking to engage closely with the medical profession and all who take an interest in the Bill to put the patient’s voice at its centre as the Government put the detailed proposals together. He has a close relationship with the Association of Medical Research Charities. He will want to repeat the offer made by the Minister in the House of Commons for it to come to the top table and help to shape this landscape for the faster adoption of innovative medicines. Indeed, by putting the patient’s voice and experience—in many cases best expressed by the great research charities—at the heart of this, we can move forward in empowering patients and accelerating innovation.
I do not need to add any more about the purpose of the Bill, only to say that I know my noble friend will want to ensure that, through the process of creating this database, we explore mechanisms for ensuring that NICE can look at evidence and develop evidence-based guidance on off-label medicines so that doctors are aware of which drugs are being used in an off-label indication. I hope that my noble friend will also confirm that, after discussions, NICE is now looking at ways to collect evidence on repurposed medicines. It is looking at taking evidence and how it could use, through its existing evidence review process, evidence on repurposed medicines specifically. That would be a helpful reassurance.
I say to your Lordships what you are all well aware of: the world of drug discovery is changing profoundly, as the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, said. The transformational power of genomics and informatics creates a wholly new opportunity to discover new medicines and to target them at individual patients more quickly, and to discover repurposed uses of existing drugs in a way that we have not been able to previously. The 100,000 Genomes Project, which the Government have initiated and funded, has already begun to identify existing drugs that have uses and indications that were not hitherto known. The pace at which new drugs are being developed and discovered is increasing, as one of the leaders of oncology said this week, at what he called a supersonic pace—a great testament to the creativity of the medical profession. In time, with the Government’s extensive consultation in the medical profession, the model that emerges of this database could supplant the expensive and time-consuming manual surveys currently used for cancer mapping.
I end with this. It is striking to me, and I hope to all your Lordships, that it is 50 years since President Nixon declared America’s war on cancer. Seven Presidents later, in his State of the Union address to Congress two weeks ago, the current US President put all US federal agencies at the disposal of the US Administration’s attempt at what he called a “moonshot” in cancer. He declared that information and data sharing would be at its scientific heart. The next day, the US President told schoolchildren in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that cancer would be cured in not his lifetime but in theirs. He said that America would be the country that cures cancer. I hope that the Bill will help a little to make it British scientists who make Britain achieve the greatest of great moments in medical history and that your Lordships will join the House of Commons in taking this first step. I beg to move.
Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)
My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, on his indomitable determination to see something on the statute book concerning access to innovative medical treatments. I have been asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, to say that she would have been here today supporting the Bill but has had to attend the funeral of a good friend, which clashes with today’s business.
My interest in this subject goes back some years, when my brother was dying too early. One was willing on his behalf to try to find something to help him survive. An innovative treatment can give hope if everything else has failed.
At the age of six, a young cousin of mine developed neuroblastoma—an aggressive childhood cancer. His parents did everything they could, including taking him for treatment to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He was the most resilient, brave boy and he went back to school, but the cancer won in the end and Jamie died at the age of eight. His case illustrates the desperate need for new treatments. I feel that the Bill, which has been so well presented to your Lordships by the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, may help to drive forward more innovative medical treatments.
The noble Lord knows that I am keen to speed up the process of getting new drugs to desperately ill patients when the usual ones do not work. I am keen on innovation as long as it is safe and in the best interest of the patient. Do the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, and the Minister think that the Bill is safe enough? I do not want patients to have added discomfort when they are desperately ill, but on the other hand where there is life there is hope, and something new might just help.
The other day I read about a woman who had a cancerous tumour between her ribs and had been told by her doctor to go home and live her life until she died—there was nothing that could be done. She did research on the internet and found a place in America which used CyberKnife for this problem. The money was raised, she had the treatment and now, eight years later, she is well and free from cancer.
The Bill is about having a database to collect data about things that work and things that do not work. Information is vital if there is to be progress. I hope that the database will become available worldwide. It is important, for the sake of patients, that information is shared, so that our people can benefit from countries that are doing better than us. It is depressing that our cancer survival rates are not as high as they should be compared to other countries in Europe. Why, for instance, is Sweden so much better than the UK?
Some time ago I met a remarkable man called Les Halpin, already mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi. He had motor neurone disease and he had a passion to find a better way of treating MND. There was, and still is, a desperate need for access to drugs which may be able to help. Les died. People like Les cannot wait. MND takes most people very quickly. Les Halpin’s spirit lives on, and on Tuesday “Empower: Data4Health” was launched to collect data with the patient at its heart. Its aim is to get drugs which can help. I hope that “Empower: Data4Health” and the Bill will work together.
I have some questions about Clause 2. Subsection (2) states:
“The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision conferring functions on the Health and Social Care Information Centre (“the HSCIC”) in connection with the establishment, maintenance and operation of a database containing information about … (a) innovative medical treatments carried out by doctors in England, and … (b) the results of such treatments”.
Does this mean that the NHS will pay for the database? Will the NHS run it? It would be very interesting to know how it will work, if that information is available today. It needs to be open and transparent, with the patient at the centre. Who will be able to access the database? Will patients be able to?
It is time for progress to be made, but communication must be efficient and patients must be safe. There are always risks in life, but there must be safeguards against those who put cash before care.
Lord Ryder of Wensum (Con)
My Lords, I echo the comments of my noble friend Lord Saatchi on the quality of the debate in the other place, which I followed very closely. I speak as a lay man and shall be brief, referring only to innovation. My interest in the Bill stems from several years as chairman of the Institute of Cancer Research.
I supported the principles of my noble friend’s earlier Bill and I support them again without reservation today. This legislation could provide another valuable piece for a large, complex jigsaw puzzle. “Innovation” is the key word in the title of my noble friend’s Bill. Innovations in the form of breakthroughs in our understanding of genetics and targeted molecular oncology are racing far ahead of our cumbersome regulatory systems and evaluations. Innovations such as targeted personalised medicines now enable us to attack some cancers with drones instead of carpet bombs. We should no longer tolerate regulatory authorities that unduly delay such scientific advances. Fresh regulations are required for clinical trials.
How can we ensure that new and proven drugs are made available sooner and more cheaply? Trials can be stratified using genome sequencing. This will expedite smaller, cheaper trials. More drugs can be licensed after well designed phase 2 trials. Phase 3 trials are by a stretch the most expensive for pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Earlier approvals by the regulatory authorities after phase 2 would cut costs and stimulate more innovation. Sometimes pharmaceutical companies are hampered by fears of rejection by regulatory authorities. Here in the UK, NICE should offer even stronger considerations of whether innovative drugs are tackling cancers by truly novel methods.
A year ago, our admirable Life Sciences Minister warned that overregulation by the European Union through the clinical trials directive could herald what he termed a “new Dark Age” for bioscience, yet this 2001 directive has already prevented untold numbers of UK applications for clinical trials. Minor revisions to the directive are promised, but clinical trials will still be overregulated by this directive through complexities, risks and costs. This cumbersome system inhibits United Kingdom innovation and has harmed us as a country far more than other European nations, because we are global leaders in life sciences. As a result of the directive and other cumbersome regulations, we are losing expertise and markets to the Far East.
We boast many of the foremost scientists, clinicians and research institutes and two of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. They combine to contribute surplus billions of pounds sterling each year to our balance of payments. Sometimes I wish that our rulers could devote even a tenth as much time to applauding and advancing the interests of these innovators as they do to protecting our financial services sector. I cannot avoid concluding that, if they did so, we would generate a healthier economy and a healthier people.
Finally, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Saatchi for his perseverance and courtesy throughout the past three years from the moment that the two of us first discussed the important legislation that he has brought before the House today. My noble friend is an innovator.
Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)
My Lords, I support the Bill and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, on introducing it in your Lordships’ House. I want to refer particularly to those parts of the Bill that relate to the use of off-patent drugs: Clause 1, which refers to promoting access to,
“the off-label use of medicines”,
and Clause 3, which refers to a medicinal product being used,
“for a purpose other than one for which its use is specified”.
As the House will know, the clauses relate to the Off-patent Drugs Bill, which was originally introduced in the other place a year or so ago by Jonathan Evans, the then Conservative Member for Cardiff North. Unfortunately for him, the election intervened and the Bill fell. It was then taken up by my successor as Member of Parliament for Torfaen, Nick Thomas-Symonds, in the House of Commons in November 2015. The Bill received the support of members of eight political parties in the other place but unfortunately it was talked out, much to the anger of many Members of Parliament right across the political spectrum. But because of the level of support for the Bill, on 29 January this year, during the debate on today’s Bill, the Government agreed to support the principle of Nick Thomas-Symonds’ original Bill and hence the parts to which I referred earlier.
As your Lordships will know, many drugs that are used for one disease, such as cancer, can be used to treat other diseases, particularly after the original patent runs out, but they lack a licence for the second sort of treatment. They are used very often by specialists and consultants but not so often by other prescribers, and there is a huge geographical inconsistency in their use in the United Kingdom. Indeed, some general practitioners are deeply reluctant to use them because of the liability that might fall upon them and their profession. But I believe that their use is undoubtedly beneficial.
One example is zoledronic acid, which helps women with breast cancer and reduces the risk of cancer spreading to the bone. I am told that this drug could save up to 1,000 lives a year and, like many of these drugs, it is really very cheap. It costs just 5p a day for an individual patient. Other drugs are repurposed to help in the treatment of multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, leukaemia and prostate cancer.
The use of these drugs, as my honourable friend Nick Thomas-Symonds said when he introduced his Bill, is supported by four of the royal colleges, including the Royal College of Physicians; 12 medical research charities; the British Medical Association; and NHS Clinical Commissioners in England. In addition, 40 eminent clinicians wrote to the Daily Telegraph supporting that Bill and more than 30,000 people in this country wrote in support of it to their own Members of Parliament.
The Minister will presumably come to this point in his wind-up, but I understand that the Government have agreed to put these off-patent drugs for different use on to the database to which the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, referred earlier. I am also told that the Bible of the medical profession, the British National Formulary, will now have details of those drugs included. That will give much more confidence to prescribers throughout our country to prescribe these drugs, and enable their use to be much more widespread. I hope the Minister can reaffirm today the Government’s support for this vitally important development. It will help to save the lives of many thousands of people in our country and will be of great comfort to their families.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, I am delighted to support this Bill and hope that it will have a swift passage through this House and become legislation. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, on presenting it in great detail and in his usual style, and—given the difficulties his predecessor Bill had—on his tenacity in listening to people in and outside this House and getting to the position whereby the Bill is now acceptable to all the professionals I have spoken to.
Perhaps I may briefly go off the Bill and come on to some comments that have been made. Before I do that, I will declare my interests. I am, as everybody knows, a doctor by background. I am the chancellor of the University of Dundee, which is one of the key UK universities for life sciences. I chaired until recently the UK cancer research centre in Dundee. I now chair, as a board member, another research group in Dundee that is looking at the scientific evidence as to why cancer outcomes can be worse among people from a poorer background, where they are disastrously worse. I was also responsible in this House for chairing a report on genomic medicine. That led, thankfully, to the developments in genomic medicine in the United Kingdom and the research centre which the Government support through the research councils.
It is true that as we learn more and more about genomics and genetics, we will need to have a huge database from which we can learn. What the noble Lord, Lord Ryder, said is correct: there will be patients who would be appropriate for stratifications of medicines that we know now and which are found to be effective because they are used more generically. If we learn from genomic medicine that stratification makes them more suitable for that treatment, because of their genetic make-up, such drugs will be very beneficial.
It is also true that innovations occur in the United States at a faster rate—the noble Lord, Lord Ryder, referred to this—because the processes of the different trial phases there are much more efficient. Some say they are too quick; I do not subscribe to that view. Let me give one example. The noble Lord referred to this concept briefly. Some of the breast cancer treatments do not work in all women. We know that the drug that is given will work but that it cannot be given in the quantities required because most drugs, as we know, are poison. You can use it in a dosage that will treat the disease but if you exceed that dose, you are likely to do more harm than good. But if you can limit that treatment to only the cancer cells, those drugs will be effective. We now have innovations whereby this can be done by identifying the molecular make-up of the cancer and then loading the drug with that molecular marker, so that it will attack only the cancer cells and leave the normal cells alone.
We need a different way of innovating. My own university also has a drug discovery unit. We have contributed to the development of several drugs, two of which would be regarded as blockbuster drugs, through understanding the science of disease processes—the biology of disease. Such understanding is crucial before you develop a treatment.
However, we need to move away from that to other ways of developing drugs. We try to do this by using 70,000 compounds that were previously identified by pharmaceutical companies but not used because they were not found to be effective in treatment. We are seeing if any could be used for the treatment of so-called tropical diseases that are not infectious, which a huge number of people are affected by. We do this in collaboration with other countries by supplying them with these compounds. I agree that we need to look at different ways of innovating drugs and treatments, particularly as the science develops. There will be other ways of dealing with diseases, such as gene-editing, which was how Layla, a young girl in Great Ormond St, was treated. That may also require the development of other drugs to make sure that side-effects are suppressed.
The point I am trying to make is that the Bill may well act as a catalyst. The noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, should be pleased that people are thinking more widely and outside the box. We have an opportunity to develop good databases, as the noble Lord indicated, and to use them for innovative development of treatments. I hope this will happen. I hope that the Government will bring in wider legislation on the issues that the noble Lord, Lord Ryder, referred to, such as better ways of conducting clinical trials. We need transparency and openness. I do not think the medical profession is averse to that, and it is what the public need. We have to be honest: not all the treatments we try will work, but if we try harder, we will find treatments that work which we have been ignoring.
I have to admit to something here, which I hope the GMC does not hear me say—although it might, and if it does, I do not care. I have used off-licensed drugs on several occasions, with the full consent of the patients I was treating, when no other treatment was working. Lots of my colleagues do this. If any doctor stands up and says they never do it, I would not suggest that they might not be telling the truth, but I would be surprised if they were innovators in the true sense.
Then, there is research. I have done research that I am not very happy about and that I wish I had not done, but at the time I did it with a clear conscience. In retrospect, I now know that it probably did not work as well as expected and was probably not all that good for the patient—I hope it did not do any harm—but if I had not tried it, I would never have known. It is important that we stop arguing at length and trying to regulate and control in the minutest detail innovations in medicine that we can drive forward. We do this more easily with innovations in surgical and other procedures. We are much freer about that and clearly understand that, as doctors, you work with people in other countries to introduce the same procedures and use a common database to learn.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
Would many current surgical procedures have been authorised if they had had to go through the kind of clinical trial process that medicines do?
Lord Patel
We would not have had stents put in hearts, bypasses, ablations—
Lord Patel
Yes, we would not have had Marie Curie’s radiation treatment. One of my children is an oncologist, so I know what they do. The noble Lord is quite right: fortunately, such procedures do not have to go through this stringent process. Some argue that they should, but that would be a backward step.
The only minor concern the professional organisations have had is to clarify the definition of medical innovations. It is true that practitioners must clearly understand that they cannot bypass current regulations on patient safety; I have no doubt that the Minister will confirm that. The other matter, which has been mentioned and on which the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, convinced me in his introduction, is that the database has to be transparent and shared and there must be clear stewardship of it. I hope the Minister will confirm that.
I strongly support the Bill and wish it a speedy passage.
Lord Blencathra
My Lords, I declare an interest in that I would benefit personally if some medical innovation or off-label drug helped my MS problem. I would probably also benefit financially, because I would save hundreds of pounds on all the various vitamin pills and potions that I scoff liberally in the hope that they will make some sort of difference. Mind you, if that were to happen, the shares of Holland & Barrett would crash disastrously.
It is a pleasure to participate in a debate when so many excellent speakers have spoken before me and I agree entirely with every word they have said—all my noble friends and the noble Lord, Lord Murphy. In particular, I mention my noble friend Lord Ryder, with whom I passionately agree. Slightly to misquote my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor, who was writing about a different issue in the past few days, we have an analogue system trapped in a digital age. Our regulatory system is like an old analogue system which has not kept up to date with the latest scientific breakthroughs, and we need to change that soon—but not in this Bill.
What a pleasure it was also to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Patel. I wish that I had come to him to get some of the off-label drugs that I have been acquiring and testing out myself. No doctor here would prescribe them, but a friend of a friend who, I believe, may work in a major hospital in New York, was able to supply me with some, and I have been testing them out. It is all very well for people like me to be able to go through that back door—legitimately—to acquire drugs to test out. Most people in this country cannot do that, and we need a much faster system to try out off-label drugs, off-patent drugs and cocktails.
I congratulate my noble friend Lord Saatchi on returning to the charge once again with a revised version of his medical innovation Bill. When I first read it, I thought, “Where are all the sections dealing with what is not negligence? We must put them back in”. As I said during the course of his Bill last year, I, and, I believe, 99% of those of us with a condition such as MS, Parkinson’s or the really terrible motor neurone disease are interested only in seeking new treatments which may make a difference to our condition.
When we see our consultants we ask, “What is the latest you have to tell us? Will that stem cell replacement work for me? When can I get it? What about that clinical trial you are now conducting at the National with three different drug cocktails? Can I try it?”. When I asked, the answer was, “No, David, the cut-off age is 60 and you are 61. Never mind, thanks for asking”. We do not go to our consultants with our ambulance-chasing lawyer in tow ready to sue if the innovative treatment does not work.
That is why I found it so disappointing last time that so many lawyers opposed the original Bill because they thought that it could limit their opportunity to sue for failure. Those of us who are searching for treatments which may help us could be deprived of such treatments because doctors—or more likely their health authority—were terrified of being sued. That is utterly, utterly wrong.
However I have listened to the advice of my noble friend Lord Saatchi and my honourable friend, the excellent Chris Heaton-Harris MP, who piloted the Bill through the other place. They say that the Bill before us today has universal support and all-party agreement. Apparently, even the lawyers are not opposed to it. If any colleagues were to attempt to amend it, we would jeopardise that all-party support and we might also run out of time when we return the Bill to the other place. So I shall not try to amend it at all.
The question for me is this: since the Bill now deals only with the database, is it worth while doing it at all? On reflection, I concluded that it is very worth while and, when implemented, there may be no need for a new definition of what is not negligence. Of course, there will be nothing to stop someone in future attempting to bring in a “What is not Medical Negligence” Bill, but it may not be needed.
Let me explain my thinking. One of the principal reasons which may be advanced alleging negligence is that the doctor attempted something innovative which no other doctor has ever done before. It is easy for lawyers to then argue that it was negligent. He did not stick to normal clinical practice; there was no evidence base for his treatment; no one else in the world was doing it; and, therefore, per se, it was negligence. However, if we have a database showing that around the country, five, 10, 20 or 100 or more doctors were also trying that innovation, or something close to it, it cannot be argued that the doctor was off the wall and trying something dangerous, unethical and therefore negligent. Over time, with a sufficient database, we could get the ambulance chasers off our backs.
Furthermore, we need one easily accessible database. If one does a web search for example, as I did yesterday, of the latest MS breakthroughs, one gets hundreds of pages with a dozen hits on each page with studies published by the MS Society, half a dozen top UK hospitals and hospitals in Queensland, Dublin, Paris and a dozen in the USA—and that was only the first two pages on my screen. Then there are studies published in the Lancet, British Medical Journal, Neurology Today or Neurology Now, and countless other publications. It seems that every university medical research centre publishes its own research, then other journals publish other research and then disease-specific societies also publish research. Even a top consultant who specialises in research cannot find the time to search and keep up to date with the myriad organisations publishing research on innovative treatments. Therefore, a common database is vital. It may not be as sexy as legislating for medical negligence, but it is a more important step to pointing all doctors in the same direction with regard to expanding innovative treatment.
Therefore, I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that the Government will not waste a second in creating this database and that the funding will be found for it. At the end of the day, it will save the NHS a fortune. Hypothetically, a pill which fixes Alzheimer’s, for example, will save years of medical care and treatment. Finding cures using cocktails of already approved drugs or some of the 70,000 existing compounds that the noble Lord, Lord Patel, mentioned, is infinitely cheaper than paying the pharmaceutical companies to develop a very expensive new, patented one. On that note, I received a briefing note, as I suspect many noble Lords did, from the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries, saying that, of course, it supports the Bill in principle, but that on the other hand there was nothing right about it. I hope that that will not derail this measure. It may not necessarily be my view, but a cynic would say that of course the association is opposed to it, as it has no interest in finding that a drug which is now out off-patent and dirt cheap may cure some other problem. It would prefer to invent a new patented drug for which it can charge what it likes. Having said that, I pay tribute to our pharmaceutical industries for the innovation that they are doing; I wish that there was a faster regulatory system to get the drug to market faster and cheaper.
I have a few other points for the Minister. This database is for the UK only, or rather England and Wales. As soon as it is established and working properly, then I would ask that it be extended as soon as possible to research published in other countries, especially the United States. I follow carefully every announcement made by the Scripps Research Institute in Chicago, John Hopkins hospitals, Mount Sinai and others in the USA. In some cases, they have made great medical advances faster than us, but in other areas we have made breakthroughs better and faster than them. Without straying into Brexit matters, it has to be said that Britain leads the world in medical research. If we only had as much money to throw at it as the Yanks have, they would not come anywhere near us in the amount or quality of research that we do. Therefore, it is vital for UK doctors to be able to rely on medical innovation happening in the United States, and their results have to be added to the database. Then we need to add other countries from around the world that are respected as medical innovators—or rather, their research findings are respected as legitimate.
I understand that the Department of Health intends to issue instructions or guidance to all doctors that they should submit information to the database about what has worked and what has failed. That is very important. However, I am worried about the term “failed” or whatever is used. Will that not give a green light to our legal friends to sue for negligence just because something did not work? As a non-lawyer, I feel that the concept of negligence is far too wide. Getting it wrong is not necessarily negligence, but I see too many cases where it is alleged that it is. We all hear of hundreds of cases where the NHS has made a tiny mistake, such as losing a patient’s pyjamas, and all the patient wants is a simple apology. However, because of the increasingly grubby trend of suing for everything under the sun, doctors and the health authorities are terrified of saying, “We are sorry we made a little mistake”, because they are afraid a lawsuit will be in the post. Therefore I would like to hear from the Minister what safeguards will be in place that will encourage doctors to record faithfully what has worked and what has not and will remove the threat of them being sued.
Finally, let me say a word about the timings for the remaining stages of the Bill. While I would like to have tried out some amendments, I will not now do so because this Bill is in danger of running out of time. Assuming that it gets a Second Reading today and a committal Motion, we will next look at it on Friday 11 March. However, this morning I went to the other place to see what was happening there and got a copy of its Order Paper. It is dealing with Private Members’ Bills today and on 4 March, and the very last day the Commons has to consider Private Members’ Bills is Friday 11 March, the same day that we will be coming back here to consider my noble friend’s Bill either to discharge the committal Motion or to do Committee and Report stages. I understand that we cannot have Third Reading on the same day. If we were to amend this Bill on 11 March and the Commons finishes on 11 March, the Bill cannot go back there for ping-pong and we would lose it. Therefore, I say to my noble friends, if anyone wants to amend the Bill, please do not.
The last point I shall make is to the government Whip on the Bench. Please tell the Chief Whip that if we cannot do Third Reading on 11 March—at the moment it seems to be the last day we have scheduled for a Private Member’s Bill—can we please find another little slot for the Third Reading of my noble friend’s Bill? I know that as a former Chief Whip it seems a bit hypocritical of me to plead for another day for a Private Member’s Bill because it will set a precedent and everyone will want their Bill taken, but since this Bill has had universal support in the Commons and is getting universal support here, I hope we can find time for a little formal Third Reading to get this Bill on the statute book.
I congratulate Mr Heaton-Harris in the other place on piloting the Bill through the Commons and getting unanimous all-party support, and I again congratulate my noble friend Lord Saatchi on returning to the charge and taking the Bill through this House. I hope and trust that neither time nor procedure will prevent its passage, and I commend it to the House.
Lord Freyberg (CB)
My Lords, I, too, am delighted to support the Bill. I speak today, as many noble Lords do, as one touched by the tragedy of cancer. As some noble Lords may know, my sister died two years of mesothelioma. Recent data from the Office for National Statistics show that 43% of cancers are less common cancers such as mesothelioma. While each is small, collectively they account for well over half of cancer deaths. There is insufficient commercial incentive globally for the current innovation processes to bring new hope to sufferers of these terrible diseases. We can see this in the rate of improvement in annual mortality ratios, which are the number of deaths linked to a cancer divided by the number of incident cancers. In the top five cancers, mortality ratios have improved 12% since 1999, from 49% to 37%. In the less common cancers the improvement was only 4%, and today’s mortality ratio is a shocking 56%, 19% worse than the 37% found in common cancers. That is three times less innovation in less common cancer.
So where have the modern precision drugs been launched? They have been launched for common cancer, of course. What is that? It is economics. At $75,000 per patient, cancer clinical trials are immensely expensive. It can cost billions to bring a drug to market. Where are rational economic agents going to place their research bets? They will do so in the big markets of common cancer, not the small, such as mesothelioma.
What is so unfortunate is that less common cancer has the same underlying genetic causes as common cancer. Modern precision drugs developed for common cancer often, but not always, work in these rarer diseases, but the costs of trials and the challenge of finding patients in rare disease mean that little development happens. That does not matter much in the US, the largest market in the world. There, a physician can prescribe off-label. There is no rationing watchdog like NICE breathing down his or her neck. US insurers will generally pay for the drug, with very limited data, such as a small case series in that cancer. As a result, the largest market in the world has extensive off-label use and does not require costly trials in rarer cancers. By implication, most of the economic incentive for formal label expansion vanishes. Pharma can get revenue without much R&D cost. Sadly, the research potential of this off-label use is not captured in the US, as its balkanised healthcare system does not capture the outcome data needed to close the loop and to discover what works for whom.
It is in this global context that we must evaluate this Bill. In particular, concerns about the Bill overriding UK due regulatory process ignore these economic realities. This is not the 19th century; there is no sea of pink on the maps. The regulatory and reimbursement process that matters globally for the pharma industry is the US, not the UK. We are a paltry 3% of the global market; it is 40%. Also, the US has a system that allows promiscuous off-label use. We must deal with the consequences of those global incentives and not be distracted by due process, as the noble Lord, Lord Ryder, stated.
Let us explore this global context further. As the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, mentioned, US Vice-President Joe Biden is leading Obama’s $1 billion moonshot on cancer, after his son died of a rare brain cancer. A key part of that initiative looks set to be a database similar to that proposed by this Bill, implemented in willing but small US integrated care systems such as the Veterans Association. These databases have a name: stratified outcome registries. They are large-scale, real-world clinical databases, but upgraded for the 21st century with molecular diagnostic information, treatment outcomes and electronic consents. They capture not only what works for whom but, as importantly, what does not work. They close the learning loop.
I have consulted the supporters of the Bill and will be looking to see that it is appropriately amended—or not, depending on how we come to it in the time limit—to this effect in Committee. That is in line with the recent input from the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry on the importance of capturing both the good and the bad in such a database.
I also commend to the House the work that is being done by a small and innovative US not-for-profit, Cancer Commons, in helping to design such registries. In the US, it pioneers the application of these registries for optimising the use of existing drugs in common cancer and extending their use into less common cancer. It points out that such databases have a number of other benefits. They can discover which patients will not respond to costly treatment, saving those patients side-effects for no gain and saving the system money.
As an example, my sister had a molecular test that showed that cisplatin would not work for her cancer and would be more toxic for her than for most. As it is the NHS’s standard cancer treatment for the disease, she was given it. The toxicity occurred as predicted. She suffered horrendously and became ineligible for trial. The NHS faced significant costs in managing those unnecessary side-effects and complications. My sister might have lived a few months longer but for the side-effects.
Another benefit is that these databases have enough molecular information for scientists to hypothesise why a drug worked or did not work and so pump-prime basic research. Where we cannot explain the response, we can feed those exceptional patients to Genomics England, which will make that superb basic research engine more efficient. Finally, over time, the database would generate the information to derisk formal trials in less common disease. That will make such trials more economically attractive to industry and so change drug availability globally.
What may not be known to the House is that the UK is well placed to lead globally on developing these databases. In particular, we have a secret weapon in the National Cancer Intelligence Network registry in England. This covers 280,000 new cancer patients a year and today captures classical presentation, treatment and outcome data and small amounts of molecular data. The best US outcomes registry today covers fewer than 30,000 patients a year.
That volume of patients with clinical data gives us huge power globally. It is the largest in the world by a factor of 10, housed in the country that led the human genome initiative and with an enviable clinical research tradition. We should aim to use it to recraft the NHS to be the workshop for the world in precision oncology. This would win back a significant share of pharma’s global R&D spend, create a huge number of high-value precision medicine research jobs, and have a positive impact on investment flows into the UK. In particular, if we deployed low-cost generic panel-based cancer molecular diagnostics proactively into the NHS and ahead of approved drugs, pharma would supply late-stage research drugs in less common cancer. It would do this because the clinical data generated would both encourage off-label use in the US and give it future expansion options.
The evidence for this can be seen in France, where the Institut National du Cancer has been driving a national molecular pathology programme for over a decade. It is the preferred European partner for large pharma like Pfizer for late-stage clinical trials in precision oncology. That investment also created equality of access to modern molecular diagnostic technologies and prevented a testing postcode lottery. Today in the UK, we have an appalling postcode lottery in molecular testing, as recently highlighted by the Independent Cancer Taskforce and the NHS Atlas of Variation in Healthcare. We need the political will to change how we fund molecular diagnostics in the NHS to alter this. France drove the adoption of such tests by top-slicing the hospital care activity budgets to create a dedicated pool of money for a national testing programme and taking on entrenched vested interests to drive reform. We need to be similarly brave and creative if we are to achieve this here but it will save money and lives.
If we upgraded NCIN to being a stratified registry through the investment in a national molecular pathology service, I am confident that quickly some, but not all, UK patients would also live longer as a result of the increased access to innovative drugs. Over time we will also close some, but not all, of the yawning gap in mortality burden in the less common cancers, and we would have an intelligence system that could manage the risks of real-world innovation.
If such a system had existed when my sister had been ill, it might have helped her. Half of us will get cancer—it might well help you. In short, we can do well as a nation by doing good for the world. We can make the UK the preferred destination for the US drug companies for their clinical development, but only if we reshape the NHS to be a cradle for the sorts of innovation supported by the Bill, not a barrier. Let us use the global drug development system and its perverse incentives to our national advantage. Let us support the Bill and its database of innovation and work together on the many important details that may need ironing out in Committee.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for bringing the Bill to your Lordships’ House and I commend him for his perseverance and stamina as he sought to take it and the previous Bill through. I, too, pay tribute to the honourable Chris Heaton-Harris for taking the Bill through the House of Commons.
When the noble Lord opened his speech he referred to the adoption of new medicines, and I am very sympathetic to the point he raised. The fact is that we have a shocking record in the UK on the adoption of new medicines. We use fewer branded medicines per person than comparable countries; we tend to use older rather than the latest medicines; fewer patients in the UK receive new, innovative medicines than those in comparable countries; and we have a problem in that NICE-recommended medicines—even those that have been through the NICE process and have been shown to be clinically effective and cost effective—face further reviews and restrictions at local level, even though there is a legal requirement on clinical commissioning groups to make sure that NICE technology appraisals are put into action. For me, that adds to the concerns of the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Ryder, about the position of the UK when it comes to investment in R&D by the pharmaceutical sector. We know that we have a very strong science base and at the moment we have a strong pharma R&D base, but those are at risk, partly for the regulatory reasons that noble Lords have already referred to. I do not think that that is so much the case in this country but I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ryder, about European regulation.
The other big problem we have is that the NHS is hopeless at adopting new medicines. We have the Hugh Taylor Accelerated Access Review, which has been sponsored by Mr George Freeman, to whom I pay tribute for the work he is doing in this area. The review has produced an interim report and the final report will come out in the summer. It is concerned with access to innovative drugs, devices and diagnostics, which it aims to speed up. But however good the recommendations are and will be, unless the NHS and NHS England completely change their perspective and recognise that we have to adopt these fantastic new innovations that are coming to the UK or are developed here, in the end we will not be seen as a country in which it is worth investing. My experience—it may also be the noble Lord’s experience—is that the big problem is that there is a culture within the NHS that regards drugs as a cost rather than a benefit to patients. There is a need to take a very different approach, even in relation to new equipment and clinical staffing. There is a huge cultural barrier that we have to face up to.
Noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, mentioned that we have received briefings from a number of medical bodies—the ABPI, the BMA and many of the royal colleges—which are still expressing concern, even though the Bill has changed considerably since the noble Lord took it through in the last Session. We know that they still have some concerns about the database and about what they regard as the perverse incentives. Is the Minister confident that his department can help to assuage those concerns? If we are to see this Bill progress—and we all want to see the benefit that the noble Lord wishes to bring to healthcare in the UK—it is important that there be some way of reassuring those bodies that what is intended here will not put at risk some of the things they have put forward.
I also hope that the noble Lord will respond to my noble friend Lord Murphy on the very important point about off-patent drugs. I am not convinced that the authorities in the UK have ever understood the importance of making progress in this area. In the end, only Ministers can kick people to make progress. I agree with him—let us hope that this database is at least a start in giving prescribers confidence to prescribe off-patent drugs.
Finally, I come to the recommendations in the Delegated Powers Committee’s report published on 25 February. I do not know whether the noble Lord has seen it but it makes reference to this Bill and I am slightly concerned about it. The committee is concerned about Clause 2, which,
“enables the Secretary of State, by negative procedure regulations, to confer functions on the Health and Social Care Information Centre … in connection with the database”.
In particular, the regulations may include requiring or authorising the centre to disclose information to specified persons. The Delegated Powers Committee has no problem with the use of subordinate legislation to do that, nor with the use of the negative procedure, but it says that,
“clause 2 appears to envisage no provision, either in the Bill itself or in the regulations, for the enforcement of conditions imposed by virtue of subsection (4)(b), and we draw this matter to the attention of the House so that it may seek an explanation, either from the Member promoting the Bill or from the Minister”.
I do not expect the Minister to be able to respond today. However, if the committee has identified a drafting issue, the question of how it is going to be dealt with is a concern.
I end with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, made about timing. Presumably, he is basing his assumption on the Commons rising in May, but he seemed to be saying that 11 March would be the last time in this Session that the Commons would deal with it.
Lord Blencathra
My assumption is not based on when the Queen’s Speech would be or when the Commons rises. In the Commons, the days for Private Members’ Bills are announced at the start of the Session, and Friday 11 March has been announced as the last day. Even if the Commons ran into June or July, there would not be an extension beyond 2.30 pm on Friday 11 March.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
But on that basis, even if there were no Committee or Report stage, it would still be too late. Will the Minister join me in asking the usual channels whether we can find some time before 11 March to take this Bill through, even if the Government may need to table a technical amendment? Obviously, a recommendation from the Delegated Powers Committee cannot be ignored. We on this side of the House would certainly support the Minister in doing that.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)
My Lords, it has been a fascinating debate. I was not here when we have had debates about this Bill or the Bill that preceded it, so I am not as familiar with the arguments as many noble Lords are. However, it has been a very insightful and high-quality debate.
I first thank my noble friend Lord Saatchi. This is his Bill really. Before I was in this place, I remember listening on the radio in a casual way to the arguments being batted around, and, without knowing the details of his earlier Bill, the need for a quantum change in the rate of innovation and adoption of new medicines and products in this country resonated with me.
I have just come back from a trip to the USA, and one always comes back feeling that there is such a sense of dynamism, speed and pace in America that we simply do not have in this country or in Europe, or anywhere else in the world. Partly, of course, that is because they have much more money in the US, but it is a state of mind. Even in a highly litigious society such as America, there is an entrepreneurial, innovative drive and that is something we need. We have so much research capability in this country and yet we seem to be so slow at bringing products to the market for the benefit of patients. The speech by my noble friend Lord Ryder absolutely nailed this issue once and for all.
I also thank Chris Heaton-Harris, who is still here—he has stood here throughout this whole debate. The work that he and my colleague in the Department of Health, George Freeman, have done to win cross-party consensus for this Bill has been hugely impressive. I also pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who brought an amendment for a registry in the previous Bill. That has been changed in the new Bill but, nevertheless, has been very important in bringing the Bill to us today.
Before I come to my main speech, I will pick up a few of the particular questions asked by noble Lords. The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, raised the critical point in many ways, which is this balance between innovation and patient safety. That went to the heart of the debate on the original Bill. She raised a particular question about the guardianship of the database. The database will be established with a quality-control mechanism to ensure its oversight. HSCIC is very experienced in databases of this kind and it will have responsibility for that guardianship. It will establish an independent committee to overview the database to make sure that it will not breach patient confidentiality and the like. That is obviously critically important.
The noble Baroness also raised the issue of who could have access to the database. This may disappoint some noble Lords, but access to the database, certainly to start with, will be for doctors rather than members of the public. Again, that is largely based around the need for proper information governance and patient confidentiality. There is a risk, particularly with rare diseases, which the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, raised, that individuals can be identified if one is not careful.
The noble Lord, Lord Murphy, and others raised the issue of off-label drugs. I can assure noble Lords that the database can include medicines being used off label as well as the use of unlicensed or off-patent medicines.
The noble Lord, Lord Patel, asked what was the definition of medical innovation—or “innovative medical treatment”, which is the right expression. The short answer to that is that, under the Bill, an “innovative medical treatment” is defined as,
“medical treatment for a condition that involves a departure from the existing range of accepted medical treatments for the condition”.
There is clearly a much longer, more technical answer to his question, but I hope that that will satisfy him today.
My noble friend Lord Blencathra raised a number of important issues. It will cost money to establish this database. The estimate is between £5 million and £15 million. That money will be found by HSCIC and ultimately through the Department of Health. Both my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, thought that it would be wonderful if this database could extend to the USA and worldwide. They are absolutely right—in time, but not immediately.
The noble Lord also raised an important issue about whether, if doctors put their results on to a database and they had failed, it would open them up to legal challenge. The establishment of the database will not change whether or not a doctor would face a successful negligence claim. If a doctor acts responsibly, they will not face a successful claim even if the outcome for that patient is negative. I hope that I will pick up other issues that were raised by noble Lords in what I had pre-prepared to say.
The Bill we have considered today is not the same as my noble friend Lord Saatchi’s original Medical Innovation Bill, but it shares the same desired outcome—to create a culture that promotes greater use of innovative medicines and gives us the best chance of improving outcomes for patients. In response to a point that my noble friend made in his introduction, it is very much going in the same direction as the accelerated access review, which is being conducted by Sir Hugh Taylor. We will see that later in the year. That will, of course, address some of the issues raised by my noble friend Lord Ryder.
The Bill before us today seeks to give doctors access to a database as a source of learning where they can both share their innovations and search for those that other doctors have used. The purpose of the database is to promote access to innovative treatments for patients by giving doctors access to information that they may not otherwise be aware of. Doctors will be able to search the database for innovations, see who else is using new techniques, and which ones are effective for patients. The database could ultimately result in better care and health outcomes for patients, and potentially in the fast uptake of new treatments which are shown to work.
I do not think any of us should be under the illusion that this is going to solve the problem; rather, this is us setting out our stall and saying how important the issue is. It will facilitate things, and it is a stake in the sand to show that we, the Government, and the country take this matter seriously. It is also important to state for the avoidance of doubt that the Bill does not contain any provisions relating to the law of clinical negligence. Those provisions have been removed and are not part of this Bill. The Access to Medical Treatments (Innovation) Bill is concerned solely with conferring a power on the Secretary of State to make regulations requiring the HSCIC to set up and manage a database of innovative treatments.
There are two matters that I would like to address in a little more detail, given the degree of discussion there has been around them. The first is how the database will operate and the consultation that will surround it. The detailed design of the database will be worked out by the HSCIC as the expert organisation in this field working in conjunction with professional and patient bodies, a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, and others, and other interested stakeholders. On Report in the other place, the Minister for Life Sciences gave an assurance that should the Bill receive Royal Assent before the establishment of such a database, there will be a period of consultation to inform its detailed design. I would like to clarify that this would not take the form of a government consultation, but rather, engagement to be worked out jointly between the HSCIC, the relevant statutory bodies and stakeholders from the medical community representing those who will be using the database.
The second matter is compulsory recording in the database. I am aware that during the passage of my noble friend Lord Saatchi’s original Bill, the issue of mandatory recording and the data registry was the subject of lengthy debate. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, tabled an amendment seeking to ensure that doctors would be required to record all outcomes, positive and negative, in the registry. I also understand that the Government opposed the amendment on the basis that including a mandatory registry would change the test of negligence under the Bill. As has been covered extensively, the Bill we are discussing today differs significantly from the Medical Innovation Bill. On the issue of recording, it is important to highlight that the principal difference between the data registry and the database of innovative treatments is that the database will both capture and disclose information, while the data registry is concerned with the registration of a patient linked to a disease, or a specific cohort. Crucially, it is intended that information relating to innovative medical treatments and the outcomes of those treatments carried out by doctors in England will be passed to the HSCIC through the use of coding in patient notes.
While there is nothing in the Bill to compel doctors to record their innovations on the database, it is intended that policy guidance on implementation will be issued to providers of NHS-funded services requiring them to ensure that their staff record information on the database. The Government have subsequently liaised with NHS England as to whether this could be made a contractual requirement. NHS England has confirmed that once such guidance has been issued, it could consult on introducing a new condition in a future version of the NHS standard contract with the intention of making compliance with the guidance a contractual duty for provider organisations. Providers of NHS services need to demonstrate to their commissioners that they are complying with their obligations under the standard contract, so they would need to be able to show that they are implementing any condition that required doctors to record in the proposed database.
I hope that what I have outlined will satisfy noble Lords on the issues associated with mandatory recording.
Baroness Masham of Ilton
My Lords, before the noble Lord finishes, will he agree that the excuse of confidentiality can be a stifling block to innovation? Les Halpin was an example of openness. Surely patients and doctors should be sharing and working together. Therefore, they should have the information.
Lord Prior of Brampton
My Lords, all my experience over the last 15 years is that openness and transparency are critical to get improvement and innovation into the NHS, but we have to accept that patient confidentiality is also extremely important. If we in any way compromise or give people reason to think that patient confidentiality will be in any way intruded on, we may unwittingly undermine everything else that we are trying to do. We have seen that in other areas in the health service in the last year or so. We have to be very careful in this area, but I understand the importance of the noble Baroness’s point.
The Bill does not seek to add an extra burden on doctors, as the GMC’s guidance already sets out requirements on doctors to record their work clearly in clinical records. Doctors are required to have regard to such guidance as part of maintaining their licence. However, through the use of NHS contract guidance, doctors will be required by their providers to have regard to the requirement to record their innovations and, crucially, all associated outcomes.
Lord Blencathra
I appreciate that no Minister at the Dispatch Box would dare make any commitment about more time for a Bill or rescheduling, which is the complete province of the Chief Whips and Leaders on both sides, but will my noble friend the Minister make some representations to the usual channels that we seem to be in complete agreement here and that we need to find, within the rules of the House and without creating precedents, some means of making sure that we get the Bill through before the shutters of the House of Commons come down at 2.30 pm on Friday 11 March?
Lord Prior of Brampton
I was going to come to that point right at the end. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, raised it as well. I give complete assurance that the Government will do everything they can to work with the noble Lord opposite and others to ensure that the Bill goes through. It clearly commands the full support of the House. It is a hugely important Bill, which the Government fully support, both in the other place and here. I certainly give that undertaking.
Lord Saatchi
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate and earlier debates. As last time, I hope that all noble Lords who have been involved in this Bill and the predecessor Bill take pride in the ability of your Lordships’ House and, as it perhaps surprisingly turned out in the House of Commons, of both Houses of Parliament to avoid tribal party warfare and work together, at least in this area of health. That is a remarkable achievement of which both Houses of Parliament and all of us can feel very proud.
I shall try to reflect the tone of what my noble friend the Minister said. This is a modest step, authorising the Secretary of State to instruct one of the key bodies in the NHS to start to work with medical professionals—the royal colleges, the charities, the patient groups—in assembling this database, which everyone wants. I hope that your Lordships’ House will allow me to ask it to give the Bill a Second Reading.