Grand Committee
(6 years, 7 months ago)
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British Overseas Territories: Transport and Infrastructure
(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Shutt of Greetland
To ask Her Majesty's Government what additional resources they plan to commit to address the transport and major infrastructure needs of Saint Helena, Ascension, Tristan da Cunha and the Falkland Islands.
Lord Shutt of Greetland (LD)
My Lords, as we meet today to consider matters about overseas territories in the south Atlantic, we must offer our thoughts, prayers and concerns to the troubled people of other overseas territories, in the Caribbean, following the onslaught of Hurricane Irma.
Transport and infrastructure in these south Atlantic islands are interrelated; both are both hugely relevant to the islands’ economies. Saints are hardworking people. The resident population is just over 4,000. Few people are unemployed but 300 Saints work in the Falkland Islands and 600 on Ascension Island—indeed, they are 70% of its residents. It is not unreasonable for these people to want to return home from time to time. From Easter Sunday this year, the regular Brize Norton-Falklands flight ceased to call at Ascension. There has been no call since, the refuelling stop now being in Cape Verde. Why? We are advised that the heavy RAF planes cannot now land on the crumbling Wideawake Airfield runway. Why no earlier maintenance? Even at this stage, should there not be urgency in attending to the runway, rather than waiting until 2020? One wonders what else on the island is in urgent need of repair. How is it expected that Saints working in the Falklands may return home?
Surely emergency arrangements should have been put in place for the returning Saints, for those who have engaged in important environmental and conservation work and for those interested in holidaying on Ascension, particularly for two-island visits—indeed, to keep Ascension Island going. The economy, which is reliant on visitors, is, like the runway, crumbling. The owners of the only hotel are likely to close their doors for good. Following the seven-month gap, a monthly air link is promised to start on 11 November. This will not assist tourism; how many visitors can spend a month away? Nor will it help anyone with business there who cannot afford a month there. I wonder how helpful a monthly service will be to the working Saints.
Ascension Island has been promoted by this Government as a blue belt of marine protection. Surely this promotion is incompatible with the present totally inadequate transport links. What are the Government’s plans for Ascension’s transport and infrastructure? Indeed, what are the plans for the future of the island?
Turning to St Helena, while awaiting the air link, the RMS “St Helena” struggled on beset by breakdowns, but the air link is now but 37 days away. This weekly service will provide, if every aircraft seat of the 76 available is filled, only 80% of the full capacity of berths on the RMS. That will be the position once the air and ship luxury of this next few months ends with the expected withdrawal of the RMS next February. Perhaps the Minister could confirm that the RMS will serve at least until the completion of Voyage 268 at Cape Town on 11 February 2018. Furthermore, is the Minister aware of whether, at a later stage, the carriage capacity of the aircraft can be increased? Is any resolution in sight on wind shear so that larger aircraft may be used? The air service now on offer will not add to the tourist potential of St Helena and the enrichment of the economy. How can it? The airport was supposed to be the gateway to a tourism-led economy, but the creation of that base in terms of infrastructure has barely started. There is much more to do.
Although the island’s newest hotel in Jamestown, supported by the St Helena Government, is due to open in October, all other hotel developments proposed by private interests are stalled. Why? I believe it is due to a lack of confidence in the sufficiency of transport links and the related confidence of lenders to invest in the absence of any guarantee that these links will be robust.
St Helena also needs to enhance other infrastructure, such as its sewerage arrangements, road network, further work in rockfall abatement and the inadequate broadband connections. There are proposals for a south Atlantic cable, which could have a St Helena link. Are this Government disposed to support that? The cost of internet connection in St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha is very expensive, perhaps the most expensive in the world. For Tristan da Cunha—the remotest settlement on earth, where a cable connection is unlikely —it is still vital for education, health, good governance and economic development that there is good access. How is the Minister able to assist to improve these links?
Resources to improve infrastructure can come from several budget lines. Clearly, DfID has an important role, with its enhanced budget and the requirement to attend as a first call to the overseas territories’ needs. Under the 11th European Development Fund, however, these islands have been granted aid of €21.5 million for the period 2014-20. Are these funds guaranteed in European Union departure times? Will replacements be made in this type of funding? I am aware that some of the NGOs are looking to obtain funding from the UK National Lottery for environmental and heritage work. Does the Minister support that aim?
In the last week of our time here in July, I attended, alongside other noble Lords, a roadshow put on by the Commonwealth Development Corporation, or the CDC as it is known. I picked up and studied its annual report and strategic framework to understand its role in development. I was interested to learn that the organisation engages in Africa and south Asia. Sixty-seven countries are listed as to where they may invest: 49 on the African continent—all of mainland Africa—as well as Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe. The St Helena group are not so listed. Surely they can only be part of the African continent; I cannot see them being in any other. The Central Intelligence Agency has helpfully produced a list of 198 countries in the world, showing their gross domestic product per capita. St Helena’s GDP is $7,800, less than half the world average. Of the 49 African countries that the CDC is prepared to consider supporting, 13 have a greater GDP per capita than the St Helena group of islands. I put it to the Minister that the CDC, with its quadrupled financial resources and considerable expertise, is well-placed to be part of the answer to enhancing the infrastructure of St Helena.
The investment in St Helena Airport was a very important achievement, but it is only part of the solution to translate the economy to one based on sympathetic tourism. The infrastructure investment must follow now. This Government, either directly or through their agencies, have the resources, skill and experience to translate these dependent economies to self-sustaining ones. Will the Minister commit today that the Government have the will to do it?
The correspondence I have received prior to this debate, both from St Helena and the many friends of the islands in the UK—and elsewhere—shows the timeliness of the debate. I thank those who wrote for their knowledge and interest. I also thank all noble Lords for taking part and look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Shutt—I call him my noble friend because although he is in a different party, he is usually on the same side—on securing the debate. I also associate myself with his remarks about the problems facing our overseas territories in the Caribbean and our friends in independent Caribbean countries. The hurricane seems one of the worst they have faced and I hope we will see the Department for International Development and the UK Government doing as much as they can to help. It would be helpful if the Minister could mention that in his reply.
I want to deal with two issues: the sad saga of St Helena and how it has been dealt with by the British Government, and Ascension Island. I do not want to go over the terrible saga of the airport again; I am afraid DfID does not come out of it well. Getting information, with the help of the Minister—I am not blaming the noble Lord, Lord Bates, because he has been helpful—out of DfID has been like drawing hen’s teeth. It has been very difficult. The answers to my Parliamentary Questions are like the famous bikini: what they conceal is much more interesting than what they reveal. I do not think it is very clever of civil servants to see how well they cannot answer questions. If I were a civil servant, I would go out of my way to try to help Parliament by answering questions properly.
There needs to be some inquiry into why so much money was spent and wasted in building the airport without proper planning and foresight. We now know that aircraft can go in and out—it is clear that they can. That could have happened from day one if it had been planned properly. There needs to be some inquiry and I hope the Public Accounts Committee in the other place might have a further look at it.
One of the problems is the question of who makes the decisions in relation to St Helena and other overseas territories. It is split between DfID, the FCO, which appoints the governor, the governor herself and the island’s council. I pay tribute to the council: to Lawson Henry and to Derek Thomas, whom I know very well and have sat with on important Commonwealth Parliamentary Association committees. He is a very good man, as is Lawson. They are elected, and yet they are not given a proper place in decision-making in St Helena. The truth is that the man who pays the piper—and usually it is a man; sorry, ladies—calls the tune. In this case, DfID is paying the piper. Some 52% of St Helena’s expenditure comes from a DfID budget. We know that although the fiction is that the governor makes a decision, it is not the governor who ultimately does so but the United Kingdom Government, DfID, in particular.
That is why this plan was devised in the first place: to get away from that and make the island more independent and self-sustaining through tourism, not just from the United Kingdom but from France. A lot of French people want to go to see the reminiscences of Napoleon’s visit to the island. There is great potential there for environmental tourism and a range of other things. That is why the development must go ahead. I hope the Minister will give some indication of what he is doing to support the companies that have already shown an interest and to help the individuals, some of whom have put in their own money and have had no compensation or indication of help. I keep getting a brochure about some scheme; I hope the Minister will not refer to that again because it is not really the kind of help they need. They need more sustained and better help.
I am hearing about problems with the new wharf at Rupert’s. Again, the islanders, who know, suggested that it should be in Jamestown, but DfID, which thinks it knows better, insisted that it should be at Rupert’s Wharf. Now we have problems of potential rockfall. It is about time DfID paid more attention to what the islanders—the people on the ground—say, because they know what is going on. I hope the Minister will give an indication of whether DfID has agreed the funding and business case for the next three years. The islanders need to know that. They need some planning and some foresight. I hope that business case has been agreed.
I must watch my time because I want to come on to Ascension Island. I have some information that I would like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, for. The airport has been closed—or so we are told—to everyone except the Americans. How is it that the Americans can use this broken runway? Do they have some kind of aircraft that we do not? Do they have special aeroplanes that can land on broken runways? The islanders there have a suspicion that we are heading for another Diego Garcia and that the United Kingdom will hand over Ascension to the Americans. They already run Wideawake Airfield. I have no doubt that they are very keen to take it over for their own purposes. With the current President we do not know what the hell will happen there. Why is it that the Americans can land there and others cannot?
We have a big interest there, not just Cable & Wireless. GCHQ has a base there. It has potential for environmental tourism as well. I hope the Minister will spell out—I think my noble friend Lord Shutt covered this—exactly what will happen regarding access for aircraft flying in and out, and how frequently we will have them into St Helena and then perhaps up to Ascension. I hope the Minister will give an absolute assurance that there is no intention to withdraw RMS “St Helena” until it is absolutely clear—100% sure—that there are viable alternatives.
My time is up. In conclusion, there is a feeling abroad, in this Committee and in the Chamber down the road, that the Government are so preoccupied with Brexit, with so much attention put into it, that they are not dealing with some of the other important issues, such as St Helena or Ascension. I hope the Minister will give us some indication that he, at least, is concerned about the kind of issues that my noble friend Lord Shutt, I and others will raise today.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Shutt on tabling this Question for Short Debate, which raises an issue that is in some ways seen as slightly niche. I told somebody this morning that I would be speaking about transport and infrastructure in Ascension, St Helena and Tristan da Cunha. They had lost the will to live before I got as far as saying, “And the Falkland Islands”. There has, perhaps, not been sufficient discussion, debate and oversight of what is going on for our overseas territories.
I am taking us slightly further down into the south Atlantic. We have heard so far predominantly about Ascension and St Helena—not so much about Tristan da Cunha. I will talk a little more about the Falkland Islands, partly because last year, under the auspices of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme, I had the opportunity of travelling to the Falkland Islands and therefore stopping in Ascension and coming down. That was quite an efficient although slow route, but it is one that operated twice a week and is clearly important to UK forces. We still have the three services in the Falkland Islands; the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force and the Army are still based in the islands so we need mechanisms to get our service men and women there effectively. That is a question that possibly needs to go back to the MoD, but I have a few other questions I want to raise regarding our service men and women.
There was an established route that worked for the military and for the civilian residents of the Falkland Islands. If they wanted to come to the UK, they could book on to the twice-weekly Voyager flights. That is quite different from the number of services we are seeing at the moment, which might be available going through St Helena or to Ascension using different routes. I seem to recall that when the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, raised this issue in the Chamber during a Question, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, suggested that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, should be sent on the first commercial flight in and out of St Helena. I think the noble Lord might be there for some time because clearly the flights are not frequent.
Baroness Smith of Newnham
The noble Lord might say that but I could not possibly comment. However, there is a question about the frequency of the flights and their utility for islanders, whether from Ascension, St Helena or the Falkland Islands.
While I was drafting my notes for today’s debate, I wanted to investigate a little further into Ascension. I looked at the island details online and found a web link for “Flights”. I clicked on it and a message stated, “The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later”. It looks like a dead web page but clearly it also links to the fact that the flights are not functioning either. The noble Lord, Lord Shutt, has suggested that we are looking at 2020 before the Ascension airfield will be back in service. That is neither a short nor a temporary break in service; it is a very long time. One question I should like to put to the Minister is: what assessment have Her Majesty’s Government made of the additional costs to HM Armed Forces of the rerouting via Cape Verde?
In answer to a Question for Written Answer tabled on 17 July in the House of Commons, Mark Lancaster stated that it was too early to provide details of the costs related to the rerouting of the South Atlantic Airbridge covering items such as fuel, handling and landing fees, but that they would be tracked and recorded. Is there an answer to that question, because we are looking at at least three years of this rerouting? What is the cost and might it be better to talk to the United States and ask whether the United Kingdom could not assist in the renovation of what is supposed to be called the Wideawake Airfield, although it seems more like fast asleep. As the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, pointed out, it seems closed to everyone apart from the Americans, and that in itself raises questions. Perhaps the USAF uses smaller planes than the Voyagers flying on behalf of the RAF, but why is that happening? There are questions about maintenance and the costs of dealing with the airfield in Ascension.
There remains a wider set of questions about the role that the United Kingdom feels it can play in association with the British Overseas Territories. For months and years we have been hearing that in the light of Brexit, we are looking to go global. Surely the first places we should be thinking about are our territories overseas whose links to the European Union will be damaged by Brexit. The islands have benefited from British membership of the European Union, including EDF funding. So far, under the current 2014-2020 EU budget, some €21.5 million has been assigned for the Atlantic territories. Has that all been spent, and if not, will it be part of the divorce budget that the United Kingdom is facing? If it is, should we not be thinking about making sure that it is spent in useful ways?
Finally, I should like to touch on infrastructure in the Falklands. It is not only a question of the runway on Ascension; it is also about the roads in the Falklands, in particular the road between Port Stanley and Mount Pleasant airfield. Who is affected by that? In part it is the resident islanders, but it also affects our service men and women. RAF staff may be sent on six-month deployments. The roads are dreadful. They are not necessarily made, and at the moment they are being upgraded at the rate of, I believe, a mile and a half a year, which is all that can be afforded. Will Her Majesty’s Government look at ways of improving the infrastructure, given that it affects not just the islanders but, crucially, our service men and women, who go on long deployments and would benefit enormously from safer and quicker road transport? It would enable them to get to Stanley and spend some of their time not just at the airport.
There is a whole set of infrastructure questions that could be dealt with. A final one concerns IT. Are there mechanisms for looking at, again, communications? Cheaper and more effective IT infrastructure would be most beneficial not just to islanders but to our service men and women.
Baroness Hooper (Con)
My Lords, for people living in remote places, communications are vital. One can only imagine what it must feel like to lose existing air services and links such as Ascension, and anticipated new links such as the airport in St Helena. I have had the pleasure of visiting Ascension to watch the green turtles, before going on to the Falkland Islands, where I have also made a few visits, but I have not yet had the privilege of going to St Helena. I have, however, a long-standing interest and involvement in the overseas territories, going back to the days when they were known as dependent territories. This debate is about helping the overseas territories to remain independent.
The noble Lord, Lord Shutt, has given us a wonderful opportunity to focus on the issues affecting these three tiny territories and has provided a very detailed factual background, for which we must all thank him. This is indeed a timely debate. It is very important to raise awareness of the problems and to seek and suggest solutions, and I look forward to hearing from my noble friend Lord Bates on the Government’s thinking and answers to some of the questions raised. Given that the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, has covered the ground so thoroughly, as indeed have others, I wish only to underline and emphasise certain points.
The airport saga in St Helena has indeed been a saga, but the main assurance needed by the people of St Helena—the Saints—is a guarantee for a transitional period, once the airport finally opens in October, and that the RMS “St Helena” will remain as a back-up service for as long as possible. I understand that the aeroplanes to be used at the new airport have a capacity for some 70 people, which is not very great. RMS “St Helena” can transport some 156 passengers, I believe. Given that the high season for tourism is approaching and hotels and other tourist-related activities need some certainty, it is important that such a guarantee is given urgently. Therefore I hope my noble friend the Minister can give us a positive answer on this subject.
My understanding was that there are no specific issues relating to the Falklands in the Falklands themselves other than issues of access via Ascension, as has been said. As for the issues in Ascension and St Helena, the sooner action is taken the better, since we all know that infrastructure costs always rise with time, and there is the added issue of European Union funding, which will no longer be available in the future. I hope that such resources as are required to meet these issues will not be affected by the current tragedy and needs of those overseas territories in the Caribbean—I would mention Anguilla in particular. I join those who have sent their good wishes to the people who are suffering in those places.
I hope very much that, as a result of this debate, we will get some answers to provide reassurance for the peoples of St Helena, Ascension and the Falklands.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, I, too, wish to associate myself with the remarks about Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean, which is clearly on an unprecedented scale. In my capacity as president of the Caribbean Council, I know that many of the people whom we are associated with will be affected by it. I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Shutt on this debate. I know he has a long-standing interest and has had the advantage of going to St Helena, which not all of us have.
My involvement in this goes back about 10 years. I freely admit that it was only in my capacity as chair of the International Development Committee that it was brought to my attention that the future of St Helena was believed to depend on the development of an airport, which at that time was not at all a firm commitment but a consideration. The process of getting to the final commitment was a pretty convoluted and stop/start one, in any case.
What I remember from that time is this fundamental point, which relates to what has been said about Ascension, too: the survivability of these communities depends on having a functioning economy, albeit maybe a subsidised one. There is a clear worry that these territories will become the 21st century’s St Kilda and that the lack of support, investment and infrastructure will be such that it will be declared impossible to support the communities and they will be abandoned. I would like the Minister to assure me that the Government have a real commitment to ensuring that these communities can and should survive. I do not want to be in any way contentious in saying this but, partly because of the conflict, the Falkland Islands have had a lot of attention and a huge amount of investment, whereas these other communities have, frankly, been almost forgotten. It is time that was redressed.
The point made to me when I was being lobbied, apart from that fundamental one that it was important for the viability, economic development and opportunity of the St Helena community, was that the ship—which was, incidentally, built in Aberdeen—was reaching the end of its life. Rather than build another ship, it was therefore said that it would be better to put the money towards an airport, which is the modern means of communication, although I appreciate the worry about having no shipping. I then heard the objections or issues from various sources, the first of which was the cost of developing an airport, the difficult terrain being very remote and there being no heavy lifting equipment on the island. It all had to be brought in and subsequently removed, which is a problem now, and that consideration made it more expensive.
The second concern was about the environment, both the physical impact on the appearance of the island and the disruption to wildlife—I have heard about other consequences—on the grounds that the ecosystem was part of the island’s attraction, and so should not be damaged or destroyed. There were people actually saying, “Let’s not have the airport”, but the argument was won and it was clear that the overwhelming majority of the community wanted it.
What I never heard about, not once, was the possibility of wind shear. I heard about it only last year, as I think most of us did, apparently when flying into the airport started to be thought about. I have read that there were test flights and calibration measures. I was told that the islanders could tell just by watching the birds that there was a wind issue. There is a question of whether the process of reorganising the landscape to build the airport had any effect on aggravating the wind shear. I have no idea—it would be interesting to know about that—but what is now clear is that the wind shear exists. It also now appears that there is a partial resolution, which my noble friend Lord Shutt referred to, as it is a problem from one way at the airport but not the other. You can land more safely with a tail wind—I have just seen the video—but the problem is that when you land, you keep on going and at the end, there is the sea. It is therefore unsuitable for heavier planes to do that because the runway is not long enough.
That brings me to the question of what to do now. For example, is there a possibility of an extension to the runway, because it is slightly shorter than was originally envisaged? Would that help? Could any other measures be put in place that might affect the wind shear? Again, I do not have the technical knowledge to know whether that is possible. The point about Ascension then comes into play, because it gives you alternatives. Apart from direct flights from Angola, South Africa or Namibia, it would also perhaps be possible, if the runway in Ascension were in use, to take larger planes into Ascension and then have a more regular link service for smaller planes into St Helena, which might deliver volume if the demand developed.
We should step back and recognise that the hope for this was to create a significant opportunity for the island to sustain and grow its economy as a unique tourist destination. It would obviously not be for the mass market; it would be both expensive and special, but it requires reliability of the service, and the knowledge that you can get on and off the island at reasonable intervals. It would require decent accommodation and facilities to enable people, if they are to be there for a week or 10 days, to benefit from what the island has to offer and have reasonable comfort.
The point being made about the developers and the CDC is to get to find a reasonable solution to guarantee an amount of flying capacity on a regular basis. That should give confidence for developers to provide the tourism facilities that would benefit from this. The CDC should reasonably regard that as within its remit.
When I was chairman of the International Development Committee, people asked why we were spending money in this small community, when there is much greater need in Africa and elsewhere. I understand that argument. As a committee, we decided to leave it alone, because we did not want to be seen to be standing in the way of the needs of the St Helenians. The reality is that it is the Government’s responsibility. It qualifies for ODA, so maybe it should legitimately be DfID’s, but it should be done nevertheless and the Government should have a commitment. There should be an assurance that there is a real future, a solution that can be sustained and the ability to support the economy’s development, in the terms that the local community hoped for when the decision to go ahead with the airport was taken.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I also associate myself with the comments regarding Hurricane Irma. No one could not be moved by the remarks on the radio this morning about the devastation. I know the Government have made a Statement in the other place, and it would be helpful if the Minister could give us a brief update on that situation. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, for initiating this debate. I cannot believe it is over three years since the first one I was involved in, which he initiated. We had the report about the building of the airport then. It was scheduled for completion in 2016. It was clear that the airport would provide opportunities for growth and jobs but we knew then that, without proper investment, the cost of failure would be high.
Only by developing sustainable enterprise will St Helena be weaned off the budget support of around £25 million to £30 million a year. The noble Lord, Lord Bates, has said the airport business case depended not on rapid development but slow growth over 25 years, going from fewer than 1,000 tourists to 30,000 tourists by 2014. Of course that was based on five flights a week, not the initial weekly flight service that is now planned.
Most noble Lords in the debate have mentioned key infrastructure issues. There is value in cross-learning and development between islands. The noble Lord, Lord Bates, has said that the Joint Ministerial Council is an obvious vehicle for putting that into practice, as is the Overseas Territories Consultative Committee. Can the Minister indicate how that sharing of best practice has been delivered by those committees?
Noble Lords have mentioned the CDC, and I make another plug for it. It is vital for the five-year plan that has just been published that we in Parliament debate the priorities in that plan, and I hope the Minister can tell us that the Government will make time for a proper debate. It is, as noble Lords have said, concerning that DfID did not foresee and address the impact of difficult wind conditions on landing commercial aircraft safely sooner. However, as my noble friend mentioned, I am grateful to the Minister for keeping noble Lords informed of the remedial action taken by the department. In particular, I am grateful that he responded to my questions about the need for clear contingency plans combined with a realistic timetable to remove uncertainty. That includes provision of sea routes while we are assessing the success of the airport.
My noble friend Lord Foulkes also mentioned compensation for residents who have expanded their business, where the uncertainty has affected their investment. The department says that there have not been any claims, but I would appreciate it if the Minister could give us a bit more news on the role of the business support initiative and how it has responded to the needs of those who have invested. We now have confirmation that we will have a scheduled commercial air service. The agreement was signed in July, and I am grateful to the Minister for advising me that regulatory approvals from the South African CAA have been given, that we had a successful proving flight last week and that the service will start on 14 October. That is fantastic news, but it does not alleviate the need for contingency planning, ensuring greater certainty and protecting the investments that have been made.
Another announcement was of a weekly charter service to Ascension, which has now been put into question by the US authorities, who own and are responsible under the Bahamas agreement for managing that airfield, the Wideawake Airfield, which does not seem so wide awake at the moment. Again, I come back to contingency planning. Why was there not more advance notice of this? Why is there not much more effective contingency planning? Why is there so much uncertainty, which is creating stress in those communities’ lives?
I hope that the Minister will respond to the key issue, which is what assistance the Government will provide to residents of St Helena employed in supporting the British military presence in the Falklands. Are we any further forward from the response that the MoD is working to find a solution? We have had three months of that, and it is vital that we hear from the Government today.
The noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, said that the response to support people employed in Ascension is for the employing organisations. He acknowledged, however, the considerable logistical challenges created by the current air access issues and said that the Government were “urgently considering” how best they could support those on Ascension with this. That was three months ago, so I should like to hear from the Minister: is he in a position to tell us what support can be given today?
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, I first join other noble Lords in paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, for securing this debate on transport and major infrastructure needs of St Helena, Ascension, Tristan da Cunha and the Falkland Islands. He and several noble Lords began their remarks—correctly—by expressing their thoughts and prayers for all the people in the Caribbean, including those on Anguilla, Montserrat, the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands who are dealing with the effects of Hurricane Irma. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, referenced the Statement made by Sir Alan Duncan in another place earlier. There will be a COBRA meeting starting at 2 pm today; further announcements will be made following that. The Secretary of State, Priti Patel, has announced that the Royal Fleet Auxiliary “Mounts Bay” is already in the Caribbean and should reach the affected territories today. The ship carries Royal Marines and Army engineers and her primary task is the protection of the overseas territories. She is loaded with a range of equipment, vehicles, tents, stores and hydraulic vehicles, specifically intended to respond to disasters such as this. As I say, we are aware that further action will be needed and it will be forthcoming, as an expression of not only our humanitarian concern but, of course, our legal obligation to those territories.
I will deal with as many of the points that have been raised as possible. My approach will probably be one that is fairly positive. It is in my nature—I am afraid that my blood group is B positive and I therefore live in that positive world. I recall that the St Helena air service is indelibly printed upon my ministerial memory at DfID: I was appointed in the morning and, in the afternoon, I faced my first Question on the issue from the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. I am grateful that noble Lords have acknowledged that we have tried to work together through this. We have had several meetings, which I have been grateful to noble Lords for attending. We have tried to keep noble Lords informed throughout the very difficult progress and as we wrestled to find a solution for this. We met with a quality assurance panel and with the team and have been sharing that information. I hope very much that the conversation we have been able to have with those who are interested in the future of these overseas territories can continue, even beyond the start of the service.
The noble Lord, Lord Collins, has already referred to the commercial air service, by SA Airlink, which is expected to start on 14 October. These are exciting times for St Helena. This service will end centuries of isolation for the island. My noble friend Lady Hooper referred to the fact that communications are vital to these remote communities. This connection will be extremely important. For those who are looking for our commitment to these islands, I think the fact that we spend £285 million of British taxpayers’ money on the airport is a real commitment. One thing that we are absolutely sure of is that we want to ensure that not only the Saints but the British taxpayers see that there is good value for money from that very significant investment in the air service. The service will end centuries of isolation for the island which, until recently, had been accessible only by sea.
Some noble Lords commented on the parity between the existing link with St Helena and the number of places that are available. The air service will have an initial capacity of 76, which will increase to 87 in early 2018. Reference has been made to the capacity on RMS “St Helena”, but it takes five days to get to the island. Airlink will get there in six and a half hours. The costs are less: proposed ticket prices start at £804, making it a real, affordable opportunity for people to take advantage of. The service will be extended every month, providing a much quicker connection to St Helena for Saints on Ascension Island. DfID has supported the St Helena Government throughout the process, from designing and building the airport to the commercial negotiations necessary to have reached this stage. We have also supported a substantial programme of technical work to better understand wind conditions on the island. That work has been key to securing significant interest from commercial airlines to operate the service.
St Helena is a beautiful island. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, referred to the ambition for an increase in tourism over the long term, which justified the initial investment for up to 30,000 visitors. We know that will be a significant ask and that significant investment in infrastructure will be required, but we are confident that once people discover St Helena’s amazing scenery, attractive walks, varied bird and marine life—including whale sharks—and Napoleonic and other historical heritage, those numbers will increase.
Enterprise St Helena, the island’s economic development agency, is working on a number of fronts to enhance the tourism product, including assistance for start-ups and expanding businesses, skills development, and improving standards of accommodation, catering and transport services. With the UK’s investment in the airport and the air services starting, we are working with the St Helena Government and Enterprise St Helena to attract further international private sector investment in tourism infrastructure alongside the growth in the airport.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Will the Minister remind us about the frequency of the air service?
Lord Bates
Initially, the frequency of the air service will be once a week. We have said that number. We expect that will increase, but it has to be on the basis of demand. The agreement we have is to support the service and make it viable. That is part of our confidence that once people see the attraction of the island, the service will continue. We are looking at other ways we can talk about the business support operation, which I know the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, told me not to mention, but the noble Lord, Lord Collins, asked me to mention. I am happy to reference that operation, through which we can offer support to the organisations and business that have had difficulties as a result of the delays.
In addition to investment in the airport, we have provided £16.5 million over three and a half years to improve the island’s infrastructure, which I know the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, was keen to know about. That investment has enabled the St Helena Government to make improvements to areas such as social housing, education, health and utilities. The investment has improved the lives of the people of St Helena. For example, the level of healthcare available on the island has increased following the refurbishment of the hospital. There have also been improvements to power generation and water distribution.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, and several others, referred to the internet and to the CDC. We had a very interesting discussion at that point and I know those discussions are ongoing. Sometimes it is not necessarily that we do not want to answer questions, but these matters are very complicated. I assure noble Lords that those discussions and ideas are being taken very seriously. We funded the feasibility programme for the submarine internet connection to the islands because we see it as complementary to our tourism ambitions. We have also continued our support to the core budget of the St Helena Government, which the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, mentioned as the man paying the piper; in this case, it was Priti Patel, a female, paying the piper. That commitment continues and we have agreed a further project of up to £4.8 million over the next three years to help support tourism and economic development.
We have invested nearly £13 million in Tristan da Cunha’s infrastructure. That has kept the harbour open, allowing access to the island and allowing the lobster catch, which is very important to the island’s economy, to be landed. In addition, the newly built health facility opened its doors in June 2017. This replaced the failing hospital with a facility which offers an improved level of medical care. The UK Government have received positive feedback from the islanders and clinicians.
Turning to Ascension, the rerouting of the South Atlantic Airbridge has clearly had an impact on the lives of people on the island and on operations with the organisations based there. However, the runway remains open should there be a need for medical evacuation and the MoD military flights are still running. I recognise the particular interest which the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, has through her Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme experience. Let me just add, on maintenance of the runway, that it is the US Government who own the runway on Ascension and contract and patch repairs. It is they who have asked that, until further notice be given, the RAF should cease from operating the heavier Voyager aircraft, due to the deterioration of the runway that has occurred during that time.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
The Minister is reading a speech rather than answering the debate. Will he answer the question as to why the Americans are still able to fly in, as they were before, but we are not?
Lord Bates
This is a debate we are having here. I thought it would be helpful for noble Lords to hear what HMG are actually doing in these areas. Discussions with the United States Government are of course ongoing under the terms of the agreement about how this will operate. I am very happy to write to and update noble Lords with the outcome of those.
The majority of those on Ascension are from St Helena. The new once-a-month air service to St Helena, with onward travel to South Africa, will drastically improve travel times, allowing Saints to return home to visit their families and friends, as the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, requested. The Government are clear about the importance of continued access to Ascension before and during the planned runway repairs. My noble friend Lord Ahmad spoke to the Ascension councillors on 7 July to hear their views, and the FCO is in close contact with the Ascension Government, employing organisations and representatives of the people of the island. Ascension continues to have a role in delivering a number of strategic priorities for the UK and our allies. The UK Government are committed to working with the Ascension representatives to find a sustainable operating model that works.
Travel to and from the UK to the Falkland Islands has been maintained by rerouting the South Atlantic Airbridge through Cape Verde, for which Her Majesty’s Government are very grateful. The responsibility for infrastructure investment on the Falkland Islands is a devolved matter to the Falkland Islands’ Government, which I know the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, is interested in.
I again thank the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, for calling this debate and to all who have contributed. It shows the depth of support in this House for the people of the overseas territories, to whom we have a special responsibility. I hope the House can continue to support the work of the UK Government in discharging this responsibility to some of the most remote and challenging places in the world, and that the investment which we have placed already and the communication which we have already invested within this House can continue into the future for the benefit of the Saints and other organisations elsewhere.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)
The first debate has now concluded and the Committee will stand adjourned until 2 pm.
Brexit: Negotiations
(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Dykes
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to bring regular reports before Parliament on the progress of the negotiations for Brexit.
Lord Dykes (CB)
My Lords, one of the features of my last visit to New York was a snippet of New York traditional humour. I was very impressed that the definition of a real optimist was a 95 year-old man who got married for the eighth time and bought a new house near a school. The Government need even more optimism than that to get through this nightmare of Brexit. The less congenial part of this, for me, is having to sound curmudgeonly to a very distinguished Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay. We thank her for coming today and we look forward to her responses, but it is always a problem to deal with someone who has such an excellent reputation as a very hard-working Minister. So I apologise in advance for everything I say if the Minister—unsurprisingly— disagrees a little with it.
The Government do not realise how impossibly complicated this process will be. That is why the reports now need to accelerate and be much stronger and more regular in the light of all those coming to speak in this debate. I believe that the two representatives of the EU Committee are the noble Lords, Lord Jay and Lord Teverson, and I hope they will quite rightly ask the Government to promise that the EU Committee is kept well informed about what goes on. We hope that the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, will soon be back as the chairman.
The Government have lost their original mandate from the decision of 23 June 2016 because of the 8 June election this year. They cannot proceed legitimately—possibly even legally, particularly if we had a written constitution, which of course we do not have. The Bill being debated today in the Commons and on Monday grants those sinister Henry VIII powers on secondary legislation, which will not be accepted by Parliament. A minority Government, which is what they are, dependent on a peculiar DUP grouping of Protestant hard-liners in Belfast, cannot possibly enforce their decisions against the true democratic majority increasingly revolted—as are the public—by this daft plan to leave the European Union. The prospect of leaving is alarming mainly the representatives of UK industry, farming and commerce, and particularly major exporters to the EU. The idea that this will not grow from now on—it will keep coming back to haunt the Government—is daft, if that is what some Ministers still think.
The immigration issues are even more painful. All the way through, it was extraordinary that the Government, unlike other EU member states, for some bizarre reason avoided using the existing powers in the treaty of Rome—now the TFEU—to limit immigration from other EU countries if they wanted to. Guess who was the Home Office Minister in charge at the time: a lady called Theresa May—so it is even more strange.
On 7 March this year I asked the Home Office Minister in the Lords why the powers, mostly under Clause 45, were not invoked, which would have softened the irrational hostility to migrants in this country. She did not answer but said she could not be responsible for what had happened in the past. So much for Tory government continuity on main policy areas. They failed repeatedly to use the treaty three-month rule, and then in a panic reverted to Cameron’s unachievable tens of thousands formula, which, incredibly, is still being repeated by a lady called Theresa May.
I will quickly refer to Article 50 again. In response to Questions in the Lords on 19 December last year, the Minister used the word “instructed”, a word that is illicit or perhaps even illegal—it would be if we had a written constitution—as the referendum was an advisory opinion only. Of course, anti-EU Tories said they would accept the result and act on it. However, the then Government were elected with a net small majority but only by just under a quarter of the qualified voting public, which excluded the youngest voters—hardly a democratic basis in law. In the same exchanges, the peculiar invocation of a red, white and blue Brexit by Mrs May was described as red for the millions of dead in two world wars followed by six decades of peace thanks to the EU; white for the cowardly slide in this country into irrational xenophobia; and blue, representing just the Tory interest, mostly older people—a party which now has a membership base less than one-fifth of that of the main opposition party in the Commons.
The emotional background is even more striking. With Ministers floundering and dreading the growing public revulsion at this monumental disaster looming over this country, we recall the effects of what the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, described as the continuing “cancer” literally threatening to destroy the Tory party in the future. Ministers have ignored the sensible voices and opted to listen only to the dark voices of reaction, prejudice and ignorance, as well as a few genuine believers in a mystical and old-fashioned independence, which no longer exists in reality for any country, even the United States.
For once—and it surprised me at the time—the Prime Minister expressed it with accuracy in her article of 8 January this year in, of all places, the Sunday Telegraph, saying that people,
“did not simply vote to withdraw from the European Union; they voted to change the way our country works … forever”,
and were disgruntled by economic and social setbacks in their lives. Apart from immigration, this is probably the main reason why people did vote—to give the Government a kick, which is what they tend to do in referendums if they are feeling fed up with lots of things, as people are in this country now. That is fair enough but why should the Government take it out on our membership of the most successful trading system in the world?
In the brilliant four-page “Why we are still angry” special in the New European newspaper on 10 to 16 February this year, the second of the four whys reminded us that,
“every one of the reasons given to persuade Leavers to vote for Brexit is a lie”.
Let us note the voices of good old British common sense, of people who are beginning to wake up to what is happening in this country with this daft policy of Brexit, such as John Cole, a citizen from Shipley, West Yorkshire, who stated in the Guardian in January this year that the referendum,
“was only ever advisory. The government had no obligation to act on the outcome, especially when it was so close. Any golf club or musical society requires a super-majority for significant constitutional change … the government has grossly overinterpreted the result”.
He must have been thinking about the fateful utterance of the infamous words after the previous election that “Brexit means Brexit” by an inexperienced and maladroit Prime Minister in the heat of the moment.
There are now very difficult questions facing the Government and they have to be faced up to from now on, with regular reports to Parliament, both the Lords and the Commons. We know that in both places the majority against Brexit is growing. In the Lords I believe the majority against leaving Europe is very large indeed, among all groups and parties.
How do we avoid hard Brexit? As the negotiations have now started at last, some eight weeks later than if there had been no election, the earlier strong fears that Theresa May would be happy to opt for a hard Brexit—a no deal at all kind of outcome—have happily receded somewhat, only because of the gradual evolution of some common sense among some Ministers. I will avoid naming names. It does not apply to all who are involved in this exercise.
As early as 21 February this year, in the debate on the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill in the Lords, the highly respected Cross-Bench Peer, the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, said that there was “no question” of just ignoring the referendum. However, he rejected absolutely the concept of the hard exit, or Brexit, which had not been mandated. He added,
“there is no way that I am going to vote for triggering a negotiation designed to achieve a hard Brexit, which is likely to be so damaging for our country”,—[Official Report, 21/2/17; col. 222.]
for reasons he went on to explain in some detail. He also went on to attack the approach as a cavalier disregard of the 48% of voters, then and now a figure that is growing, who are against this daft policy.
On 6 July I argued that the original Brexit mandate had lapsed long since the 8 June outcome. Indeed, the results of that election are striking. Even Sky News in its analysis said that there was a built-in majority against Brexit in the overall result of all the electors voting for the political groups. Of course, we had new younger voters coming in for the first time as well, who signalled a very significant change. The Tories are now down to just above the Member numbers for the Liberal Democrat party with their absurd and childish psychodrama which we have all been locked into. When I met senior officials and MPs in Berlin recently, they asked me one of those psychological questions: “Why are they being so childish?”. I was unable to reply so I said that I would refer the question to Ministers here and ask them. I did so, but I never got an answer from the then Lords Minister about it.
In the Financial Times on 18 July, the writer Gideon Rachman put into chilling context that when people say that the vote which occurred on 23 June must be followed they mean,
“the Leavers’ view of democracy is similar to that of a third-world dictator—‘one man, one vote, one time’”.
Thus it can never be revisited. That of course was not the case in the 1975 referendum, which was reversed by the second in 2016. There is now less than a 50/50 chance of a comprehensive agreement being reached by March 2019. My noble friend Lord Kerr wrote on 26 January this year that, “The UK might withdraw its Article 50 notice, as it legally could”. Meanwhile the rest of the EU is paying close attention to the neurotic antics here which shame the reputation of UK politics. All the 27 sovereign member states, who incidentally are proud of the links between their own national sovereignty and the collective sovereignty afforded by EU membership, see more and more people here beginning to back away from the Brexit disaster movie, filmed in black and white.
If anti-Brexit is thwarting the will of the people, by 2019 some 2 million people from the Brexit electorate will have passed away and have been replaced by a similar number of voters aged 18-plus, on top of the 1 million extra young voters in the election held in June this year. Hence we conclude that staying in the single market and the customs union is a legitimate compromise. The Opposition should repeat this all the time and I do hope that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and others will persuade Jeremy Corbyn to sound a little more enthusiastic about matters European, not only to please members of the Labour Party but others in this country, and indeed many trade union members who are increasingly keen on Europe.
The inexorably looming and increasingly obvious solution is to study the sage words of one of our most brilliant authors, Ian McEwan. Early in June this year he said,
“I am a denialist. Almost a year on, I am still shaking my head in disbelief. I know it’s not helpful, but I don’t accept this near mystical, emotionally charged decision”.
That view will be echoed by others as we see what happens from now on. I wait with interest to hear the response of the Minister.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for initiating this debate. I do not think that any of his speech touched on the subject of the debate, which is about information being given to the House. What we are facing, of course, are very different traditions in Brussels and London. When I held office in the European Parliament, I had a good system for getting documents read: stamp “Confidential” on the top of them and they would be read by every office in the European Parliament within a day.
We have to look at the dissemination of information because this is incredibly complex. I want to stick to the subject of the debate. I do not think that there is any central body in Britain that is actually running what I would called a Brexit website. There are such things in Brussels; in fact, Brussels is overflowing with information. Every day I get two briefings from an excellent outfit called Politico, which tells you everything that is going on. It is thorough. It tells you every bit of news that you need to know, including the fact that today is the birthday of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, which I got from that website. Also, at midday I got a thing about Barnier’s statement on Ireland. In other words, the information flow is better co-ordinated, and the Government need to look at how they can co-ordinate ours better.
The Government need to have a contact system for the Lords. When the Minister was at the FCO, she had regular meetings of interested groups. I am always reluctant to put forward solutions that work elsewhere, because generally in this place the reaction is, “British democracy is best and Brussels is rubbish”. I will just mention that the system being used in Brussels, which is working very well, is that the Parliament has a rapporteur—that is aside from M Barnier: it has Guy Verhofstadt. He has what is called a contact group. Every week he meets with a group of parliamentarians representing virtually all of Parliament, although, demonstrating the skill for which it is famous, the Conservative group has managed not to be a member of that particular group—the only group in Parliament that has achieved this. There are two Labour members on it, incidentally. The group meets and Verhofstadt brings it up to date.
The purpose of the contact group, because there are 750 MEPs, is for them to then go away to their political groups and committees and brief them. It is a two-stage process and it happens every week. The second stage is open to anyone who wants to follow what is going on. I would like the Minister to look at that, because making Statements to the House, where you get the usual people jumping up and down with no order and no organisation, is not going to do what we want. We need a structured briefing system for this House. In other words, we need the Minister to look at the system she had when she was a Minister in the FCO, and adapt it to make it work in this way.
My final point is that there is a tendency to rubbish the European Parliament. We should not fall for that. It is following these negotiations very carefully. Ultimately, it has a veto. If it feels that it is not even being considered or taken seriously, it is not going to be as friendly as it might be if it felt that we were fully engaging with it. I have never heard the Minister associated with this negativity, so this is not a criticism, but I ask her to tell her friends in Government to pay proper respect to the elected European Parliament, which contains elected representatives of this country, who, frankly, the Government need to keep on side.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, as day follows day, I get increasingly astonished that people who I know to be intelligent, grown-up politicians accept the result and narrow majority in an advisory referendum on a flawed franchise, with lies and disinformation on the leave side, as an instruction to Parliament and the Government in a parliamentary democracy. They get up and say it on the radio and on television. Do they really believe it? Are they really serious or are they just part of this “Brexit means Brexit” determination, because it is good from a party-political point of view? Even some people on my own side are saying it, which is even more disappointing.
Looking at what is ahead of us, the withdrawal Bill is starting in the House of Commons only today—it has another day next week—and it is the first Bill we are going to consider. Perhaps in her reply, the Minister can tell us how many other Bills there are going to be. We are told there will be a number of them. Forget about the statutory instruments in the meantime; how many other Bills are we going to consider, all of which we have to get done well before 29 March 2019?
I asked the House of Lords Library to look at how many sittings we had when we passed the Single European Act and Maastricht. I remember it well, as does the noble Lord, Lord Dykes. I was in the House of Commons at the time and on the Opposition Front Bench, opposing it. We had 11 sittings on the Single European Act, six of which went well beyond the time of the House, and on Maastricht we had 41 sittings, 18 of which went well beyond that. I understand that they have not even decided yet in the House of Commons whether to have a timetable Motion, but to think that the Government are going to get the first Bill through by—when is it supposed to be?—early 2018 is really astonishing. Perhaps the Minister can tell us from her wisdom how she thinks that is to be done. I really find it astonishing that we are to face this plethora of legislation and information in such a short time.
I also find deeply disappointing the way in which the House of Lords, and the European Union Select Committee in particular, is being treated. On the day I read that my noble friend Lord Jay had expressed concern that David Davis could not come to report to the European Union Select Committee, that same David Davis was appearing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in a comedy show with Alex Salmond. I am told that when my noble friend raised it in the House earlier today, she did not get a reply. Perhaps the Minister can give us an indication as to why the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is more important to the Secretary of State than the European Union Select Committee, given what he is paid, and supposed, to do.
I see that we have a huge task ahead of us. It will be very difficult, even with the kind of suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe. It really is clutching at straws to think that any such structure can deal with the plethora—the huge volume or flood—of legislation and other matters that we have to consider. There is no way that it will be considered by Parliament, by the European Parliament, by parliaments overseas and finally, in what we are told will be a meaningful vote, by both Houses of this Parliament. That is my only hope. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, I thought that the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, was excellent. It was right on the subject. At the end of this process, if we even achieve getting there—I hope that we do not—we may have a meaningful vote. I hope that that vote will give the British people, and I am right behind the Liberal Democrats on this, the opportunity to consider whether they want the deal that comes out of this—if there is one, which I doubt there will be—or whether they would prefer, as I would, to stay and get the benefits of the European Union.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, particularly with that endorsement of the Liberal Democrats, which I have never heard him make previously. I probably never will again.
There is a mixture of former MPs and MEPs here, as the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, said. When I first became a Member of the European Parliament, some time ago now, I was wet behind the ears as a parliamentarian. I remember an instance of the plenary session, which I think was in Brussels, when a commissioner failed to turn up at the beginning of a debate which he had been called to. My Dutch colleague said, “This is utterly outrageous”. He said that in the lower chamber of Parliament in Holland, if ever a Minister did not arrive in time for a debate, it would effectively be a matter of resignation because of the predominance of parliament. In the European Parliament, I never came across that happening again because of the respect that there was for the Parliament and the parliamentary process. Since I have been privileged to be a Member of this House, for 11 years, I have not found that to be the case in Westminster generally. In my four minutes, some of my criticism will be as much of Parliament as of the Government during this process.
The Government have form on listening to Parliament. I still cannot understand why they decided to fight the Article 50 issue through the courts to the Supreme Court. It wasted time. It was obvious that Parliament was not going to stand in the way of Article 50—partly because of where the Labour Party stood at the time—and it made it look as if the Government were trying to take back control from the British Parliament, when the referendum was about so much else. That court case should not have been necessary because Parliament, particularly the House of Commons, should have insisted. It could have voted to resolve that issue but decided not to. That is a weakness in our parliamentary system.
As a member of the EU Committee, I particularly want to raise—I expect that the noble Lord, Lord Jay, will as well—the fact that it was our duty as parliamentarians and as members of the committee, having been appointed by the whole House, to bring the Government to account. That was one of our core roles. Because of that, the committee decided that it would come back during August to hear about the latest round of negotiations from the Secretary of State. I was astounded by the letter that came back from him telling us why he was not doing that. One reason that he gave was because of the parliamentary recess. Yet Parliament—this House, that committee that had been given that responsibility—was willing and eager to come back to keep that dialogue going. The Government are not in recess during August. Ministers do not give up their duties and go on holiday. The process of government does not stop. Yes, Parliament does, but we were prepared to come back and the Government decided not to.
The arrangements that we have in this House and in the Commons are not good enough for what we need for this great change to the constitution of this country. I have said this in EU Committee sittings when the Secretary of State has been there: the more that Government involve Parliament, the more credibility they will have and, I suspect, the more wisdom they will have in their negotiation as they find their way to the end of this process. By keeping things to themselves, by not consulting, by getting into groupthink, the outcome for them, as well as the country, will be far from good.
Lord Jay of Ewelme (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for initiating this debate and for introducing it so robustly. I am also grateful to the Government for arranging a debate on the implications of Brexit for Ireland, north and south, earlier this week and for scheduling the debate next week on the EU position papers.
As acting chair of your Lordships’ EU Committee, I will speak today about accountability on Brexit to committees of the House. The points that I shall make reflect a letter that I sent yesterday on behalf of the EU Committee to David Davis, with a copy to the Minister. Parliamentary committees, including the EU Committee, are an essential part of parliamentary scrutiny. They meet regularly, they work across party lines, they have experienced support and they build up substantial knowledge of and expertise on their subject matter. Certainly in the Lords, they look at things objectively. If Parliament is to scrutinise effectively something as complex and important as the Brexit negotiations—as it must—committee engagement is essential.
As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, the EU Committee has found the Secretary of State’s response to its requests for reports back after each round of the negotiations to be disappointing and unlikely to lead, if I may say so, to the deep and special relationship that we all want to establish with him. He has offered to appear quarterly, which is helpful as far as it goes, but the negotiations are fast-moving and regular reports back really are needed. We understand that the Secretary of State has a heavily charged schedule—in Edinburgh and elsewhere—and may not be able to attend as often as the committee would like, but the committee finds it hard to understand his apparent reluctance to allow his Ministers to appear before it. From my own experience, that would surely be the natural thing to do. That is why I wrote to Mr Davis yesterday, on behalf of the committee, welcoming his commitment to appear before us at least quarterly and formally inviting the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay—for whom we all have very great respect—to appear before us after the intervening negotiating rounds. I hope that she will be able to respond positively to the committee’s invitation in her reply to today’s debate.
The Brexit negotiations are the most important and complex negotiations that any British Government have carried out since the Second World War. Proper parliamentary accountability for and scrutiny of them is an essential part of our constitutional arrangements—even if unwritten. It really does matter.
Lord Bowness (Con)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for asking the Question and I also thank my noble friend the Minister for being here in person to answer. It is typical of her, in fact, and we should not be surprised at that. From her previous roles, we have come to know her willingness to listen to our concerns. Some Members may think that the Question asked is irrelevant in the light of the Secretary of State for Brexit’s letter to Members of 9 August promising a Statement after each stage of the negotiations.
However, the Question really is wider than post-event Statements. Many of us were concerned that so many position papers were issued when Parliament was not sitting. While the granting of a debate upon those papers is welcome, I suspect it will be just that: a debate. What we should have is the opportunity to question the relevant Ministers on the detail of each paper—proper parliamentary scrutiny. I therefore put to my noble friend that, before further papers are issued, consideration should be given to having a procedure similar to that which takes place after the making of an Oral Statement, when Ministers can be questioned on that particular topic and that topic alone.
We were told that negotiations would be prejudiced if the Government were put in the position of disclosing its hand. But we have position papers from both sides, press conferences, statements from Cabinet Ministers—to say nothing of leaks—and pending legislation on immigration, fishing and other subjects, setting out what we are going to do immediately post our leaving. How does that not disclose our hand? What is there left to negotiate if we have already published to the world where we are going? My noble friend Lord Balfe has told us about the European Parliament arrangements and I think we could all be rather jealous of those. It seems to me, with the greatest respect, that our Parliament is reduced to the status of a spectator—a noisy one perhaps, but a spectator nevertheless.
The position papers have only increased the need for more parliamentary scrutiny. The papers themselves reveal little, except that we want most, if not all, of what we already have as members of the European Union, save that we just do not want to be members. They are short on how we will achieve this desirable state. We are told by Ministers that imaginative solutions are needed from the European Union. Where is our imagination taking us, I wonder.
The scene is changing, I suggest, if for no other reason than the papers have exposed to the public gaze issues that had no or little serious discussion in the disastrous referendum campaign. I refer not only to the less than frank claims by the leave campaign but to the misjudged campaign to remain. We have seen this over the UK-Irish border—when is a border not a border—a virtual border? The rights of EU citizens have become wrapped up in the ideologues’ loathing of the European Court of Justice; likewise, membership of the single market, the customs union and who knows what else—never mind trying to have your cake and eat it. There must be an increasing number of reasonable people who were on the side of leave, as well as those of us who were on the side of remain, who are beginning to wonder whether this game we were induced into playing is really worth the candle.
All this leads me to the conclusion that Parliament, and the House of Commons in particular as the elected representatives of the people, must be given the opportunity of a meaningful vote at the end of the process, if not, on some key issues, before the end. The choice cannot be just that this is the cake we have baked and we must eat it—half-baked or soggy it may be—or do without any cake at all.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, like other Members, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for tabling this Question for Short Debate and for opening it in such a lively and engaging way. It may have been slightly more hyperbolic and with rather more adjectives than some Members would use, but there was a very clear sense of the passion with which he wanted to make his case.
It is commonplace to say that this is a timely debate. In some ways this week feels the least timely time to have this debate, because after months of famine, when we have had no reporting and there has been no opportunity to scrutinise, we have had a Statement from the Secretary of State finally reporting back on rounds two and three of the negotiations—kindly repeated by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay—and a whole set of position papers. All of a sudden there seems to be a little bit of activity and a debate next week on the position papers. But then we have another recess and finally only in October do we begin to get down to the serious business of scrutinising what is going on.
The referendum was in June last year; it will be more than 15 months since the referendum before Parliament can properly scrutinise what the Government are doing. It will be more than six months since the Prime Minister triggered Article 50. She then held an unnecessary general election. When the election was called, I asked the then Minister of State, the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, what the Government had done to work out how much time had been lost for parliamentary engagement on Brexit thanks to the election. Needless to say, there was no answer. I suspect that the Prime Minister had not been thinking about that when she triggered the election.
Come October it will be six months since the other place has had any Select Committees. In July the Labour Party nominated members for various committees. The Conservative Party voted only this week. As of last night, the Brexit committee still had not had its membership confirmed. Six months after the triggering of Article 50 there has been no opportunity for the House of Commons to do any proper scrutiny work in committee. Even if the Secretary of State did not have other activities in Edinburgh—perhaps he was going to see Nicola Sturgeon at the same time; maybe he was doing his duty and talking to the devolved Administrations—a key role in Parliament, as the noble Lord, Lord Jay, pointed out, is that of committees. Clearly, your Lordships’ House’s EU Select Committee is crucial, but the Commons committees matter as well. They had all begun to work on particular reports before the election; all that work is gone.
The Secretary of State has said he wants to report back as soon as possible after the negotiations have happened and yet, so far, he has reported back only once, despite the options to come during the Recess, as we have heard from my noble friend Lord Teverson and the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme. The Government have suggested that they wanted to update Parliament and there will be ample opportunity for both Houses to debate the key issues arising from Brexit.
The White Paper also said Parliament has a “critical role” to play in the process of leaving the European Union. At times it feels that Her Majesty’s Government, and in particular the Prime Minister, do not believe that Parliament should have a critical role at all—critical either in being important or ever challenging anything the Government say. The role of scrutiny, and of Parliament, is surely to hold the Government to account, to ask questions and to raise issues, in order that we can make the right decisions and help the Government make the right decision. Whatever one thinks about the result of last year’s referendum, it is surely part of giving control back to Parliament that Parliament scrutinises the Government. The idea that, somehow, anybody challenging the Government and wanting to amend legislation is going against the will of the people is surely a fundamental misunderstanding of democracy.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, we heard from my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon and indeed from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and other noble Lords, in Questions this morning and here this afternoon, of dissatisfaction with the Government’s record of reporting back on negotiations. In that light, our Motion on Tuesday will call on the Government to lay before Parliament a Statement of the strategy and principles which underpin the negotiations on withdrawal, transition and future relationships, accompanied by a plan for the full involvement of the devolved Administrations, together with consultation on consumer, employer and trade union organisations.
It must be clear to everyone who reads the papers that Parliament, business and wider society do not feel they are being listened to. We saw the CBI’s statement this week and the London Chamber of Commerce warning that,
“business confidence has been hugely impacted by uncertainty”.
The telecoms industry is dismayed at being classified as a “low priority” for the negotiations. Those sorts of concerns from outside Parliament are legitimate for us to raise with the Government. Beyond us, there is almost anger from the Welsh Government for their exclusion. There is an absence of any forum for consumer representatives to voice their concerns. All of this points, as the noble Baroness has just said, to a Government who seem unwilling to level with the very people whose futures depend on the specifics of the outcome of the talks.
Indeed, as well as wanting engagement with consumer bodies, the Chartered Trading Standards Institute is concerned that the Government’s hierarchy of priorities may fail to pick up detailed areas where maintaining legislative arrangements in day one of Brexit will not deal with the co-operation between agencies and across networks that currently keeps consumers safe and treated fairly. To raise those sorts of questions is not to question the outcome of the referendum; it is to challenge how the Government are proposing to move us out of the European Union. So it is time for the Government’s “no questions please” approach to stop. Indeed, if I could make one recommendation to the Minister it would be to listen to her noble friend Lord Balfe, because some of his proposals for that dialogue would benefit the whole House.
I also feel that the Government have to stop giving more information to the press than they seem willing to give to us. The leak of the immigration paper may simply be a leak. Harold Wilson said, “You leak, I brief”; it may have been a briefing rather than a leak. Aside from that, we heard from Sky News and the Guardian that Cabinet Ministers, speaking directly to them, seem to accept that the EU will not be able to say in October that sufficient progress has been made in phase one to open talks on the substantive issue of Britain’s future relationship. That may not even happen until Christmas. If that is the case, why not tell Parliament, rather than Sky News and the Guardian, and spell out what this means for a transitional period, as well as for the final agreement, rather than pretend that all is going swimmingly well, in the wonderful definition of optimism?
My plea, to add to that of the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for regular reporting to Parliament, is for meaningful reporting to Parliament. There will be the meaningful vote at the end, though just as I think the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, said—sorry it may have been the noble Lord, Lord Teverson—if you treat the European Parliament correctly, then it is more likely that it will respect what goes to it. That goes for our Parliament too. We need to be treated with respect so that our meaningful vote at the end is based on the results of good dialogue.
The Minister of State, Department for Exiting the European Union (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)
My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for securing this debate. His exposition of the last year and why he regrets the decision of the British people dominated his speech, but that shows his passion. We understand that. What I want to do, as my respect to Parliament, is to base most of my remarks on the core issue of the Question on the Order Paper. But I will, in doing so, seek to cover many of the issues rightly raised today.
One of those, of course, was from the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who joined in the reminiscing of what might have been if there had not been the result in the referendum. He asked a question specifically about legislation. The Queen’s Speech gave an outline of that. Since then, we have been giving greater detail about which Bills are published, and they are now beginning to be debated not only in the House of Commons, but in this House. I waited for 13 years in opposition for the Labour Government to tell us what Bills were about to come: answer came there none. We have given more of an answer about how these Bills will develop. It is important—the noble Lord was not asking an improper question—because as we set out White Papers, as we have said we shall, on immigration and trade, those will be a core part of the discussion in this Parliament about how we proceed after we have left the European Union.
Therefore, Parliament will have a scrutiny role and there will be, I am sure, from my colleagues across departments opportunities to participate in meetings, as I shall do, not only when the withdrawal Bill reaches the House, but in advance. For example, next Tuesday I am having a drop-in meeting for all Peers, not only to hear a brief introduction from me about the Bill, but to be able to hear directly from the Bill team. I felt it was essential for this House to hear that shortly after the finalisation of Second Reading on Monday evening. That is really core to the way I like to operate and I shall continue to do so. I shall return to some of those very helpful comments made by my noble friend Lord Balfe later.
We have heard today the lively, informed, rightful interest in this House on the progress of the negotiations. We are reminded by many that the clock is ticking. It ticks for both sides. As it goes faster, it is faster for both sides. It is important for the European Union also to recognise that they need to be more “flexible and imaginative”. Those are words from the European Council, not made up by us. David Davis is simply reminding our colleagues across Europe what our joint enterprise is. We have always undertaken that we would wish to provide for the greatest possible transparency that is consistent with maintaining our ability to negotiate successfully. In that, we are guided by the Motion that was agreed by the House of Commons that the process should be undertaken in a way that does not undermine the negotiating position of the Government, but there is still much that we can do. We are doing that and we can learn from the debate today, and others, about how we can do more.
In looking at the issues today, I try to set out what we have done so far to report to Parliament, our plans to continue to update Parliament in the wake of future negotiating rounds, including, of course, our support for invaluable scrutiny by Select Committees. and our written publications. In reporting to Parliament, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union has committed to update the House after each round of negotiations. Naturally, I will do so in this House, with the leave of the House, as I did earlier this week. Of course, as noble Lords have pointed out, the dates of the negotiation rounds do not always align well with parliamentary sittings. That is a matter for the House to determine but it is a matter of practical fact and I recognise the difficulties it can raise. Of course, it will occur again as the September round takes place, but we have sought to ensure that Parliament was kept properly informed over the summer. That is why the Secretary of State wrote to all colleagues to give details on the progress made during the second round of negotiations. Noble Lords can be assured that they will have an opportunity to scrutinise the Government on the next round of negotiations when we return in October.
Of course, Statements to Parliament are a powerful method of reporting. I appreciate that they are not the only method, although I note in parenthesis, thinking back to the question asked this morning by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that when we had the Statement on Tuesday, I was astonished that Back-Bench time was not taken up. There was time at least for two, if not three, further questions at the end. That was a little disappointing.
In the European Parliament the position is different. Of course, there is a constitutional relationship with the Commission; it is a unicameral Parliament. As a result, it has a different way of operating. Therefore, when Monsieur Barnier appears before the European Parliament, as he has just twice, he takes no questions. He appears, speaks and goes. Guy Verhofstadt has been nominated the Brexit co-ordinator there. He does report back and has a role in that respect. It is a different hub: Barnier and Verhofstadt. There is the Brexit steering group, which is more or less a self-appointed group and does not represent all the parties there. That is the group to which Monsieur Barnier goes and has some discussions with on a confidential basis and therefore nobody knows what goes on.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
I have to say, I listened with belief to what my noble friend said on that. I am glad that he said it, not me. We are going to maintain our undertaking to serve Parliament as well as we humanly can.
My noble friend Lord Balfe made a point about the problem with information. Everyone wants it but there is a huge amount of it and how do we get it, particularly in the recesses? I do have an answer. My own department arranges that there is information on its website. It is the go-to place for everything that we do on Brexit. I do not want to put my noble friend off but at GOV.UK/dexeu there are 133 announcements, seven position papers, five future partnership papers and two White Papers. Of course, the European Commission site updates its papers.
The advantage of our website is that after each negotiating round we update the papers. As I mentioned on the Floor of the House this week with regard to the citizenship paper, it means that the joint EU-UK position paper—the annexe that has been published, which shows the red/amber/green system—actually shows how that has been advanced at the latest negotiating stage, not only the further agreement that has been reached but where each of the negotiating groups has agreed that it needs to do more. It is not just us, it is the Commission as well, but we are more forward-leaning. For example, on citizens, after the August round a further 20 lines of detail were added. More than half of those are where we are making more of an offer than the European Commission is.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
We all accept on this side—and, I think, on all sides—that the people who can best deal with the detail are those on the European Union Select Committee. They have all the background, they are working on it week in, week out. The Minister has still not explained why David Davis refused to appear before our Select Committee when we offered to meet—as we know, Select Committees can meet even when Parliament is not sitting. Why did he refuse to meet us?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My next page turns to Select Committee appearances. The key to explaining the Secretary of State’s position is in the letter he wrote on 9 August to the noble Lord, Lord Jay. I am delighted he has been able to participate here. I want to address his very careful points in a moment, but first I will refer briefly to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, because I do not want to run out of time and the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Jay, was crucial.
In that letter from 9 August, my right honourable friend said that,
“I want to emphasise that I fully recognise the critical role the Committee plays in scrutinising our withdrawal from the European Union. It is for that reason I am clear that, as the Secretary of State who represents the UK in Brussels, I should personally update the Committee on the progress of negotiations.”
He goes on to talk about how. At the meeting of the committee in July, he made it clear that he would consider how best he could do that and balance that duty against the range of other committees. I would say, very carefully of course, that since my department was created, just 15 months ago, Ministers from my department have given evidence to Select Committees, covering a range of EU exit-related inquiries, on no less than 16 occasions. We will not step back.
I address the noble Lord, Lord Jay, because I feel it is vital to do so in my last two minutes. I thank him for the letter he wrote to the Secretary of State, which he kindly copied to me. I have made it clear that my department and I fully support the work of committees in both Houses in fulfilling their scrutiny responsibilities and that we will continue to value the work of the noble Lord’s committee as it conducts its Brexit-related inquiries.
The Secretary of State has given his commitments to update us after each round and will do so with a Statement, as he said. It is no small commitment to update the House after each negotiation round and, no less importantly, to take questions from Members. I want to give all Members of the House the opportunity to scrutinise progress in the negotiations and the Secretary of State has made it clear that he is happy to give evidence to the committee in the autumn.
I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Jay, will appreciate that the complexity of the negotiations—he was head of the Foreign Office so knows about the difficulties of the issue—demands a level of flexibility to ensure that they are conducted successfully, and that rigid committee appearances at fixed intervals may run counter to that. I appreciate there has been some joshing about what my right honourable friend may or may not do. What he does do is properly respect Parliament and scrutiny. I look forward to seeing the noble Lord, Lord Jay, later today when I am sure I will have the opportunity to explain in more detail why the Government are taking that approach.
Lord Jay of Ewelme
Before the noble Baroness finishes that part of her speech, can she confirm that she will be prepared to accept the invitation of the Select Committee to come before it for meetings when the Secretary of State is otherwise engaged?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
Although I am out of time, I crave the indulgence of the Committee. I would like to discuss the matter further. I have set out the Government’s position and, because of the interventions from noble Lords, I have not been able to cover the issue of papers. I hope that I have at least given the way in which noble Lords can access those papers and that information. It is disappointing not to be able to conclude in a fuller way but I can certainly say that we will have plenty of further opportunities to discuss these matters.
Local Government Elections
(6 years, 7 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Greaves
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of whether the law relating to local government elections is in need of improvement or clarification.
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, I want to concentrate on the offence of treating, which is a corrupt practice under Section 114 of the Representation of the People Act 1983. Subsection (2) says:
“A person shall be guilty of treating if he corruptly, by himself or by any other person, either before, during or after an election, directly or indirectly gives or provides, or pays wholly or in part the expense of giving or providing, any meat, drink, entertainment or provision to or for any person—(a) for the purpose of corruptly influencing that person or any other person to vote or refrain from voting; or (b) on account of that person or any other person having voted or refrained from voting, or being about to vote or refrain from voting”.
Subsection (3) extends the offence to:
“Every elector or his proxy who corruptly accepts or takes any such meat, drink, entertainment or provision”.
This wording has been passed down from the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act 1883. The last case law appears to be more than 100 years old. My reason for raising this is to suggest that this 19th century law as it stands is antiquated, uncertain and not fit for purpose in the 21st century.
Over half a century ago, when I learned the trade of running election campaigns, treating was taken very seriously. Candidates and agents were firmly instructed to make sure that any food or refreshments—in committee rooms, for example—were strictly for bona fide party workers and a small contribution should be asked for. Candidates were told to be careful about buying rounds in the pub during the campaign. But the practice has now grown of providing free food, including hot dinners, both in walk-in committee rooms and at public meetings addressed by candidates and their supporters before and during elections, notably in places with large numbers of electors of south Asian heritage. My immediate interest comes from activities carried out by two Conservative candidates in Pendle in the county council elections in May this year.
In brief, the events concerned were that four public meetings were held before the formal four-week election period started but after the candidates had been announced in press releases and the local press, on social media and in leaflets distributed in the area. At these meetings speeches were made by the candidates and other persons in support, including councillors and the local MP, urging people to vote for them. A hot dinner was then provided to the people present, free of charge, including curry and rice and soft drinks. In total, at least 1,000 people attended these meetings, most of them electors in the two divisions. Other than a small number of party officials and councillors, all the people present were Asian men. We estimate that the cost of providing the accommodation and meals and associated publicity, including leaflets, would not have been less than £3,000, and possibly rather more.
I made a complaint under Section 114 and provided a dossier of evidence, which the Lancashire police investigated, and I have no complaints about the work they put into that. I quote the conclusion from a letter that the investigating officer kindly sent to me:
“Unfortunately the decision has been taken that the matter will not be prosecuted due to a lack of evidence. It was deemed that the evidential threshold required to present the case to the Crown Prosecution Service for them to consider charges had not been met”.
He goes on to say:
“As I think we alluded to when we first met, this particular offence presents some unusual hurdles in terms of prosecuting”—
noble Lords will probably realise that I knew more about it than the police did at the time—
“and I found myself hitting these hurdles at regular intervals when looking at the matter through evidential eyes. I agree with your initial observation some three months ago, that perhaps this is an area of law that requires some modernisation”.
The Law Commission agrees. In its report Electoral Law: An Interim Report, published in February 2016 and produced together with its Scottish and Northern Irish counterparts, it proposes in Recommendation 11.3:
“The electoral offence of treating should be abolished and the behaviour that it captures should where appropriate be prosecuted as bribery”.
This follows a discussion about a similar situation which was considered by commissioner Richard Mawrey QC in the Tower Hamlets petition. It challenged the election in May 2014 of Lutfur Rahman as mayor of Tower Hamlets. Similar difficulties arose at that time over the offence of treating, described by commissioner Mawrey as,
“surely an obsolescent if not obsolete concept in the modern world”.
The treating part was then dropped. The Electoral Commission in its response to the whole report said:
“We very much welcome these proposals and believe that they will address many of the difficulties with the current law. It is important that the UK and Scottish Governments now agree that the Law Commissions can begin preparing draft legislation to implement these changes”.
Yet the problem remains, and I am not in any way suggesting that it is a problem for just one party. From inquiries I have made around the country in recent years, it is clear that putting on quite large amounts of free food at public events is a common practice across the parties in areas with large numbers of Asian voters. Of course, outside elections this is not unlawful. It is when it is done in connection with the promotion of candidates that it is at the least questionable. They are practices which have been imported into this country from abroad. The fact that it is happening will raise eyebrows in those other parts of the country where such practices would be regarded with horror. Imagine a candidate hiring a village hall and inviting the entire population of the village to a free dinner on the condition that the villagers listen to speeches telling them why they should vote for him or her. They would, I suggest, soon be up before the beak.
The Electoral Commission in its candidates guide states that,
“treating requires a corrupt intent—it does not apply to ordinary hospitality”.
What is meant by ordinary hospitality? Presumably if a neighbour calls on a candidate at home, it is okay to provide a cup of tea or even a full tea if they are friends who ordinarily do that, but not to invite the whole street for the first time three days before polling day. So is a hot curry dinner for a few hundred people “ordinary hospitality”? Among much ambiguity in this law, the interpretation of the undefined words “corrupt” and “corrupt intent” appear to cause problems. They imply an intention to affect the outcome of the election, but this is far from the clarity that good law requires.
Returning to the hot curry dinners targeted at Asian electors, the College of Policing authorised professional practice manual, Policing Elections—Investigating Electoral Malpractice includes the following:
“Cultural factors can affect this offence in that among many cultures the provision of refreshments is considered to be socially acceptable, and it would be perceived as an insult should refreshments not be provided”.
This seems very close to suggesting that electoral law is different according to the composition of the local community. If you live in a mainly indigenous village or a mainly white town such as Colne, where I live, and you put on free meals for voters, you will be locked up. If you live in a strongly Asian area and provide those meals for Asian electors, or even just for Asian men, as in Pendle, MPs and councillors will turn up and you will get away with it. I wonder whether this advice from the College of Policing has government support and should perhaps now be reviewed.
The law on treating is not fit for purpose. It is antique and it is not clear what it means. It is not clear that a law that was designed to prevent candidates providing food, drink, entertainment and provisions—whatever that means—to voters in the days of Mr Gladstone is able to deal with modern phenomena such as piles of chapattis in committee rooms open to the public to walk in and eat, and hot curry dinners open to anyone who walks in. Above all, candidates and agents in all kinds of areas need to know clearly where they stand with the law. I am not an election agent at the moment but I declare an interest, as I usually am every year. With tongue in cheek, I say that if the provision of hot dinners to voters on a large scale is now acceptable in electoral law, the nature of elections in this country might change quite a lot. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Greaves knows a great deal about elections and how they are fought and won. We have campaigned together in a number of them for almost exactly 40 years, since he came on behalf of what was then the Association of Liberal Councillors to assist in a couple of council by-elections in Liverpool in October 1977. Around that time, I read all my noble friend’s many booklets about fighting local elections and learned a great deal from them, but I learned nothing about the practices which he has just described. He has raised serious issues about electoral law and what he calls treating, which in plain English we know to be better described as bribing the voters. He rightly says that breaches of the spirit, if not the letter, of the law may occur in any party.
Many years ago, I heard of a branch of the Liberal Party that refused to undertake any of the accepted electioneering methods of canvassing and polling day organisation. Instead, it laid on a huge tea with free refreshments in the village hall on polling day, and it was customary for people to visit it after voting. Whether this affected the results, I do not know, but it should not happen. Electoral law should be more explicit about the provision of refreshment to voters and there should be proper policing action to prevent what appear to be major abuses of the law, as just outlined by my noble friend. Perhaps the Minister could share with us the latest thinking about how the Government may now attempt to implement some of the recommendations outlined in the recent review of election laws by the former chair of the Conservative Party, Sir Eric Pickles, since it first responded last December.
In relation to the overall question, I hope that the Minister will agree that there is not a massive amount of cheating in local elections, or in any form of election, in this country. For my part, I accept that we can act to reduce its prevalence, even if it is small, and that fraud would possibly be more common if it were more widely known how easy it can be. It is also important, however, that any action to prevent or deter electoral fraud is proportionate. We must recognise that any measure which might restrict the capacity of people to vote legitimately must be considered very carefully and be balanced by measures which make it more likely that people who are properly entitled to vote are enabled to do so.
My experience of suspecting personation was when I believed that the Liverpool Militants were undertaking the practice when I organised elections there in the 1980s. I was suspicious because of the way in which I noted that Militant supporters would call at doors and, if anyone said they were not voting, they left immediately without argument—the Militant people tended to be rather argumentative. In contrast, other party workers would plead with such people to turn out and vote. But in those Liverpool elections, turnouts were perhaps high because of the approach of the Militant supporters, as they identified names of people who would not be going to the polling station themselves, who may then have had votes cast on their behalf.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, then a Liverpool Liberal MP, told me how he saw people going into polling stations apparently with names and addresses written on their wrists. Some years later, the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton, told me that her investigation into the Labour Party in Liverpool when she was her party’s national organiser confirmed that personation was indeed the tactic of the Militants.
It seems to me, therefore, that a greater police presence at polling stations would have helped, together with a greater number of staff at the polling stations to ask the questions allowed for by law about whether or not people have voted already or are who they say they are. When I attempted in the Liverpool Walton by-election in 1991 to get presiding officers to ask the statutory questions of people turning up to vote who had died or said that they would not be voting, I was told by the returning officer that he simply did not have the staff to do what was legally required of him when I arranged for our agent to make the formal request for him to do so.
However, I do not believe that these tactics are common. Last year the Electoral Commission identified 19 allegations of personation in the EU referendum, some of which proved not to be personation at all, out of more than 33 million votes cast. This is in line with statistics from other national elections and does not in itself suggest that there is a widespread problem with personation requiring measures which may deter people from voting when they are entitled to do so. Voter identification is required in Northern Ireland in order to deal with problems of personation, and it is said not to have reduced turnout, but political passions run strongly there and such measures are perhaps less likely to deter voters in the Province than in Great Britain.
There should be greater awareness of the penalties for personation, greater police presence at polling stations where it may be suspected, and more resources for presiding officers to ensure that the statutory questions can be put. In this age, it should not be difficult to provide presiding officers with details of people who are known to have died, and if a mistake has been made and a supposedly dead voter turns up, they can be provided with a tendered ballot paper, as happens when a second person tries to claims the same vote as one cast earlier.
If any form of ID is ever required, a suitable form of it must be provided free of charge. If poll cards were sent in unmarked envelopes, they should suffice, because it would be hard to steal such a poll card and then impersonate someone. Lost or stolen poll cards could be reported and anyone seeking to vote on the basis of one could be questioned at the polling station. However, there is a danger that the proverbial sledgehammer is provided for the nut, and I could not consider supporting any measures requiring evidence of ID at polling stations without us also addressing the much bigger issue of the many millions of people missing from the electoral registers.
The Government’s position appears to be that people should have to opt in to the right to vote, despite the fact that Parliament has specifically preserved the principle that failing to co-operate with the electoral registration process can be subject to a fine or civil penalty. You do not have to opt in to the right to benefit from the emergency services, nor from many other things approved by law and provided by government, so you should not have to opt in to being able to vote. If you have the right to vote, the process should be automatic and making it so would be a great improvement to our democracy.
Finally, I raise the issue of postal voting. It seems legitimate to question whether a reason should be provided for voting by post rather than going to a polling station. Some years ago, I was responsible for a change in postal vote regulations requiring that the signature of the voter accompanying the postal vote matched the signature on the form applying for the postal vote. I hope the Minister might look rather more carefully than the Government have so far at seeking to amend the declaration to be signed by the voter.
In my view, the declaration should state that: the ballot paper has been completed only by the person entitled to complete it; that that has been done, together with the sealing of the ballot paper in the envelope provided, in conditions of privacy; that the envelope is being returned directly by that person to a post box, the electoral registration officer or returning officer, or a polling station on polling day; that exceptions to those principles should be made only for people who require assistance from someone such as a carer or as is necessary on grounds of disability; and that, in any event, no candidate or representative of a candidate should be involved in the process of returning ballot papers.
Lord Tyler (LD)
My Lords, my intentions in taking part in the debate are dual. First, I want to endorse and support the concerns expressed by my noble friends Lord Greaves and Lord Rennard. But secondly, as always, I look forward to the Minister’s contribution with great interest; that is my principal reason for being here. I plead with him to adopt his now-usual practice of going off-piste. I do not know whether that expression was used in last night’s debate on the Financial Guidance and Claims Bill, but I was told that the Minister was particularly helpful to the House when he left his script. At one point, he said:
“I return to my script”.—[Official Report, 6/9/17; col. 2050.]
After that, things became less interesting, so I hope that he will adopt his previous attitude this afternoon.
I am reminded by my colleagues’ contributions of my own campaigning experience. It is important to recognise that no parties have found it easy to get the clear guidance they require on the issue of treating. I recall one of my first campaigns in Cornwall; I am not sure whether it was the successful or less successful of my early attempts to get elected to the House of Commons. On arrival at a small village on one of those wonderful Cornish hills where one went in at the first floor, the committee room seemed very quiet. There was nothing much going on and one rather sleepy person ticking some things off. I said to my wife, “It doesn’t look very busy here”, to which the sleepy individual replied, “You wait ‘til you see what’s going on downstairs.” Downstairs, seven or eight people were busily producing pasties and putting clotted cream on saffron cake. The significance of it was that they were not treating the electorate, because the two essential credentials for anybody applying for refreshment were that they had already voted and would help with knocking up voters later. Treating helpers is still a rather vague issue. I have not been so well-fed on the campaign trail since then, and indeed have never had to succumb to so many cups of tea—but in Cornwall in those days, one had to. One was always offered a cup of tea but not always the rather necessary forward motions that were required thereafter.
There is a very serious issue which I know the Minister understands: the coming together of a number of concerns about the electoral process, electoral law and the reputation of the whole of our democracy. I know the Minister shares our views on that because we have had many such discussions. The issue that my noble friend Lord Greaves referred to may be a comparatively small part of the overall picture, but at a time when Parliament and the body politic are having a reputational crisis following the referendum—and with the current state of interest taken by the public, particularly young voters, in how they are represented and, frankly, how for the past 10 years the media have approached the whole process in which we are engaged—there is a crisis. It is not good enough to say, “Well, we’ll get round to this one day.”
I refer to the answer that the Minister gave to my question yesterday. I asked, rather naively, whether the Law Commission report would result in a response from the Government,
“soon, shortly or in due course”.
In his inimitable way, the Minister said:
“It is more likely to be in due course”.—[Official Report, 6/9/17; col. 1951.]
It is now quite a long time since the Law Commission made important recommendations, to some of which my noble friend Lord Greaves referred. It was in February 2016. At the time, there was a specific recommendation that we needed a single electoral law. That is particularly appropriate given the recent experience of the Conservative Party with the differing treatment of national and local campaign expenditure. The Conservative Party itself expressed considerable concern back in June at the way in which two quite different statutes were involved in the process, and the lack of clarity and difficulty that all involved had with that.
The Minister, who I suspect is on our side on this, must somehow persuade his colleagues not just in the Cabinet Office but in No. 10 that, despite all the pressures from Brexit—indeed, perhaps because of them—Parliament must be given an opportunity to look holistically at bringing the electoral law up to date. The example that my noble friend gave is but one of many that cause media, public and local concern. The Minister is an adroit political manipulator and influencer in our curiously cumbersome political system and I beg him to do everything he can. He has been so effective in the past in getting people to take issues of this sort more seriously and give them greater priority. Yes, of course Parliament will have a full agenda but that does not mean that we cannot do anything else. The result of the efforts on Brexit and the extent to which the public are prepared to accept it may depend on the reputation of our political system, local and national. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some comfort that these issues are not being swept under the carpet but will be addressed with the priority that they require and deserve.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for tabling this Question for Short Debate today. He raises an important issue, and the short answer to his Question is of course yes, on both counts: the law on local government elections needs improving and clarifying in many areas.
I agree with almost everything said in the three previous contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Greaves, Lord Rennard and Lord Tyler. They are experts in elections and we should listen to what they say carefully. In his remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, concentrated on the offence of treating. These are serious matters and I agree that the provisions need urgent updating. As he explained to the Committee, the matter that he referred to has been through the due process and the evidential threshold has been determined not to have been met. But that does not mean that important points have not been raised, and action should be taken on the whole issue of treating and whether the law is adequate. Some disturbing comments were made about curries, and other things, which were not at all good.
The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, made important points about difficulties and problems in various elections. The Labour Party got itself into terrible difficulties in Birmingham over postal vote fraud, and the individuals there were properly prosecuted. That was a shameful episode and people were properly dealt with there.
I was appointed to my first job in the Labour Party in 1989 by my noble friend Lady Gould of Potternewton. She then promoted me in 1990 and sent me to Coventry to deal with Militant. I remember her telling me in her office: “Just go and get them, Roy”. Off I went, and I hope that I dealt with them quite effectively. When I came into this House seven years ago, my two sponsors were my noble friend Lady Gould of Potternewton—my first boss in the Labour Party—and my noble friend Lady McDonagh, who was my boss many years later. I very much enjoyed working with both of them.
Many years later, as a senior official of the party, I authorised the prosecution of the Conservative Party candidate who had stood for a council election in Slough. When I first got the phone call from the Labour agent there, I was a bit sceptical. The Labour Party had lost the safest Labour ward in Slough to the Conservative Party and that guy wanted to come and see me. I agreed and he came in with a pile of papers to show me all the applications to register to vote. Then he showed me the houses, and most of them were derelict; nobody lived there at all. Of course we had all the ballot papers checked. It ended up in the courts and we were able to show that it was completely fraudulent activity and the people were sent to prison—quite rightly there, too. Again, we were able to show that it was not right. Picking the safest Labour seat in a borough was probably the daftest thing they did.
Going on to more general remarks, yesterday the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, asked a Question about the Electoral Commission in terms of the Welsh language. I asked the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, what the Government were going to do in respect of the Law Commission and the work they are doing looking at the law. I am very much of the opinion, as other noble Lords are, that our law in the round needs improving, clarifying, redrafting and consolidating for elections. The Government really must find some parliamentary time in the next couple of years for this.
In many areas, our electoral law is not fit for purpose. We have to deal with that; our democracy is at stake here. The law is spread over various Acts, statutes and codes. It has been bolted together over many years and is in a complete mess. All the parties in this Room have been in government in recent years and we have all contributed to that. We are all to blame in some measure for where we find ourselves today, and it is not a good place. I have other general remarks to make but, as I said, the Government must find some parliamentary time for that. We need consolidated legislation that covers elections, referendums, donations, registration of parties and electoral registration, all in one place so that we all know exactly what is going on. I have no idea how many Acts or parts of Acts are still in force over elections. Perhaps the Minister does. I expect that it is a great many.
If we look at our experience in recent years and at changes in technology and campaigning, we can see that the law is in need of extensive updating and, ideally, future-proofing. I accept that that is much harder to do that than to say. For example, we need to look at the use and manipulation of data in campaigning, which is a huge issue. More should be done to clarify what returning officers should and should not be doing. The Electoral Commission needs looking at again and reforming. It needs more teeth in some areas. It should focus on clearly defined issues and doing things. It should probably do a bit less commenting and voicing opinions, and take a bit more action in certain areas. We need a much tougher focus on getting the electoral registration process right and on having the powers to make sure that the service provided is fit for purpose everywhere and that the EROs and the commission are using the powers they have.
Electoral registration and the desire to get people on the register needs reinforcing. The Government have not always seemed as enthusiastic about doing so as they should. It could be suggested that they have been quite partisan in the recent past. We may hear from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, that they listened to the advice and guidance of the Electoral Commission, which is very good, but they do not always do so. They certainly did not when they removed a number of voters from the electoral register a couple of years ago in looking at the boundary review. Having mentioned the boundary review, perhaps the Minister can update us on that because all the gossip down the other end of the building is that it is dead in the water. Members of all parties down the corridor are all telling me that the Government are desperately trying to find a way to end this review. It may be that that needs legislation. If it does, let us get on with it because it is a complete waste of public money if in fact the Government intend in some way to end the review and go back to having 650 seats.
I have a few other little comments to make before I finish. The nomination process needs clarifying. There are all sorts of issues there. We have to deal with sham nominations. We may have dealt with the Liberal Democrat problem we had a few years ago but there are still issues with sham nominations. When I was an electoral commissioner, I was one of the first political commissioners. We had an issue with a disgruntled Tory candidate attempting to use the old Tory torch logo. We said, “No, it is not your logo”, and got into a discussion. In the end, we stopped him but he believed he could just walk off with a logo that belonged to the Conservative Party and stand as some sort of independent Conservative. That sort of thing goes on all the time and it was good we did that work there. The sham candidates and imposters need to be dealt with. The rule itself is clearly not quite there.
The polling day process is still not what it should be. We need some clear guidance and a single set of polling rules to apply across all elections. There is also the issue of assisting voters to the polls and actually voting. Very elderly people need to have their vote protected, in being able to get to the poll and vote. Equally, they may need assistance. That is a very hard thing to do properly but it also needs dealing with. I would also like to see some standardised rules in respect of counts. It is not always the case in some of the counts we see across the country. I know that we have electronic counting in London and in the Scottish local elections, but it always amazes me that you can normally go to a count for a council or Parliament and they sit there with pens and paper, and get a result really quickly. In the GLA they were sitting there days later. I do not know how you can deal with it, but counting should be looked at.
I just had those few comments to make. I know that the Minister probably cannot respond to all the points raised here today but I am sure he agrees with many of them. I look forward to his comments and if he cannot respond now, maybe he could do so in writing afterwards.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, on securing this debate. We have all enjoyed the reminiscences of noble Lords as they wandered around the country, seeking to secure votes for themselves and their parties. The last time I stood in a local election was 46 years ago, so my experience is not quite as up to date as that of other noble Lords. I certainly do not recall, as I wandered around the streets of Brixton and Lambeth, getting the sort of extensive hospitality that many candidates appear to have received in other parts of the country. I welcome the opportunity to address the important issues that the noble Lord and others have raised today. I will try not to go off-piste; this particular one is a black run anyway, so I will not take any further risks by straying off it.
We are committed to ensuring that the law that governs our elections is clear and operates effectively. I agree with many of the points that have been made: there are areas where we need to make progress, and I will touch on those in a moment. We want to ensure that electors have the opportunity to engage fully and express their views on issues that concern them at a local level.
We take the security of our electoral system very seriously. One point that has not been made is there are now more elections at local level than there used to be, because we now have mayors and police and crime commissioners. It is now even more important that local elections are conducted properly and that we maintain their integrity. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, that by any international standards the integrity of the electoral system in this country is good, but that does not mean that we cannot make progress.
We are currently working to strengthen the integrity of our elections, including the piloting of voter ID in polling stations at local elections next year. I will say a little more about that in a moment. As background, I reassure noble Lords that we consider policy for and issues arising in elections at both the local and national levels on an ongoing basis. That is not an issue that has been parked and will be forgotten about; it is something that we are actively engaged in. We are working with the Electoral Commission and other interested bodies, including Solace and the Association of Electoral Administrators, to consider the development and improvement of existing processes.
We are also working with the Law Commission on its proposals for changes to electoral law but, as I listened to this debate, it seemed that the task was even bigger than I thought. A number of issues have been raised, such as nomination, registration, imposters, assisting voters, polling day arrangements and validation of signatures on postal vote application forms. On imposters, someone in Ealing, Acton, changed their name to George Young before one of the parliamentary elections, which caused some confusion. I survived. Of course, there was a time when our parties did not appear on the ballot paper. You stood as yourself. That added to the confusion. Anyway, we survived that particular challenge.
The Government’s view is that electoral fraud is unacceptable at any level. It is vital for our democracy that voters are able to cast their vote safely and securely, and that the outcome of any poll has the confidence of the public. It is important that the law ensures that measures and safeguards are in place to uphold the integrity of the electoral process, and that those who seek to undermine the voting process are identified and dealt with appropriately.
The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, mentioned the report of Sir Eric Pickles, who conducted a review of electoral fraud last year. His final report, Securing the Ballot, was published last August and set out a number of recommendations covering various aspects of the electoral system. We welcome the report, and I was asked what progress has been made. We published our response, which outlined our intention to work with stakeholders to improve public confidence in the integrity of our elections. A number of those recommendations have already been addressed through guidance issued by the Electoral Commission. We intend to bring forward further measures that will protect anyone who is at risk of being bullied, undermined or tricked out of their vote and democratic right. We committed in our manifesto, in order to ensure that voters have confidence in our democracy, that we will legislate to ensure that a form of identification should be presented before voting. I will say a word about that in a moment.
The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, focused his remarks on treating. He is quite right to remind us that under the 1983 Act it is an offence for a person to treat a voter through providing food, drink and entertainment, and there is a similar offence in relation to the bribing of voters. The Pickles report acknowledges that treating,
“is a serious issue and a potential risk of corruption”,
so there is an element of agreement on that point. That report also referred to the Law Commission’s recommendation that the offence of treating be abolished and that of bribery be clarified and strengthened. We continue to work with the Law Commission and others on how best to implement the recommendations of its review of electoral law. I take on board the points that the noble Lord made about bribery. He was good enough to mention that this was not a problem confined to one party, and I will ensure that the particular incidences that he and others have referred to are taken on board in the ongoing discussions between the Government, the Electoral Commission and other stakeholders. On any particular case, if anyone believes that an offence has been committed, then they should of course report that to the police. Again, I take on board the point made by the noble Lord about the response of the police to the particular allegations that he made, and I will ensure that that is also fed into the process.
The Electoral Commission has issued guidance to candidates on spending and donations. That makes it clear that if a candidate does not comply with the legal or regulatory requirements, they may be subject to criminal sanctions. We are considering a way forward on the other recommendations made by Sir Eric Pickles, and will continue to see how we can improve the integrity of electoral processes more generally.
On voter identification, we agree with Sir Eric that the options for asking voters to present identification should be explored through a number of pilot schemes. As many noble Lords will know, that is to be tested at the May 2018 elections. That will shed some light on the concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, on the potential disincentive to vote if you have to produce some ID. The whole purpose of the pilots is to test the impact on all aspects of elections in Great Britain of asking voters to present some form of identification at polling stations before collecting their ballot papers, and to identify the best way to take that new requirement forward. The prospectus on ID pilots, published in March this year, has set out in detail our plans for delivering and evaluating pilot schemes, so that they may meet the objectives of reducing the opportunities for fraud and enhanced public confidence in the security of elections in this country. The Cabinet Office is currently working on the details on how the pilots will be run, and is continuing to work with local authorities which are preparing to pilot voter ID in May 2018. We are also in discussion with local authorities who are still considering participation in the scheme for next year, but are not yet fully committed. We will make an announcement later in the year on the planned pilot schemes, once we have confirmed which local authorities are participating.
On registration, the Government have actually done quite a lot to encourage people to register. There have been particular initiatives focused on those groups who are under-registered. The introduction of online registration has made it much easier to register to vote. You can do it in a few minutes, and in fact it is now the preferred form of registration. I hope that that will help to drive up registration. Those of us who were in the debate on the Higher Education and Research Bill have heard about experiments by some universities to drive up registration, and those initiatives are being taken forward. So we are working hard to reach groups that historically have not registered.
I was asked about the boundary commissions. I read the Times, whenever it was. Noble Lords will know that the legal position is quite clear: the Electoral Commission is on a route to complete its report and present it to Ministers and then to Parliament by September next year, and it would require primary legislation to stop that. It would also require primary legislation, having stopped it, to reboot it with a different target of, say, 650. The Government have no plans to change that; our legislation is in the open air. Any initiative would have to take place quite soon if the whole process were to be completed by 2022. Of course, if we do not go forward with revised boundary commissions there is a real risk that the next election will be fought on boundaries drawn up in the year 2000, which I am not sure would be in the interests of democracy. I am not sure I can add to the body of knowledge that people have on the boundary commissions, but the legal position at the moment is quite clear.
Sir Eric made a number of recommendations to strengthen the integrity of postal voting, a point raised by some noble Lords, including limiting the period for which a person may have a long-term postal vote to three years. I will also consider some of the points raised today.
On the Law Commission, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, is quite right, as always, in identifying the date when the Law Commission published its interim report in February last year. I do not think anyone has any difficulty with the key recommendation that the current laws governing elections should be rationalised into a single legislative framework, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, described, that is applicable across elections, subject to differentiation due to some justifiable principle or policy. We consider that that would make elections easier to administer and therefore more resilient to errors or fraud.
I cannot add to what I said in earlier exchanges about the timetable but I reassure noble Lords that I have listened very carefully to this debate. I do not know whether this is off-piste, but I detect some impatience in your Lordships’ House to get on with these important initiatives in order to make progress with enhancing the integrity of our electoral system.
This part is in the script. This has been a very interesting debate and I am grateful to noble Lords for the contributions that they have made. We will continue to work to eliminate fraud and tackle improper practices to ensure the integrity of our electoral system and that our democracy is secure and works for all voters.
Cannabis
(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Meacher
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they plan to invite the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to review the evidence supporting the rescheduling of cannabis to Schedule 2 or 4.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, chronically sick patients with constant severe pain and other symptoms have suffered for far too long, reliant on prescribed medications that are sometimes ineffective and with intolerable side-effects for many people.
I remind noble Lords, if they will forgive me, of the case of Faye, whose experience was so brilliantly articulated in the Daily Mail on 2 May. At the age of 27, Faye was diagnosed with crippling rheumatoid arthritis. She describes the side-effects of conventional drugs as,
“more disruptive to daily life than the disease itself”,
which is saying something with rheumatoid arthritis. Faye recognised that prescribed drugs are fine for some people, but not for her. Having never used an illegal drug, and rather fearful, she found cannabis, and very slowly came off her prescribed medications. What was the result? She stopped feeling sick all the time—imagine a life of feeling sick all of the time. Now, two and a half years later, taking only cannabis, Faye says that her quality of life is now 98% of what it was before the diagnosis. She works full-time. Not only is this absolutely wonderful for Faye but it is saving the NHS thousands of pounds a year in medications, consultant appointments, GP appointments and so forth.
Under our drug schedules, as all noble Lords in this Room know, cannabis is listed as a dangerous drug with no medicinal value. In reality, of course, cannabis is safer than many prescribed medications and there is growing evidence of its medicinal value for a remarkable list of conditions. Our schedule is simply wrong and should not remain as it is. We need to inject some urgency into the situation. It is unnecessary and in my view cruel for these patients to suffer another two, three or even more years of agonising, sleepless nights and pain-stricken days or risk arrest to get hold of cannabis, which they tell us is the only effective medication with minimal or no side-effects.
For the first time, the UN is on our side and on the side of our Government should they wish to undertake some reform. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime—the UNODC—at the UN General Assembly Special Session on Drug Policy in April last year, made it clear that evidence-based public health policy is here to stay, and that treatment without stigma should be the driver of drug policy. This was a most important statement from the UN body at the centre of international drug policy. After 60 years of drug policy dominated by the notion of a “war on drugs” and the ludicrous aim of creating a drug-free world, the UN is at last asking member states to consider a pragmatic, realistic approach. From now on, countries need clear objectives—how remarkable: let us have some objectives—such as reducing addiction and harm in the consumer countries, and reducing violence and corruption in the producer and transit countries.
If the world is to follow the UNODC lead, countries need to evaluate policies and introduce those for which there is an evidence base. This brings us directly back to medicinal cannabis. We have sufficient evidence worldwide to know that cannabis has very significant medical properties. As I have said, we can no longer justify its Schedule 1 status. At its last meeting, the World Health Organization’s expert group agreed that the widespread acceptance of medicinal cannabis means that the WHO’s insistence on its having no medicinal value appears incongruent, particularly as it relies on 80 year-old data. I believe that is actually progress.
Our own Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the MHRA, determined last October that products containing cannabidiol—CBD, a derivative of cannabis—are indeed medicines and can be prescribed. How can we say under Schedule 1 that cannabis has no medicinal value when, according to our regulatory body, a part of it does? We cannot. We are fortunate to have Ministers in the Home Office who understand the evidence. A blog by the Home Office Minister Sarah Newton in April stated that the Government’s view is that cannabis should be subject to “the same regulatory framework” as other potential medicines, subject to approval from the MHRA.
The big question—this is very important—is whether the MHRA can accept a special status for cannabis, an inexpensive weed with such valuable medical properties. If cannabis is put through five or 10 years of double-blind random controlled trials, it will finish up so expensive that it will be ruled out from the NHS by NICE. Sativex is a good example. My fear is that Epidiolex, for children with specific strains of severe epilepsy, may also be priced out of the NHS market in another three years’ time when the lengthy trials finally come to an end. It is impossible to overestimate the urgency of treatment for these epileptic children, who suffer severe brain damage with hundreds of seizures every single day. Their brains are being destroyed and that damage will not be reversed.
Another tragedy that we really need to think about in relation to Epidiolex is, I understand, that GW Pharmaceuticals, which has spent £20 million on these trials, now realises that another cannabinoid would be more effective for these children with severe epilepsy than the cannabinoid upon which those £20 million-worth of trials were based. It cannot repeat them all, so a suboptimal medicine will be put to the MHRA for approval. There is something terribly wrong here and I would be grateful if the Minister would meet me to talk about the need to consider a safe—it must be safe—but less costly process of trials for cannabis medicines than is required at present.
Columbia Care, a well-respected company providing reliable, dosable cannabis, may provide an answer. Its products are superior to those accepted in the Netherlands and Germany and may provide a model of trials acceptable to the MHRA. There are other reputable companies providing good-quality cannabis products to Israel and elsewhere. Already 28 US states, 11 European countries and the whole of Latin America recognise that cannabis is a medicine. More states and countries join that list every year. The illegal status of cannabis has undoubtedly discouraged research into its medicinal properties. Oxford University, however, will be funded to the tune of £10 million by Kingsley Capital Partners to investigate our own endocannabinoid system. It is our own system that explains the extraordinary powers of cannabis. I will not go into this but in the meantime Professor Mike Barnes’s report, commissioned by our APPG for Drug Policy Reform, has reviewed all the international data and showed beyond doubt that cannabis is indeed an effective medicine for a number of conditions.
In conclusion, I appeal to the Minister to request the ACMD, under the leadership of its excellent chair, Dr Owen Bowden-Jones, to review the evidence for the Schedule 1 status of cannabis and to make recommendations as soon as possible. The UK will then be prepared to respond quickly to the WHO review. I hope that the ACMD will consider the regulations we would need to support a revision of the cannabis schedule. Obviously, a good set of regulations would be extremely important. Again, I hope the Minister will respond to the urgency of the need for reform for these patients.
Lord Mancroft (Con)
My Lords, in a civilised society, one of the ways by which we are judged is how we look after those who are disadvantaged through no fault of their own: the young, the old, the infirm and the weak. Among them are those who have a particular condition or disability that cannot easily be remedied by orthodox medical care or modern drugs. But if we cannot help them conventionally, nor should we prohibit them from accessing less mainstream treatments if they believe that those treatments can alleviate some of their discomfort or pain. We all know why cannabis is illegal, and whether or not we agree with its prohibition—your Lordships will know that I never have—we can recognise the good motives of those who introduced that legislation and prohibited its use almost half a century ago. That happened some years after the proposal to ban heroin and cocaine was dropped by the Home Office. The Minister responsible agreed, after meetings with doctors’ representatives, to permit those drugs to be categorised as controlled rather than prohibited drugs so that even though they were recognised as dangerous and addictive, they could be prescribed by doctors because of their unique therapeutic value. I know a little about that because my own father was the Minister responsible for doing that in the post that my noble friend holds in the Home Office today.
At that time, no such therapeutic benefit was attributed to cannabis, which is why it was banned. Now we know differently. We live in an age of evidence-based policy, as the noble Baroness said. However, while there is scientific research that demonstrates the value of cannabis, such as that undertaken by Professor Raphael Mechoulam at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, perhaps more importantly there is overwhelming anecdotal evidence from many individuals, some of whom I too have met personally, that their symptoms can be alleviated by cannabis. We would be negligent and, as the noble Baroness said, cruel to ignore that evidence.
I hope my noble friend will not seek to resist the proposal of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, by advocating a long and complex process of drug trials. This is unnecessary. In November 2015, scientists in the United States announced the discovery of a drug that cures, without any side effects, hepatitis C—until then, incurable, untreatable and usually terminal. Some 300,000 people in Britain have it today. In less than three years, without any extensive trials, thousands of patients throughout the world, who until then faced an uncertain future, has been completely cured of hepatitis C because of the use of this drug. I have a slight interest in it because I am one of those who has been cured within the last six months, and I am immensely grateful to NICE for the decision it made to allow the prescription of this drug without any of the requirements to go through the usual years of testing required by the MHRA. So it can be done and it has been done.
Whatever regime Parliament puts in place will inevitably be circumvented by those who want to do so. Alcohol, tobacco and opiates are all controlled in different ways by the law but they are all abused in a way that the law does not permit. One cannot stop that. Arguably, the drugs that are most abused and cause the most harm are those that are routinely and quite legally prescribed by thousands of doctors, who should know better. So the argument that cannabis is uniquely dangerous and capable of being abused is not credible and appears simply obstructive for the sake of it. Let us therefore have no humbug today. Rather than looking for excuses to do nothing by citing spurious reasons from a bygone age, and thus needlessly prolonging the suffering of patients whose lives could be immeasurably improved, I hope my noble friend will use this debate and opportunity to make this tiny, reasonable and unique move—at no disadvantage to the taxpayer—and show the world that we are the civilised nation that we aspire to be.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has laid out the case admirably and I support her appeal to the Minister. I will simply tell the Committee about the experience of one person which illustrates how lamentable are the consequences of the present confusion in government policy and the Government’s refusal to remove obstacles to making cannabis-based medication available on prescription in this country beyond the extremely limited basis that now applies.
The person I shall refer to as TW got in touch with me to tell me about her situation. She suffers from advanced degeneration of the lumbar and cervical spine and she experiences chronic neuropathic back and leg pain. It is tough, not just for her but for her husband and children. Over the last 15 years, she has been prescribed some 35 different medications: anti-nausea, antispasmodic, anti-inflammatory and antidepressant medications. At one point she was on the equivalent of 180 milligrams of morphine a day. She has had caudal and facet joint injections. In 2015, she underwent major surgery, which most unfortunately has left her in yet greater pain and disability.
However, TW has been able to come off these high-dose morphine-based medicines and all her other medications, with their horrible side effects, because she has been prescribed, privately, Bedrocan. The active ingredient in Bedrocan is dronabinol, derived from cannabis. Bedrocan is not licensed in this country, though it is in Holland, Finland, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. TW has a letter from Her Majesty’s Customs informing her that she is legally permitted to bring Bedrocan, as prescribed for her personal use, into Britain from Holland. If Sativex, also derived from cannabis, were suitable for her she could, on the other hand, legally collect it on prescription from her local pharmacy. She was previously prescribed morphine, an opioid in same class as heroin and far more dangerous than cannabis, and then Fentanyl, of terrifying power, as we see in the crisis of opioid addiction in the United States of America. Both were on NHS prescription, and she was able to collect those prescriptions from her pharmacy. Yet, as a patient for whom no other medication is effective to relieve her chronic pain without unbearable side effects, TW has to endure an arduous, painful, exhausting and costly journey in her wheelchair, four times a year, to collect her prescription of Bedrocan from a Dutch pharmacy. She very reasonably asks how this can be reasonable.
Cannabis, absurdly, is in Schedule 1, the schedule for controlled drugs deemed to be of no medicinal value. Bedrocan, cannabis-based, is in Schedule 2, the same schedule as morphine, diamorphine—which is heroin—and Fentanyl. Sativex is in Schedule 4. The scheduling is a mess. For the Home Office and the Department of Health between them to force TW and others like her to go to Holland to obtain the only medication that is truly effective for them is to taunt them in their suffering. We should do better, and I look forward to the Minister explaining how the Government will do so.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on this debate and the all-party group on its work and the excellent report that was published on this subject. I need to warn my noble colleague next to me, the noble Lord, Lord Low, that I am going to be very short in my contribution. I put my name down for this debate because I did a little bit of background research again, and the thing that really came over me was the Government’s own 2017 drug strategy. It is an excellent document, which states:
“In 2015-16, around 2.7 million ... 16-59 year olds”—
so on the whole, as Members of the House of Lords, we are not included in this—
“in England and Wales reported using a drug in the last year”.
It is estimated that just over 2 million of those were cannabis users. Of course, included in that are a number of people who had to use cannabis as a medicinal aid for their suffering.
I was also interested to look up the information—asked for by my former right honourable friend, Nick Clegg—that only about 2,000 people are actually arrested over cannabis. The message that this put over to me was that those people who need cannabis as a medicine to help their suffering have to go down an illegal route so that they can either be healed or get help with their suffering. But this is something that the majority of recreational users do not even have to worry about, because the chances of their being arrested or prosecuted are very low indeed. Yet—for all the illogical reasons already given around how other drugs are treated—we demand that the people requiring this degree of assistance from this particular drug have to commit criminal acts themselves to alleviate their suffering. It is crazy and I hope this debate will be a part of stopping the very illogical and cruel situation that we put those users in.
Lord Low of Dalston (CB)
My Lords, I echo the congratulations offered by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, on securing this debate and for all her tireless work to secure a more rational policy on the regulation of drugs, from founding the all-party group, whose reports we have been reading, to her work and representations at the United Nations and around the world. The noble Baroness, in encouraging me to speak this afternoon, said that it need only be a very short speech. With the time limits, I think we have no option but to make a very short speech.
I declare an interest: I am a member of the aforementioned all-party group, but I was not involved in the inquiry into the medicinal use of cannabis. Cannabis, as we have heard, is classified with dangerous drugs with no medicinal value, yet it is clear that it does have medicinal value. It was perceived to provide great relief by 86% of those responding to an online survey commissioned by the all-party group. More than 90% reported no or only mild side-effects, whereas—as we just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Howarth—respondents using prescription medicines can experience considerable side-effects. The evidence is nuanced as to the precise scope of the medicinal value, but the Barnes review undertaken for the all-party group concluded that there is good evidence for the efficacy of cannabis in the management of chronic pain and the side-effects of chemotherapy.
At the very least, therefore, cannabis-based treatment can provide significant benefit for a group of patients of at least 10,000—and, in some estimations, very many more—suffering from chronic pain where other treatments have failed. This would be reason enough to reclassify cannabis. Schedules 2 and 3 include drugs that may be illegal for recreational use but can be made available on prescription. If cannabis were to be placed in Schedule 2, it would be in the same class as heroin, which is no less addictive—indeed, it is considerably more so, as we know—and there is no evidence of significant diversion of heroin from medical supplies to the illicit recreational market. Moreover, as we again heard from the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, Sativex, which is a proprietary product derived from cannabis, is classified in Schedule 4. In these circumstances, retaining cannabis in Schedule 1 is illogical and perverse.
The overriding reason for moving cannabis to one of the other schedules—this is my main point, really—is that it follows a policy of regulation rather than prohibition. In the reading I did in preparation for this debate, I counted that this has at least six consequential advantages, but I have time to mention only a couple of them. First, since the use of cannabis would now be lawful, patients could take it under medical guidance and supervision. When that guidance and supervision is not available, when people are forced to acquire their cannabis outside the law, the product that they obtain off the street is often much more harmful. How much better to be using it when it provides its benefits under proper medical supervision.
Secondly, the current regime places a stranglehold on research. Carrying out research into cannabis in the UK has been described as a costly obstacle course. It involves a minimum outlay of £5,000 to cover licensing and security, and licence applications can take as long as a year. It has been calculated that research involving Schedule 1 drugs takes significantly longer and costs about 10 times as much as research into other drugs.
In view of all the considerations that have been spoken to in the debate, I hope very much that the Minister will agree that the matter should be referred to the advisory council. Referring the matter for the opinion of an independent expert body, which of course does not commit the Government, is not exactly selling the pass.
Lord Norton of Louth (Con)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, on raising this issue and on the way in which she has done it. The Question asks whether the Government “plan to invite” a review of the evidence. It is asking not whether the Government will reschedule cannabis but whether they plan to review the evidence, or at least to have the evidence reviewed. That is the crucial point.
It is six and a half years since I tabled a QSD in which I asked what consideration the Government had given,
“to establishing a royal commission on the law governing drug use and possession”.
I argued the case for evidence-based policy. My starting point was that there was a demonstrable problem and that we needed to address it. I was not advocating that the policy should be adopted but making the case for reviewing existing policy. In reply, the Minister said that there was considerable disagreement on the issue—well, not in that debate; every Peer who spoke, bar the Minister, agreed with me.
In this debate the focus is on the rescheduling of cannabis. As we have heard, there is a particularly powerful case for reviewing the use of cannabis under certain conditions for medicinal use. The MS Society has changed its position on the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes in the light of reviewing the evidence, and its stance is a measured one.
The arguments that have been deployed against change by the Home Office do not stack up, especially under a Conservative Government. If a law is not working and change is resisted on the grounds of sending the wrong signals, then Ministers have little grasp of the Conservative view of law.
I repeat what I said in 2011:
“My case is that we need to explore whether the present law is necessary and sufficient, whether it is necessary but not sufficient, or whether it is neither necessary nor sufficient”.—[Official Report, 9/3/11; col. 1675.]
Implicitly the Government took, and take, the first of those positions. There was and is no critical reflection. Yesterday my noble friend Lady Williams reiterated that she supported evidence-based policy. Now is the time to consider the evidence. Will my noble friend commit to that?
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for initiating this debate. I just want to say something about the case of a little boy. I think that some of us have heard from his grandmother but I shall explain the case briefly.
He has a very rare condition—which I think is called non-inherited genetic mutation in the PCDH19 gene—for which so far only a steroid treatment is effective. This is not suitable for long-term use because of the serious health consequences. It is very likely that whole-plant medical cannabis will work and will be without particular side-effects. To get such medical cannabis, the family of the six-year-old boy would have to travel to a country where it is legal for doctors to prescribe medical cannabis. There is a product under test called Epidiolex. It is a cannabis-based product but is not yet available and is subject to a long testing regime, which may be too long for this little boy. There is a need to move quickly to permit medical cannabis to be given to this little boy under medical management.
I now turn to the wider issue of cannabis for people with MS. I should declare an interest in that a member of my family has MS. We have had an excellent briefing from the MS Society, which says that 22% of people with MS have tried cannabis. I only know that a consultant thinks that every one of his patients has tried cannabis, not 22% of them, and I put that to the MS Society.
There is a product called Sativex that might do the business but which is not available to NHS patients, although it should be in Wales. The problem is that there is a dangerous version of cannabis known as skunk. People who are buying it on the illegal market are liable to get skunk, which I understand is not desirable, whereas ordinary cannabis is okay. By making the whole thing illegal, we are encouraging people to go to dealers, who are liable to give them the dangerous stuff rather than the helpful stuff.
Some doctors say that there is no evidence that cannabis is helpful to people with MS. I have a simple answer to that. If a person suffering from a medical condition like MS feels that cannabis is helpful, surely that is enough evidence. I am not anti-scientific and I understand the noble Lord’s comments, but if a patient feels that it is helpful, then by definition it must be. That is the case for me.
Lord Crickhowell (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for getting us this debate and for the work that she has done for the APPG, which has produced a compelling evidence base for policy change. She spoke of the striking evidence of dramatic improvement to their health that some cannabis users have experienced. That, combined with the failure of prescription medicines to relieve their symptoms, has caused patients to try herbal cannabis even though access to it is not lawful. Estimates as to the use of medicinal cannabis suggest that 30,000 patients in this country are using it, most of it coming from illegal street sources. Also striking is the evidence that a majority of users have discussed using a cannabis treatment with their GP or consultant. Whether or not cannabis is legalised, the gain from having a regulated system that does not put both patients and their medical advisers in an intolerable position and vulnerable to the dangers of using street supplies of drugs is compelling.
The background to this debate is HM Government’s 2017 drug strategy, which was published in July. That strategy, which apparently is to be delivered by a board chaired by the Home Secretary, is about abuse and harm. There is no mention of medicinal cannabis. The ACMG has a central role in this. The council, emphasising the health significance of the use of cannabis, has made recommendations for further research. The Motion asks that that research should be extended, but because the evidence produced by the APPG shows clearly that the Schedule 1 listing makes research into the use of cannabis-related drugs and drug trials difficult and expensive, there is a problem ahead. Ministers claim that a clear regime is in place to enable drugs that contain cannabis to be developed and licensed, but they can cite only one example, that of Sativex. Because of the difficulties and costs of applying for a licence, no application has been made in respect of herbal cannabis.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulation Agency has stated that products containing cannabis are medicines. Surely that conclusion and the legalisation of medicinal cannabis in so many countries combined with much evidence that it has not caused an increase in crime, abuse and harm in those countries—probably the reverse is true—provides powerful reasons for the Government to reconsider their policy and look at possible models for regulation. This is a health issue and I really wonder whether the Department of Health should not play a larger role in policy-making, which in my view is too dominated by the Home Office.
Baroness Greengross (CB)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. I want briefly to look at the body of evidence from overseas which clearly demonstrates that a more sensitive and targeted approach to the use of cannabinoids can bring positive results. In the USA, those states which have medical marijuana laws see lower rates of opiate overdose.
A recent study indicates a much lower use of opiates by pain sufferers using cannabis as treatment. This year a study has shown a reduced incidence of opioid-related hospitalisations in those states and according to the world health rankings the current drug-related death rate, mainly caused by opiate use, for the UK is 3.83 per 100,000. This compares to the Netherlands, which has the most-established scheme for medicinal cannabis in Europe, of 0.63. This means that the UK has a rate for drug-related deaths more than six times higher than that of the Netherlands. Does the Minister have any comment on these figures, or on the letter, published in the Lancet this June, from Dr David Nutt of Imperial? He notes that in his view the UK Government, on the advice of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, made two problematic changes to the UK drug control regulations of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. First, they put into effect new very wide-ranging bans against a whole range of synthetic cannabinoids and, secondly, they rejected an appeal by senior UK scientists to remove THCV from Schedule 1, the highest level of control in the Act. Both decisions have substantial impacts on the UK’s research communities.
To make these drugs illegal and prevent others replacing them, the ACMD recommended that the whole chemical series be banned. However, many of this now illegal series are contained in current medicines and to get around this problem the Home Office exempted these and seven other medicines that would otherwise have become illegal. This exemption-based approach has, unfortunately, a fatal flaw: most, if not all, of these drugs were derived from a chemical series that contain precursors from which other medicines might be developed. Now these are illegal, and anyone caught supplying them is liable to up to 14 years in prison. These potential penalties will have a chilling, possibly fatal impact on pharmaceutical drug discovery in the UK, because complying with the regulations adds a vast cost burden to the pharmacology industry and to academic researchers. Dr Nutt found it concerning that the pharmaceutical experts on the ACMD did not appear to foresee this problem. Worse, it appears that the new regulations were not subject to proper consultation with the academic research community and the pharmaceutical industry.
History suggests that earlier bans on synthetic cannabinoids had little effect on their use. I fear it is likely that this new law could fail in its primary objective and badly damage UK research.
Lord Hayward (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, on securing this debate and I apologise for not having applied to speak originally—I was not expecting to be able to be present. I echo everything that has been said in this debate and I do so as a diagnosed MS sufferer. I have been confronted by the diagnosis; as it happens, contrary to what the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said, I have not taken cannabis at any point, but I agree with his overall analysis that on most estimates the figures are gross underestimates of the number of people who have taken cannabis as a treatment for my illness and, I believe, for many others as well. So I support everything that has been said around the Room this afternoon.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I strongly support the campaign of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, to make medicinal cannabis available legally for patients who can be helped by it and I congratulate her once again on her persistence. While the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, is very welcome in her place today, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, that we should be seeing a health Minister responding to a debate of this nature—so does she, I think. The lack of availability of this medicine for thousands of people in pain is just one of the terrible consequences of a failure over the years by the Government to see that their policies are not working. Their stubborn persistence with a set of policies that are manifestly failing is extraordinary. If any other policy were as much of a failure as the Government’s drugs policy, they would drop it like a hot potato.
The current classification of drugs is meant to avoid their misuse but fails completely to do so. On top of that, it penalises people for whom cannabis can be a lifesaver. They and their clinicians are forced to resort to powerful drugs such as morphine to alleviate pain because cannabis has become caught up in the debate on recreational drugs.
Let us take the case of five year-old Alfie Dingley, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. Alfie has life-threatening seizures. The drugs being used to treat him at the moment are frequent, intravenous steroids which could shorten his life, cause him to develop cancer, damage major organs or even induce psychosis. All other treatments have failed and his parents and grandparents live in constant fear of his next, possibly fatal seizure. Yet in Holland, where the law on cannabis is more rational and compassionate, doctors are able to treat children such as Alfie successfully.
In the Republic of Ireland, a named practitioner can be licensed to prescribe cannabis for medicinal purposes to a named patient. A number of other countries do something similar, so why can we not do that here? Can we not have a trial in this country to look at how children such as Alfie can be helped under proper medical supervision? Given that Alfie, along with many of the other patients we have heard about, has been given many other powerful drugs, some of which are not licensed for children as young as him, surely the risks of allowing him legal access to cannabis are considerably less? Yet to obtain cannabis legally, as we have heard is the case with other patients, Alfie’s parents would have to travel abroad at their own expense. Ironically, Alfie’s UK consultant would be willing to prescribe cannabis but is not allowed to do so. Rescheduling cannabis, as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has suggested, would allow that to happen.
I and my colleagues heard from many patients in the noble Baroness’s commission when considering the matter. The evidence was very compelling. Today, your Lordships have called on the Government to base their policy on evidence, not misguided prejudice. The Government should hear the voices of the thousands of generally law-abiding patients who are forced to break the law or go to enormous trouble and expense to travel abroad to get the medicine that they know works for them. Those people do not want to have to do that, and there are thousands more who could benefit but are not prepared to take the risk. Why are we putting good people in this invidious situation? It is cruel, it is illogical and it is time that the Government did something about it.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
My Lords, I first apologise for being late for the beginning of the debate. If I had a credible excuse, I would offer it. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, on securing the debate, which has attracted a lot of interest—as reflected by the number of speakers.
As has been said, there is a regime in place, administered by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency—MHRA—to enable medicines, including those containing controlled drugs such as cannabis, to be developed, licensed and made available for medicinal use to patients in the UK. However, as has been said, and as I understand it, only one product containing cannabis extracts—Sativex—has been licensed as a medicinal product by the MHRA. Equally, as I understand it, the MHRA has recently decided that CBD-only products—cannabidiol is one of the main compounds of cannabis—which are used to treat various symptoms, should be considered as medicines.
The question we are debating is whether the Government plan to invite the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to review the evidence supporting the rescheduling of cannabis to Schedule 2 or Schedule 4. Cannabis is controlled as a class B drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. In its raw form, it currently has no recognised medicinal benefits in the UK and is therefore listed as a Schedule 1 drug under the misuse of drugs regulations. This explicitly forbids doctors from prescribing cannabis and inhibits research.
If cannabis were rescheduled, it would enable patients with a wide range of conditions to obtain cannabis medicines to alleviate their symptoms, and doctors could prescribe it on a named-patient basis, taking responsibility for patient safety, until licensed cannabis medications became available.
In their 2017 drugs strategy, the Government said that they were committed to grounding their approach in the latest available evidence. They stated:
“The advice of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs … is fundamental to informing our approach and we will continue to seek their valuable input and advice”.
Have the advisory council expressed any view to the Government that it now thinks it appropriate to undertake a review into either the classification or the rescheduling of cannabis—and, if so, what has been the Government’s response? If significant new evidence is now available that was not available previously and which might well influence the view of the advisory council—which appears to be the position—there is a case for inviting it to consider it, particularly in the light of the Government’s position that the advice of the council is fundamental to forming their approach.
We have heard in the debate about the case of Alfie, who is nearly six. As I understand it, some children with his condition have responded well to whole-plant medical cannabis with no side-effects. Indeed, as I understand it, Alfie’s consultant at his children’s hospital supports trying medical cannabis but cannot do so because it would be illegal for him to prescribe it at present. As has already been pointed out, in several other countries, including Ireland, a named consultant can prescribe whole-plant medical cannabis to a named patient. The future does not look good for Alfie at present. I ask the Minister to look at Alfie’s case to see what help can be given to get medical cannabis under the management of his consultant here—either now or, if he has to go abroad for such treatment, once it has been shown that it helps him.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, first, I also declare an interest in MS. As the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, knows, I worked with MS patients for many years before I got involved in politics—I do not know quite how I made the transition, but that was the case. Some of the noble Lord’s anecdotes from patients chime with things that I heard. I know that there is significant feeling in the House on this issue. It is also clear from noble Lords’ remarks that they are keen that government policy on this issue should be led by evidence—as my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth said, I confirmed that yesterday—but also should not prevent patients from obtaining relief from symptoms using effective medicines.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said, the WHO’s Expert Committee on Drug Dependence has committed to reviewing the scheduling of cannabis under the UN’s 1961 convention. The review will consider therapeutic use as well as dependence, and the abuse potential of several constituent parts of cannabis, including the cannabis plant itself and cannabis resin, cannabidiol, or CBD, THC, isomers of THC and extracts and tinctures of cannabis. The review is due to conclude by early 2019 and I, like most people here today, am very interested in its outcome and look forward to future opportunities to debate this issue—as I know we will—as and when the WHO concludes its work. I must add that the recognition of CBD as having medicinal application necessarily means that the other constituent parts will do so as well. Each compound ought to be assessed on its merits.
As noble Lords have said, cannabis in its raw herbal form continues to be listed in Schedule 1 to the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001 as a substance with no recognised benefits in the UK, but I must underline that this is in its raw form. The system of scheduling does not preclude medicines based on cannabis from being developed. The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 regime, along with the associated regulations, enables the availability of controlled drugs which have recognised medicinal uses in UK healthcare—of which there are many.
We are already able to rely on a process, administered by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, MHRA, in parallel with the Home Office’s licensing system, to enable medicines, including those containing controlled drugs such as cannabis, to be developed, licensed and made available for medicinal use to patients in the UK. In the case of a Schedule 1 drug such as cannabis, the Home Office is willing to consider applications for research licences to facilitate the development of new medicines, as long as the appropriate ethical approvals have been given, as we have done in the past. I am very happy to meet again with the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, as we do regularly, to discuss this issue.
In the case of the cannabis-based drug Sativex, the Government have, as noble Lords have said, placed the product in Schedule 4 of the Misuse of Drugs Regulations to allow it to be legally supplied on prescription. Sativex was granted a marketing authorisation by the MHRA and was rigorously tested for its safety and efficacy before receiving approval for this application. This rigour should equally be applied to future medicinal products containing cannabis.
As has also been pointed out today, the MHRA has offered an opinion that products containing CBD, when used for a medical purpose, should be regulated as medicinal products. A CBD or cannabidiol product in its pure form is not controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, so where it can be extracted and isolated from the controlled substances in cannabis it would not require a licence from the Home Office. However, a CBD product that contains any trace of psychoactive compounds that are found in cannabis, such as THC or tetrahydrocannabinol, is considered to be a controlled substance under the 1971 Act and therefore unlawful to possess and supply unless it fits the criteria for an exempt product under the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001. The MHRA is working with individual companies and trade bodies to make sure that products containing CBD used for a medical purpose which can be classified as medicines satisfy the requirements of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012.
We continue to facilitate forward-looking research involving cannabis and cannabinoids. There were 19 cannabinoid clinical trial authorisations granted between 2005 and 2015. These trials cover MS, dental applications, psychotic disorders, addiction to cannabis, type 2 diabetes, epilepsy, interaction with other medicines and brain diseases. Research in this area is ongoing.
The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, asked about research into synthetic cannabinoid changes. I know that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has commissioned the ACMD to look into whether there are barriers to research into Schedule 1 drugs as a result of changes to synthetic cannabinoid generic legislation. The Home Secretary has asked the council to provide its advice before the end of this year.
The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, asked about Epidiolex. Our position on it is that, as for any other medicine and as we did with Sativex, it must be put through the same stringent process to ensure its safety and efficacy, for the benefit of patients.
My noble friend Lord Crickhowell suggested that the Department of Health and not the Home Office should be responsible for this. I quietly nodded there. Like the previous strategy, the 2017 drug strategy takes a cross-government approach that reflects the need for co-ordinated action to tackle the problem in all its dimensions. Given the strong link between drug use and offending, the Home Office has and will continue to provide the governance and accountability essential to the effective delivery of this cross-departmental approach. The Department of Health leads on the building recovery strand of the strategy and, together with the Home Office, leads on the reducing demand strategy, along with Public Health England. To ensure that we are doing all we can—and following my meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher—I have recently written to my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy, who is the Minister for Health in your Lordships’ House, to ask him to consider how the Government can facilitate the development and availability of cannabis-based medicines such as Sativex.
We are open to the development of new products based on cannabis and look forward to the review from the WHO’s expert committee. I am sure that the ACMD will follow its conclusions with great interest.
Lord Howarth of Newport
The Minister has not made any mention of Bedrocan in her response to the debate. Does she think it reasonable that TW, in the circumstances I described, has to make these visits to Holland to collect her medication, which has been prescribed for her in Britain but which she is not permitted to obtain from her local pharmacy? Is that a reasonable state of affairs and if the Minister thinks it is, why? If she thinks it is not, what will the Government do?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I noted the noble Lord’s mention of Bedrocan. I had not heard of it and I am very willing to look into that specific drug. There are of course many drugs available in other parts of the world that are not necessarily available here and vice versa. I will write to him on that point. I will also take up the point about Alfie separately.
Baroness Meacher
May I thank everybody who has spoken so effectively in this debate? So many powerful points were made and we have managed to avoid duplication, amazingly. It just shows how many points one needs to make in relation to this—
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
My Lords, there is no right of reply in this debate.
Care: Older People
(6 years, 7 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Lipsey
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the deferred payment scheme for funding older people's care.
Lord Lipsey (Lab)
My Lords, it is hard to recall the shock at the time, but it is only a few weeks ago that the Conservative Party decided that it would not have a large overall majority after all. The form this took, you will remember, was a pledge in the manifesto that everyone would have to spend themselves down to £100,000 before they got help with care costs. I think I knew what they were doing when they did it because I happened that afternoon to be on a platform for the dementia society’s conference with the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt. He made a short reference to this proposal and I was asked what I thought of it. I said, in the words of Sir Humphrey, “Very brave, Minister”. I may have misdetected it but I thought he went a little bit pale.
Why do I start with that story, which has absolutely nothing to do with deferred payment? It is very difficult to see why they did this. It could have been an accident. It could have been an outburst of honesty with the British people, which was laudable if not successful. I have another theory: that this Government have learned from long experience that you can do anything you want on care and nobody much notices—perhaps there would be more people here tonight if that were not the case. The case of deferred payments seems to me to be an extremely strong example on which the Government now need to focus and come clean with people on what they are going to do and put it into place.
Let me tell you a story—I am starting off down nostalgia lane. In 1999—I have the right decade, I think—I was sitting on the Royal Commission on Long Term Care. In parenthesis, one of my colleagues was Lord Joffe, whose death was recently announced, and who was one of the truly great and lovely men that I have had the pleasure to meet in my life. The majority of the commission—it beggars belief when you hear it now—wanted all social care to be free. That was their recommendation. I cannot really within a 10-minute speech spell out the number of noughts on the end of the cost of that proposal. It was bonkers for two other reasons. First, nearly all the extra money was going to the better-off, not the worse-off. Secondly, and to Joel and I more importantly, it did not provide an extra penny to care services. It simply made it easier for people to pay for care. Well, that is very nice and desirable if you have the money, but it is very different from providing the care services that our country desperately needs. So we did not go along with this and signed a note of dissent, as it was called.
I comfort myself that history shows that it is only minority reports or commissions that have any effect, looking back to Webb and the Poor Laws. There was one on the fire brigade, where the main dissident report was written by the chairman. Only minority reports have any effect, and that was true in one sense in this case. We never got free care and I am very glad that we did not.
However, Joel and I, when writing our dissenting report, were aware that people were suffering considerable distress as a result of the means-tested system. In particular, it caused people to sell their houses to pay for care. So without conceding the free care principle, we felt that something should be done about that.
I quote paragraph 57 on page 123 of the Note of Dissent: “We therefore propose that the state offers a virtual guarantee that no person will have to sell their home against their will. This will be put in practice by a state-sponsored loan against the value of the home of any older person in need of care who does not want to sell”. I think that that was right in principle because going into a home is for many people a dreadful thing to have to do. It is made worse if you know that your house is going straight on to the market with no chance of ever getting it back.
However, let us face it, there was a lot of politics in that. We wanted to fend off free care for all and in order to do that we thought it right to do something that would make redundant the headlines which the Daily Mail used to specialise in: “Homes sold to pay for care”. There was a general acceptance of that. The Labour Government legislated in due course. They did so ineffectively and left it to local authorities to put the schemes in place. Many local authorities did not get around to it, so it did not work. The Conservative Government seemed not even to have noticed that that had been done. David Cameron, who some will remember was then the Prime Minister, went around saying that the Government would legislate so that,
“no one will have to sell their home to pay for care”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/5/13; col. 25.]
The 2014 Act was brought forward and it did indeed establish a national scheme for deferring payment for care, except that it did not apply to people with more than £23,250 in non-housing assets. That is a terrific limitation and it destroyed what the scheme was meant to do. You would be absolutely mad, if you possess a large house, to let your other assets run down to £23,250 so that the income on that sum would have to pay for all the other little things in life you might like. It made the proposal completely defunct. That point was hammered home in this place. I remember making a speech about it at Third Reading with strong support being expressed across the House. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, gave the impression, although I may have been naive, that this would be dealt with and they would up the £23,250 limit. In the light of that, I withdrew my amendment. They did not; they stuck to it and the figure did not change. Of all people’s word to break, they broke the word of the noble Earl, Lord Howe.
I did not have to do much research to know what would happen. What has happened is that we now have a totally failed system. The Government estimated that the new scheme would bring the uptake of deferred care up from 4,000 in 2012 to 12,300, but it has not. In fact the uptake figure hovers at around 3,600; that is, even less take-up than before. The research to show that was carried out by the think tank Reform, which is not unsympathetic to the Government. That number is simply those who are eligible but who choose not to claim it—one third of the number that the Government said would. There are also all those people who are completely excluded from it by the arbitrary rules that the Government have set. Those were Cameron’s words backed by his party and both Houses of Parliament but they have been completely overruled and ignored.
I believe that Parliament was misled and that the time has come to do something about it. I believe—I hope the Minister will confirm this—that the Government are reviewing the deferred payments scheme and its impact. On the facts as we have them, I do not think there can be any doubt about what the conclusion of such a review should be. Of course, this is all part of the broader picture on social care. I, for one, welcome the review that has been carried out in the Cabinet Office, and the fact that we did not dash into that manifesto pledge and that proper, serious consideration is being given to this issue by proper, serious people on the basis of proper, serious research.
I beg the Government to look at this again, because you can make a case for the scheme or you can say that people should have to sell their houses to pay for care, but I say in all seriousness that I think it is unforgivable to mislead older people. They find this system extraordinarily complicated and extremely hard to get their heads round in any case. To leave them in the state of confusion that now exists as to whether or not they can get deferred care payments seems to me—I hesitate to use this phrase—an act of cruelty. The Government can put this right. It does not cost anything, because this is merely money that is lent to them being paid back. They should produce a clear, workable scheme so that those who do not want to sell their houses to pay for care will not have to, as David Cameron said.
Baroness Greengross (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, very much because this is a very important issue. I think I have been involved in it for longer than anybody else. I have tried to get the issues around social care, care homes and how to pay for care right. This is a persistent, complex and very difficult subject, and we have to do something about it. If we started again, I think we would have a unified system but, let us face it, the majority of people who have to go into care homes are very old and have some form of cognitive dysfunction or dementia. They are shuffled between healthcare and social care. We are once again talking about how these people are going to be funded. It is very important that eventually we get this right. All these terribly frail people cannot go on waiting year after year while David and I meet regularly at events. Those events are not perhaps as important as being here, but they are occasions where people try to deal with this subject.
It is very hard to know what the prevalence of deferred payment agreements is because the data collection is now mandatory but the 2015-16 data collection was voluntary. Data collected by Care England, Age UK and NHS Digital found that out of 55 local authorities in England, just 1,300 DPAs were written in 2015-16, the first financial year in which the mandatory scheme was in force.
If we assume that this sample is representative of the 152 local authorities offering adult social services in this country, these data suggest that only 3,600 DPAs were issued in 2015-16. That is less than a third of the Government’s original estimate and lower than the figure in 2012. Meanwhile, Reform suggests that a higher figure of about 6,000 DPAs were issued in 2015-16 compared with the Government’s projection of 12,300. But whatever figure we use, the uptake and availability of deferred payment agreements has been very much lower than expected.
Reform concluded that tighter than expected eligibility is the principal reason why the Government overstated the number of people who would take up a DPA. These outcomes are despite councils having a statutory duty to offer DPAs under the Care Act. However, there is no government target for the number of DPAs issued by local authorities. To redress this imbalance, Reform argues for the DPA means-test threshold to be increased from £23,250 to £100,000, which would raise the percentage of self-funders who are eligible for support from 45% to 62.6%. One major challenge, however, is the lack of public awareness. Different councils develop different approaches and the pause in the Care Act is also something to be contended with.
All this has led to a huge amount of confusion. First, people do not understand the difference—they never have—between healthcare and social care. I have spent years saying that somebody who has a terminal disease, such as one of 100 different types of dementia, needs only social care, according to the rules, whereas somebody with a chronic illness such as back pain is given health service care. It is all very odd, really.
There is huge confusion in people’s minds, particularly about deferred payments. Neither is it transparent to the people who provide care or to people admitted to homes under a DPA, who would otherwise have been self-funders paying the home directly. DPAs also work by placing some people under a council contract, at council fee rates, and the home does not know their true status, which might mean that they have enough money to pay for it. So, as much as I deplore the fact that we have different criteria for healthcare and social care—as we always have had—it works both ways. Some people who really have enough money are not paying, because we know that councils pay very much less, which is one reason why so many care homes are going out of business.
So the use of DPAs is not transparent to the provider and, as an example of the rather covert nature of this landscape in which DPAs operate, the Department of Health recently completed an internal review of them in order to inform policy making, but it has chosen not to make the findings public. Perhaps the Minister can say why. It would be useful to know. There has not been a detailed analysis of the deferred payments scheme since 2013, when an impact assessment was published alongside the Care Act. At the time, the analysis suggested a highly patchy take-up of the scheme. There was a lot of regional variation, ranging from 1% to 40%. A new analysis to see how much take-up has changed is very much overdue, in my humble opinion.
Expectations from citizens, however, have risen. We know that they experience social care and healthcare as a continuum. The current financial challenges make the delivery of such expectations completely untenable. Taxpayers really are not getting value for money, so I endorse Care England’s view that, for DPAs to become a constructive part of a secure funding environment, a long-term vision with strong central leadership is required to take duplication and unnecessary administrative burdens out of the system. At the national level, much more clarity is needed about the partnership between the state and the individual in terms of funding. Locally, commissioners and providers need to agree the suitability of an individual’s care package, rather than this being seen as part of an arbitrary standard price.
DPAs are only part of the solution to funding social care fees, and the promised consultation on funding is a key opportunity to think about what sort of society we want to live in. Therefore, key questions on this issue are: when will the consultation be published and what form will it take, and in the meantime what short-term provision will the Government be recommending to tackle the current levels of unmet need? I hope that the noble Lord will be able to answer at least some of those points.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, this has been a short but very interesting debate, and I am grateful to my noble friend and to the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, for the way in which they have addressed the dilemma that undoubtedly faces us, not just in relation to deferred payments but more generally in relation to funding appropriate social care.
It was interesting that my noble friend Lord Lipsey took us back to the royal commission. Over nearly 20 years we have seen a continuing debate, any number of reports and some measures on the statute book, yet we still seem no nearer to solving the conundrum of how to fund social or long-term care. I have to agree with my noble friend: there are those who argue that social care should be free at the point of use but I regard that as a fantasy. It is very unlikely that over the next 20 years any Government will in reality be able to afford it.
The problem is that, even though Governments have accepted some proposals in principle, when those proposals are costed, in reality they step back from them, and we are left in a hiatus of a completely arbitrary and unfair system. The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, referred to this problem, which is, if you like, a boundary dispute between such care being free at the point of use in the NHS and means-tested personal social care. Understandably, tensions often arise within NHS hospitals as families try to resist an individual who is receiving care which is free at the point of use in the NHS ending up in the care system, where a means test takes place. I do not think that anyone can say that we have a fair system. In my view, it is equally unfair that self-funders in care homes effectively subsidise local authority-funded residents. Speaking from where I am, I suppose you could regard that as a kind of regressive taxation. It is so arbitrary and so unfair that I believe it is very difficult to justify.
It seems to me that either we try to solve this problem or millions of people over the next 30 years will carry on living in what is sometimes abject misery, uncertainty and fear about their financial future and about their families, to whom they would like to pass on some income where they are in a position to do so. If one were putting odds on it, one would say that at the moment one sees very little likelihood of anyone coming forward with a cohesive package of things which can be funded, which is thought to be fair and which would get public support, although clearly that is what we seek to do.
The deferred payment arrangement is very disappointing. Clearly, David Cameron’s pledge was widely welcomed and was seen to be progressive. My noble friend talked about the increased estimate that the department gave, going from £4,000 to £12,300, but in any case £12,300 seems a pathetic amount. We seem to have a complete failure in the marketplace. There is no easy way for people to translate a housing asset into care home support while retaining the ability to leave some of their resources to their loved ones when they die.
A number of organisations have commented on what has happened to the deferred payment scheme. Clearly, bringing in such a tight means test undermined what we thought Mr Cameron had been offering. The point was well made by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, that we need, at the very least, to see how the scheme is working. I know that the Minister, in an answer to my noble friend in March, said that the department is continuing to monitor the success of this scheme and that an update of these deferred payment schemes across all local authorities will be available later in the year. I hope that he may be about to give us a progress report on that.
I have had evidence from Royal London and some of the charities. Royal London, for example, looked at the inconsistency between local authorities. It said that despite access to deferred payment agreement being a legal right—I am not sure that that is quite how I read the Act, but we know what it is getting at, because it is in the Act—10 local authorities told Royal London they had not entered into a single agreement since the scheme was introduced in April 2015. That is a pretty poor show. I ask the Minister: in light of the work that we hope will be published later in the year, what are we going to do about local authorities which simply refuse to operate the scheme at all?
My final point comes back to the Government’s manifesto proposal, their retreat and the intention set out in the Queen’s Speech to consult on how we improve the social care system. I refer the Minister to the Care Act 2014, a marvellous piece of work. It was consensual, it came from Dilnot and we spent weeks in your Lordships’ House in a consensual approach, yet it is dead and gone. There are some bits in it that are good, still, and which I very much applaud. It is a puzzle that the Government have never explicitly said whether they regard the whole thing as dead and gone and that is why they put the new proposals in their manifesto.
What is the consultation going to be about? Will it be about making the scheme that the Government put in their manifesto slightly more generous—raise the level, reduce the floor—or are they prepared to actually look again at Dilnot, which everyone said was a sensible approach, even if the figures may not be the right figures? Of course, the Government’s rate was much less generous than the original Dilnot proposal, but at the end of the day, whatever information the Minister can give us about the consultation, which we hope can be comprehensive, would be very welcome.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord O’Shaughnessy) (Con)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, for bringing forward this debate. I know that he has been a tenacious proponent of deferred payments and of reform of the care system. I pay credit to him for that—it is very rare that we have a debate where I can thank everyone individually, so I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to know Lord Joffe, but I know how much the House has mourned his passing and have noted the contribution he made. I want to acknowledge that as we talk about this issue.
We have had a bit of a trip down memory lane today, although others might call it Groundhog Day. We seem to be going over this issue repeatedly without properly resolving it. Of course it is not easy; the ageing population is probably the greatest social challenge, at least the greatest domestic social challenge, that we face. It is not one that we have grappled well with in the past, and that is true of Governments of all hues. That is for a number of reasons, including obviously the money and the changing nature of society, particularly working patterns. What has been highlighted by all noble Lords is the interplay between the taxpayer funded, free at the point of use National Health Service and a social care system that works on a different basis. It means that any attempt, whether it is a Labour-proposed national health and care service or through integration at STP level, is made very hard, particularly as things move. So I do not underplay the importance of this issue, and, of course, as we think about the narrower issue of DPAs, it has to be set in a context of what is happening elsewhere.
In the short run, more money is going into local authorities to try to provide the social care that is required. It is particularly focused on delayed transfers of care. That has some interplay with this issue precisely because of the concerns about moving from one part of the health system into another, something mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. It is about the difference between continuing healthcare and social care and the quite radical consequences of the different funding situations for families that are necessarily trying to navigate through it at a time of stress. It is a challenge, but we are trying to address it through this additional funding.
In the long run, as noble Lords have pointed out, the intention is to bring forward proposals on social care reform for consultation. The objective in the consultation—I am glad the noble Lord mentioned the Care Act—is to achieve the widest possible consensus. It should not be a completely open-ended “what shall we do” process, but it should try to put forward some proposals that, inevitably in the process of consultation, will change but will try to achieve some kind of consensus. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, specifically asked about Dilnot. There was a lot of agreement around Dilnot, but I still come across people who think that Dilnot was the worst thing that could ever have happened. There is a more nuanced picture. If anything, that just underlines the importance of taking care as we try to build a consensus.
Moving forward to the specific issue of the debate, which is deferred payment agreements, as has been outlined, they are a means by which individuals can access equity in their home to pay for care without having to sell it, meaning that they do not have to sell their home in their lifetimes. As the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, pointed out, DPAs have been in existence for a number of years and the issue was addressed in the Care Act precisely to attempt to create a more thoroughgoing national system to replace what had obviously been quite a patchy one. Even though some elements of the Care Act have not been taken forward, in particular the social care reform agenda, as has been pointed out, the Government took the decision to move ahead with the implementation of DPAs in order to fulfil the pledge of the previous Prime Minister—to whom both he and my noble friend Lady Sugg owe their position in this House—that people should not have to sell their homes in order to go into care during their lifetime.
In terms of the actual performance of the scheme, we had a year of voluntary data collecting for 2015-16, although it is now compulsory. A helpful note tells me that the next iteration of the data is 2016-17, and NHS Digital should be publishing them towards the end of October. We will then have a really thorough look at what is happening. The previous year showed that about one-third of local authorities responded, so it was only a partial picture. Nevertheless, it was disappointing that fewer DPAs were agreed than had been anticipated. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, pointed this out as likely to be the case in the debate on the regulations. I will come to what we can do about it, but these are of course a means to an end in themselves. This is why I am not convinced that having a target is appropriate because it is about enabling a choice and adding to the choices that are available for people by providing a means of deferring payment until after death. There are many reasons why people may not choose a DPA, and of course the private market is evolving all the time. But we need to understand why there were fewer DPAs than anticipated and to ensure that those who are eligible for them can access one. If there are local authorities where not one has been signed, that suggests that something is going wrong at the local level in terms of communication between the local authority, individuals and the social care sector. So we need to know why that happens.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
In the noble Lord’s very helpful response, he referred to the private market. He mentioned that not everyone thought Dilnot was the right answer, because one of Dilnot’s aims was, by capping costs, for the insurance market to come in when they have been reluctant to. I wondered whether part of the consultation would seek to answer the conundrum of what could make the insurance market come into this area more enthusiastically. Clearly, that would be one way that we could solve some of the problems.
Lord O’Shaughnessy
The noble Lord makes a good point. I do not know if that will be laid out explicitly. We have talked a little about the manifesto and how it was a movable feast over the course of a weekend. We ended up with a floor and a cap. At the point at which you have a cap, in theory, you have an insurable product. It depends whether it is insured by the private market or the state, but that was clearly at the core of the Dilnot design. There was lots of disagreement about how you could take forward that principle, but I think it useful so that, in keeping with the nature of the market, you have a mixed economy of funding.
We have been talking to local authorities to understand why people may not be accessing DPAs. There are a number of barriers, such as lack of awareness, interest charges and administrative fees. We are considering what actions can be taken locally and nationally to raise awareness and understanding of the scheme. One example of that is that is the wide variation in administrative fees charged by local authorities. Clearly, it is important that those fees are not set at a prohibitive rate, nor that local authorities are or seem to be profiting from the fees. They are meant to be covering costs. However, I think interest rates provide quite a positive picture, because the interest rate is around a third of that offered by the standard equity release scheme on the market. With wider awareness, that would prove more attractive than it has done.
Regarding the eligibility criteria, £100,000 is a magic fee in this social care debate—even more so after the election. That was the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, made about the reform proposal and widening eligibility. There are two points I would like to make on this. First, the Government’s aim in establishing the scheme was particularly to ensure that people did not have to sell their homes, rather than run down other capital. I know that that is more limited than noble Lords might like, but that was nevertheless the aim of the scheme.
The second point is that, in expanding the criteria, a local authority should in theory be able to recoup its costs, but there may be some costs in taking on a wider group of qualifying people. There is always a balance to be struck, particularly in cash flow terms, between helping a group who are by definition better-off people, and fairness to local taxpayers. That is one issue that needs to be considered.
The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, asked in particular about the deep dive that happened. She will be disappointed to hear that departmental protocol is that these are for internal use only, so I am afraid I am not in a position to share that information with her. It sounds like she has the detail on what happened anyway, so I am not sure that that would necessarily reveal anything that she does not know.
To conclude, it remains a departmental priority to make the scheme accessible to all those who are eligible and would benefit from it. We will continue to monitor the scheme and, once the data are published, may look at some of the ideas suggested by noble Lords on how to give this scheme more momentum. Clearly, the intention of it is not to be de minimis, but to reach the original target and more people beyond that. We are open to ideas on how that can be achieved.
Finally, any DPA scheme must in the long run fit into the wider context of social care funding and provision. That point has been well made in this debate. As the proposals come out for consultation, considering the interplay of DPAs and the overall funding environment will be critical in whether reforms are successful. I conclude by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, again for tabling this debate and other noble Lords for their contributions. I look forward to working with them on getting consensus on real reform in the sector.
House of Lords
(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Oaths and Affirmations
(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Schools: Children in Care
(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Lexden
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have plans to enable more children in care to obtain places in state and independent boarding schools.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to my noble friend for this Question, as it is a subject close to my heart. We are very keen to encourage more local authorities to consider boarding for vulnerable children. This summer we launched the Boarding School Partnerships service, very ably chaired by Colin Morrison, the former chair of the Royal National Children’s Foundation, and this service operates jointly with the boarding schools sector and charities to help local authorities collaborate with charities to place vulnerable children in state and independent boarding schools.
Lord Lexden (Con)
Does my noble friend agree that children in care can benefit greatly from a boarding education where they are suited to it? Is it not the case that many local councils once recognised this, with some 10,000 placements being arranged in the late 1960s?
Lord Nash
I agree entirely with my noble friend that boarding can have great benefits for the right children, and we want to see more vulnerable children able to access it. My noble friend is quite right that boarding was more common at one time. Boarding school, with its 24/7 level of pastoral care, can be particularly suitable for vulnerable children, and that is why we are encouraging its use more widely and why we have set up the Boarding School Partnerships.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, has this scheme been evaluated, and, if so, how? Have children been asked about the success of the scheme?
Lord Nash
That is a very good question from the noble Baroness. The scheme was launched only a few months ago and we will be concentrating initially on promoting it with local authorities. The department recently had a very successful event with local authorities to launch it with a number of people who had been in care and at boarding school speaking passionately about it. Our first step is to promote it with local authorities, but we will, when appropriate, evaluate it.
Lord Laming (CB)
My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that it is easy to say that this facility should be for children when it is appropriate for them? But please let us not gloss over what happened in the 1960s. Many children were sent to boarding schools where, frankly, they were out of sight, out of mind and they had some terrible experiences. Let us go for a wide range, but make sure the placement is appropriate to the child’s needs.
The Lord Bishop of Southwark
My Lords, as the Minister is aware, those who live in tied accommodation as part of their employment or the holding of an office have an unintentional structural disadvantage when it comes to their children’s schooling. This is ameliorated in the case of military families but not in the case of others, such as clergy and their children. Will Her Majesty’s Government now act to address this disadvantage by amending the code?
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the appropriate word is “appropriate”, and we must do what is right for the individual child in care. It might be that boarding school provision is correct, but would the Minister agree that, where boarding school provision is provided, we must have the most vigorous safeguarding assessment of that provision?
Lord Nash
I agree with the noble Lord that that is essential, but we have moved a long way from the 1960s. It may have been, as a reaction to some of the points the noble Lord, Lord Laming, made, that we have moved too far in the other direction and there is a certain overreluctance by some local authorities. We have definitely seen that local authorities are now better informed and visit schools. If noble Lords visit the Boarding School Partnerships website— at boardingschoolpartnerships.org.uk—they will be impressed, as there is a lot of information there to help local authorities on which schools are providing this and how they might assess whether it is appropriate for a particular child.
Lord Elton (Con)
My Lords, will local authorities retain their duty of care during term time, and what arrangements will be made during holidays to see that the children’s educational interests are not neglected during that time?
Lord Nash
My noble friend makes a very good point, as local authorities do remain responsible. In holidays there are some facilities that may be able to keep children and we have initiatives to try to extend such arrangements, but it is certainly the case that local authorities continue to be responsible.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, is it true that this whole programme is being driven by the need to save money, as against placing children in foster care? In so far as we know that only 100 children nationally are now in such placements, surely we should fully evaluate the effect on those children before we proceed further down this route.
Lord Nash
It is not driven by money at all; it is driven by a passionate belief by a number of people, including the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and others who have been to boarding school that it can help and that we had lurched into a certain prejudice against boarding schools. We are just inviting local authorities to look more widely at the options and making much more information available to allow them to evaluate those options.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, while acknowledging the potential benefits of the Boarding School Partnerships, the noble Lord will be aware that most children in care will have experienced some kind of trauma and a high proportion have unmet mental health needs. Extending the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, I think that it is questionable whether boarding schools are equipped to provide the sort of wraparound support that these children may need. Indeed, such a placement does not necessarily address the reasons a child was taken into care in the first place. For many of the children being placed at a state or independent boarding school, that will be outside their local authority. Research by the Children’s Society demonstrates that the further children are placed from home, the more likely they are to go missing from care. Will the Minister give an assurance that, when children in care are placed in boarding schools outside their home local authorities, the placing local authority will share appropriate information with the host authority to ensure that these children are appropriately safeguarded and have their particular needs met?
Pension Schemes: Universities
(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Falkner of Margravine
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the affordability and sustainability of United Kingdom university pension schemes.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, universities are subject to regular assessment of their financial sustainability, management and governance. Government set the legislative framework for pension schemes to operate within. It is for the trustee and employer to agree appropriate plans to ensure schemes are adequately funded. This is overseen by the independent Pensions Regulator. Where the Pensions Regulator believes that a scheme’s position warrants its involvement, it considers intervention options, from education through enablement to enforcement.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)
I need to declare a few interests. I am visiting professor at King’s College London, I am married to an academic who pays into the scheme and I am the parent of a child who is paying university tuition fees: these may well be used to bail out the scheme, so I submit to the House that I may be relatively neutral in this regard.
I accept that the valuations of the scheme are a matter for the Pensions Regulator, and its discussions with Universities UK will be interesting, but the size of the deficit of the United Kingdom’s largest private pension scheme must be of some interest to the Government. I remind the Minister that, rightly, the Government bailed out the banks. It would appear odd, when the public purse pays £105 billion into universities, that they should say that this is a hands-off matter. We know that there are only three ways to plug the gap: to make students pay for it through higher fees; to cut research and teaching budgets; or for the universities themselves to plug the gap, perhaps through cutting senior salaries and remuneration. Which approach do the Government favour?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
The House may not be surprised to hear me say that it does not need reminding about the passage of the Higher Education Act, when there was a strong focus on universities being autonomous institutions responsible for their own finances. While the Government cannot intervene in a higher education institution’s finances, we do set and will continue to set the maximum fee cap.
On pension schemes, the independent Pensions Regulator has powers to protect member benefits under circumstances set out in legislation, and that remains.
Lord Cormack (Con)
If the Government cannot interfere in university finances, why are they making statements about how much vice-chancellors should be paid?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I should just point out to my noble friend that the Government are not making statements about how much they should be paid. My honourable friend in the other place, Jo Johnson, made a speech this morning reiterating his point that universities should exercise great restraint in deciding how much to pay vice-chancellors and other staff and has set out a series of guidance. Furthermore, the Office for Students, which has been set up as part of the Act, will also be given greater powers and encouragement to set a remuneration code.
Baroness Altmann (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that there seems to have been quite a lot of scaremongering about this particular pension scheme? The assets of the scheme have performed well; it is well governed, has already adjusted its benefits in relation to the deficit that opened up in the 2014 valuation, and is now negotiating with universities and unions as to further adjustments that will be required. However, it is important to stress that student fees are set by the Government, and universities have sources of income that go well beyond the fees they receive from students. Much of the problem is caused by the exceptional policies that the Bank of England faces. This is an open scheme with strong cash flow and strong governance.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My noble friend knows more than I do how complex managing pension schemes is. There are lots of variables and issues to consider. She is right that there was a review in 2014. In fact, there is a review of the scheme every three years and a recovery plan is in place. My noble friend is right: the recovery plan, we believe, is robust and will offer a good degree of stability for the next 30 years.
The DWP is publishing a Green Paper in February to build on the ongoing discussions on pension schemes in general. We will publish a response to the consultation in a White Paper this winter.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, the Question in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, mentioned university schemes, although for the reasons she outlined to us, she only referred to the Universities Superannuation Scheme. In fact, there is a two-tier system in pensions provision for academic staff in universities. An academic retiring after 30 years at Oxford University will have a pension pot with the USS scheme worth around £150,000 less than an academic retiring at the same time from Oxford Brookes University in the Teachers’ Pension Scheme. While the Teachers’ Pension Scheme is in good financial health, despite the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, the Universities Superannuation Scheme is certainly not. The Universities and Colleges Union has real concerns about the manner in which the scheme’s executives carry out valuations and make investment decisions.
Will the Minister ask the Department for Education to challenge university finance directors over the manner in which the scheme is being run—leaving aside the role of the Pensions Regulator—when academic staff, their representatives and others have made suggestions for a change in direction for the scheme which have so far been ignored?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I do not agree with the noble Lord’s assessment of the scheme. It has a deficit, but so have many pension schemes. He will know more than I do about how that operates. It is being closely monitored and Universities UK, which oversees the scheme as a representative of employers, has launched a consultation this month which will run until 29 September on the proposed assumptions for the scheme’s technical provisions. A lot is going on to be sure that we monitor the scheme’s progress. Without getting too technical, interest rates, as the House may know, have played a part. These can change, and suddenly the parameters can change.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)
To pick up my noble friend’s final point, does he accept that when the Bank of England eventually starts to raise base rates to more normal levels, a lot of pension funds will be much more fundable and sustainable than they are today?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I am not an expert in pension schemes, but let us hope that is the case. It is one of many parameters that one has to take account of in managing pension schemes.
Lord Lexden (Con)
Does my noble friend agree that several university vice-chancellors should be paid much more than our Prime Minister?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I am not going to be drawn into commenting on that. I will only repeat what I said earlier, which is that universities are being strongly encouraged to show restraint in the amount of remuneration they set their staff.
Brexit: Negotiations
(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Spicer
To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they will next report to Parliament on the progress of negotiations with the European Union with regard to Brexit.
The Minister of State, Department for Exiting the European Union (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)
My Lords, on Tuesday, the Government made a Statement to the House of Commons on progress made in both the July and August negotiation rounds, which I repeated in this Chamber. The Secretary of State made a clear commitment to give an update to the House of Commons after each round of negotiations. With the leave of this House, it will also be repeated here.
Lord Spicer (Con)
Will my noble friend confirm that when we leave the European Union on 19 March 2019, the jurisdiction of all the bodies throughout Europe that have governing powers will cease, that that is the essence of Brexit, and that the rest of the issues are consequential and could be settled in their own time?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My noble friend has raised questions which I am sure will occupy this House with great interest and elicit investigation over the period until we do leave the European Union. He raises a crucial point that in leaving the European Union, we take back control of our own laws, and this is about how we do that and the pace at which we do it. We have made it clear that, for example, the direct jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union will end as we leave the European Union. But another place is currently discussing the withdrawal Bill, which makes it clear that there would still be some role for the CJEU, for example in pending cases. It is a complex matter and my noble friend is right to raise it.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, given the timescales, there will be important negotiations during recesses. Our EU Committee asked the Secretary of State to report back during the Summer Recess, and was clear that if he was unable to attend on the particular date it offered, it would be happy to hear from another Minister, the Permanent Secretary or the Permanent Representative. The invitation was declined—not just for that date but until October. Yet the Secretary of State found time to be part of the entertainment at the Edinburgh Festival, as a guest of Alex Salmond. This is a question of priorities, and that shows more respect for the comedy fringe than it does for Parliament. Is it right that Ministers can ignore Parliament in this way throughout any recess, particularly when it is the Government who choose the recess dates?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, the Government have not ignored Parliament. We made clear at the beginning of the process, when the British public decided they wanted to leave the European Union, that there would be regular reporting to Parliament. Indeed, what we do is far beyond what is available to the European Parliament, in effect, because we make available Statements, debates and Questions in which all parliamentarians may participate. In addition, in just the 15 months since my own department was founded, the Secretary of State appeared before the EU Committee on 11 July and, as the noble Baroness said, of course he plans to attend very shortly. He has also provided evidence to the Select Committee on Exiting the European Union in another place on two occasions, and will appear before that committee when it has been re-established. In those 15 months, there have been a further 14 occasions where my department’s Ministers and officials have given evidence to a wide range of committees. We continue with our commitment to engage fully with Select Committees. There are various ways in which we can do that, and I very much look forward to discussing those matters in detail with individual committees and their chairs.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend think that there is any prospect that when the Government report on the negotiations to this House and to the other place, we will not see the same speeches made by the same people who are still fighting the referendum campaign and trying to reverse the result brought about by the British people?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
Immediately after the result of the referendum last year, when I said that I had voted to remain, I also said that when democracy makes a decision you accept it and move on. My noble friend is right.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, we are moving from general principle to detail on the negotiations now, and it is the detail that we find extremely difficult. I remember that before we joined the single market, when Mrs Thatcher was negotiating it, a study demonstrated that, actually, the British accepted US regulation in domestic law as a matter of course, because we had to accept international regulation on a whole host of things. We are now discovering about the detail, and if we are leaving the EU both Houses need to be kept informed on the question of which international regulations we accept, and how we proceed, on everything from blood supplies to airline regulation. Many lobbies will be extremely interested, and that is the hard stuff that we need to be kept informed about. Can the Minister give us some reassurance?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
The noble Lord is absolutely right about how crucial it is that, as negotiations progress and there is more of a convergence of agreement about what is, as he says, very detailed technical information about the status of regulations after Brexit, we are able to transmit that information. I assure him that that is what we have sought to do throughout the summer. One brief example is provided by the common position paper, published by both the EU Commission and the UK, on our negotiations on the status of citizens. Clearly a wide range of issues, including highly technical ones, are involved, and after the August round we updated the online convergence annexe immediately and made sure the information was in this House. That really shows how we are trying to transmit that detail. But I do not underestimate the complexity or the amount of detail that I know the House will wish to scrutinise.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister recognise that the issue of periodicity of reporting, which the noble Lord, Lord Spicer, raised, is not the only one at stake? There is also, of course, the content of the reports, which up to now has left something to be desired—and also the ability of this House, when the report is made, to have more than the time that is made available when a ministerial Statement is made. Will the Minister consult the usual channels to see whether, in the case of Brexit, which is a matter of huge interest to all parts of this House, the time allowed for discussion following a ministerial Statement on the progress of the negotiations is a bit longer than is allowed on a normal one?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I think there are many views around the House about how noble Lords wish to participate in the scrutiny of these matters. A Statement is, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, just one method. There are indeed occasions when the usual channels can arrange debate, and I thank my noble friend the Captain of the Gentlemen-at-Arms for being so generous as to put time on the Order Paper next Tuesday so that this House can examine the position papers at length. That is a measure of the generosity of the Government; I hope that it will be met in good spirit, and not undermined by others.
Bell Pottinger
(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, the behaviour of Bell Pottinger in South Africa has been completely unacceptable. We support the investigations conducted by the Public Relations and Communications Association and Herbert Smith Freehills and the stark conclusions of their report. I want to put it on record that at no stage were Her Majesty’s Government in any way involved in its work in South Africa.
Lord Hain (Lab)
I welcome that Answer but do the Government agree that, after running a pernicious and poisonously racist smear campaign in South Africa for the wealthy Gupta brothers, whom President Zuma has enabled to capture the state and bankroll his family and friends through corruption and cronyism, all Bell Pottinger’s work for British public bodies must be called in and reviewed? Since the respected former Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has stated that the Guptas and Zumas have benefited from 6.8 billion rand of money laundering, can the Government investigate whether any British banks are involved and what action can be taken at a European level? Will the Minister agree to meet me about this?
Lord Young of Cookham
I am grateful to the noble Lord for those questions. There are no contracts between the Government and Bell Pottinger. On the second point about money laundering, I have read the reports that I referred to in my original reply and there is no implication that there has been any money laundering or indeed any criminal activity. The company behaved unprofessionally and unethically. If the noble Lord has any evidence of money laundering, of course that should be investigated. We have some of the toughest money laundering regulations in the world, and earlier this year Deutsche Bank was fined £163 million for breaching those regulations. If there is any evidence of money laundering, of course we should look at it. I would not rule out at all a ministerial meeting with the noble Lord.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, what action are we taking against the individuals involved in this case? It is okay dealing with the organisation, but what about the individuals? Will they be allowed to continue their normal duties?
Lord Young of Cookham
This is a private company operating in a foreign country. In this particular case, the chief executive has resigned and a number of officials have been dismissed. I am not sure there is a role for the Government in intervening on a private company in disciplinary matters of this nature.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, that is not quite the case. When the lobbying Bill was going through the House, we warned the Government that if they did not require a lobbying firm to be a member of a professional body and abide by its code, then their statutory register would be meaningless. We now see that Bell Pottinger, although thrown out of the PRCA because it broke the code, is still a member and remains on the statutory register, able to lobby Ministers and Permanent Secretaries. Could the Minister undertake to discuss with the Office for the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists whether it is appropriate to give to give credence to this company and whether Ministers will still be willing to meet with it?
Lord Young of Cookham
As I said, the Government have no contracts with Bell Pottinger. I understand that the registrar is in touch with Bell Pottinger to establish whether or not it is still signed up to the codes of either the PRCA or the other professional body. In the light of those inquiries, the register will then clarify whether it is still signed up to those principles. As the legislation stands, you can be removed from the register only if you stop doing public relations business. You cannot be removed from the register for the sort of activities that we have been talking about.
Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD)
Does not a rather wider consideration arise out of these matters? While Bell Pottinger might have suffered reputationally and financially from its behaviour, the fact that it is a British company, albeit operating in a foreign country, may well have an effect on the extent to which, in the febrile atmosphere of South African politics, diplomatic representations may be disregarded.
Lord Young of Cookham
I have been in touch with our high commissioner in Pretoria this morning. He has made it clear that this has had a very damaging impact on our country’s reputation in South Africa, which is why I have gone out of my way to make it absolutely clear that neither the Government nor indeed the staff of the high commission in South Africa were in any way involved in this contract. The reputation of Bell Pottinger has been seriously impaired. This is a company that seeks to boost the image of other companies but here it is, having a very severe reputational hit of its own. It could perhaps begin to put that right by donating any profits it has made from the contract to some charity in South Africa.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, made an observation in an earlier reply to the effect that it was not possible, as he understood it, for Bell Pottinger—or any other company—to be removed from the register of those people entitled to lobby Parliament. Might this not be an appropriate moment to review those rules and to consider whether there should be a mechanism for removing such people from the register?
Lord Young of Cookham
The House, I know, was surprised when I stated the legislative position: you can be removed from the register only if you stop acting as a lobbyist. That is what the law says. There was an attempt last year with a Private Member’s Bill, which started in this House and progressed through it, to take this a step further and have a statutory code of conduct. Although it passed through this House, there was no parliamentary time in another place to take it forward. Discussions are taking place at an official level between those who would like to see the sort of reform that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, has outlined, but at this stage the Government have no plans to legislate.
Business of the House
(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
That the debates on the motions in the names of Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood and Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho set down for today shall each be limited to 2½ hours.
Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee
(6 years, 7 months ago)
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The Senior Deputy Speaker
That Lord Blencathra be appointed Chairman of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in place of Baroness Fookes, resigned.
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper and, in doing so, inform the House that it is necessary as a result of the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, being taken seriously ill during the summer. I pay tribute personally to her for her support and encouragement to me since I took up this position. She has been outstanding as chair of the Delegated Powers Committee and as a parliamentarian over many decades. I am sure that the whole House will join me in wishing her a full and speedy recovery.
Lord Tyler (LD)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, who has been a remarkable chairman of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, on which I serve. I think all members of the committee will enthusiastically endorse what the noble Lord said. She has been extraordinarily wise, effective, forthright and non-partisan—a real tribute to the way in which chairs of committees in this House operate—and I entirely hope that all Members of your Lordships’ House will endorse what the noble Lord said about her rapid recovery to full health.
Prisons: Overcrowding
(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood
That this House takes note of the level of overcrowding in prisons.
Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)
My Lords, when opening the debate here on prison reform early last year, the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, now our esteemed Lord Speaker, recalled that when in the 1970s the prison population first exceeded 40,000, the Times published a series of articles under the heading “The Prisons Crisis”. Today, there are over 85,000 prisoners and, on present trends, this number is projected to rise in a very few years to over 90,000. Can anyone doubt that today our prisons truly are in crisis—seriously overcrowded, understaffed and volatile—and that the solution cannot be simply to build more, but lies rather in adopting fresh approaches to reducing their population and restoring what is now almost entirely lost: the real prospect of prison sentences actually being used to reform and rehabilitate inmates?
I need spend little time establishing that there are too many people in prison. Numerous statistics bear it out. The percentage of our population serving prison sentences is almost twice that in Germany, let alone Scandinavia, and very substantially higher than in most of the developed world. Our standard sentences are routinely substantially longer than elsewhere. The statistics are yet more striking when it comes to indeterminate sentences: astonishingly, in England and Wales, more people are sentenced to an indeterminate term than in all the other 46 countries of the Council of Europe combined.
Nor, surely, do I need to linger long on the many and acute problems which result from prison overcrowding. Inevitably I must generalise, so let me acknowledge at once the many caring and conscientious prison staff and governors who do their very best to overcome these problems. Their efforts notwithstanding, the consequences of overcrowding are all too evident. Almost one-fifth of prisoners are doubled up in single cells or tripled in cells for two, often sharing an open, unscreened toilet. Many spend up to 23 hours a day in these squalid conditions. Often prisons are without functioning classrooms, workshops, teachers or any of the other services or supports needed to help inmates to deal with problems and prepare them for release and resettlement. In short, warehousing has largely replaced rehabilitation.
Small wonder that prison riots and disturbances are no longer a rarity; prisons are dangerous places. Who can forget the finding by the Chief Inspector of Prisons in July that in not a single YOI is it safe to house a child? Small wonder, too, that in the last year there were more than 26,000 assaults in prison, including more than 7,000 on prison staff, that many prison officers suffer stress-related illnesses, and that there were more than 40,000 incidents of self-harm among inmates and 97 self-inflicted deaths. It is hardly surprising that, as the BMA has briefed, incarceration often leads to deterioration in physical and mental health, with the prisoner’s fragile state of mind all too often having played a part in his original offending. It is unsurprising, too, that the illegal use of drugs and mobile phones and the corruption, addiction, debt and violence that generally go with them represent widespread and persistent problems, such problems unlikely to be eradicated by 300 sniffer dogs and the hand-held mobile detectors promised by the Lord Chancellor in his Evening Standard article last month.
Perhaps least surprising of all is the high rate of recidivism following a prison sentence. In that same newspaper article, the Lord Chancellor expressly recognised that about half of those sent to jail will end up back behind bars. Some years ago, a Home Secretary famously suggested that “prison works”, above all in keeping prolific professional burglars out of our houses. Whether or not that was ever so, it manifestly is not today. Rather, it militates against any chance of effective rehabilitation, and once again we see the crime figures steadily on the rise. So the £1.3 billion now promised to the MoJ should be devoted not to catering for an ever-larger prison population but rather to improving the prison estate and facilities to prepare existing and future inmates for release.
The present continuing upward spiral must end, so let me briefly suggest four basic imperatives as to how—although, alas, with no sufficient time to develop them. First, send fewer people to prison and for shorter terms. Secondly, indefinite sentences, which are now commonplace, should become a rarity. Thirdly, facilitate prison release. Fourthly, drastically cut the number of recalls.
First and foremost, of course, we must end prison sentence inflation—its upward spiral. All too often, we hear of some dreadful fresh offence and, in common doubtless with many others—not just Daily Mail readers—whether it be a case of child cruelty, the torture of some elderly person to extract his savings or the recent spate of moped riders hurling acid into people’s faces, my first reaction is to lock the perpetrators up and throw away the key: avenge the victims or, at the very least, mark society’s outrage by raising the statutory maximum for the offence.
Indeed, that has often been Parliament’s reaction over recent years, but unfortunately—although perhaps occasionally justifiable in the case, say, of terrorist offences—its inevitable consequence has been to ratchet up sentences across the board. Even now, there is under consideration—subject to consultation and apparently gaining widespread public support—a proposal to increase from 14 years to life the maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving. Earlier this year, Parliament doubled the maximum sentences available for stalking and harassment offences, variously from five years to 10 and, in aggravated cases, from seven to 14 years. Before that, in 2014, the maximum sentence under the Dangerous Dogs Act was increased from two years to 14 years. In 2015, contrary to the judges’ advice, minimum custodial terms were introduced for carrying knives, both for second possession offences and for first offences where accompanied by threats.
And, of course, by Schedule 21 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the Act which first introduced the ill-starred IPP sentence scheme, the minimum terms to be served by mandatory life prisoners were fixed at substantially higher levels than ever before—through later amendments they have twice since been raised higher still—so they have risen steadily from an average of 12 and a half years in 2003 to, I think, over 21 years now.
The Sentencing Council—a largely judicial body created by statute in 2009—is loyally responsive to these demonstrations of Parliament’s will. As a result, guideline sentences have become progressively longer to maintain some sort of coherence across the entire spectrum of criminal offending. Reducing the length of prison sentences requires, above all, political will, not judicial policy-making. I urge Parliament to amend the council’s statutory remit to include among its aims the overall reduction of the prison population.
If one pauses for a moment and asks in the abstract how long a sentence should be—whether, say, a dangerous driver, a burglar or a historic sex offender should serve 10 or five years, or whatever—what logic dictates that answer? Assuming he does not need to be confined long term for reasons of public safety, but that some immediate custodial disposal is called for, how many weeks, months or years does due punishment—just retribution—require that he be locked up in a squalid cell away from his family and friends, and deprived of most else that makes life worth living? In terms of deterrence, while plainly it is important to catch, prosecute and convict offenders, there is no evidence to suggest that, whatever is fixed as the standard sentence, it is of any consequence in deterring criminal behaviour—least of all crimes of sex and violence. The first imperative, therefore, is fewer and shorter sentences, suspended wherever possible.
Secondly, we should impose infinitely fewer indefinite sentences, of which there are many different kinds, and to which currently over 11,000 prisoners are subject. Inevitably, they suffer uncertainty and hopelessness, unsettling for all those around them, not least their families. As is increasingly widely recognised, the IPP regime is a clear case in point. Despite its abolition in 2012, some 3,300 IPP prisoners are yet to be released, the majority having served for many years—some over 10 years—beyond their tariff terms. Truly, this is preventive detention—in effect, internment. It is a stain on our criminal justice system and it must end.
The third imperative is to facilitate the release of those who have served their minimum terms—indeed, ideally, to release them earlier still. Additional resources should be provided for training, education and suitable courses. Never should release be delayed because the Parole Board is insufficiently resourced to process it speedily. The burden of proving safety for release, which is almost impossible for the prisoner to discharge, should—as the chairman of the Parole Board himself recently suggested—shift on to those seeking his continued detention. Neither should release have to be delayed because of insufficient accommodation in probation hostels for long-sentence prisoners to live in under supervision in the community, the subject of a Times article last month.
The temporary release scheme, whereby prisoners are prepared for release by allowing them out during the day to undertake paid or voluntary work, has been greatly restricted over recent years, most regrettably, despite its previous record of almost 100% success. It should be fully restored. Indeed, I would go further and urge the scheme’s extension to encompass also, whenever possible, those actually serving sentences so that family relationships can be preserved, employment prospects improved and institutionalisation kept at bay.
The fourth and final imperative is that, once a prisoner has finally secured his release, he should not thereafter readily be recalled. The number of those in prison for breach of their licence conditions has grown from 150 in 1995 to over 6,000 today, including over 700 IPP prisoners, whose rate of recall almost matches their rate of release, an issue on which the Howard League is currently engaged. Recall should be used only exceptionally. As it is, the majority are largely for technical reasons: failing to attend a probation officer appointment, spending a night away from a notified address and so forth. The actual numbers of recalls have grown immeasurably. In 2000-01, there were just over 3,000 recalls to custody. In the year ending this March, over 21,000 were recalled, including 8,000 who had served under eight months. Indeed, since the Offender Rehabilitation Act, nearly 15,000 of those serving under a year have been recalled, generally for just 14 or 28 days. In short, the part-privatisation of the probation service and the eligibility for recall of those sentenced to under 12 months are proving just as problematic as many here predicted when these measures were introduced.
I am conscious that I have had time only to sketch in some of the problems and suggest some of the required solutions. I must end. I have not even touched on many of the problems affecting the Prison Service today—for example, those arising from an ever-ageing prison population, including many serving long sentences for historic sex abuse, cases nowadays representing over half the Crown Courts’ workload. Truly, prisons are in crisis. Indeed, the very fact that over 30 noble Lords, most with deep knowledge and experience in this field, are down to speak is some indication of the enormous public concern about the situation in our prisons today. I greatly look forward to their contributions, all too brief, though, alas, they must be.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, noble Lords will have observed that we are very tight for time in this debate. I respectfully remind them that when the clock shows three, any further utterances are technically out of time.
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)
My Lords, first, I warmly congratulate the noble and learned Lord on initiating a most distinguished and eminent debate, and on a very thoughtful contribution—as one would expect from a former justice of the Supreme Court.
I particularly welcome the current President-elect of the Supreme Court. When I first became involved in criminal justice matters 42 years ago as a very young magistrate, I became chairman of the juvenile court in Lambeth and was absolutely aware that the judiciary was coping with the consequences of poverty, disadvantage, illiteracy and domestic upheaval. In one young judge, Brenda Hale, I found a person who was interested in debating whether or not sentencing made any difference. I used to sit with a stipendiary who said, “In the public interest you must go to a detention centre”. I used to say, “In the public interest we know that if they go to a detention centre, they have an 80% chance of reoffending”—so a more thoughtful, analytical approach to sentencing is evidently part of this situation. The other areas of IPPs, prison release and cutting recalls are also critically important.
But I am afraid the idea that there was ever a mythical day when it all worked beautifully is nonsense. Dr Helen Johnston of the criminology department at the wonderful University of Hull has done a tremendous longitudinal study of prison, going right back to the middle of the 19th century. She states:
“The use of custodial sentences today are just as financially costly and ineffective as they have always been, and they will continue to damage chances of rehabilitation from the outset. For over a hundred years the use of custody has cut away connections and support-networks in the community. Sentenced offenders lose their residences, their jobs, and sometimes also their family-relationships as soon as they go through the doors of the prison”.
Now, people will talk about prison education and prison health. I felt very strongly about ensuring that prison health was part of the National Health Service, not outside it. But I have a different call for action. When Nick Hardwick stepped down as the Chief Inspector of Prisons, he described as “appalling” the sector’s,
“lack of imagination and … failure of empathy”.
What I am calling for, and believe we are beginning to see, is a real presence of imagination and a much more genuine empathy. I used to have debates in another place in the mid-1980s on prisons. Nobody was interested; it was not a subject that would have attracted as many speakers as there are today. The only way we are going to address these issues is by community mobilisation. This is not just the Justice Department but all departments of Government; and it is not just prisons but whole communities.
I argue that the police and crime commissioners, now in their second iteration, are much more appropriate and able to create partnerships. The new community rehabilitation companies are beginning to work well. Above all, the voluntary sector is now coming forward with massively impressive schemes. I have worked closely with Working Chance, which is working with employers to find work for women prisoners. The wonderful KeepOut scheme in Surrey is using prisoners to educate others.
All in all, we have to work together to create a community for change. We need innovation, ingenuity, collaboration and determination—and I believe we really can turn the tide.
Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome this debate and thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, for securing it at such a critical time, as this summer of unrest has shown.
We are facing a crisis that shows no sign of ending. Without a reduction in the numbers going to prison, there can be no solution to overcrowding. Together, England and Wales have the highest imprisonment rate in western Europe. The prison system as a whole has been overcrowded in every year since 1994. People in prison, both prisoners and staff, are less safe than they have been at any time, with more self-inflicted deaths, self-harm and assaults than ever before.
I have two suggestions to reduce the numbers going to prison. First, we should urgently review the use of short-term sentencing and reverse the sharp decline in community orders. Secondly, we should stop the imprisonment of women for non-violent offences and invest more in women’s centres. The Government should cancel plans for new women’s prisons and spend the resources instead on a network of women’s centres. Imprisoning women for a short time results in loss of employment and housing—and, worst of all, in their children being taken into care, often with devastating consequences.
The number of women in prison has more than doubled since 1993: there are now nearly 2,300 more women in prison today than there were in 1993. On 16 June this year there were 3,994 women in prison in England and Wales, and 8,447 women were sent to prison in the year to December 2016, either on remand or to serve a sentence.
Most women entering prison under sentence have committed a non-violent offence, with theft offences accounting for nearly half of all custodial sentences given to women in 2016. As a result, most women entering prison serve a very short sentence: 70% of sentenced women entering prison in the year to December 2016 were serving six months or less. Short sentences do not allow for a programme of rehabilitation, education and training to take effect or for the health and social needs that many women face on entering custody to be addressed. Many are already damaged, with 53% reporting having experienced emotional, physical or sexual abuse as a child. There were 12 self-inflicted deaths of women in prisons in England and Wales in 2016. My noble friend Lady Corston made important recommendations in her report a decade ago that are still relevant today.
Reducing the use of short prison sentences would ease pressure throughout the prison estate. They are not only wasteful but ineffective, with 60% of people serving sentences of 12 months or less reoffending within one year of release. Now is the time to rethink sentencing and imprisoning women unnecessarily.
Lord McNally (LD)
My Lords, being called so early gives me the opportunity to be the first to remind the House that it was the Liberal Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, over 100 years ago, who said that the measurement of a society’s civilisation was how it treated its prisoners. There is no doubt, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, demonstrated in his forensic presentation, that the case for prison reform is overwhelming. As preparation for this debate I read the reflections of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, on his five and a half years as Prisons Minister—I mean inspector—and over 14 years ago the subtitle of his book, Prisongate, was,
“The shocking state of Britain’s prisons and the need for visionary change”.
Fewer than seven weeks ago, the Chief Inspector of Prisons warned us that the situation was getting worse.
The case is therefore there, so why does nothing happen? One point where I disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, is the idea that we would get a more enlightened debate at the other end. I fear that part of the problem of prison reform is that in a way, the whole of our Prison Service is like a paddle steamer driven by two paddles, but they go in different directions. One paddle is egged on by the media, influenced by public opinion and by politicians who, when given the hard choice between backing the difficult decision or playing for the politics of fear, have too often chosen the latter, and by political parties of all kinds, which, when it comes to elections, put out their leaflets telling their would-be voters how crime is rising and how they are going to deal with it. That paddle, pounding away, always makes it difficult to get the case for reform.
We therefore have to understand that the debate today, which will be overwhelmingly in favour of sensible reform, still has to pass that test of how we get a Secretary of State, a Prisons Minister and a Prime Minister who are willing to drive the reforms through. The building blocks are there: the Corston report on women, the Bradley report on mental health, the Harris report on deaths in custody, the Laming report on looked-after children, Dame Sally Coates’s report on education in prisons, and Charlie Taylor’s report on an education-led reform of youth custody. What is required is the political will. I would like to see the Prisons Minister at the Bar. I hope he reads this full debate and takes some courage from what he reads.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, I salute my noble and learned friend Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood for tabling this important debate, on an issue that has bedevilled the conduct of imprisonment for far too long. Time allows me to mention only two possible ameliorations, neither of them new, of which I hope the Minister will take note.
Giving evidence to my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf’s masterly inquiry into the riots in Strangeways and other prisons in 1990, the then Director-General of the Prison Service, Mr Train, justifying his contention that:
“for improvement to be solid and service-wide, the canker of overcrowding must be rooted out”,
said that,
“the life and work of the Prison Service have, for the last 20 years, been distorted by the problems of overcrowding. That single factor has dominated prisoners’ lives, it has produced often intolerable pressure on the staff, and as a consequence it has soured industrial relations. It has skewed managerial effort and it has diverted it away from positive developments. The removal of over-crowding is … an indispensable pre-condition of sustained and universal improvement in prison conditions”.
My noble and learned friend recommended a new prison rule that no establishment should be allowed to hold more than 3% of its certified level of accommodation for longer than three months without the permission of the Secretary of State, about which he had to inform Parliament. The then Home Secretary, now the noble Lord, Lord Baker, followed the inquiry with a White Paper containing 12 priorities for the way ahead for the Prison Service, including to end overcrowding. Sadly, none has yet been implemented by any successor Secretary of State, nor has the proposed Prison Rule.
My second point involves cell certification, for which, under the Prison Commission, inspectors were responsible, but which the Home Office brought in-house when it took over the running of prisons in 1963. As Chief Inspector, I felt it quite wrong that the Prison Service should be both judge and jury on how many prisoners might be held in each cell. I agitated that I should be made responsible for advising the Secretary of State on when overcrowding had become so bad in a particular prison that further intakes of prisoners should be forbidden—my request was refused.
Of course, ministerial and parliamentary oversight of the numbers, and cell certification by the inspectorate, will not by themselves root out the canker of over- crowding. But if the Prison Service’s distortion of its role is to be rooted out, Ministers and officials must stop ignoring, and start listening, to the clarion calls of those who, for years, have been drawing their attention to the damage that overcrowding does to a system for which they are responsible and accountable to the public.
The Lord Bishop of Rochester
My Lords, I too am very grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, for bringing this debate. I rather wish that the slight slip of the tongue of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, in first referring to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, as a former Minister for Prisons had been true, but there we are.
I recall a visit in my capacity as Bishop to Her Majesty’s Prisons, to one of our prisons and encountering a young man who was visibly distressed and disturbed, sitting against a wall with his hands over his ears, unable to cope with the general noise and hubbub on a prison wing—not least an overcrowded prison wing. I talked to one of the officers on that wing, who was relatively newly recruited and new in post; he was clearly there because of a really positive motivation, wanting to make a difference and with a vocation to work in the Prison Service. However, he was very conscious that because of responsibility to the whole wing, he was unable to give that distressed young prisoner the focused attention that was required.
We have in our prisons many governors, chaplains, staff, volunteers and officers like the one I have just described, who seriously want to make a difference, have a vocation for this work and are committed, and who want to see what is the aspiration of the Prison Service come to fruition, namely to create a rehabilitative culture. Sadly, it is largely a matter of numbers, more particularly, the ratio between numbers and staffing, which frustrates that desire and aspiration in so many ways. So many of the good interventions, programmes and possibilities delivered by staff, volunteers and many others are not able to fulfil their potential in bringing transformation and in turning around people’s lives. If that ratio between staff and prisoner numbers is too stretched, then these programmes cannot be delivered, the relationships are not built and there is no such transformation.
There are two particular things I would like to take this opportunity to address to Her Majesty’s Government. One relates to those, of whom there are far too many in prison, who have serious mental health conditions. Can conversations between the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Health be seriously ratcheted up to address that issue, with serious proposals about alternative provision for people for whom prison is not the right place to be because of their mental health conditions? That would have a significant effect on the prison population. Secondly, will Her Majesty’s Government give serious attention to the consultation that is being undertaken by the Scottish Government at the moment, which will bring in a presumption against sentences shorter than 12 months, and to ask whether there are lessons to be learned for the Prison Service on the back of that consultation, and for sentencing policy in England and Wales?
It is crucial, if prison is going to do what we all want it to do, that these issues are addressed, so I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, for bringing forward this opportunity for us to hear the wisdom of so many within this House.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, there are far too many people in prison who ought not to be there at all. I have been concerned for some time about what can best be described as inflation in the length of the sentences being imposed by the courts. In England and Wales, the average length of a custodial sentence in 2007 was 12.4 months. In March 2017, it was 16.6 months—an increase of about one-quarter over the decade. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, pointed out, the tariffs for life sentences have increased too. In 2005, the average tariff in England and Wales was 15.7 years. By 2015, it had increased to 21.2 years. These are shocking increases. Why has this happened and what purpose is it serving? The Sentencing Council should be asked to examine the phenomenon of sentence inflation, to consider whether these increases now serve any useful purpose and to find ways of reversing the increases where they do not.
The effect of overcrowding is that the opportunity for effective rehabilitation is greatly reduced. On the other hand, many more prisoners are being recalled now for breach of licence conditions than ever before. The Transforming for Rehabilitation programme, introduced by the previous Government in February 2015, requires all those sentenced to a custodial term of less than 12 months to be subject to supervision for 12 months on release and to be eligible for recall. Since that date, there have been nearly 15,000 recalls of people serving these short sentences. This means that the number of people in prison on any day for breaching licence conditions has increased from 150 in June 1995 to 6,500 in March 2017—another shocking figure.
After all, the majority of those recalled are being sent back to prison for technical reasons only, such as failing to attend appointments with probation officers. They have not reoffended. They are in prison for a few days only, before being released again. The only purpose of this is to prevent reoffending by further rehabilitation. But what is the point of recalling prisoners for breach of conditions when, due to lack of resources, the rehabilitation element is largely absent?
This, like the IPP problem to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, has drawn attention so frequently, is a policy—no doubt well meaning—that has gone badly wrong. The good intentions that lie behind these measures are not being matched by a commitment to provide the funding necessary to make them work. The Government need to address the reasons for these rises in prison numbers as much as they need to address the physical problems the overcrowding gives rise to.
Lord Wigley (PC)
My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, for facilitating this timely debate and I endorse his comments, particularly with regard to IPP prisoners. The prison system in England and Wales has been characterised for the last 30 years by overcrowding, building programme challenges, disorder and the absence of any reductionist strategy. The number of prisoners incarcerated in England and Wales has risen by 1,200 since May 2017 to over 86,000, despite the fact that fewer cases are coming before the courts. That is not because more criminals are being caught and sent down, but because a higher proportion of offenders are getting prison sentences and those sentences are getting longer, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, mentioned a moment ago.
Projections show that numbers in custody are likely to increase by another 1,600 by 2022. If so, at least one more prison will be needed. Incidentally, our priority in Wales is to secure our first women’s prison. The latest statistics show that not only sexual and violent offenders are getting tougher punishments from the courts. In 2010, less than a quarter of people convicted of theft went to jail, but last year the corresponding figure was almost 30%. Average prison terms as a whole have risen from under 14 months to over 16 months over the last seven years, as has been noted.
Research is needed to clarify whether the courts are hearing more serious cases or seeing more prolific offenders. The reduction by half in the police cautioning rates suggests that in all probability, more less-serious cases are coming before the courts than was the case seven years ago. Since 2010, the proportion of indictable crimes resulting in a community order fell from 25% to 20%. For so-called either-way offences, it fell from 42% to 37% over the same time period. It seems that these options are less attractive to the judiciary.
Violence in prisons is at record levels, including a 20% increase in assaults over the past year. The Howard League reports that 264 men and women have died in the 10 most recently opened prisons since 1997. There have been 8,188 recorded incidents of self-injury and 3,952 recorded assaults.
In a poll published last week, when asked what would be the most effective way of cutting crime, just 7% of respondents said “jail more people”. The majority advocated more police on the streets, better parenting, greater discipline in schools or better rehabilitation, yet successive Governments over the last 30 years have opted for building ever more jails as their solution. We desperately need a new fundamental review of the whole strategy of preventing crime, rehabilitating offenders and building communities at peace with themselves. We need radical new thinking and we need it very soon.
Baroness Murphy (CB)
My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, has highlighted, as have others, the unspeakable toll of suicides and self-harm pointing to the distressing rates of mental disorder in prisons. It is that that I wish, as a psychiatrist, to draw attention to today, since overcrowding is both a cause and a consequence of the negative impact of mental illness. I am not going to plough through the statistics, which are already so well known to those speaking here today, but I concur totally with the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, who said we need a totally new cultural and social approach to address the difficulties of crime and the mental disorder that so often goes with it.
The National Audit Office’s excoriating report on mental health in prisons, published in June this year, paints an alarming picture of what prison is for someone with mental health problems. Admirable intentions are not being delivered on the ground and cannot even be measured. We put money into policies and we have no idea whether they are being delivered, simply because we have no way of measuring and there is nobody who can do the measuring. So policy ambitions are not being addressed. Of course, the prison regime is most likely to lead to depression, anomie and disturbed behaviour. Inside prisons the situation is dire. There are long waiting lists for mental health clinics. Dozens of new prisoners arrive every week and spookily disappear just as quickly as they arrive, either discharged on the constant merry-go-round or moved to other prisons on the great train traffic to somewhere else. That totally curtails the ability of psychiatric and mental health services in prison to address the problems. Since we have Spice these days, which is the new flavour of death in prisons, matters are getting worse.
Preparing for this debate today I asked a colleague who works in the forensic service in Birmingham to tell me about a recent visit to prison to see patients there. He said:
“When we arrived, so-called recovery worker ‘offenders’ outnumbered the exhausted looking prison officers, who encouraged us to wander between wings unescorted. No one recalled asking us to attend and, as we sat waiting, prisoners came to see us, seemingly unnoticed by prison officers, questioning us about psychoactive drugs and so on. Offenders were friendly enough, but it felt like a phase of pre-anarchy as boundaries were breaking down because of the lack of staff available to deal with what appeared to be a very disturbed group of prisoners”.
My time is up, but it is clear that we cannot continue with this shameful position. Yes, we could have more mental health services but, frankly, it will not make any difference unless we solve the problem of how we are pouring people into the criminal justice system.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, we are all extremely grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, not only for today’s debate and the manner in which he introduced it, but for all he has done over so many years to bring this to the notice of your Lordships’ House.
The noble Lord, Lord McNally, reminded us of the Churchill test. We should be collectively ashamed that we have failed it. We should constantly remind ourselves that punishment is sending somebody to prison, and the purpose of prison is rehabilitation. That has been neglected and forgotten for so long. One of the reasons, I fear, is the commercialisation of prisons. I really feel that incarcerating people is the role of the state and I do not believe that private prisons should have any part of it.
Many things can be done to avoid custodial sentences. I saw at first hand in Northern Ireland the very effective community restorative justice scheme. We could do much more on that front. We should set ourselves a target that by 2025 no prisoner should have to share a cell. Every prisoner should have an individual lavatory in his or her cell. No prisoner should ever be locked up for more than 12 hours in 24—and preferably for less than that—and should be given reasonable and challenging things to do while in prison. Every prisoner who remains clean of drugs and mobile phones and does not partake in violence should qualify at a very early stage for remission. Those who do not should have their conduct drawn to their attention by not being eligible.
We have to try to reduce the prison population. If we do not, we will continue to connive at perpetuating a blemish on our society. We are collectively indicting our own civilisation on our civilised values. I hope that the Secretary of State for Justice will heed my call for a target date and will set about achieving it.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)
My Lords, in this debate, for which I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, I wish to focus on one aspect only—the impact of overcrowding on self-inflicted deaths.
The number of self-inflicted deaths has risen sharply in recent years. In the year to June 2017, for example, there were 97 suicides. This was a slight fall from the previous year’s figure of 107 but a steep rise from the 53 reported in 2012. People in prison are between five and 10 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population. This number is far too high. It is also important to note in relation to this the number of incidents of self-harm. There were nearly 40,000 incidents reported last year, up 24% on the previous year.
Overcrowding in prisons and the shortage of prison staff impact on the safety of prisoners, especially the vulnerable, in a number of ways. For example, there are fewer staff available to keep an eye on prisoners and especially to develop enough of a relationship with them to notice when something is seriously amiss. There is less time to observe any change of mood or to interact with them. Prisoners interviewed about the situation said that it was very difficult to speak to their personal officer as they were always far too busy. This is further accentuated by the loss of experienced staff and the advent of new staff without the necessary experience and training to look for signs of distress. Vulnerable prisoners need to be able to trust staff enough to confide in them when they feel suicidal. They can do that only if there is some face-to-face contact.
Overcrowding also means that there are fewer education opportunities, workshops, teachers, healthcare resources or resettlement and support services for the size of the population the prison holds, resulting in prisoners spending up to 23 hours a day in their cells. It means they are unable to go to classes or to engage in other activities to help them cope, including being able to speak on the phone to loved ones. It means that prisoners are more likely to miss their regular health checks because of a lack of prison staff to escort them.
The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman’s annual report for 2016-17 said that,
“suicide prevention procedures are still badly in need of updating and streamlining, without which I continue to question their fitness for purpose”.
Overcrowding also means that whenever a risk issue arises there will be total lockdown of the prison for 23 hours, increasing the sense of isolation of prisoners.
It is a terrible sadness when someone commits suicide, a tragedy which is felt very grievously by the family and friends of the person concerned. When a person is in prison the state has a particular responsibility to do all it can to ensure that they do not develop a state of mind where suicide is what they are tempted to do. Prison can lead to a sense of isolation, mental fragility and a feeling of hopelessness. For the reasons that I have outlined very briefly, the present overcrowding makes the situation much worse and is totally unacceptable.
Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)
My Lords, for many years I was a member of the board of visitors—now known as monitors—at a young offender institution. The 2016-17 report by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales should make people who read it realise that improvements must be made. I did not see monitors mentioned once. I ask the Minister: are monitors still involved in trying to highlight needs and improve conditions, as we did? What is their present role? When 78 of the 116 prisons in England and Wales are overcrowded there are many risks.
Things have changed over the years and they are now much more complex. There has always been a problem with alcohol abuse, but prisons are now recording surging levels of violence, self-harm and drug use. It is deeply concerning that the incidence of self-inflicted death and self-harm among women in prison has risen dramatically. Many young adult prisoners spend less than two hours a day out of their cells. It is no wonder that many are depressed. Is this due to shortages of staff, or could the system be more humane? How is the drive to recruit more prison officers proceeding? Are there facilities to train them adequately?
Apart from overcrowding and the shortage of staff, there is the challenge of prisoners with mental and physical health problems and a growing population of elderly prisoners who need extra care. If there was a more comprehensive aftercare system for vulnerable prisoners when discharged, with ongoing rehabilitation and a place to live for those who are homeless, maybe there would not be so much recidivism, which is one reason for prison overcrowding. Discharging vulnerable prisoners on a Friday, with no care plan in place, is asking for trouble. What hope is there for a better system?
Lord Bradley (Lab)
My Lords, I also congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, on this debate and on his excellent opening speech. I declare an interest as a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust. In this short time I will raise three issues relating to overcrowding. First, as we have heard, reform is urgently required of indeterminate sentences for public protection. I support an approach recommended by the Prison Reform Trust, based on the three principles of convert, protect and rehabilitate. IPP sentences should be converted from indeterminate to fixed-length sentences, starting with the shortest tariff lengths where the greatest injustice seems to have occurred. The public should be protected with a guaranteed minimum licence period for all cases following release. As to rehabilitation, we should ensure that a proper investment is made in the support of IPP prisoners after release.
Secondly, as we have heard, overcrowding has a dramatic impact on the health and well-being of prisoners. Despite improvements in prison healthcare following the transfer of commissioning to the NHS, overcrowding limits the opportunity for effective treatment, particularly for those with mental health problems, learning disabilities and other complex needs. We know that 26% of women and 16% of men said that they had received treatment for mental health problems in the year before custody and that three in 10 people assessed in prison in 2015-16 reported that they had a learning disability or difficulty. The national rollout of liaison and diversion schemes can therefore make a real contribution to reducing overcrowding. Following my report in 2009, and the support of successive Governments, 75% of the country is now covered by such services, with the ambition for 100% coverage by 2019-20. Such services include: street triage, where the police and health staff work together on our streets to identify and assess people requiring crisis care intervention; and health staff working in police custody suites and the courts to identify and assess people with health needs. This would enable the police to make more informed decisions on charging, proportionate to the offence that has been committed, or consider the option of diverting the person to appropriate health and social care facilities and services. The courts would then receive information about the mental health and other complex needs of the individual at their first appearance, enabling magistrates to make a more timely decision, reducing the use of remand—particularly important for women offenders—and using community sentences with treatment orders instead of custodial sentences.
Thirdly, the current delays in transfer from prison to psychiatric units of prisoners approved for such a move exacerbate the overcrowding problem and are totally unacceptable. I therefore hope that the Minister will support the continued development of liaison and diversion services and see it as part of the solution to the intolerable overcrowding in our prisons.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, in April it was reported that in the previous 12 months there were 344 deaths in prison, up by 19%, of which 113 were self-inflicted. Self-harm incidents increased by 24%; assault incidents were up 27%; and assaults on staff were up by 38%. All this was described as,
“a relentless decline in safety”.
Prison officers cannot be expected to deal effectively with this crisis when their own numbers have been reduced over the past seven years, from 25,000 to 18,000. Compromised safety, the associated violence and the availability of drugs, especially psychoactive drugs such as spice—even entering prisons by drones—and plummeting morale among staff within an environment are not conducive to reform, rehabilitation or a reduction in reoffending.
Half of 15 to 17 year-olds in young offender institutions have the literacy or numeracy levels expected of a seven to 11 year-old. This pattern repeats itself among prisoners who have no qualifications, about half of whom are functionally illiterate. Victor Hugo was right when he said, “He who opens a school door closes a prison.”
Prisoners whom I met during a visit to Birmingham prison told me that, unless we break the Gordian knot that ties them into a pattern of reoffending and reimprisonment, their lives will become utterly devoid of hope. What is happening to the Government’s proposals for getting prisoners into jobs after release, for ensuring that prisoners learn English and maths and for league tables to evaluate progress on education? Where do education, training, secure schools and young offender institutions fit into the long-term strategy?
I have drawn the Minister’s attention to the 60% of prisoners sentenced to less than 12 months in custody who go on to commit further crimes and to the overall reoffending rate of 45%—one of the highest in Europe—reflecting the highest rate of imprisonment in western Europe, with 148 prisoners per 100,000 of the population.
This is not just about a failure to promote reform or to work out how many prisoners can be crammed like sardines into a tin. Consider also the danger of prisons being used by jailed hate preachers acting as self-styled “emirs” to capitalise on gang culture to recruit susceptible inmates. Or consider the consequences of open-ended sentences for non-violent prisoners, who are captives of a system that seems too often to have forgotten them. We then see some of the other dimensions of jails that have become simmering cauldrons of unrest.
As others have said, we need an entirely new culture in our prisons and a different attitude to the way in which we run them—one that passes, as the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord McNally, said earlier, the Churchill test of civilisation. These are just some of the reasons why we should all be grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Brown for laying this Motion for debate before your Lordships today.
Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)
My Lords, the facts have all been stated, and the reports are labyrinthine. We understand the heart of the difficult arguments, and now it is time to move towards answers and solutions, to cut the cost to the public purse and to stop the unnecessary incarceration of men and women who do not need to be in prison.
I start with a reflection on the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, about empathy. In order to help me think a bit better about this debate and issue, I visited a lifer just three weeks ago in one of Her Majesty’s prisons in Kent. I had an hour and a half with a man who is serving nearly a 20-year sentence and has done nearly 10 years already, and found him sensitive, erudite, thoughtful, persuasive, interesting, challenging, and with deep intellectual pursuits. However, he had been written off at one point by the courts as simply a man to be thrown behind bars with no early point of release. That made me realise that not just that man alone but multitudes of others, both men and women, need to be let out of prison considerably earlier.
When we apply the empathy test to understand that a man or woman has changed and their character has been reformed, instead of pouring £50,000 on average of my tax money into sustaining that man in prison, I would rather invest the money instead in enterprise and employment. I would rather secure him into a way beyond the prison. I would rather let out multitudes of men who have shown the ability to seek character reform and therefore see them productive taxpayers contributing to society—maybe held under some form of a licence and check, in order to secure society’s desire to see punishment done. But I would not wish us to continue to have a system that simply pays into a pot that contains but does nothing to reform and to rebuild.
This Government, along with the previous Government, have spent millions—I think the estimate is in the region of £54 million a year—on character education in schools. That is vital expenditure, and we all agree with it. Why not spend tens of millions on character education and development and supportive networks for offenders and those within prison, and once they have passed the test of responsible citizenship, give them the opportunity for work and responsibility? Why not invest our tax resources instead in their futures, and not in containing people in the despair and hopelessness of prison?
Lord Lee of Trafford (LD)
My Lords, our prisons are a national embarrassment. Fifty years ago, I served as trustee of the William House Trust, a home for discharged prisoners in Manchester providing accommodation and employment help. I want to focus my remarks on the need to reduce recidivism by providing training and employment opportunities for offenders.
The retailer Timpson is probably the best example in this regard, with 10% of its workforce ex-offenders and the provision of training opportunities in prisons. Other companies have some sort of involvement: Boots, Greggs, Halfords, McDonald’s, Pret a Manger, Toyota and Whitbread. But they and others could do so much more. There are huge opportunities, particularly in the hospitality sector and within building trades, both of which have severe skills shortages. I have six specific recommendations.
First, prison governors should build bridges with firms in their locality and liaise with local chambers of commerce. National employers should encourage local managers to visit prisons and establish a dialogue.
Secondly, the Ministry of Justice should appoint a senior, perhaps retired, person from the private sector to work full-time on encouraging employers to participate, ideally perhaps a major national figure.
Thirdly, public companies should report their involvement in this whole area in their annual reports.
Fourthly, the Justice Secretary and Ministers should create an award, similar perhaps to the Queen’s Award for Enterprise or Investors in People, and have an annual awards event acknowledging best practice in this area.
Fifthly, employer organisations such as the CBI, the National Federation of Builders and the British Hospitality Association should be pressured by the highest levels of government to assume greater responsibilities for promoting this work.
Finally, many prisoners have particular trades or skills. Those should be utilised, and the prisoners rewarded for passing on their expertise to other inmates wherever possible. Offenders should be used for smaller building and maintenance project work within their own prisons, preparing them for future employment on release.
Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)
My Lords, I will focus on one aspect of my noble and learned friend’s Motion. My only real experience, I am glad to say, of prison life comes from the many years I spent as a trustee of the Koestler Trust, which the Minister will know seeks to provide prisoners with access to the arts and the means to participate in the arts: competitions and material, for example, for the visual arts, music and writing.
It is difficult enough to fulfil these noble aims even when prisoners have the space and time to work on those disciplines. But when prisoners are locked up for 22 or 23 of the 24 hours, and barely have the space to humanely cohabit in their cells, the arts tend to be the first thing to go out of the window. If we seek to reduce recidivism and show that there is another path, we simply have to be a more enlightened society. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, rightly reminded your Lordships that the way in which a society treats its prisoners is a test of its civilisation. In the light of the statistics given by my noble and learned friend Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, I wonder whether the Minister would consider whether we pass or fail this test.
I have seen the quite remarkable transformation that can be achieved by giving an incarcerated person the means to express themselves through acting, music-making, painting and writing. A prisoner wrote to me to say that, had he had the ability to play an instrument when he was a young and wild man, he would not now be serving life for murder. Artistic expression can afford an outlet for turbulence, frustration and pent-up violence, and that release is a vital part of rehabilitation. Without it, more prisoners will turn to drugs, not simply to relieve boredom but as a means of psychological escape.
Overcrowding in prisons is severely hampering the opportunity for rehabilitation and the shining of a light in a dark place to illuminate a more redemptive path.
Lord Birt (CB)
My Lords, people are in prison because they have offended against the rules of a civilised society—and that society should demonstrate and reinforce its own civilised values and intentions when it denies offenders their liberty, as so many of your Lordships have said. The vivid undercover filming by “Panorama” inside HMP Northumberland recently laid bare our failure to do that. It captured the anarchic reality, the Hogarthian horror, of a typical modern British prison: extensive drug use, fevered volatility, prisoners both threatening and frightened, and staff powerless and stressed—conditions in no way conducive to addressing offending behaviour.
How has this happened? It has been a particularly egregious failure of government. Since 2010 there have been five Secretaries of State and a succession of U-turns. The result, as others have said, has been: like-for-like sentence inflation; 25% of prisoners in overcrowded cells; prison staff reduced by 7,000; the leaving rate for officers in this high-stress occupation an unsurprising 10%; 25% of staff now inexperienced and in their first two years of service; and, in spite of a policy reverse and a fresh recruitment drive, a net increase in the 12 months to 31 March this year of just 75 staff. Yes, recruitment has improved since, but still more slowly than prisoner numbers have increased.
The recent prison riot at HMP The Mount occurred when only 20 officers were available over a weekend to supervise 1,000 prisoners under a severely restricted regime. In round figures, deaths in custody are up 20%, self-harm 25%, and assaults on staff 40%—all in one year. These rates of increase are truly alarming and can only prompt grave concern about the immediate period ahead.
What is needed is not more obfuscatory press releases from the MoJ, with numbers unaccompanied by any convincing narrative at all, but an integrated and convincing five-to-10-year plan that moves us ahead of the curve and contains prudent forecasts of prisoner numbers, with plans to build an estate without any overcrowding and with a plan for officer numbers that will allow our prisons to become controlled, disciplined and civilised. Will the Minister agree today to produce such a plan?
The Lord Bishop of Southwark
My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, is to be thanked for this timely debate. As some noble Lords are aware, the diocese of Southwark contains five major prison establishments: Belmarsh, Brixton, Thameside, Wandsworth and Isis—though I hasten to add that that last name relates to the river goddess. It is my practice to visit them at the invitation of each Church of England chaplain who holds my licence.
The issue that I wish to raise in this debate is the level of staffing. Issues around the number of inmates and physical space also relate to issues of access and staffing, the activities that staff enable and the relationships that are nurtured. While Her Majesty’s Government announced their intention to recruit an additional 2,500 front-line staff late last year, that came in the wake of a reduction of over 6,000 staff, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has attested, which has compounded the consequences of overcrowding and a rising prison population. The fiscal imperative of staff cuts being played out in our prisons is very risky. For anything meaningful on the landing, spur or wing, one needs staff. Staff will best and most confidently carry out their duties if they know and trust that an able colleague has their back. Proper staffing allows for supervision outside cells and in activities that augment skill, self-insight and a capacity for fruitful encounters on release. As in so many professions, the relational element is key to success.
Educational activity and training for work has suffered only marginally from the cuts, but at the expense of everything else. The named-officer scheme is moribund. Within prisons, the availability of officers to inmates has significantly diminished; they are much less available for association periods or to build relationships, discuss and spot problems, offer advice or discreetly receive information relevant to the security of the prison. We need to ensure that more than basic security, administration and escort is being delivered constantly. I am aware that inmates wishing to attend chapel or Bible study are not able to do so because staff are not available to escort them. This is detrimental to the humanitarian standards that we would wish to see in our prisons. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, has drawn attention to the high incidence of suicide in our prisons.
We need to offer our thanks to those who work in our prisons, excellence in which is promoted by the Butler Trust. Prison chaplains minister daily to enable inmates to face life as it is and life as it may be. Their contribution and that of many volunteers has an enormous impact in difficult times. The Lord Chancellor seeks a proper emphasis on rehabilitation in our prisons. It is imperative that we work together to increase hope and ensure that words and aspirations are matched by actions and delivery. There is an urgent need so to do.
Lord Low of Dalston (CB)
My Lords, I have thought for some time that we should look at the differences in practice exemplified by other countries with lower rates of imprisonment to see what can be learned from them. In 2012 the National Audit Office spoke of the potential benefit of conducting more research into prison population trends in other countries, and a report from the Criminal Justice Alliance identified some structural features of European criminal justice systems that appeared to be associated with lower rates of imprisonment. These uncannily anticipate all those advocated by my noble and learned friend Lord Brown in his masterly introduction to this debate. They include the greater use of suspended sentences and greater restraint in the imposition of imprisonment for breaches of a community penalty; lower maximum sentences and going rates for particular offences; much less use of mandatory minimum and indeterminate sentences; and the treatment of problems of mental health and drug dependency much more as matters for health and social care than for the criminal justice system.
All these approaches and more are adopted elsewhere. The numbers in prison are lower and the sky does not fall in. We should look not only at the prosecution and sentencing practice of other countries but at what they do instead with those offenders, particularly categories of offender who are no longer sent to prison.
Another report, entitled “A Presumption Against Imprisonment: Social Order and Social Values”, written by eight leading criminologists and academic lawyers and issued by the British Academy in 2014, came to very similar conclusions. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, referred to the guidelines issued by the Sentencing Council. These are based almost entirely on the symbolic significance of a prison sentence in reflecting the seriousness of the offence, with little or no regard for instrumental objectives such as making it less likely that the offender will re-offend, protecting the public, or making amends, for example through compensation, community service, or apology. With the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, I want to see the council’s guidelines reviewed in the light of the comparative evidence to which I have drawn attention.
The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 contains provisions that are designed to have an impact on the numbers held on remand if there is little likelihood of a custodial sentence, and a wider range of options for dealing with breaches of community sentences. These have been much less remarked on than the provisions designed to cut the legal aid bill. The Ministry of Justice is about to undertake a post-implementation review of LASPO, and I hope very much that it will give as much attention to the provisions in the Act designed to reduce the numbers in prison as it does to those designed to reduce the numbers receiving legal aid.
Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers (CB)
My Lords, we are dealing with a problem that successive Governments have failed to solve for over half a century. The cause of that problem is that we send far too many people to prison for far too long: far longer than is necessary for rehabilitation and far longer than is needed to provide an effective deterrent.
How about punishment? That is a legitimate object of imprisonment. The man in the street and, particularly, the victims of crime want to see criminals pay for their wrongdoing, and depriving them of liberty is a legitimate way of satisfying society’s demand for vengeance. But the man in the street is not best placed to decide how long criminals should be kept in prison by way of punishment. That is not a simple task, and ultimately it is Parliament that performs it by laying down a framework of maximum and minimum sentences within which judges exercise relatively limited discretion. In performing that task, Parliament should have regard to the heavy cost to society of keeping people in prison to punish them.
As your Lordships have heard, there has been a phenomenon over the last 40 years of “sentence creep”, brought about largely by well-intentioned but misguided legislative intervention. What is needed is a change in the public attitude to keeping people locked up in prison: a recognition that the cost to society of this form of punishment is prohibitive; that the cost of each year that a man spends in prison simply by way of punishment is depriving us of resources that could otherwise be used to meet urgent social needs, including those that prevent young people turning into criminals. To bring about this change in attitude calls for leadership and courage on the part of Government. The aim should be, for a start, to halve the number of those in prison. IPP prisoners should be released. Old men who no longer pose any threat should not be held in expensive custody. Most importantly, legislation should reverse the trend of requiring ever longer sentences.
This is the ideal time to do that. Current legislation that deals with sentencing extends to over 1,300 pages. The Law Commission has recommended a simplified sentencing code but its recommendations are only procedural. It makes no recommendations in relation to maximum and minimum sentences. These should be reduced, and in some cases removed, to send a signal that the current scale of punishment in this country is unnecessarily severe and beyond our means. Finally, consideration should also be given to a period of prescription for all save the most serious crimes.
Lord Colgrain (Con)
My Lords, I am conscious that many, if indeed perhaps the majority, of your Lordships speaking here today have had first-hand experience of the prison system from an executive, supervisory or regulatory perspective. My own experience, by contrast, has been limited to visiting the seven prisons in the county where I reside. These visits have provided me with the experience to have an appreciation of the recent comments of the president of the Prison Governors Association, particularly regarding drugs and Islamist extremist activities.
I have had a number of conversations regarding prison officer numbers, the benefit of new, purpose-built prisons as opposed to outdated buildings, which are inefficient in every sense, and the issues surrounding IPP offenders. However, I have been drawn to three particular aspects of the prison system that seemed so anomalous that I subsequently drew them to the attention of the then Secretary of State for Justice, and I think that it is worth reiterating them now in the context of this debate on prison overcrowding.
If a prison governor is obliged by law to take responsibility for the repair of grade 1 and grade 2 listed buildings, it is quite possible that he cannot afford to make those repairs. In response to health and safety regulations, he may have to close those buildings to prisoner access. If the buildings have provided the location for recreational activities or have been the site of vocational or basic skills training which will facilitate employment for prisoners upon their release, similar to those programmes run by the Clink Charity or Timpson, their closure has a psychological impact as well as a physical one. However, the most obvious consequence is a reduction of utilisable space, which in turn adds to the sense of overcrowding. When choosing which old prisons should be closed, I suggest that this consideration should be factored into the argument.
The second consideration arose from observing the increasing number of prisoners who do not have English as their first language, and indeed in some cases barely speak or understand English at all. The need to have translators in court, the difficulty sometimes of obtaining suitably qualified candidates to translate and the delays incurred thereby have been well documented elsewhere. However, when the same problems are exacerbated in prison, a failure by prison staff through no fault of their own to communicate effectively with inmates, and the inability to comprehend inmates’ various dialects and vernaculars and the issues that are particular to their tribal differences, cause delay in administration, which in turn restricts the execution of the system, which in turn leads to overcrowding. I am aware that there is no speedy resolve to these language problems, other than to hasten repatriation where appropriate.
The third consideration arises from looking at the times of prisoner release. If we are endeavouring to assist offenders to integrate back into society as quickly and smoothly as possible, surely one of the worst things we can do is to release them so late in the working day that the safety net of the probation service is unable to be on hand to help them. Release late on a Friday afternoon, with limited ready funds and no protected environment within which to reside, must surely contribute to a higher possibility of reoffending than might otherwise be the case, with the subsequent prison overcrowding that comes as a consequence.
As a further observation, the closure of some of the prison farms has also had detrimental effects. Notwithstanding the rights and wrongs of the financial debate over whether the sourcing of such food is cost effective, providing offenders with the opportunity to work on the land, away from the immediate confines of prison buildings, has the double benefit of, first, creating less physical overcrowding pressure on these buildings during daylight and working hours, and, secondly, providing the advantage of working outdoors for those whom it temperamentally suits and the possibility thereby of obtaining a training that can have a benefit when they are released.
Baroness Hollins (CB)
My Lords, the fact is that overcrowding and staff shortages are significant factors in the current failed system. As the noble Baroness, Lady Healy, and the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, have commented respectively, women and people with learning disabilities are particularly vulnerable. Current conditions exacerbate their mental health problems and increase the risk of suicide and sexual assault. Women offenders often have histories of mental illness, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder, and prison is a re-traumatising experience for them. Gender and disability awareness both need to be improved, as does appropriate diversion to mental health services.
There is positive work being carried out in prisons. An important example is work carried out by chaplains, as has been mentioned by some Members. This is especially important during people’s first days in prison, when they are at particular risk of self-harm, bullying and isolation. I would like to share the words of one Catholic prisoner, who said:
“On the very first day I came into prison, my chaplain came to my cell. I was devastated getting into prison, but she encouraged me”.
Prison chaplains are trusted by prisoners. They are able to help counter the negative effects of overcrowding by offering personal and pastoral support to the prisoners in their care. I hope the Government will continue to recognise the vital work done by chaplains. But this work is often hindered by the pressure that our prison system is under. Recent research by the Catholic Church found that a quarter of prisoners reported problems accessing chaplaincy.
Pressures created by overcrowding also threaten to undermine the quality and provision of family contact in prison—something particularly relevant to mothers with dependent children. As the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, stated in a recent review, family ties are as essential to rehabilitation as education and employment. Prisoners who have regular contact with their families are 39% less likely to reoffend. Family contact is often supported by voluntary organisations, such as the Prison Advice and Care Trust. From 2015-16 they supported 96,000 adults and 20,000 children to visit family members in prison, as well as running hundreds of relationship and parenting education programmes for prisoners and their families.
Can the Minister assure this House that neither family contact nor access to chaplaincy will be deprioritised despite the pressures of overcrowding?
Lord Bird (CB)
My Lords, I apologise for arriving five minutes late for the opening of this debate. Please forgive me. It has nothing to do with a lack of interest in this subject. I am very interested in prisons, because prisons are an enormous social machine for producing something we do not want to produce. They are an emergency response to a crisis that is largely around poverty, a lack of good education and other key things. When we look at the average prisoner, we often find average prisoners have a number of similarities.
I, for example, was an average prisoner. I was put away at the age of 14 for stealing a bike. I find it a bit difficult that most noble Lords who have spoken so far talk as though we have now entered a time when we have become aggressive towards people who are doing wrong. Putting a 14-year-old boy into a short, sharp shock, kicking him all over the place for three months and then bringing him out and expecting him to be a good citizen—that sounds pretty mean to me, let alone giving the same boy a three-to-five-year custodial sentence at the age of 15 for stealing £5. What are we talking about? Are we talking about a different world? Have we moved on and are we only now being really terrible to our prisoners?
I find this difficult. I am sorry to raise the issue because I am sure it is looked upon as an illiberal response, but I would like us to look at history and at the ideas around our present situation. My problem with this debate is that it seems a bit like the NHS debate. The NHS debate is enormous, but it always deals with the NHS as though its problems did not arise from the fact that we do not spend the amount of money we should be spending on preventing people from becoming ill. When you go to the hospital across the road, as I did with a doctor, and you find out that 70% of the people there have done things against their own bodies, or they have not taken the right approach, it becomes clear that we need to move towards prevention.
We have a prison population full of people who have failed at school. I failed at school, as did most of the people I knew in prison. When I go into a prison, I ask a simple question: “How did you do at school?”. Virtually all—80%—of them will say, “I failed at school”.
We have these big engines that drive forward. Until we move on to prevention, until we start to dismantle poverty, we will have overcrowded prisons. I am sorry to say this, because overcrowded prisons are not prisons that work. We can be as clever as we like and come up with all sorts of solutions, but let us stop the churn; let us stop the arrival of people in prisons. That is the big, revolutionary need in terms of our thinking.
Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, I join those who have thanked most warmly the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, for having made this debate possible. I would also like to say how much I admire the fact that this is not just a debate he has secured; he provides consistent and impressive advocacy on the need for change, not least in the prison system.
It is quite clear from what we have been hearing today that the penal system has failed in its prisons. We see violence, suicides, self-harm, bullying and reoffending. These issues are brought into already dislocated women’s lives and, above all, we have the issue of broken homes. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, said, prisons are full of people who should not be there. This is never truer than in the case of prisoners with mental health issues. These prisoners require specific, carefully designed places in which their mental illnesses and difficulties can be tackled constructively.
I emphasise the importance of what the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, said. There is an urgent need for a review of our whole penal system—of what it is we are really trying to respond to. We are constantly tackling this with a piecemeal approach. I suggest that, whatever comes out of that review, one thing will remain true. Above all, it will be about rehabilitation. If our system is not rehabilitating people, it is a total failure. There needs to be a culture and a professional commitment at all times to rehabilitation. Rehabilitation means recognising that prisoners are individuals. The noble Lord, Lord Bird, spoke very powerfully, as usual, about his experiences in this sphere. It is true that, if we are going to be successful in rehabilitation, we have to see how we work together with individuals to rebuild their lives constructively.
The noble Lord, Lord McNally, was also right. We all have a heavy responsibility to resist the cynical populism of the press and too many of our political colleagues when it comes to the challenge of prison reform. What we have now is generating crisis, not overcoming it.
Lord Cullen of Whitekirk (CB)
My Lords, I wish to say something about the position in Scotland, which has had its own national prison system since the middle of the 19th century. After steadily increasing over a number of decades, the total prison population in Scotland is showing signs of stabilising. Indeed, the average daily prison population in Scotland has been decreasing. In 2011-12, it was 8,179, whereas five years later it was 7,552. In August of this year, it was under 7,500. Since the number of bed spaces in the 15 prisons in Scotland is currently over 7,900, it is not surprising that there is little evidence of overcrowding in Scotland’s 15 prisons.
The most marked decrease has been in the number of young offenders. This points to the success of a whole-system initiative which has encouraged a number of actions such as early intervention, opportunities for diversion from prosecution and support from the court process. For initiatives such as this the relatively small size of Scotland has assisted in bringing together the responsible agencies, sharing good practice and developing good teamwork.
The adequacy of prison accommodation can be thought of in terms of bed spaces, but that, of course, is not the whole picture because the question is, what accommodation is provided that is adequate and suitable for the various categories of prisoners? One I mention briefly is that of older men of 60 years or more. That category has been increasing in Scotland, perhaps due partly to the increase in the number of prosecutions for historic sexual offences. That makes a demand on a system. The Chief Inspector of Prisons in Scotland recently reported that there is insufficient accommodation available for older prisoners who have problems with mobility and chronic health conditions.
The other category is that of women prisoners. In recent years there has been a doubling of their number. Many were frequent reoffenders and had complex needs to do with their social circumstances, histories of abuse and mental health and addiction problems. A commission under Dame Elish Angiolini, a former Lord Advocate, concluded that Cornton Vale Prison, which housed the majority of women prisoners, should be removed as it was not fit for purpose and should be replaced. Overcrowding had caused problems for the management and staff and inhibited opportunities to rehabilitate women and reduce their reoffending. Their mental health needs were not being addressed adequately and there were high levels of self-harm and a lack of constructive and meaningful activity. I am glad to say that Cornton Vale is now being replaced with a smaller prison for more serious offenders and a number of community systems which will cope with offenders closer to home. I am glad that these steps have been taken.
Lord Fellowes (CB)
My Lords, I think we all know the nature of successive reports on prisons from those whose task it is to assess them. These reports tell of a sorry state of affairs. They tell of the dreadful numbers of suicides, of self-harm and violence in custody and of the squalor in which many prisoners have to live. Then there is the matter of the darkest blot on our national escutcheon—the many prisoners held back in jail despite the fact that their tariffs under indeterminate sentences have long run out. This must be dealt with before any long-term reforms can be effective. As for our reoffending figures, we seem to have learnt nothing from other countries whose reoffending rates are less than half of ours. This, too, is something which must be, and can be, improved, but it will not be while the overall size of the prison population is obstinately stuck where it is, or rising.
If any other public service were in the position of our prisons, radical measures would have to be taken, and quickly. In the case of Britain’s prisons, this becomes more and more essential as the years go by, and the clear priority must be for a significant drop in overall numbers. The present numbers ensure that rehabilitation comes way down the priority list.
The staff in prisons undertake a complex and difficult job; that the situation is not even worse is testament to the skills and commitment with which they undertake daunting work on behalf of the rest of us. But too often their focus is on running a decent and safe regime, lacking the resources to cater to the needs and difficulties which many prisoners experience. An ex-governor has suggested that a prison population of 25,000 would be appropriate on the grounds of public protection. With such a number, meaningful rehabilitative work becomes a possibility, yet we continue to fill our prisons to excess, setting all involved up to fail. It must be our responsibility to find out why we persist with a formula which is ineffective.
What we must see is a review of our sentencing regime with a view to reducing the numbers of people we send to prison and the length of sentences. It will need steely resolve by a Government prepared to argue their case with media and public. There are no easy answers, only complexities, contradictions and hard work. Until this review is undertaken and its recommendations put into effect, the miserable state of our prisons will remain unaltered, and the same old cycle will stay to haunt us.
All this is happening while innumerable individuals and charities work nobly to turn the tide. There is a distinct danger that their faith and enthusiasm will fade as they listen again and again to the familiar cries for help. This danger can only increase if we fail to re-examine the sentencing regime which has raised the numbers of prisoners to unsustainable levels.
I know that our Government have much urgent business to complete, but the state of our prisons and the intolerable burden we place on the Prison Service continue to shame us and remain a danger to the stability of our society.
Lord Woolf (CB)
My Lords, we have heard a series of excellent speeches dealing with the problems in prisons. I congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, on achieving this debate. I also congratulate those who have already taken part in it on what they said. They have shown a picture which is beyond dispute—our prisons are in a state of crisis. This has happened notwithstanding the fact that excellent work has been done within prisons and excellent reports have been produced from time to time which have shown what is needed in our prison system. We have to decide on an alternative method for preventing the present position continuing. This has given me cause for thought over a long period.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, was good enough to refer to my report, which I think was produced nearly 30 years ago. In it I tried to identify a means of putting a brake on overcrowding. That I was right to do so was made apparent by what we have heard today. However, it is equally clear that the brake I then suggested was, first, not implemented and, secondly, would almost certainly have failed. We have to realise that forces are at work which we need to tackle. I thought at the time it was created that the Sentencing Guidelines Council was an excellent idea. However, instead of helping the situation, and through no fault of its members, its remit had the opposite effect. I say that having been the first chairman of the first incarnation of that body. In our system very powerful forces, coming largely from Parliament, continually drive up sentences and there is no equally powerful force which has the opposite effect of reducing them. That is what we have to focus upon. This is a very relevant time to act, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips, pointed out, given the changes which are going to take place in relation to the sentencing code. Therefore, I suggest that we have to give the Sentencing Council a new remit whereby, if sentences are increased, it has to make recommendations under which they can be reduced. Unless we get a balancing factor of that sort, I am afraid that the present problems will continue.
Baroness Stern (CB)
My Lords, it is indeed a great honour to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and to have had an opportunity to hear his wise words. In preparing for this important debate I lifted down from my shelf my much annotated, very tatty and extremely heavy copy of the Woolf Report 1991. I looked through it again and reflected briefly: if the Government of the day had implemented the noble and learned Lord’s recommendations, how different our situation now would be. It is a huge pity that that did not happen. On the same shelf I have the Corston report, the Bradley report, the report on justice reinvestment produced by the Justice Select Committee when the noble Lord, Lord Beith, was its chair, and many others. The proposals are all there on how to reduce our high and wasteful imprisonment rate, while ensuring that crime is dealt with effectively.
I am most grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, for initiating this timely debate, and I thank him also for his dogged determination to get justice for the over 3,000 prisoners still serving indeterminate sentences for public protection, which is indeed a blemish on our system.
During my working life I have visited places of imprisonment in 50 or so countries, covering all the regions of the world—countries in wealthy western Europe and countries in desperately poor parts of Africa. I have concluded from these experiences that it is unwise to expect too much from imprisonment. It is best not to dream too much about what prisons can achieve on their own. Many speakers have analysed and highlighted in this debate the damage that imprisonment causes to individuals, social stability, family ties, self-esteem and ability to function in the outside world.
Reducing the use of imprisonment is not, however, impossible. In 2008 there were 3,000-plus young people in custody; in June this year, the figure was 924. This was done without changes to the law on sentencing; it was done by parts of the system working together. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, will know how this was done as he chaired the Youth Justice Board through much of those years. The lessons from Scotland—brought to our attention by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Cullen of Whitekirk—are also well worth studying.
I would make two proposals to the Minister. First, a radical review could be a very practical and sensible way to proceed. Secondly, would she consider inviting the Secretary of State for Justice—who has a very good reputation—to find the time to listen to the views of some of those in your Lordships’ House in whom so much wisdom on this subject resides?
Lord Elton (Con)
Your Lordships have subjected me to conflicting tensions of great hope and great despair. The great hope arises from the number, the intellectual force, the charity and the authority with which you have spoken on a subject of vital importance. My despair arises because with the exception of about three speakers, including the noble Lord, Lord Bird, it has been assumed that the problem that needs to be solved is how you treat criminals. But the problem would be solved with much less expenditure and much greater effect if you focus on how you treat children so that they do not become criminals.
In the three years, 45 years ago, that I was Minister for Prisons, I walked into a similar and, in fact, more intense crisis than the present one. I had a chart on the wall showing that if 12 more people had been given custodial sentences we would have had to trigger executive release—to let people out before the end of their sentences. Willie Whitelaw—the late Viscount Whitelaw—was my boss, so I was a very anxious man, but we avoided it. When I resigned from the Government some years later I founded a charity to keep children out of prison. I discovered that by spending small amounts, mostly through voluntary agencies, to give young people the vent for their enthusiasm, energy and enterprise which they do not get without help, before it drives them into criminality, you can prevent them becoming criminals. Some £50 spent there can save £50,000 later. Can the Government get their collective act together and have the Treasury preside over a review about how to stop this catastrophic nonsense and tackle the problem where it actually begins? I will die a happy man if they do.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, I too thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, for securing this debate. It is a mark of its significance that we have heard from so many distinguished speakers with virtually no dissent from the thrust of the noble and learned Lord’s argument.
The state of our prisons is one of the scandals of our times. They are neither humane nor civilised and they fail as places of rehabilitation and reform. The combination of overcrowding and understaffing is toxic. We have heard the miserable statistics, and the depressing fact is that on present predictions from the Prison Reform Trust, overcrowding looks set to get worse, not better.
The alarming and increasing levels of violence were graphically described by Peter Clarke in his first two annual reports as Chief Inspector of Prisons. In his first he reported that:
“Too many of our prisons had become unacceptably violent and dangerous places”.
In his second he reported:
“The situation has not improved—in fact, it has become worse. There have been startling increases in all types of violence”.
He gave the details of 103 self-inflicted deaths in male prisons over the last year, and very large increases in the incidence of self-harm, assaults on staff and assaults by prisoners on other prisoners.
Our prisons have become unsafe, and the psychological effect on individual prisoners is profound. Pack three prisoners in cells designed for two and two prisoners in cells designed for one and the resulting frustration, isolation and unhappiness are obvious. Violence is inevitable, particularly in the context of a volatile prison population.
But we compound the inhumanity of overcrowding with squalid conditions: damp, dilapidated, infested with vermin, with shared cells with unscreened lavatories. We compound it further by providing too few staff to supervise prisoners, to prevent violence or to control the flow of drugs. Just as important—as the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, and the right reverend prelate the Bishop of Southwark argued—we stifle attempts to achieve reform when we provide too few staff to escort prisoners away from their cells for work or education and training activities. In many prisons we lack even the staff to enable prisoners to eat together in common areas. The result is that many are locked in their cells for as much as 23 hours a day, dehumanising them as a result.
Many prisoners, men and women, arrive in prison with a whole range of mental health problems and problems of drug and alcohol abuse, as well as learning difficulties. The very fact of being imprisoned, removing prisoners from homes and families, makes those problems worse. The impoverishment of the prison regime makes them unbearable. These issues are inadequately addressed. The noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, gave us a graphic account of this failure and the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, spoke to similar effect. We are breaking people in prison, not rehabilitating them.
Overcrowding also means prisoners being shunted around the prison estate for requirements of space, without regard to their needs. Proximity to homes and families and the availability of courses to help them on release take second place to the need to find places, wherever they may be. The Prison Reform Trust says that transfer requests are the single biggest issue its advice and information service deals with.
There is virtual unanimity, in this House at least, about what needs to be done. Everyone, the Government included, pays lip service to the need to reduce overcrowding, to increase staffing and to put education, training and reform at the heart of the mission of the prison service, to enable them to retrain for employment in the way that my noble friend Lord Lee of Trafford described. But successive Governments have failed to do it.
We must send fewer offenders to prison. We are constantly told by Ministers that sentencing is a matter for judges. That is a false excuse. The sentencing framework and guidelines are within the power of Parliament to alter. Parliament can and should ensure that served sentences get shorter and do so in the face of media and public resistance, as my noble friend Lord McNally and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, pointed out. The noble and learned Lords, Lord Brown, Lord Hope and Lord Phillips, made a strong argument for Parliament’s avoiding sentence inflation. We must also see that far fewer short sentences are passed and that more offences are dealt with within the community, including the voluntary sector, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, stressed. We could make more use of tagging and flexible imprisonment, with part-time imprisonment or temporary release permitting prisoners to work, and early release subject to supervision and restrictions, enabling a staged rehabilitation. We must stop the excessive use of prisoner recall.
As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, said, we must secure the release of IPP prisoners who have served their tariffs—in this debate he has been widely supported across the House on that. Ministers regularly tell us that IPP prisoners are kept in prison until they are no longer a danger to the public. But that is again a false argument. We abolished IPP sentences in 2012 precisely because we believed it unjust that prisoners should be kept in prison after completing their punishment. The continued incarceration of IPP prisoners who have completed their tariffs defies that principle and is an injustice that should be stopped.
For those who must be in prison, we must renew the prison estate to house them in decent, humane and uncrowded conditions. We must ensure adequate staff to look after them properly, to supervise and protect them and to maintain order and discipline. We must provide education, training and work activities which will offer prisoners the chance of rehabilitation into their communities on release.
It is a great shame that the Government have abandoned the prisons part of the Prisons and Courts Bill. Certainly some reform can be achieved without primary legislation. But had that Bill proceeded, we would have pressed for statutory minimum standards applicable throughout the prison estate. A civilised society has a duty to ensure, by law when necessary—and experience has shown that it is—that prison is genuinely only used as a last resort; that prisons must be decent, humane and uncrowded; that sufficient staff must be employed to keep prisoners safe and secure; and that prisoners must be afforded full opportunities for education and work with a view to their rehabilitation. We should legislate to insist on achieving those standards. Only when we achieve them may we say that we have an acceptable penal system.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, on securing the debate and on his masterly review of the crisis in our prisons system.
On 23 February, a Home Office press release announced:
“Justice Secretary Elizabeth Truss unveils landmark Prisons and Courts Bill”,
and claimed that the Bill,
“paves the way for the biggest overhaul of prisons in a generation”.
In her Second Reading speech on the Bill—which of course subsequently seems to have disappeared—the then Lord Chancellor proclaimed:
“We have held the prison population stable for the last six years”. —[Official Report, Commons, 20/3/17; col. 657.]
Stability can of course take several forms. Certainly prisoner numbers remained stable, but as today’s debate makes clear, stability cannot be claimed for the rising tide of violence, self-harm and drug abuse which grew exponentially in those six years.
For a quarter of a century, under successive Governments, the number of prisoners grew inexorably, until we now have, as we have heard, the highest incarceration rate in western Europe, higher than some of the less advanced countries in eastern Europe. Also, of course, the number of prison officers has fallen substantially, by more than 25%.
The consequences include the highest number of deaths among prisoners on record in the year to March 2017. The chief inspector’s report states that a third of the 344 deaths were self-inflicted, while serious assaults more than doubled in the last three years, and, tellingly, assaults on staff rose by 88% in the last two years. Force is also used by prison staff, and the report discloses that it was found at a high level in two-thirds of prisons, while it expresses,
“concerns about the quality of documentation used to justify the use of force”.
Further, self-harm figures rose from just under 26,000 in 2014-15 to over 40,000 in 2016, a rate of 471 per 1,000 prisoners. The Howard League recently reported a 75% increase in two years of additional days in prison for breaking prison rules, to a total of 290,000 cases.
Having reduced the number of prison staff by 7,500 and saved £900 million by 2015, the Government are now seeking to recruit 2,500 new officers. However, the number of front-line staff increased by only 75 in the last year after allowing for numbers leaving the service. Can the Minister update the figures for those leaving and those joining the service, and can she tell us the average term of service for those who departed? Does she accept that, so far from prison numbers being held at the present level, let alone reduced, the forecast for 2020 is now for the numbers to grow to 90,000? If so, what are the implications for staffing and new prison places?
The chief inspector’s report of 18 July is a veritable litany of failure across the penal system. He highlights the fact that only 14% of prisoners and 4% of young adults were unlocked for at least 10 hours a day, and was shocked to discover that 30% of the latter spent fewer than two hours a day out of their cells. He was confronted by vermin infestation and insanitary toilets and showers. Too many prisoners suffered from learning disability or mental health problems, and he affirmed that it is the,
“job of the Inspectorate to point out where the imbalance between staff and prisoner numbers adversely affects the treatment of and conditions for prisoners”.
It is fair to point out that the inspector found conditions in women’s prisons to be better, but self-harming and suicide reached the highest level in women’s prisons in 12 years. Similar patterns were-reflected in young offender institutions, where the inspector shockingly concluded that,
“there was not a single establishment that we inspected in England and Wales in which it was safe to hold children and young people”.
It is particularly disturbing to learn that:
“In many cases the response to previous recommendations has been unforgivably poor”,
with,
“42% of recommendations on safety”,
not being achieved.
Worryingly, the report records a decline in the condition of secure training centres, stating:
“We have seen regimes where boys take every meal alone in their cell, where they are locked up for excessive amounts of time, where they do not get enough exercise, education or training, and where there do not appear to be any credible plans to break the cycle of violence”.
It is difficult to imagine a more damaging critique of any public service, let alone one concerning young people. Paradoxically, the report notes that large sums of money have been provided for teachers and classrooms that are being paid for but not used, because institutions cannot get boys to education in time or at all.
We are entitled to ask of the Government what notice, if any, they take of the inspectorate’s reports regarding the funding of the service and the penalties imposed for failure, especially in prisons being run for profit by the likes of G4S and Sodexo. Damningly, in his introduction to the report, Mr Clarke points out that, notwithstanding his statement of the previous year,
“too many of our prisons had become unacceptably violent and dangerous places. The situation has not improved – in fact, it has become worse”.
What are the Government going to do to rectify this dire and shameful situation? The much vaunted Prisons and Courts Bill was launched in February, claiming to be,
“paving the way for the biggest overhaul of prisons in a generation and the delivery of a world-class court system”.
I observe that we already have a world-class system—unfortunately, it is a third-world-class system. We do not know what the Government’s intentions are in respect of legislation. Perhaps the Minister could advise us. What has become of the claim in the Government press release of 23 February that the,
“Historic Prisons and Courts Bill will transform the lives of offenders and put victims at the heart of the justice system, helping to create a safer and better society”,
and that,
“new legislation underpins measures outlined in the ground-breaking Prison Safety and Reform White Paper which will transform how our prisons operate”?
Ever helpful, as is my wont, I suggest that the Government begin again and include in any future Bill on the topic—assuming there is parliamentary time in the face of the tidal wave of Brexit legislation which is about to overwhelm us—some basic proposals designed to reduce the prison population to a more manageable, and therefore more effective, level. First, in addition to the suggestions of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, there is a need to deal much more promptly with the scandal of the IPP prisoners, still numbering some 3,000. Secondly, the Government need to reduce significantly the number of prisoners on remand pending trial, a significant proportion of whom will be found not guilty or, if guilty, receive light, often non-custodial sentences. Thirdly, in discussion with the judiciary, they need to review the degree of sentence inflation which has characterised the last couple of decades, which a number of noble Lords have referred to. Fourthly, they need to reconsider their policy of building very large prisons, which in too many cases are very distant from the families and communities to which prisoners will return on their release. Lastly, they need to investigate the disproportionate number of ethnic minority prisoners relative to other offenders committing comparable offences.
We have had a broad and very well informed debate which I hope the Government will take on board. I’m not sure whether the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, has had to reply to a debate on prisons thus far?
Lord Beecham
I hope her initiation has not proved too painful. I am sure she will address very seriously the issues that noble Lords around the House have raised and will, together with the new Lord Chancellor, make greater progress than seems likely at present. I think the House will be grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, in particular, who has, as ever, brought his masterful experience of the system to the fore and made a very strong case for the change that is needed to make it more effective and humane.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
My Lords, I would like to begin by thanking the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, for securing this debate. He and other noble—and in some cases noble and learned—Lords have raised some very important points, which I hope to address. I will certainly write to address detailed and specific points, as so many have been raised today, and I am extraordinarily grateful for the quality of this debate.
Our prisons have been overcrowded for well over a decade, with the rate stable at around 25%. Overcrowding has been a long-standing issue for successive Governments. In November last year, to tackle overcrowding and other problems facing the prison system, this Government launched the Prison Safety and Reform White Paper. This programme will transform the prison estate and the experience of prisoners in it. It includes a £1.3 billion investment to make prisons safe and secure—and, in turn, places of rehabilitation. To reduce overcrowding, we must act in two areas. We must reform the prison estate and manage prisoner numbers.
Turning first to the prison estate, we need to make sure that we have the right number of prison places of the right type in modern or modernised buildings. There remain large parts of the prison estate that are old and inefficient, as noted by my noble friend Lord Colgrain. Prisoners are housed in poor physical conditions. Our transformative prison building and redevelopment programme will put this right. We are replacing old, inefficient prison places with 10,000 modern and better-designed places that support prisoner rehabilitation. Reducing overcrowding is a central aim of this estate modernisation, and the new prisons will be designed with this firmly in mind—so I believe that what we are doing is in line with the comments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown. We are not building significantly more, but we are building better. We are also making sure that places are available now by bringing unused cells back into use.
I turn to the number of prisoners in our prisons. The Government are clear that there will always be enough prison places for offenders committed to custody by the courts, but many of the opportunities for achieving a better outcome for prisoners and the public may result in a reduction in prisoner numbers and will therefore help us tackle overcrowding. First, we must reduce reoffending. Many noble Lords have mentioned reoffending or the factors that lead to it: a lack of education and training, a dearth of employment opportunities, drug or alcohol addiction, poor mental health, and so many more. Reoffending costs the country £13 billion a year and puts a huge strain on our prisons.
The Government are committed through the prison safety and reform programme to improving the education, training and employment opportunities for prisoners, including encouraging prisoners to get qualifications in English and maths, providing access to apprenticeship programmes and teaming up with employment partners such as National Rail, Timpson, Halfords and so many more, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Lee. There will be more on these when we launch the education and employment strategy later this year.
The Government are also working to help prisoners beat addiction by ensuring access to trained providers of specialist addiction services. We have also announced measures to crack down on the availability of drugs in prisons. We believe that these actions will reduce reoffending and aid rehabilitation.
IPP prisoners have an impact on prisoner numbers, of course, and were mentioned by many noble Lords. We are committed to helping the remaining IPP prisoners to progress through their sentences towards safe release. IPP sentences, introduced by the previous Labour Government, were imposed a long time ago and were abolished by the coalition Government in 2012. Since then, the Prison Service, the National Probation Service and the Parole Board have taken up a range of work to speed up IPP sentence progression. This has included diverting recall cases away from the Parole Board so that it can focus on reviewing IPP prisoners; enhanced case management, with a view to avoiding IPP cases becoming stuck in the parole system; increasing the provision of places on new progression regimes; and improved access to interventions and programmes. Last year alone, 576 IPP prisoners were released—the highest number of annual releases. The Parole Board gave a release decision to almost half of all IPP prisoners considered, and recommended a move to open conditions for a further quarter.
There are a number of other areas it is worth mentioning with regard to prisoner numbers. The first is our focus on deporting foreign national offenders. Last year we deported 6,171—a record number. Electronic tagging, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, is an effective offender management tool, which can give suspects and offenders a chance to maintain their ties with a community while imposing additional safeguards to protect the public. The work to deliver the new service is complicated and has taken longer than originally anticipated, although lessons have been learned along the way. Our changes will introduce location monitoring and the flexibility to bring in an even greater range of monitoring in the future.
There is also the use of release on temporary licence as part of rehabilitation, where we will maintain improvements recently made to ROTL and allow governors greater discretion to help prisoners get the skills and training that they need. We will, however, continue to use recall where appropriate for breaches of conditions, particularly where there is a risk to the public—but we are taking action to ensure that more is done to help offenders complete their licence period successfully without reaching the point where recall becomes necessary.
Noble Lords referred to other issues that may ultimately make it less likely that a prisoner will be rehabilitated and go on to become a successful returning citizen. I have mentioned that we are taking steps to tackle drug addiction and reduce the availability of drugs. These are important to improve prisoner rehabilitation and reduce violence and instability in our prisons. We want prisons to be places of hard work, rigorous education and high ambition, with incentives for prisoners to learn and for prison staff to prioritise education and work. We need to put the tools to drive change into the hands of those in the front line, who know best what works. Progress is being made on a number of recommendations, including giving governors the budget and flexibility to spend their resources appropriately in order, for example, to help prisoners keep up important family ties—which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins.
To support prisoners and enable each to reach his or her new potential, the new offender management model included as part of the prison safety and reform programme ensures that each prisoner has a key worker with time to engage one to one, act as a mentor and support changes in attitudes and behaviour. Each prison officer will have no more than around six cases. That will ensure that prisoners have the means to develop a programme of support that meets their needs: from access to education to getting ready to leave prison, from getting treatment for poor mental health to enrolling on a training programme.
Many noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, the right reverend prelate the Bishop of Rochester and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, mentioned the problems of suicide, self-harm and poor mental health. On suicide and self-harm, we have put in place a range of measures to support prisoners who are at risk of self-harm or suicide, especially in the first 24 hours, when they are at their most vulnerable. We are rolling out new training that will help staff identify the risks and triggers of suicide and self-harm and understand what they can do to support prisoners at risk. We have put in place specialist roles, including regional safer-custody leads in every region to provide advice to prisoners and spread good practice. We are using experts, including providing extra funding to the Samaritans, to provide support for prison staff and prisoners directly.
On mental health more broadly, we need a more systematic, nationally consistent approach that provides quicker and more certain access to mental health treatment. We are working with the Department of Health and NHS England to develop a new health and justice protocol so that courts are able to increase their use of mental health treatment requirements, alcohol treatment requirements and drug rehabilitation requirements as part of a community sentence. This will mean that we can intervene earlier to deal with mental health and substance misuse issues. We are also working with the judiciary and the Health Secretary to make sure that courts have better access to psychologists and registered mental health practitioners. These liaison and diversion services—for which we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, for his work—are being trialled at police stations and courts across nearly 70% of the country. NHS England is leading a cross-government programme to expand these services to the whole of England by 2020-21.
Finally, prison must be safe. The level of violence in our prisons is unacceptable. We are fully committed to making prisons safer and addressing the significant increase in violence and assaults by increasing staffing levels and improving ways of working. In all of this, the work of prison staff is supported by close working relationships with a range of partners. Prison chaplains of many faiths, for example—mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark—are critical in providing pastoral and spiritual care to those in our care. They offer valuable support to governors in delivering decent and humane regimes. We recognise and welcome the valuable pastoral care that our chaplaincies provide to staff and inmates across the prison estate.
There is much more to be done—much new thinking to be had and innovation to be found. That was mentioned by my noble friend Lady Bottomley and the noble Lords, Lord Wigley, Lord Alton and Lord Bird. I hope that we can continue these discussions going forward.
In order to achieve our goals and provide prisoners with the support that they need, we need to back the hard-working prison workforce already in place and bolster its numbers over the next 18 months. That is why we are investing £100 million a year to recruit an extra 2,500 prison officers by the end of next year. The most recent figures show that the number of prison officers has increased by 868 compared with the previous quarter. Prison officer recruitment numbers are at their highest level since records began. We believe that these new prison officers will meet the forecast needs of the prison system.
Targeted recruitment activities, such as higher starting pay and additional allowances of up to £5,000 a year, support the process in those establishments that have the most difficulty with recruitment. These new recruits will join thousands of dedicated prison officers who undertake such important work day in and day out to keep our prisons and the public safe. We will need their experience, which is why we are rolling out retention programmes across the estate and providing financial incentives to reduce attrition.
It should be noted that the role of the prison officer is developing. It is changing and on training, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, we are making improvements. We have increased our prison officer training capacity to be able to deal with the significant boost in numbers. Existing staff are undertaking key worker training. We are providing tailored support to governors and their teams to introduce this model and train staff, beginning with 10 pathfinder prisons. This investment in additional prison staff, plus more effective training and the greater autonomy we have given to governors—
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
I apologise that I was not able to be here for most of the debate because of other business, but can the Minister tell us what would be the ratio, once these additional prison staff are recruited, of prison staff to prisoners compared with, say, eight years ago?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
Unfortunately, I do not have those data to hand, but I go back to the comments I made earlier about each prison officer having a maximum of six cases in their workload, which is certainly manageable going forward. If I receive any further information I will of course write to the noble Lord.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, perhaps I can help the Minister. The ratio of staff to prisoners is now 1: 6, which it was last in 1950. At the time of the riots in 1990, it was 1:3. It has increased, therefore, to 1:6, which I suggest is unsustainable.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
I thank the noble Lord for his comments.
This investment in additional prison staff, plus more effective training, the greater autonomy we have given to governors and the implementation of our commitment to have one key worker for every six prisoners will enable more time directly to supervise offenders, provide essential one-to-one mentoring and support and help reduce the unacceptable levels of assault, self-harm and suicide.
My noble friend Lord Cormack and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, mentioned private prisons. There are 13 privately managed prisons in England and the Government remain fully committed to a mixed market for public services, drawing on the best of public, private and voluntary providers to improve quality and secure value for money for the taxpayer. We have robust processes in place to closely monitor and manage private contractors and will not hesitate to take action when standards fall short. Using private prisons allows for different financing models, stimulates continuous improvement and encourages the sort of innovation to which the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, referred. It brings commercial rigour into the system, which we feel is essential.
I believe that the reforms and actions I have set out show how we are effectively managing the prison population, now and for the future. In an estate parts of which date back to Victorian times, there are of course significant challenges, but we know where those challenges lie and what is needed to rise to them. With our recruitment of record numbers of prison officers, with our unprecedented prison modernising programme and our focus on rehabilitation and reducing offending rates, we are getting on with that important work to build a prison system that is safe and secure and transforms offenders’ lives.
Lord Elton
Will my noble friend undertake to take copies of the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and myself to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury and discuss them over a cup of coffee, or perhaps a glass of whisky?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
I thank my noble friend for his intervention and I would say, over a glass of wine.
Lord Birt
I am sure the House will welcome the constructive tone that the Minister has adopted. I note with pleasure her educational pedigree—she has an MBA from a leading business school—so she will be familiar with the notion of a long-term integrated business plan. Will she undertake to bring together all the many measures she has discussed with some hard numbers and forecasts to reassure us that the outcomes she desires will actually be funded and achieved?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
Once again I thank the noble Lord for his intervention. I will certainly look into it but as we know, forecasts are sometimes somewhat unreliable.
Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood
My Lords, I am truly grateful to all those who have taken part in this debate, not least the Minister. She will, I hope, allow me to congratulate her on this, her maiden response to a debate, and suggest that she played some of the points with a straight bat that will be the envy of some of those likely to be dismissed at the other Lord’s venue today. Given, however, the weight and expertise of the others who have contributed to this debate and the strength and urgency of their various calls to action, I would urge her to copy this debate widely and send a record of it to the Lord Chancellor, to the Prisons Minister, indeed to all those in government who have interests beyond merely Brexit in advancing civilised values and the quality of life in this country. There is time to say no more than that now. I repeat my thanks and beg to move.
Digital Understanding
(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho
That this House takes note of the case for improved digital understanding at all levels of United Kingdom society.
Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (CB)
My Lords, the last time I secured a debate in your Lordships’ Chamber, it was to mark the 25th anniversary of the world wide web. We marvelled at having Bach and da Vinci at our fingertips and celebrated 94 year-olds on social media. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, called the internet,
“the greatest transformative force in history bar none”.—[Official Report, 16/1/14; col. 403.]
However, even on that day we were cautious. I said that,
“we are sleepwalking into assuming that the platform underpinning so much of our daily life is not changing”.—[Official Report, 16/1/14; col. 396.]
I am sad to report that nearly all of us, including me, have spent too much of the past three years continuing to sleepwalk. If that debate was a birthday party, today’s must be a mid-life crisis.
We are in the midst of some major geopolitical shifts. The planet is hotter than it has been in 115,000 years. Populism has seen a worrying resurgence, both at home and abroad. Stagnating wages mean that young people are earning thousands less than generations before them. Alongside these, we are living through the staggering transformation brought by the internet. Technology is changing our world at a speed we have never seen before, a speed that I believe will now never be reversed. That is a challenge, but if we allow ourselves to awaken we can make it a source of tremendous opportunity: if we seize them, if we own them, we can harness the power of these technologies to address the other great challenges we face. I am calling today for digital understanding to be improved everywhere because I believe it is central to our ability to create better outcomes for people in the next century.
For as long as we have had the internet, we have had the internet’s promise. The internet promised us energised democracies and a world where all could speak to one another. In a way, it has fulfilled that promise: we can register to vote, petition the Government and support candidates who match our values with just a few keystrokes. But in addition to that, we have emotionally manipulative advertisements that target us based on our gender, our faith, and even our sexual preferences. The Vote Leave campaign last year spent 98% of its budget on digital adverts and boasted that the advantage of doing so was that it was so poorly scrutinised by the political media. Just this morning, as many noble Lords will have heard, Facebook revealed that many thousands of dollars of political ads were bought by Russian trolls during the US election, and I am sure there will be more revelations to come.
The internet promised us flexible, creative work that could be done anywhere. Again, it delivered: today we have the biggest tech industry in Europe, with 1.5 million people employed and £7 billion invested last year alone. However, alongside that we also have Amazon delivery drivers receiving as little as £3 an hour with no breaks, while CEO Jeff Bezos’s personal wealth surpasses $92 billion. Not a day goes by without headlines wrestling with the nature of artificial intelligence and how it will affect the world of work. Enormous and extraordinary leaps in quantum computing and machine learning somehow feel dislocated from the people who will inevitably be affected by the ways these innovations are deployed.
The internet promised us free access to the world’s information. We now live in a world where every single piece of art at the Tate has its own web page, but also one where fake news is an art form, slickly produced by anyone who wants to profit from our confusion. The internet promised access to new ways of learning and creativity for our children and in many ways, again, this has been true: learning has become democratised and more accessible, with everything from Khan Academy to the amazing BBC resources. But who in the early days of the web would have imagined the creation of Instagram and foreseen its damaging effects on young people’s self-esteem?
For a dotcom dinosaur like me, one of the most surprising developments is the domination of our experience of the internet by a handful of companies. Twenty years ago the rise of these so-called platform businesses was not anticipated. Now the flows of money, power and usage are controlled in a way far removed from the open, distributed, fragmented early years. We can point to these tech giants, the monopoly platforms, the wily political strategists who have shaped these phenomena, and try to blame them for all this, but the truth is that they only created some of the hollow vessels. We are the users.
Every time we use the internet, we leave a data trail of valuable information to be transformed into personalised and targeted advertising. That may be a tantalising holiday home in Europe for some of us, but for the poor and vulnerable it is likely to be a high-interest loan or a bad insurance deal. Every time we share some outrageous piece of invective or agitation, we encourage the creation of even more content which erodes the factual base of our public conversation. Every time we tap our phone to choose the convenience of a short ride home, we buy into the idea that it is okay for a driver to have no job security or holiday pay. To paraphrase John Lanchester recently in the London Review of Books, “We are the product”.
Now we are seeing the outcomes of these contributions. Expertise has been devalued and emotion reigns supreme. Take a look at the climate crisis. The internet has helped to drive the exponential increase in information, but the public’s ability to accept it has slid. YouTube videos with titles such as “What They Haven’t Told You About Climate Change” and “The Great Climate Change Hoax” have driven millions of views. Is it any wonder that in the UK, Australia, Germany, Canada and the US the average partisan divide over the climate crisis is now 40 points?
We have let these things come upon us, but it is not too late to wake up. If we want to change this dynamic and shape the future we need to recapture some of the internet’s original promise and more of its positive transformative power. That means we need to understand—at all levels of society—what our digital world really is. We need to address the challenges that already exist and pre-empt the ones we do not know about.
We live our digital lives this way because we have the skills to do so. Some 91% of us in the UK have the ability to use the internet. This is a remarkable achievement. It is important to continue the work to close the remaining gap and include those who do not have the skills or access. But we also need to move beyond skills to understanding. Nearly all UK internet users have the digital skills to use a search engine but only half know how to distinguish between search results and adverts. Around two-thirds of our digitally skilled population can shop and bank online but a third of those do not make any checks before entering their personal or financial information. More than 1.4 million of us work in tech-related jobs but, as the recent WannaCry attack showed us, hardly anyone is investing the time, resources or expertise to keep our systems safe. This list could go on for ever.
Becoming a nation of people with digital understanding will be different and more complicated than becoming one with digital skills. For starters, skills are tangible and teachable—can you download this app, programme this device or complete this transaction? They also reinforce the notion that digital is something we do. It is time-bound and transactional. But in a world where we spend more time online than we do asleep and where everything from televisions to kettles can connect to the internet, digital is something we are. Understanding is not a race to be run. It is a lifelong process of learning unique to each of us.
We in this House have a particular responsibility as we have the privilege of playing a role in public life. We must ask ourselves whether we have the digital understanding to provide the leadership needed in this time of technological change. I cannot stress how vital it is that we—parliamentarians, policymakers and politicians—absorb and engage with the realities of how digital technologies work. We must see where our country can make the most of them and be alert to the potential dangers.
In recent months I have heard frankly anodyne comments such as “enough is enough” or “we must scrap end-to-end encryption”—the very system that keeps our personal information safe. This is alarmist and a disservice to the people we serve. Just as it would not be acceptable for a Minister not to understand how her departmental budget works, it is not acceptable for her not to understand how technology affects her brief. It is not an insurmountable task. We live in 2017, not 1817, and we have form to follow.
I had the pleasure of working at the beginning of the Government Digital Service. It has shown how digital understanding can be applied to the world of government, from scrapping paper car tax discs to simplifying the appointment of power of attorney. It has also shown us how not to do it. It saved us £4.1 billion by not creating expensive and complicated apps and by salvaging doomed projects such as universal credit. But the good work being done to help the Government modernise and to make it work for people who live their lives digitally is being dismantled. Departmental silos are creeping back, replicating cost and inefficiency. GDS is celebrated and copied around the world. Last year we were ranked top for digital government by the UN. How ironic if we fail to recognise and nurture this great asset because of a lack of digital understanding.
There are other pioneers making digital understanding a reality. The Open University—in which I declare my interest as chancellor—makes digital literacy integral to its students’ experience. OU students graduate able to manage their digital identities, separate fact from fiction and make sense of what they find online. It is sharing its experience with other institutions. Citizens Advice—a reassuring hand on our high streets since the war—now has a digital dashboard showing what advice people are searching for and is helping millions of its users navigate the new challenges in their lives, from Facebook scams to online identity theft. London has just appointed its first chief digital officer, making our capital a role model for making the city digital. This is not about shiny new gadgets. It is about using technology so we can recycle better and have fewer potholes and more effective parking.
I call on the Government to support and amplify the good things happening and to bring these people together in a more structured way. How about we create a formal network of public organisations that can tangibly build our nation’s digital understanding? Much of their work is admirable but it is co-ordination and focus that will embed digital understanding in the fabric of our lives. Perhaps too this network could have a more formal role as a resource for elected and public officials needing support. But while we do this at a granular level, we need to do it with a purpose and a destination. We need to know what kind of digital world we are trying to shape. For this reason, I welcome the Government’s role in developing a digital charter. It presents an opportunity for us to argue and articulate what we want and to design a moral compass for our digital age.
We know that the digital landscape is currently monopolised by a few American-based platforms—although I would watch out for the Asian digital tigers which may soon join them—which are steeped in the world-view of Silicon Valley with its love of the First Amendment and libertarianism. We can build a charter of our own—an articulation of the nation we want to be and then perhaps we can globally find our commonalities and create the basis of a Geneva Convention for the web. I believe we must come together and attempt to put some of these universal principles in place for the next phase of our digital world.
No matter how we move forward, we must do so in modern ways. We do not need a Select Committee on digital understanding beavering away in a closed-off room. We need smart people working in creative and agile ways to get to the bottom of what is really going on. Difficult or not, this work must be done and done now. It is an issue not just of technology but of fairness. It is simply not fair that only a few people understand technology and are taking advantage of the billions who do not. None of this means that we can rest in the mission to bring basic digital skills to everyone or roll out high-quality broadband to the rest of the country. It just means we need to expand our goal. It is not an either/or but a both.
If there is anyone still struggling to comprehend the universality of tech in our lives, I recommend taking a look at today’s list of speakers. We have a composer, a neuroscientist, the Astronomer Royal, a filmmaker, businesswomen and a Bishop—not to mention the man who brought us Amstrad. I am heartened by the fact that, as this Chamber debates digital understanding for everyone in the UK, we are not simply hearing from those whose careers, like mine, have been built around technology. Members from all over the House will speak and, if a 700-year-old institution can see the value of digital understanding, I have no doubt the rest of the British public can too.
Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on an excellent speech and for promoting this debate. It is really excellent. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has published a strategy for the data and digital world. It is a good document and well promoted by its Minister, Matthew Hancock, but it is like a signpost pointing the way, and I am not sure we are going down the road that it is pointing to at all clearly.
The whole strategy will be undermined by the fact that we have now a deficiency of 750,000 digital technicians in our country. How is that gap possibly going to be filled? It will not be by the education policy imposed by Michael Gove in 2010, when almost on a whim he made all our students follow a very narrow academic curriculum at 16 comprising five subjects: English, maths, science, history or geography and a foreign language. It is the exact curriculum announced in 1904 by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education. Computing is virtually squeezed out. No computing at 16.
Does the Minister know that, in the GSCEs that have just finished, 7,000 fewer students took computing exams at 16? That should worry his department. I do not know if he has seen these figures: GCSE computing science, which is a tough exam, increased by 4,000 and IT fell by 11,000. It is extraordinary that that is happening in this digital age. It shows that there is no joined-up work in Government. Does he know that in the last year the Government have asked all primary schools to introduce coding? Does he know how many have done so? I would be interested in that figure, but I think it is very few. Last week, I visited a school in Turkey for four to 14 year-olds, with 600 students going on to 900. Two teachers were teaching coding to six and seven year-old Turkish children. That does not happen in our schools at all.
In the colleges that I have been promoting we are very digitally aware. For example, the sixth-formers at the UTC in Scarborough are working in a cybersecurity suite sponsored by GCHQ. GCHQ has come out of the closet and does not worry at all about publicity now, because it cannot recruit from normal schools the youngsters that it wants to employ. Another UTC, next to City Airport, is doing advanced computing. If you go there, you will see 20 16 year-old sixth-form students with helmets on their heads creating virtual reality. There is no other school in the country doing that.
The Ministers in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport have got to take an interest in these issues. There is no joined-up government between what the Government are doing educationally and what they hope for in their policy.
If the Minister has any spare time, he might go and visit Estonia. It is the most digitally successful country in Europe, so much so that its former Prime Minister has now been appointed by the European Commission to develop its digital strategy. Coding has been in Estonian schools for years and, as a result, they produce an enormous number of computer scientists and export them. We are in the extraordinary position of trying to catch up with Estonia.
The Minister cannot just look on this strategy as a signpost. He has to engage in the voyage.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
My Lords, this is another debate on digital led by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, and yet another long list of speakers. Her leadership in this area is obvious. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Baker. There is plenty I want to say in response to his speech, but that will have to wait until next Thursday’s debate in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott.
As the past chair and now patron of the Good Things Foundation, there is also much I would like to say relating to the need to narrow the divide in digital skills and understanding between the majority and the more than 10 million Britons without the skills and confidence to take advantage of the digital world. These are most likely to be older, poorer and disabled: the most vulnerable in our society.
I also remind your Lordships of my interests in the register, in particular my work with TES. In the analogue world, this was the Times Educational Supplement, but in its digital incarnation it minimises the number of characters used and is simply TES. That work has hugely helped my understanding of the power of digital to help the recruitment, training and resourcing of teachers.
I have also co-founded a business, xRapid, which uses the ability of a smartphone to recognise patterns through its camera lens, attached to a microscope, to diagnose malaria and count asbestos fibres. These machines are then able to learn from each other and thereby keep increasing the accuracy of the diagnosis.
Of course, these exciting forms of artificial intelligence need fuelling and their precious fuel is data, so that is what I will focus my remarks upon. This House will shortly be considering the data protection Bill. As the noble Baroness said, it is vital that enough of us have sufficient digital understanding to properly scrutinise and improve that legislation. In doing so, we need to pay special attention to those least able to understand and advocate for themselves.
My attention therefore turns to children: there is no demographic that has a greater need for improved digital understanding. Most parents struggle to advise their children on online safety, but they are also highly concerned to know that their child’s personal data are safe. We currently have little time in the school curriculum, which the noble Lord has just described, to teach children about data. We need to fix that, so that children know what information, images and videos are collected that are personal to them, why, by whom and for what use. What plans does DCMS have to engage children on this agenda?
Will the Minister talk to the DfE about this, and include a warning about the national pupil database? The NPD routinely collects highly sensitive data about all the nation’s children and shares them across government departments, with academics and with private companies. There is little transparency as to why it collects what it does, it is a workload pressure on teachers and I hope that the Minister can help them quickly address concerns about this data collection.
Our digital future is uncertain. With transparency, inclusion and understanding, we can progress with consent and confidence.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for this debate. This area is not a natural strength of mine, but I have always taken the view that the best way to learn is to jump in at the deep end.
The internet is a relatively new phenomenon, compared to the time it took to develop our brains as the basic human apparatus devoted to learning. There are huge opportunities associated with digital technologies, but there are equally big risks. Our lives have been transformed by the internet.
Schools do not equip people to adapt to change or to be questioning and critical about the internet. As a country, our basic and advanced skills in IT have increased year by year. Yes, there are regional, gender, age and socioeconomic differences, but progress and development have been amazing. Schools need to be at the forefront of developing digital understanding, but to do that they need qualified, enthusiastic and inspiring teachers and a school curriculum—and an EBacc—fit for purpose. All too often, Governments perceive a need to develop a subject, decree from on high how it will happen, but do not provide the resources and expertise needed.
I want young people to have the skills, but I also want them to understand the internet. For example, I want children at a young age to know that anyone who uses the internet creates and leaves a series of footprints: lasting impressions of all of an individual’s online activity which can be visible to others, particularly through social media. I want them to understand about data protection and cybersecurity. Understanding is about opportunities, but it is also about threats.
Finally, the biggest gap in digital skills, never mind understanding, is between socioeconomic groups. If you live in a deprived community, you cannot afford a PC, let alone an iPad or a smartphone: you do not have access to the technologies. Perhaps your local library, which might have had a bank of computers, has closed down or has been cut back. You can have all the understanding in the world, but it is for nought.
The internet is, undeniably, an important part of our lives and has transformed them for good. In her stunning speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, asked what type of digital world we want to create. To my mind, that would be the most important building block in our digital understanding.
Baroness Kidron (CB)
My Lords, I will use the time available to make two brief points. First, we often equate digital understanding with digital skills, and I believe that is an error which will hold us back. Secondly, I suggest that digital understanding must include a willingness to impose our values on the digital environment as well as to understand it on the terms that it currently presents itself.
With regard to the first point, I draw noble Lords’ attention to a report, “Digital Skills for Life and Work”, that will be published on 17 September by the UN Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development. I declare my interest as a named contributor to this, as well my interests on the register. The report gathers some of the best research available from around the world, including from the big tech companies and concludes, in its chapter on skills, that many of the things explicitly labelled as 21st century digital skills are not actually skills but are a combination of knowledge, work habits, character traits and attitudes. The label “skills” encompasses abilities that cover a range of different technical, cognitive, social and ethical domains.
The report underlines that not all of these competencies involve direct use of digital technology. Many of them require awareness, critical understanding and non-technical expertise. In particular, it points out that digital interactions include not only what an individual does but what is done to an individual—and, increasingly, what is done to an individual when they are not consciously or deliberately engaging with the digital environment. In that case, it firmly attaches the idea of safety and security to a knowledge of and an implementation of rights.
The report states that skills, both basic and advanced, are just one small component of a broader set of literacies required for digital competency. It lays out those competencies in some detail, but I urge the Minister and the Government to embrace this notion of digital competency. I recommend the report to the many Ministers who have work in this area and will put a copy in the Library for colleagues after publication.
My second point is that technology is neutral but its culture is not, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, so carefully set out. There is an awkward tension in having a technology that is able to help us to confront our societal needs—an ageing population, health outcomes, education, transport, climate change and so on—and a corporate culture that aggressively balks at the responsibilities implicit in sharing its tax burden or long-term societal responsibilities in the nation states in which they operate. They are the richest companies in the world, with a vast turnover of products which depend on their novelty and expire quickly. They reside nowhere and answer to no one because their presence and their business are considered virtual, even if the products and services they deliver are not.
Any discussion about digital understanding does not begin and end with teaching digital skills or competencies, how to protect the vulnerable online, automation or even questions of security and encryption but rather starts with the question of how we yoke the incredible power and potential of digital technology to our societal values. This in turn requires us to be somewhat clearer about what those values are, and what institutions and arrangements—national and international—are required to implement and protect those values.
The Government have announced an array of interventions in the digital environment. We await a Green Paper and a digital charter. To my knowledge, there is work going on in the Home Office, the Department of Health, the Department for Education, DCMS and the Ministry of Justice. I am looking for a clear core, a clear articulation of our values and a commitment to making our children, businesses and institutions—and our Parliament—digitally competent.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for tabling today’s debate. As well as the powerful economic reasons for improving digital understanding, there are also some very important social reasons why we need to look at this key area. As our lives move increasingly online, we risk leaving those at the margins and without digital understanding even further behind.
I will talk very briefly about the digital inclusion and access required for improved understanding to occur. The charity Scope has pointed out that 70% of disabled people have internet access compared with 94% of non-disabled people. According to Age UK, more than 1 million older people report going more than a month without speaking to a friend, neighbour or family member. Digital inclusion is a vital and important way to combat loneliness and strengthen social links. Online connections provide lifelines for those who struggle to leave their homes, sometimes because of illness, and to keep in touch with family and friends. Efforts to improve digital understanding should not overlook the profound difference that helping people to connect online can make.
However, for people to be digitally included, they have to have digital access. The Government’s commitment to a broadband universal service obligation is a good start, guaranteeing that all have a legal right to request a broadband connection capable of a minimum speed of 10 megabytes per second. Nevertheless, there is no point in having this right if people are not able to exercise it. The Government must be proactive in working with community groups to stimulate demand for broadband and assist people who need help to get online.
Creative community solutions can make a difference, not least, for example, in remote rural areas. The Church of England is very involved in the wiSpire project, using church spires to provide high-speed internet to remote rural communities where fibre connections may not be cost effective. This benefits both the rural economy and those living in less accessible areas.
Where people have the skills, confidence and ability to get online, individuals and communities can flourish socially as well as economically. We simply cannot afford to let people miss out on this important development.
Lord Sugar (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for introducing this debate today. I may stray a little from the general thrust of what she wanted to talk about, but it is very rare that we have the opportunity to discuss IT matters in this House.
I have been in the technology industry for over 50 years and I have obviously witnessed the massive growth of the internet. It did not exist 25 years ago and when it started, it came as a bit of a cultural shock to a lot of people. We did not trust it; we did not want to buy things online. Well, that is history. We have seen large companies such as Amazon, eBay and Google emerge in an industry that never before existed. Regrettably, all this is at the expense of a diminishing high street where independent retailers can no longer compete with online services. Looking ahead another 20 years, I simply wonder what the retail arena will look like—large or small.
Some of the public are aware that each and every time they engage in a transaction with the likes of Amazon or Google, they have been marked digitally. It is quite likely that the next time they go online, they will receive unsolicited messages relating to things they may have enquired about in the past. This is effectively what we might call the “big brother” syndrome—someone is overlooking your data and knows all about you. You have a profile somewhere in the cloud. Let me tell your Lordships, it is not going to go away. All we can do is be very careful and wary of what we do online. I am afraid that any discussion today about trying to stop this will be wasted. What I would say is very simple: “Get over it. It has happened”. Can we stop it? The answer is no: we are digitally marked and that is the end of it.
The internet is a wonderful tool, but it can also be used for dangerous purposes—terrorism, paedophilia, and so on. Internet search engine providers have a responsibility to assist the crime and security services in seeking out people who use the internet for the wrong reasons. Of course, if I were to ask the CEO of any of these companies, they would tell me that for sure they co-operate wholeheartedly with the security services. The reality is that they are commercial organisations. Their technical resources are used to find new ways to make money. The Government should insist, and have some form of auditing commitment to ensure that serious technical resource is allocated to seeking out the use of the internet for criminal or terrorism purposes. I suggest that GCHQ should be the auditing party and the Government should have the right to include an audit clause in the licences that allow providers to operate in our country. This will ensure that they are genuinely doing something about it.
I have seven grandchildren and on the very odd occasion that I am blessed with their coming to my home to have dinner, they sit around the table with their faces buried in their smartphones, to such an extent that I have banned the devices from the dining room. I deduce from this that something cannot be right. There is something wrong with young people in society today. I urge parents to take a stance to prevent their children spending too much time gazing into these devices. The internet is a wonderful thing, but it can also be a very dangerous tool.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for initiating this debate and for her brilliant speech.
Connected health or technology-enabled care—TEC, as it is commonly known—is a collective term for telecare, telehealth, telemedicine, m-health, e-health and digital health, which is increasingly seen as an integral and rapidly evolving part of healthcare delivery and of care. For example, the number of health apps on iOS and Android devices alone now exceeds 100,000. By 2018, Europe will be the largest m-health market outside the USA, worth over £8 billion to £10 billion a year. The advantages of digital health to health providers and patients include freeing up time for more direct patient contact and reducing readmissions, A&E attendance and hospital bed usage, which will help reduce the cost of health and social care and will provide better outcomes, especially for patients with long-term conditions because they will be more able to manage their own care themselves. But to deliver this, we will need health delivery systems geared up for it and health professionals trained in digital skills and able to understand and use them.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, in a report to the National Information Board in December 2015, made four key recommendations to achieve this, including free wi-fi in every hospital, building the basic digital skills of the NHS workforce, and a target of 10% of patients registered with GP practices using digital services by 2017. This would include patients in most need of health and social care. Can the Minister say what progress has been made in implementing these recommendations, which would go a long way to making healthcare in the NHS digitally skilled?
Does the Minister also agree that to achieve this, we need all training institutions—from schools and universities to medical schools, nursing schools and those providing continuous education in healthcare—to provide the necessary skills and understanding for the workforce? Does he also agree that when NICE produces guidance, it must have a component of m-health and e-health within it, which it rarely ever has? I understand of course that he may not be able to answer these questions because they might not come under his department, but would he mind passing them on to the appropriate department and maybe writing to us?
Earl Cathcart (Con)
My Lords, the noble Baroness’s Motion is excellent for those who receive adequate broadband speed. For those who do not, it is meaningless. In answer to my recent Written Question on poor broadband speeds, the Minister said that in this Parliament, the universal service obligation would give “everyone” a “legal right” to request 10 megabits per second. He also said:
“All homes and businesses can now gain access to broadband speeds of 2 Megabits”.
That is just not true. In spite of me and my fellow parishioners constantly asking BT and Openreach for better speeds, nothing ever happens. Our speeds are woefully poor to non-existent, as my noble friend Lord Ashton found out when he stayed with me in Norfolk this summer. He tested our speed and found it was a mere 0.3 megabits per second, which was nowhere near the promised 2 megabits he assured us we had in his written reply.
So where do the Government get their information, which is quite clearly so inaccurate, from? Could it be from Ofcom, which acknowledges that,
“many homes and small businesses still are unable to receive broadband speeds that are adequate to reliably perform a range of common online activities. Almost a quarter of a million UK premises … cannot get a download speed of more than 2Mbit/s.”?
A quarter of a million premises might just about be right for rural Norfolk—I bet the figure is far higher for the whole country. So where has Ofcom got its figures from? It certainly has not visited my home, as my noble friend did, or it too might have discovered a speed of only 0.3 megabits, which is worse than many third world countries.
Since my Written Question and my noble friend’s visit, has his department met Ofcom to enquire why progress in rural areas is so slow? If not, why not? Has his department met BT or Openreach regarding expected progress? Again, if not, why not? Or is getting acceptable speeds to rural areas just too difficult or too expensive?
The Government have just announced another £400 million to boost high-speed broadband, when many parts of the country still do not have the promised 2 megabits Would his money not be better spent providing the basic service that has long been promised the country? Those still languishing in broadband poverty would no doubt welcome the Motion of the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, if only they had adequate broadband speeds, so they could rise to the challenge.
Lord Giddens (Lab)
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, on her excellent opening speech and her extraordinary career so far. Apropos of what the noble Lord, Lord Sugar, said, I note that quite a few noble Lords were looking at their devices while he was speaking, and he has so far looked at his device three times since he finished speaking.
Do we need improved digital understanding at all levels of our society? You bet we do. I completely buy the distinction made by the noble Baroness between digital skills and digital understanding, and digital understanding is absolutely central to the next few years in our society and in the world at large. The digital revolution is a huge wave of change breaking across the world and transforming our largest institutions but also intimate aspects of our personal lives. The digital revolution is not the internet; the digital revolution is not robotics; the digital revolution is not awesome algorithmic or supercomputing power. It is all three of these, producing a pace of change unknown previously. The pace of change today far outstrips the industrial revolution and it is far more immediately global. It is a whole new world, which we are being plunged into at almost the speed of light. As other noble Lords have said, it is a vast mixture of opportunities and threats. The opportunities are very large. Consider, for example, the overlap between supercomputing power and genetics. Genetics is simply information, and as supercomputers deal in the awesome power of information, there will be fantastic advances in medicine, but the threats are just as large and are everywhere.
I have three quick points. First, the huge digital corporations must be held to account in relation to democratic processes and concerns, and this must happen quickly. Our lives have been invaded. Data are kept, in enormous amounts, on all of us. We cannot simply accept this as it stands. Secondly, as citizens, we cannot just sit back and accept a situation where human beings are programmed out of key technologies. Smart machines can be designed either to replace us or to enhance and extend our capabilities. When it comes to the distinction between AI and what has been called IA—intelligence augmentation—we should push for the second of these. This is a very serious issue. Thirdly, direct human contact should be preserved and sometimes reintroduced. “Back to the future” is a good way of handling advanced technologies. Let us reintroduce human contact wherever we can where at the moment we have robotic automated voices. Let us contain and humanise the robots.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)
My Lords, I am happy to concur, as always, with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, has said. His remarks are well worth careful study. I want to draw colleagues’ attention to something that those who work with the Parliamentary Digital Service will already know—that tomorrow is the last day for our retiring director, Mr Rob Greig. As a former chair of the Information Committee I shall take this opportunity to wish him well in his career and thank him for the leadership—which is worth mentioning in dispatches—that he gave to the response to the recent cyberattack. Without his leadership that would have had a much worse impact on our institution. He has done two and a half years, and he has made a difference. We wish him well, and thank him for his work.
I was particularly interested in the reference by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, to the way in which we run Parliament. Listening to the debate, I realise that with her, with the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, and others, we have an enormous amount of talent among the membership of your Lordships’ House. I am also pleased that the Senior Deputy Speaker has taken enough of an interest in this debate to be present today, because he has a key role in trying to make sure that we do business in a way that is fit for purpose in a digital age.
I agree with some of the speeches made earlier. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, made a powerful speech, and he has done great work in dealing with training needs. He says that we need to catch up with Estonia, and he is correct. That is how bad things are. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans made a powerful speech about fairness. Obviously, I would subscribe to that, because if we in this House are passing laws relying on “digital by default”, it is not right if we do not know what we are asking our clients—applicants for universal credit—to know and understand, because we need a better grounding. We need not only a grounding but an understanding—that is a good word; it is not just digital skills that we need, but an understanding of what a modern Parliament needs.
My plea, following on from the important speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, is that, working with the Lord Speaker—I know that he has a genuine interest—and the new interim director of the PDS, we should be operating with a much closer interest by Members to try to make Parliament much more effectively digital. If we do not do that, we will be left behind. The institution, qua institution, will become more and more irrelevant to the needs, political and otherwise, of the day. I suggest starting some kind of interest group—it could be online, virtual, or anything we like—to bring together some of the collective massive talent we have, and try to encourage other Members who are perhaps less familiar with technology, and do not feel as comfortable with it, to engage in a conversation, so that we can all not only improve our own individual contributions to the work of this important institution, but produce a better result for the British public. That is an important priority for the Government.
Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)
My Lords, as we have heard, digital technology has transformed our lives, with the same import as the invention of the wheel. My noble friend Lady Lane-Fox of Soho has reminded me of the important strictures of one of my composition teachers—that you will only ever get out of any venture rewards in direct correlation with what you put in. That lies at the heart of this timely debate.
For example, I can press a button and digital technology will play me a piece of music—but by exploring that technology further, by investing time and creativity in it, I can do so much more. I can write music directly on electronic manuscript paper, or I can play it on a keyboard and the technology will notate it and play it back. Is that not absolutely extraordinary? Just imagine if Bach or Mozart had had that technology. Their improvisations would have been preserved for posterity, and instead of their laboriously writing out by quill all the individual parts for violins, violas, woodwind and brass, and sending them by horse to musicians desperate to rehearse, the technology would extricate the parts, which could then be sent instantly all over the world, where they could be printed—or even, as now happens, be performed by reading from an electronic tablet, just as I am referring to my notes now. Mozart would surely have had time to finish his own Requiem, and so much more besides.
Let us follow the example of composers, scientists and artists of this stature who seized technological advances in their own time, and by understanding them were able to transform knowledge and to write sublime masterpieces for instruments that were still in their infancy. Mozart’s clarinet concerto, and his quintet, are perfect examples of not merely using advances in technology but understanding their potential. Look at how David Hockney has used digital technology in his iPad pictures and his multicamera moving landscapes. Every theatrical event we attend is now lit by pre-programmed computer technology. Many films and television programmes manage magically to combine realism with technological fantasy to transport us to an extraordinary and brave new world—and indeed, to worlds beyond our own.
We must concentrate on the young and the underprivileged in our efforts to educate, and to spread the digital word. Opportunity to learn is such a gift. With it we will transform the lives of so many, allowing them to share in the magical cornucopia of experience that digital technology and the internet offer. The next generation will transport us in ways that are unimaginable as we sit here today. Why, we might meet in virtual reality, thus solving our current problems of housing during repairs and rebuilding.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, on introducing this debate. She has already forced somebody with few digital skills into a little bit of digital understanding, and I thank her very much for that. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. He put this issue into the context of music and I shall put it into the context of policing. It was a delight that the noble Baroness mentioned climate change, but I am going to avoid that topic today and talk about policing.
A high level of digital understanding is obviously important for the police. It will be essential in fighting crime. The problem is that the rapid pace of technological advancement leaves many unknown unknowns—for example, the policing issues that might arise with driverless cars or quantum computers. As new crimes come forward, such as cyberbullying and phishing, the police need technology skills and support to face these 21st-century crimes. At the same time as we navigate these challenges, we also have to maintain a constant focus on protecting civil liberties while encouraging and facilitating innovation.
Digital crime differs greatly from traditional crimes, because most digital crime can be committed from the comfort of the perpetrator’s own home, and the actions of a computer-savvy criminal can rapidly affect thousands of people. The ransomware attack on the NHS in May showed the devastating effect that cybercrime can have on core public services. To meet these challenges, all police officers and police staff need the knowledge and skills to use digital technology and be aware of emerging trends. Police leaders must have a deep understanding of the developing issues, and have the vision for a new strategy to seize the initiative on these new crimes.
I want to talk about big data, which the police use a lot. That means drawing huge amounts of data from diverse sources, assessing their accuracy and reliability, and then making critical analyses—and sometimes difficult decisions based on what has been learned. This is an important issue, as it has wide-ranging implications for civil liberties and discrimination within society. It offers opportunities for the police to add data-driven insights to their traditional policing expertise. Complex algorithms can make useful predictions from a range of data as diverse as historical crime data, location of cashpoints, census data, football results, weather patterns and temperature changes.
The opportunity is that big data models can give deeper insight into the trends that affect crime and allow police to direct scarce resources better. Often this can make policing easier but sometimes IT goes badly wrong, and I shall give your Lordships an example of that. Last month, London’s Met police used what is actually a controversial, inaccurate and largely unregulated automated facial recognition technology to spot troublemakers at the Notting Hill Carnival. This is the second year running that it has trialled it, and once again it did more harm than good. Last year it actually proved useless, so that was okay, but this year it proved worse than useless, with 35 false matches and one wrongful arrest of someone erroneously tagged as being wanted on warrant for a rioting offence. Silkie Carlo, the technology policy officer for civil rights group Liberty, saw the technology in action and, in a blog post, described the system as showing,
“all the hallmarks of the very basic pitfalls technologists have warned of for years—policing led by low-quality data and low-quality algorithms”.
Yet, in spite of its lack of success, the Met’s project leads viewed the weekend not as a failure but as a resounding success. It had come up with one solitary successful match, and even that was skewered by sloppy record-keeping that got an individual wrongly arrested. The automated facial recognition was accurate but the person had already been processed by the justice system and was erroneously included on a suspect database. It so often comes back to basic record-keeping, not to technology that can make things easier.
I see two particular problems for the police force: understanding what there is in terms of digital products, and having the judgment to know what is appropriate to use.
Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (CB)
My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox. This is a really important topic, and it is right to have this debate before we get anywhere near the Bill that seeks to reform the data protection system.
Who could be opposed to improving digital literacy? Like financial, political or emotional literacy, it is surely of great practical and human importance. No doubt one of the shortcomings of our present situation is that all too many of us are not sufficiently digitally literate. Many of us are part of a generation of digital autodidacts, and both our understanding and our know-how are too often patchy.
However, there are great obstacles to improvement in digital literacy while the underlying rules and conventions of the digital world are so obscure. I do not mean merely that the technical protocols of the digital world are unclear, although few are likely to understand them. I mean that the basic legal, regulatory and cultural standards of the online world remain obscure. Perhaps an analogy with the world of print in its early days will show this. In its early days, printing was initially a deeply disruptive new technology. Today our ability to assess the printed word is supported by a framework of laws and conventions; we can distinguish between authors, printers and publishers; publishers must be identifiable and are subject to laws that bear on defamation or breaches of copyright; and there are sanctions for plagiarism and passing off. There is a huge list of further laws and regulations that bear on the printed word. We can secure good standards of written communication only because we have reasonably clear legal, regulatory and cultural frameworks in place—there are common standards. At present, matters are not comparable in the online world. Digital literacy is therefore not enough to offer adequate protection or empowerment even to those who make an effort to become more digitally literate. It would be naive to expect individual digital literacy to offer adequate certainty or protection to those using digital technologies.
There are still cyber romantics to be found who believe that no legislation or regulation should restrain the online world. However, I think that picture is remote from daily life. Of course we need to preserve freedom of expression online, as offline—but online, as offline, the aim has to be qualified by measures that secure other rights of the person. Freedom of expression, online as offline, is a qualified right. The real problem is not that standards are not needed but that extraterritoriality is an everyday reality of the digital world, and all standards will need to be established by co-operation between the powers of that world and those of the world of states. They cannot be secured by state legislation alone, and this will not be easy. Agreement on the technical standards is one matter, but the wider systemic standards needed for a digital civilisation cannot be secured while there are vast rewards for breaching them.
To cast the burden of improvement entirely on individuals by requiring them to improve their digital literacy would be to overlook where the deeper need for change lies. I suggest that Parliament needs to start to address the deeper issues of securing legislation that supports standards in the digital world. That will not be done by some tweaks in the data protection laws; indeed, I suspect that revising that failing approach to the digital world will not lead us very far.
Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)
My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for tabling this debate. I declare my interest as a trustee of the digital charity Doteveryone, which the noble Baroness chairs so ably. She and I have campaigned for a long time about basic digital skills, and a number of noble Lords here today have spoken very eloquently about that. So I want to park the issue of basic digital skills; they are so essential that a lot has already been said about them today. I hope the Minister will update us on what the Government are doing to deliver on their commitments to spend money on and support universal basic digital literacy.
Instead, I shall focus my comments on the importance of digital understanding more broadly. Basic digital skills and digital infrastructure are essential to be able to start to understand the digital world, and that is really what this debate is all about: broad digital understanding. People are afraid of the things they do not understand. They are particularly afraid of the things they do not understand that threaten their way of life, and we should have no illusions that the digital world is going to do that to a large number of people. There will be good change and bad change. I firmly believe that the good will outweigh the bad, but it is unlikely to happen simultaneously and symmetrically so that individuals are not left stranded unless we do something about it.
I shall talk briefly about one example: cars. If you take a taxi ride in London today and mention the word “Uber”, your conversation is pretty much guaranteed for the rest of the journey. The danger is that those taxi drivers are actually fighting yesterday’s battle. Come driverless cars, it is not going to be a question of regulating the drivers of Uber taxis; we need to think about how we prepare a huge swathe of society to build different skills in order to have different jobs in the new world. We also need to think about how we regulate those driverless cars. I think it was in 1930 or 1931 that the Highway Code was first drafted. One thing that has remained consistent in that code is the exhortation to drivers to drive with care and consideration of others. We are going to need to work out what the Highway Code for driverless cars is that ingrains that in the machine learning and the algorithms. We cannot abdicate that responsibility to either our children or grandchildren in the way that our grandparents did in working the VCR, nor can we abdicate that responsibility to the brilliant software engineers. I honestly think they are the last people who should be working out the new Highway Code and the moral and ethical regulatory debates that that will bring.
To create the right regulatory framework—I have picked one tiny innovation that the digital world is bringing—all of us need a general understanding of that technology to be able to engage in the debate with those brilliant software engineers, rather than to run away from them. That is why this debate is so important and why it is so fantastic, for me as someone who has worked in the tech sector for a long time, to see so many people in the Chamber today bringing such varied perspectives to this subject.
I ask the Minister what he and his department are doing to drive further digital understanding in Whitehall, in Westminster and beyond. Some very important work needs to happen now. I think we already see the signs of fear of change in our society. I would not suggest that technology is the only reason why we have a very fractured and unhappy political discourse today but it is undoubtedly one of the underlying reasons, and that is only going to increase. I hope that in future we will be discussing the real ethical and regulatory issues, rather than the need to discuss them one day.
Lord Aberdare (CB)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, on this debate; on her visionary, inspiring and rather daunting speech; and indeed on all her work to promote digital understanding and effective usage of digital technology. I was planning to speak mainly on some rather specific aspects of digital skills, based on my experience as a member of the House’s Digital Skills Committee, but, listening to the noble Baroness’s speech and the debate so far, I feel that some of the points I had planned to make fall rather below the threshold of quality that other speakers have achieved. I am going to try to rescue one or two points from my speech, with apologies if I get totally lost as a result, and congratulations to the other speakers.
My first point is about the role of government, which the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, has just raised. The Digital Skills Committee—rightly, in my view—has suggested that the Government have a role as the conductor of the orchestra. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, could have made something of this, but I will merely endorse that role: giving a lead, ensuring co-ordination and harmony between the different groups involved, achieving an overall balance and engaging all the different audiences that need to be reached.
My second point is the importance of building young people’s digital understanding right from the moment they start school, or even before, both in and outside the classroom. Like the noble Lord, Lord Sugar, my grandchildren spend most of their time looking at iPads or iPhones; however, one of the things they looked at was a wonderful kit based on the extraordinary Raspberry Pi computer. My nine year-old grandson, within around an hour of unwrapping that at Christmas, was doing some very basic programming. We could usefully learn from and encourage techniques like that.
My third point, which is another essential in this area, is to improve the careers advice and guidance offer. I have said before in this House that I am a great fan of the work that the Careers & Enterprise Company is doing to help schools improve in this area, both for skills and for understanding. The CEC’s “passport for life” is a promising initiative to provide a standardised and verified digital record of achievement that young people can share with employers.
I had also intended to endorse the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, that one of the key audiences whose digital understanding might usefully be improved is Parliament. I was very interested in a study that Doteveryone did last year, mentoring four MPs. I am sure that there are lessons to be learned from that study and that we should be looking at how we can extend that sort of learning to improve our ability to address these issues. This is a huge challenge, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister that the Government have fully studied the score and are ready to step onto the podium.
Lord Maxton (Lab)
My Lords, you will note that I have basically torn up my speech. If you are number 17 on the list, most of what you want to say has already been said. First, I would like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, both for her speech and for introducing this debate. Her speech was very good, if slightly depressing. I have already used the intranet and the internet at least twice today: I used the intranet to book a table in the dining room and I drew money out of a cash machine, which uses the internet, as we all know.
I have three political points to make. I am a politician and delighted to be called one, but I do not think that politics is keeping up with the change that is taking place in our society at the present time. In education, in the health service, in shopping, in whatever else it may be, the internet is becoming more and more important. Education was my field before I became an MP. I read education debates, and neither the word “computer” nor the internet is ever mentioned. Why? Surely we ought to be involved in that discussion. The computer and the internet ought to be transforming our education policy. I listened to the First Minister of Scotland, and she never mentioned it. It was never part of her policy.
We want to spend more money on the health service. Good, but on what? What is our health policy? Should we be connecting everything together by computer and by the internet? In the area of genetics, for instance, you can move forward only by connecting all the various computers together and making them all work on the same policy and issues. Why are we not doing that?
The internet is transforming our society and the way we work, yet our political parties—despite what the Liberals might say, and I will come to that in a moment—are not keeping up with the transformation that is taking place. They are not moving with the times. In part, this is due to the fact that our democratic process is a five-year process, whereas the process of planning for the internet, science and technology looks forward 20 years. The noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, raised that issue.
I will finish with one last point, which comes back to ensuring that everybody has access and which will make the Liberal party wake up. The only way you can ensure that everybody has access to the internet and the skills needed is by introducing a smartcard or an ID card—whatever you like to call it.
Baroness Greenfield (CB)
I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for the opportunity to contribute to this timely debate. As a neuroscientist, I urge that digital understanding should go further still and include a deeper awareness of the impact of screen technologies on the physical brain and how it is changing our actual thought processes and consciousness.
Humans possess the superlative ability to adapt to the environment. The human brain becomes highly personalised after birth by the development of unique configurations of connections between brain cells. This, I suggest, constitutes an individual “mind”. These neuronal connections are constantly being modified by input from the outside world—a world now increasingly mediated by screens. Our highly impressionable brains, our minds, will be adapting in an unprecedented fashion.
While the internet can be a source of high-quality entertainment and education and of socialising in new ways, such benefits, especially for the young, should be weighed against some very basic considerations. Young children, who are still developing the ability to regulate their emotions and cope with frustration and boredom, need to develop self-calming skills that do not rely on the palliative of the screen. No matter how high-quality the content of what is flashed up, time spent in a screen-based world displaces time spent learning, playing and socialising in the real world. Real-world toys, activities and human-to-human interactions foster the imagination, creativity and social skills of a child in ways that screen technologies typically cannot. Computer gaming has been shown to bring benefits such as improved dexterity, but the content and context of these activities should not be ignored. Put bluntly, is it not worth pondering the relative merits of 10,000 hours spent playing “World of Warcraft” online versus 10,000 hours developing skills on the guitar or piano in the sociable company of other musicians?
The temptation to immerse oneself obsessively in the screen world is well-nigh universal. Over 2,000 peer-reviewed articles relating to internet addiction offer increasingly strong evidence that it is a real phenomenon. What exactly is an internet addict addicted to? We have always found pleasure in finding new information, whether through intentional searching or happenstance, but the preference to engage with the screen world could be because it offers a qualitatively different experience from that encountered in the three-dimensional, less-compliant real world. Whatever you do in the screen world will elicit an instant response, unlike real life. This instant feedback is not merely reassuring, but so compelling for some that it becomes a prerequisite for their well-being. A recent Harvard study found that, rather than sit alone with their own thoughts for 15 minutes, many people chose to give themselves painful electric shocks. That was in Science in 2014.
Screen culture, characterised by its never-ending traffic of input and output, appears symptomatic of a new type of existential challenge: to sustain and enjoy a rewarding personal, inner world that is independent of external stimulation. The noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, should be applauded for founding a think tank highlighting a key area: examining the internet’s effect on how we live, care, consume, love, learn, work and die. Surely central to such examination should be careful consideration of its unprecedented effects on the brain itself.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, like others, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox. She has been a role model for us all. She has created a successful digital business; she helped the Government to get ahead on technology when we served together on the coalition’s Efficiency Board; and now she is beating the drum for digital skills, awareness and understanding.
I know that she feels that public policy on this matter has developed rather too slowly. I share that sentiment, but it is rarely in the nature of government to be quick. Nevertheless, as a nation we benefit from very strong technology and creative industries. So some things are going well, and we benefit from the support of groups such as techUK, which briefed us for this debate.
When I came to Parliament, I used to wax lyrical on the awfulness of internet and mobile coverage, as well as the problems of exclusion, described again today by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and my noble friend Lord Cathcart. This made me very unpopular with Ed Vaizey, who, to do him justice, worked hard to extend coverage with less help from industry than he deserved. Only last week he was on the “Today” programme, still cheering us up on this very subject. We made money available for digital infrastructure when I was at the Treasury, and it is clear to me that a combination of wi-fi and 4G and 5G mobile providing digital access right across the UK is essential to our success now that digital affects most—indeed, perhaps all—of our endeavours.
Today, I want to make two further points. First, the noble Baroness is right to worry about digital understanding, as well as about skills. I was cheered by the figures in the Library note showing that, according to Lloyds Bank, only 11.5 million people lack digital skills and, according to the ONS, only 9% have never used the internet. If you look back only 10 years, that is an extraordinary improvement and a tribute to free-market transformation. My noble friend Lord Baker will be glad to know that my granddaughter learned coding in her first year at primary school in Wandsworth.
However, as with everything in life, there are drawbacks to internet penetration. It poses a major challenge to government and society. There are worrying externalities to balance the wonderful convenience, pleasure and efficiency that digital brings. I am referring to scams, especially the millions of financial scams every week, with data and identities constantly at risk from cyberattacks. Which? has produced very good reports on this scourge. I am also referring to access to the compulsive dangers of gambling and drugs, and to bullying online, child abuse, pornography and Islamist extremism. There is also biased, unregulated and annoying advertising, putting the offline advertisers at a commercial disadvantage and undermining the print media. Close to my heart, there is also the theft of intellectual property, affecting books and other networks. In addition, there is fake news online and its huge impact on society, public sentiment and elections.
Finally, regarding Brexit, as the Minister responsible for the digital single market, I spent many hours with other member states, including Estonia, debating the right way forward—how to open up the opportunities for the flow of digital content, fintech, commerce and so on. In finishing, I should very much like to ask the Minister to share his thinking on the positives and negatives for our digital policy, the digital economy and digital understanding of a post-Brexit world, because equivalent challenges and opportunities will still exist post Brexit.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for introducing this debate. Before I start, I should draw the House’s attention to some of my interests listed in the register.
There have been two very brief mentions of disability in this debate—by the right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Knight—in the context of groups of disabled people not getting access to the internet. However, we have not addressed the fact that there is another problem for these people. Many groups can use adaptations to allow them a degree of access to the net—but, unless companies do to their websites what something like 80% of major firms have done, that technology will be non-accessible. This is the equivalent of insisting, in the built environment, that you have steps in front of everything—it means that some people cannot get in. Currently, there is no understanding of the need for accessibility when these systems are devised, or of how this might be done.
With the expansion of this area, effectively we have totally forgotten something that we have talked about and implemented over many decades in the built and non-digital environment. The problem is that some people cannot access certain functions. From what I have been led to understand, those with visual impairments are probably the worst affected. Dyslexics also have a problem—for them it presents an absolute barrier. I have been studying a group called AchieveAbility and the problems relating to employment for those in the neurodiverse community—dyslexics, dyspraxics, those with autism and dyscalculics. The biggest problem that this group experiences with recruitment is through the big agencies. They insist that you go online—but you cannot fill out the form. The rest of society should be made aware of something this basic. At the moment, nobody knows about it and most of these sins are committed in ignorance. Let us start to look at this issue. If we do not, we will be excluding something like 20% of the population from the benefits of the internet.
Lord Mair (CB)
My Lords, I, too, welcome this important debate introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox. Without question, the future is digital.
I speak as a professor of civil engineering at Cambridge University and also from my 25 years’ experience of industry as a practising engineer. In March, the Institution of Civil Engineers published its report State of the Nation 2017: Digital Transformation. Its principal message was that digital transformation should be at the heart of the infrastructure pillar in the Government’s industrial strategy.
Our infrastructure, which I will use as an example, is vital for our economy and our society. More importantly, we need smart infrastructure. By this, we mean combining physical infrastructure with digital infrastructure. Bridges can have sensors measuring all kinds of parameters, as can our tunnels and buildings—indeed, any type of infrastructure. We will be able to know when a bridge or a tunnel is overstressed, requires attention or is reaching the end of its useful life. Sensors on our infrastructure are part of the “internet of things”—myriad smart devices that collect and transmit data.
Here, I should declare an interest. In the engineering department at Cambridge, I lead the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction. Innovative sensors—fibre optics and wireless devices—have recently been installed at more than 100 sites, providing important and unique new data. However, to be of any use, the data from sensors on infrastructure will require understanding, interpretation and management—crucial digital skills. Vast amounts of data themselves are of little use. We need to turn data into knowledge. All data must be critically interpreted and managed, and the implications properly understood. The limitations and implications of unreliable data need to be fully appreciated by the users of the data. Full digital understanding is needed for this.
These skills relate principally to our engineers and scientists, and to our technologies and industrial strategy. They are in the category of the digital worker and the digital maker, as defined by the Digital Skills Taskforce. These required skills are significantly beyond those of the ordinary digital citizen, who may be reasonably confident with day-to-day activities such as communicating, finding information and purchasing goods or services. We need to convert many more digital citizens into digital workers.
The Government’s Green Paper Building Our Industrial Strategy highlights the importance of enhancing digital skills at all levels of society. In responding to the Green Paper, the Royal Academy of Engineering reported that the engineering community would like to see a general computing GCSE introduced, as well as increased and sustained support for computer science. Also, computing should be designated a core subject in schools.
My final point relates to primary schools. I fully agree with the noble Lord, Lord Baker, that more emphasis in primary schools on STEM subjects, including digital skills, will surely lead to improved digital understanding at all levels in our society.
Baroness Worthington (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I would like to add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for her influential work and for introducing this important debate.
I begin by stating that I am a technological optimist. Advances in information and communications technologies have brought great benefits to humanity, with potential for many more to follow. Much of the utility of the super-computers that now surround us has been provided to us by companies whose programming skills have made them household names. As their usefulness has grown, so too has the value of these companies, to the point now where they are the mostly highly capitalised companies on the planet, replacing oil companies. The companies with the highest market valuation are the particular breed through which vast amounts of data pass—data generated by users, which means all of us.
These platform service providers often do not charge for the services they provide, yet their incomes are vast, derived mainly from advertising—and specifically from highly targeted and efficient advertising, the likes of which older forms of broadcast and print media could never deliver. As we go about our digital lives, we leave behind us valuable digital information that can be processed en masse by super-computers, helping to profile us into ever more detailed market segments, defined not just by who we are or what we do, but by how we think and feel.
A mass communications revolution is under way and there will inevitably be negative consequences. We need to ask how these can be minimised. Internet platform providers are not classed as broadcasters since they do not generate original content. This has led to controversies around abuses of copyright and stretched the boundaries between freedom of expression and the rules seeking to govern defamation, incitement to hate and other forms of illegal communication.
As interconnectedness has grown in a concentrated number of platforms, information volumes have also increased. This has led to more curation of the flow of information to improve user experiences. But who decides what improves a user experience? Often, it means keeping content in line with already known preferences. Our natural confirmation biases are being strengthened as our news feeds are curated to show more of what we agree with and less of what we do not. With no requirement to maintain political neutrality, platforms can serve up content which is the equivalent of the entire panel of “Question Time” being populated only by Nigel Farages every week.
In this polarised environment, deliberate misinformation or fake news can spread like wildfire. It can spread naturally if the “click bait” is compelling enough. However, why leave it to chance? It is possible to guarantee a higher circulation of stories—whether real or not—using fake personalities controlled by computers to “like” or “favourite” stories thousands of times so they are picked up by listing algorithms and circulated more broadly.
Algorithms control what we see. Has the line between companies such as Facebook being platforms and publishers been crossed? Are publishers not editors of content? Even if it is an algorithm doing the editing, these algorithms originate somewhere and they express a set of beliefs that shape what we see. They should be open to scrutiny. Transparency is a precursor to understanding.
Increased digital understanding will be necessary before we draw up and maintain a rule book so the benefits of digitalisation are felt by everyone and the incidents of abuse and misuse are minimised. As a group of lawmakers, we have a particular responsibility to educate ourselves. That is why I am delighted that we have created an ad hoc committee to consider artificial intelligence, which, I am sure, under the expert chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, will produce excellent results. I also look forward to the Government’s digital charter and data protection Bill, which will allow this rich debate to continue. There are so many aspects of this debate that we could have covered today, but time is short. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, once again for introducing this debate and I hope it will not be the last of its kind.
Lord Rees of Ludlow (CB)
My Lords, I join other speakers in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, on this debate. Our lives have been hugely enriched by consumer electronics and by web-based services that are free or very cheap. Indeed, during a decade where many people’s real wages have fallen, the main reason why they may enjoy greater subjective well-being is the consumer surplus offered by the ever more pervasive digital world. However, it is not an unalloyed piece of good news that young people spend so much time online, and there are other concerns. What about, for instance, the burgeoning information about us on the net—about health records, google searches, where we have travelled and what we buy?
When we are at home, Amazon’s home robot is recording what we say. Even the humble robotic vacuum cleaner can record the floorplans of our rooms. All this information has commercial value to the companies that dominate the sector. Criminal hackers can steal our identity. As the internet of things becomes more pervasive, they will be able to sabotage our house and our car as well. When on the phone or online, it is increasingly hard to tell whether you are dealing with a real person or with a computer. Bots can engage in increasingly sophisticated dialogue—but it is important that we should be able to recognise them for what they are. Would we be happy if a stranger who sat near us on a train could access facial recognition software, identify us and then search our online presence?
AI will enable machines to control traffic flows, the electric grid and such like. They will do such jobs better than humans and that is an unambiguous benefit, but when machines decide the fate of individuals, one is ambivalent. If individuals are denied a request, they should be entitled to be told the reason. One genuine dilemma is that machine learning leads to algorithms that seem reliable, but no human understands how they come to their decisions.
When so much business, including our interaction with Government, is done via websites, we should worry about, for instance, an elderly or disabled person living alone who is expected to access the benefits system online. Think of the anxiety and frustration when something goes wrong. Such people will have peace of mind only if there are enough adequately trained human beings in the system to ensure that they can get help and are not disadvantaged.
This leads to a more general point. The digital revolution generates huge wealth for an elite, but preserving a healthy society will require massive redistribution of wealth and, of course, redeployment of labour to ensure that everyone still has worthwhile employment. To do this we should surely hugely expand the numbers of public service jobs where the human element is crucial and where demand is huge, and now hugely unsatisfied, especially carers for young and old, and in particular, enough computer-savvy carers to help the old and the bewildered.
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, on securing this very relevant debate. It is difficult to overestimate her role in promoting digital government.
In 2010, my noble friend Lord Maude commissioned the noble Baroness to carry out a review of government digital capability. Unlike most government reviews, which take months if not years, the Martha Lane-Fox report was produced in two weeks. Her recommendations were admirably straightforward: government should be digital by default with assisted digital for those not yet online, and there should be a new government digital organisation headed by the best person possible—the outstanding Mike Bracken took this role.
The results of what became the Government Digital Service, or GDS, speak for themselves. In 2010, the UK was a byword for car-crash government IT programmes. In contrast, as we have heard, in 2016 the UK was top of the UN rankings. We saved over £4 billion from the IT bill in just four years, Government became an attractive employer for a generation of digital talent, and start-ups and SMEs won government business, ending the domination of a few international companies. The award-winning GOV.UK became one of the most visited sites in the UK. GDS was hailed as Europe’s best start-up, with the Washington Post calling it the “gold standard” for digital government.
When the Australian Government set up their Digital Transformation Office, Malcolm Turnbull, now the Australian Prime Minister, emailed my noble friend Lord Maude to say that if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, he should consider himself very flattered. Many other countries, including the US, copied the model, often with the help of former GDS staffers.
These remarkable results were not accidental. Reform, especially in the Civil Service, needs leadership, stamina and political courage. The success of GDS depended on strong authority and leadership at the centre of government. The mantra was, “the strategy is delivery”. Yet the new GDS mandate—to support, enable and assure departments—seems to place the needs of departments over the needs of users. The battle over the use of shared platforms is worrying. Cross-government platforms such as Verify are designed for the user so that digital government is consistent and easy to deal with. Their use by departments is set to save billions of pounds, yet they are resisting their use.
One of the great myths of government is that while central control may be needed to drive initial reform, there comes a point where the reforms are said to be embedded and controls can be eased off. My experience is that reforms embedded in departments are precisely that. They are usually embedded six feet under so that departments can regain autonomy and go right back to their old ways without further interference. We should not risk our digital leadership position to maintain a pointless power battle in Whitehall.
The Government have published a powerful digital transformation strategy and GDS is vital to its delivery. I hope the Minister can reassure us that GDS must be empowered to do so. I wonder whether now is a timely moment for the noble Baroness to review progress after five years, which could address her other concerns.
Baroness Sugg (Con)
My Lords, as noble Lords know, this is a time-limited debate and we must finish at 4.33 pm, which may cut into the Minister’s response.
Baroness Murphy (CB)
My Lords, I live in rural Norfolk so if my remarks sound rather like those of the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, I am sure that noble Lords will understand.
It would be so nice to follow the call of the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for digital understanding, but for those of us who do not have access to the digital world through an effective broadband internet, that understanding is a bit of a chimera. The Government have a totally inadequate strategy to achieve universal coverage of the internet broadband service in rural areas. Where I live in the parish of Brockdish and Thorpe Abbotts in the Waveney valley along the border between Norfolk and Suffolk, it took from 1926 to 1955 to get electrification and it looks as if it is going to take as long to get broadband. I discovered two months ago that there is a cable laid by a Dutch company that runs all the way down from Lowestoft to London and is laid 300 yards from my door. However, the Government processes of putting in rural broadband around Norfolk are constrained by not only all the money being given away to BT, which has wasted it in ways I will outline in a minute, but also by the fact that nobody can get access to this cable except through voluntary organisations that have now bought into it. It looks as if I will have to dig the cable myself.
Is that satisfactory? I do not think so. I am supporting a group of very angry local residents who feel we have been totally abandoned. It has been a scandal. Hundreds of millions of pounds have poured into BT and Openreach and their vans are all over place. They are putting in cabinets that connect to copper wire, through which we can get an effective signal about 30 yards from the cabinet. So those of us who live in the outlying villages will never get broadband. There are little red dots on the BT maps that say “you’re never gonna get it”.
It is making a huge difference to educational and economic prospects: our farmers tear their hair out, I cannot even buy things online from my favourite shops and as for downloading things, it is not enough. What I want to know is: how are we going to get an adequate strategy that enables us to get a realistic deliverable timetable? To me this is as important as electricity and a clean water supply. Can the Minister, say something to cheer up us unconnected village folk of Brockdish and Thorpe Abbotts, and the thousands round our county and all the other rural counties who have exactly the same problem? We are never going to catch up unless you give some real government support for local communities to get it in.
Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)
My Lords, I join the deserved chorus of congratulation for the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, on securing this debate. I want briefly to address two issues: first the impact on young people, who in many ways personify the dilemma of digital understanding. On the one hand, digital opens up for them a world of opportunity. On the other hand, the fast-moving world of social media presents great danger in terms of isolation, bullying—particularly homophobic bullying—and depression. Schools have a very fine balancing act. I am a governor of Brentwood School in Essex—I declare an interest accordingly—which is one of those showing the way in this area. It harnesses the power of digital to enhance and enrich learning by ensuring that every child in the school has their own iPad. At the same time it strives to keep children safe by keeping control of the technology by banning mobile phone use during the school day, encouraging pupils to use technology in a family space and advocating social time without the distraction of any devices. I am sure that that will be music to the ears of the noble Lord, Lord Sugar. That seems to me to be a good way of squaring the circle of empowerment and safety. It is a challenge all schools must face up to.
In my own world of the media—I declare an interest as executive director of the Telegraph Media Group—the digital revolution has allowed us to reach out to huge new audiences. Today 39 million people in the UK digitally access news on the industry’s websites, and many hundreds of millions worldwide. Last year, content on those websites drove 1 billion social media interactions. That is a phenomenal success story, but it has come at a price. As all noble Lords know, the digital revolution has destroyed the business model which sustains the news publishing industry as advertising revenue has shifted online. For many in the business it is a race against time to adapt and to find new revenues. I am confident it is a challenge that can be met, provided the industry is free to adapt unburdened by excessive and punitive legislation including, of course, the odious Section 40.
One area of great concern is fake news, which is central to this area. Fake news has been with us ever since the printing press was invented, and always will be. What has changed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, said, is the impact of social media, where algorithms connect users to news by second guessing what the user might like rather than assessing its quality. As it thrives, it attracts advertising from reputable brands and Government. Fake news causes real social harm by reinforcing so-called “filter bubbles” that warp people’s understanding of the world and insulating them from opposing views.
There is no easy answer to that, but one thing we need to do is ensure the sustainability of the real, verified, regulated news which appears in UK news brands. Like many others, I warmly welcome the Government’s commitment to establishing a digital charter which will go a long way towards dealing with some of these issues. I also believe that while fake news is an important issue in its own right, it is actually part of a much wider problem of the sustainability of the news industry, and the structural changes in the advertising market from the establishment of a duopoly of news aggregators. That is an issue to which we shall have to return.
Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)
My Lords, in 2007 the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, appointed me as the Minister for Digital Inclusion. It was as bizarre an appointment to me as it was to my friends, but one of the most significant actions I took when I did that job was to recommend the appointment of the noble Lady, Baroness Lane-Fox, as the digital champion for our country. She did a wonderful job, and has done a brilliant job this afternoon in introducing this extremely important debate. She talked about the difference between skills and understanding. I think when I was Minister I had some skills, but I did not have much understanding. I hope this is better now.
What certainly is better is that 10 years ago there were about 17 million people in our country who had no digital skills at all. That figure has now gone down to about 11 or 12 million so there has definitely been an improvement. But there are of course still parts of our society where an awful lot more work has to be done: among older people, who can benefit enormously from digital skills, whether by shopping or by talking to their relatives abroad, or whatever it might be—that has got better; among younger people from different socioeconomic groups and from poorer groups in society, who will not get jobs unless they are digitally literate; and, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans told the House, among disabled people, whose lives can be greatly enhanced if they are linked up to the internet.
However, there is another divide, too, which is between the different parts of the United Kingdom. In England, in Humberside, Yorkshire and the West Midlands, there is a deficit, and there is certainly a deficit in Wales, where I come from, and in Northern Ireland and Scotland. Therefore my plea to the Minister today—this has not been mentioned yet, so I hope that he can reply to me on this—is for him to say how he will bring together the different parts of our country on the issue of digital improvement.
The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare—who is of course himself a Welshman—talked about the orchestra and the conductor. The fact is that in the United Kingdom there is more than one orchestra. There is the English orchestra, but also the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish ones. How will the Minister and the Government co-ordinate the work of all the different Governments in the United Kingdom and to share experience and best practice? There is one way of doing it, which is to ensure that they look at the various institutions which allow them to do just that. There is the British- Irish Council, which brings together Ministers and Governments from these islands, and the Joint Ministerial Committee. It seems that there is a great job of work to be done there to ensure that we approach digital inclusion, digital skills and a better digital understanding right across the United Kingdom. I look forward to the Minister’s response on those issues.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for this debate and I declare my interests as laid out in the register, particularly as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
The potential for public services to use information technology to provide opportunities to improve lives and empower people is great but the reality is that, here in the UK, this is grinding to a halt. We started well but now we have moved into the slow lane. There is now a focus on measurement, cost efficiency and the model of new public service management—on digitising the back office and self-service—and not on how to improve lives and deal with long-held social ills and lack of opportunities for people to reach their potential.
A Deloitte report in 2015 might shed light as to why. It is clear that those leading in the public sector do not really understand the digital world—they see it as a way of doing what we do now but just via a different platform. Some 89% of leaders in the public sector say that they see digital as a way of cost-cutting and not transformation, and 25% said they do not even have the skills to execute the limited plans now being undertaken.
IT is here for the public sector to take advantage of, yet the lack of a design-led and innovation culture, knowledge, governance rules, legislation and digital leadership for doing so is now sadly missing for the next step of a digitally led facilitating and networking public service. For our public sector to transform, we need to address the following. We need leadership at both political and managerial level, building a network of people with the skills, knowledge and understanding to guide the new world, not a governance model of regulation that is concrete and suited to Victorian ideas of government built on siloed pillars. But we also need to build a network for citizens who can support each other and empower each other to understand the risks and the opportunities that technology brings, not a top-down paternal approach that is so yesterday. Data should be seen as for the citizen and by the citizen. Look at Estonia, which is changing the power between state and citizen. The reason why a lot of people do not understand is because citizens are seen as passive and not holding power, but they could be empowered. A new HR strategy is needed to look at leaders who are design-led—networkers and co-producers, not technical experts—and who know the offers of IT transformation that are real, as well as the ones to be avoided. For this to happen we need a clear path—a direction to go forward with. That is vital if we are to transform people’s lives.
Lord St John of Bletso (CB)
I also thank my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox for introducing this very topical debate. I declare an interest as patron of Citizens Online, a national charity set up to tackle issues of digital exclusion. Its focus has been supporting the public, many of whom are elderly, to develop digital skills, while helping partners to improve service delivery.
I noted in the brief of techUK that, while businesses are increasing their digital awareness, 38% of SMEs still lack basic digital skills. It is also alarming that one in 10 adults in this country has never used the internet, and many more are missing out on the opportunities the digital world offers, whether through lack of connectivity—we have heard a lot about that today—digital skills or motivation. Although the digital world has been inexorably marching forward over the last 20 years, providing ever more efficient services to businesses and the public through the internet, only now is there a new revolution about to occur. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, that just as the Industrial Revolution transformed the nature of manual work, artificial intelligence—AI—is set to dramatically change the nature of white-collar work and the service industry. I am talking about chatbots replacing call centres, credit decision officers being replaced—even accountants, lawyers and truck drivers. A confluence of change means that AI has reached the flashover point—computer power, availability of huge volumes of data and the fact that digital channels for interacting with businesses and citizens are now preferable.
Time precludes me from speaking about data privacy; we shall have plenty of time to do that on the data protection Bill. The AI revolution will happen in years, not decades. Time is of the essence. The very global nature of business and the internet means there is scope for any country to become specialist and dominant in this sphere, with all the associated export benefits, as well as maintaining its own interests, both economically and from a security point of view. The United Kingdom cannot afford to be complacent in believing that its superior education system will be enough to provide a front-row seat. A proactive campaign is essential to raise digital understanding and for the United Kingdom to lead from the front. This is necessary at all levels, enabling business to leverage the opportunity and become more competitive on a global playing field. Just as Estonia is a world leader in digital skills, we need to ensure that the United Kingdom is at the forefront of the AI revolution, as it was in the Industrial Revolution.
Baroness Rock (Con)
My Lords, I also commend my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox for securing this debate but, beyond that, for continuing to champion the digital and tech agenda as she does with such alacrity and passion. We have heard many fascinating speeches and insights this afternoon, so I will keep my comments brief and to two areas. The first is digital’s contribution to our economy and our global competitiveness. To coin a once popular phrase, if we are to win the global race, delivering the pipeline of digital skills and digital understanding is a necessary condition of success.
There are lots of positive signs. Tech City UK’s recent Tech Nation report found that in 2016 UK digital tech investment reached £6.8 billion—higher than any other European country. However, we need to do more if we want to reap the benefits of moving to a fully digital, tech-savvy economy. For example, according to research from O2, 745,000 additional workers with digital skills are needed to meet rising demand from employers over the period 2013-17. I am interested to hear from the Minister whether we are on track.
What more needs to be done in policy, particularly, as my noble friend Lord Baker mentioned, on education? One example is coding and software development. Coadec—the Coalition for a Digital Economy—has identified key areas. One concern is mathematics and a lack of students taking further maths qualifications—a necessary precursor for developer training. Indeed, data show that for the proportion of students studying any maths after 16 years old, England is in the 0% to 10% category, yet countries as diverse as Taiwan, Russia and Japan are in the 95% to 100% category.
The second area that I want to consider is something that the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, has spoken about—that this challenge does not merely concern new and exciting digital factors but is also about whether our entire population can participate in the life of the nation. We need digital skills to participate, but we also need the understanding to equip us to deal with the rapidly changing technological landscape. I am delighted to be participating in the House of Lords Artificial Intelligence Committee. As my noble friend Lord St John mentioned, this area is evolving rapidly, enhancing diverse areas from healthcare to finance. But AI is also making us subject to decisions made by algorithms without fully understanding how they work and how AI may affect humanity.
Coadec suggests making access to digital education free for all adults just as we have done with adult literacy, with good results. I could not agree more. We must capitalise on all opportunities for global Britain, particularly in the light of Brexit, but we must also realise that improving digital understanding at all levels is an opportunity to increase participation in our national life. Winning the global race means ensuring that everyone can take part.
Lord Janvrin (CB)
My Lords, I may be the 30th speaker to congratulate my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox on introducing this debate with a fantastic speech. It is no less heartfelt for being the 30th, but I will be brief. I welcome the debate for three reasons. First, the emphasis on digital understanding is very refreshing. We have had debates about digital skills before, but the need to look at the some of the wider issues we face is brought out by this whole concept of digital understanding.
Secondly, I believe that this House is well placed to explore some of the wider issues. As this debate is demonstrating, Members of this House can bring the whole range of expertise to bear, illuminating the constitutional, ethical and social consequences of the digital revolution. My third reason for welcoming this debate is that it offers a chance, at least briefly, to commend the Government for their digital strategy, which was published last March.
I make three comments arising from the strategy. The first is the obvious one relating to the issue of digital understanding before us in this debate. The Government’s digital strategy is rightly focused on areas where practical progress can be made—for example, in infrastructure skills training or start-up growth opportunities. These are obviously crucial, but do the Government see the need to give a lead in the examination of the wider issues that have come out in this debate? Will they, for example, lead the debate on some of the public policy and regulatory issues ahead, on questions of privacy around big data, on concerns about censorship and freedom of expression around the internet, or on the profound ethical issues raised by AI and the social issues around digital exclusion?
My second question about the digital strategy is more specific—about digital skills—and is one I have raised before in this House. The one certainty about digital technology is continuing change, and the digital skills required are not something to be left to be learned at school. They require access to lifelong learning opportunities for everyone. We all need opportunities to reskill and retool throughout our working lives. Are the Government giving sufficient priority to lifelong learning?
My final point is that the digital revolution is obviously a global megatrend. It has the capacity to offer major opportunities to change lives for the better, to generate economic growth and to improve national well-being, but as this debate demonstrates, there are many wider policy issues which require examination and discussion. Given the many other huge policy challenges the Government are grappling with, can the Minister assure us that our digital future is being given the priority it so clearly deserves?
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, may I be the 31st speaker to congratulate, quite justifiably, the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, on initiating this debate and on the way she introduced it? This has been a really important debate and of course it has stimulated terrific contributions from all sides of the House. I declare the interests in the register in relation to ombudsman services, Queen Mary University of London, the AI Select Committee and the all-party AI group, all of which seem to have coalesced in this debate, which is a very strange experience.
There have been some very powerful and well informed speeches today on skills, on infrastructure and on inclusion. I am not going to go over that ground: it was extremely knowledgeable and I agree with a huge amount of what has been said, particularly on the state of our infrastructure. I recommend that the Minister take his holidays in Estonia in future, rather than with the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart: that might be a sensible solution.
Lord Maxton
The noble Lord is aware, of course, that Estonia insists on every citizen having an identity card, which is a smart card.
Lord Clement-Jones
I was going to deal with the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, later, but if he talks to the Government Digital Service about blockchain technologies, he might find that the technology in the Verify software will move into blockchain and therefore there will be no need for identity cards. I am very happy to give him a little instruction later.
I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, and the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, that we need to look at the broader issues relating to digital understanding. Indeed, doteveryone has a very interesting agenda, bringing to our attention that we cannot simply compartmentalise some of these issues—that is why we have had such an interesting debate today. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, reminded us about the pace of change and the fact that we are in a new world, with digital technologies opening up new opportunities around prediction, machine learning, the internet of things and the use of algorithms. We need to take action, as the noble Baroness urged, on digital understanding. It impacts on our lives and affects the choices we make as citizens, and the decisions that are made about us and for us by businesses and government bodies, particularly in ways that affect us financially.
The noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, made an extremely important point about the impact of immersion in the screen world. We need to understand the impact that is having on us.
Of course, there are also very strong positives, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, reminded us, as did the noble Lord, Lord Patel, in terms of healthcare. We must ensure as we experience the “fourth industrial revolution” that we know who has power over us and what values are in play when that power is exercised, including in terms of social media and fake news, as the noble Lord, Lord Black, reminded us. Of course, that includes us as parliamentarians and public servants, as my noble friends Lord Kirkwood and Lord Scriven reminded us. It is vital for the proper functioning of our society and, as the Government declare in the context of their statement of intent on the new data protection Bill, for the maintenance of public trust.
The Government’s digital strategy touches somewhat on the issue of digital capability but we need to go much further. There are three crucial elements I will briefly highlight in this context. The first is the need to understand the power of big data and what is known as data capitalism. I think the noble Lord, Lord Sugar, would refer to it as “Big Brother syndrome”. What is being collected, when, what is it being used for—as the noble Lord, Lord Mair, said—how reliable is it and who is it being shared with? How long is it retained and when can it be expunged? What is the impact on those who are not of an age of majority? Many of us, having worked on the Digital Economy Bill and about to work on the new data protection Bill, will not have a readily available answer. I am sure the Minister will enlighten us.
We need to be able to look beneath the outer layer of the tech giants, as many noble Lords today have reminded us, to see what the consequences are of signing up to their standard terms. What redress do we have for misuse or breach of cybersecurity or identity theft? What data are they collecting and sharing? I believe very firmly, as my party does, in the need for a digital Bill of Rights so that people’s power over their own information is protected.
Secondly, we need to understand the impact—sometimes beneficial but also sometimes prejudicial—of AI, machine learning and the algorithms employed on the big data that are collected. The noble Lord, Lord Rees, reminded us about chatbots, a growing feature of our lives: semi-autonomous interactive computer programs that mimic conversation with people using artificial intelligence.
On algorithms, I recommend Cathy O’Neil’s recent book Weapons of Math Destruction as autumn reading. The potential for bias in algorithms, for instance, is a great concern. How do we know in future when a mortgage, grant or insurance policy is refused that there is no bias in the system? I have argued on a number of occasions for ethics advisory boards when those algorithms are employed in the corporate sector. There must be readily understood standards of accountability, and with these go explainability and transparency, remediability, responsibility and verifiability. A whole raft of different areas needs addressing. The concept of accountability, and with it responsibility and remediability, in particular, means that our complaints and dispute resolution systems must be fit for purpose. That means being readily accessible and understood. If ombudsman schemes are to continue to be effective in improving business practice and in tackling consumer detriment, their role and capabilities must change. These schemes must understand and engage with fairness in an emerging digital world.
Finally, there is the need for young people starting in higher and further education to have the tools to understand the challenges of the future and the skills they will need. We have had very important contributions on the secondary sector. What skills will be in demand in the future? The Royal Society in its Machine Learning report makes a strong case for cross-disciplinary skills. Other skills include cross-cultural competency, novel and adaptive thinking and social intelligence. We need new, active programmes to develop these skills. To be able to make career choices, young people need to have much better information, at the start of their working lives, about the growth prospects for different sectors. We are going to need skills in creativity, data usage and innovation, but we may well not need quite so much in the way of analytical skills in the future because that may be done for us. In the face of this, young people need to be able to make informed choices about the type of jobs which will be available. The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, made that point.
It is vital that we treat AI as a tool, not as a technology that controls us, and the greatest priority of all is the need to ensure public understanding. Public awareness of AI and machine learning is extremely low, even if what it delivers is well recognised. We then have to go through the question of what kind of values we want to instil in our new technology. The noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady O’Neill, raised this point. We cannot be cyber romantics—an extremely good phrase in the circumstances; we need to establish what the noble Baroness aptly called a “digital civilisation”. We do not yet have consensus on that, but I hope that as we work on, develop and debate the Government’s digital charter we will be groping our way towards some kind of understanding of what the future world should look like.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, in her excellent speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, called herself a “dotcom dinosaur”. I beg to differ. I think she was suggesting that her time had passed and that she was a fading force in the scene. That is simply not true: she is a star. We all value the contributions she has made and continues to make in this area and long may she continue. In particular, her willingness to acknowledge the dark side of the digital world, such as poor employment conditions, cybercrime, cyberbullying, fake news and identity theft—I welcome the fact that that was also picked up by the former Minister—was very refreshing and gave a very good start to this important debate. If digital is now something we are, not something we do, she is right to suggest that we parliamentarians have a duty, as the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, said, to understand this better and to do something about the problems that we perceive.
The theme which has come through most strongly this afternoon is that digitalisation has brought us both good and bad. As the noble Lord, Lord Rees, said, we have got information, convenience and entertainment but we also have sources of crime and loss of privacy. The price we pay for what is often called a “free” service—though it is certainly not that—is that we let companies, the Government and others learn all there is to learn about us. We have no control over who owns the data about us, no idea where they are kept and how they are used but, on the other hand, this flow of personal data leads to products and services that respond more quickly and precisely to our needs and can help give better value and improve productivity. That is why the noble Baroness may be right: as we live more of our lives online there is no doubt that we simply must improve our digital understanding.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and other noble Lords were right to warn us of the category error of confusing digital skills with digital understanding. However, it would be wrong if the Minister does not pick up in his response the problem of the need for basic skills to be properly funded and introduced across the country. The importance of infrastructure was so wonderfully explained by the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, and the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy. I was going to deal with some issues to do with technical training and skills, but time has cut into that.
Two points have not had enough attention. The first is the need to make the UK a safe and secure digital economy. Ensuring safety and security is a role for government and it is important that we understand how this happens and what will work. The UK needs to aim to make itself the safest place for people to go online. Young people must be supported to develop digital resilience to navigate the online world safely. As the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said, there is a huge amount of catching up to do in this area under the Department for Education. There is good practice, but it is not nearly sufficiently well bedded.
The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, talked about data ethics and the noble Lord, Lord Mair, touched on this in relation to the data—which underpin all parts of the UK’s ever-digitising economy—that need to be looked at much more carefully in order to get the most out of this revolution. There is another side to this, which has also been raised. A data-driven economy and its licence to innovate will work only if there is public confidence in which data are used and the ethical decision-making employed in using them. As has been noted, that is something which we will return to when we get on to the data protection Bill.
This has been an extremely good debate; one of the best that I have witnessed and been involved in in your Lordships’ House. It will serve as a taster for the Bill as it comes forward. I hope the Minister will be able to explain where we are on that and when we are likely to see a draft, because it would be quite interesting to see what it contains.
It has been said, and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, was right to remind us, that we still have many issues around some of the points that are coming up here. We need to look at the powers which the Bill may contain to give people the right to ask for material on the net to be deleted; the power it may explicitly give to hold or withhold consent to our data being used; the power to protect our online identity by extending definitions of personal data and our right to contest decisions that are made about us by algorithms—a point that came up in some of the later contributions.
This has been a very interesting debate. I take from it that improved digital understanding will help us to benefit more from the good and make us less of a victim of the bad. At the end of her remarks, the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, suggested—and others have picked up on this—that a digital charter might help with the process of improving digital understanding. As we sit here, around us are the effigies—or perhaps I should say the avatars—of those barons who were involved in the original Magna Carta. They wish us well.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness and everyone who has contributed to the debate. I have 10 minutes and about 50 minutes’ worth of material, so I will speak fast and hope I will be able to answer some questions.
This is obviously an extremely important subject, as demonstrated by the contributions around the House. I have certainly enjoyed the debate. As everyone has said, there are good things and bad things about our digital world, but the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. The noble Lord, Lord Sugar, expressed it more succinctly: “Get over it”, he said. We will have to cope and I will try to explain how we will.
We have three overarching goals for digital technology. First, we want the country to continue to be what it is today—a world-leading digital economy and the best place in the world to innovate with technology and to start and grow a digital business. Secondly, we want all the benefits of digital to be enjoyed by everyone, rather than be the exclusive preserve of tech professionals. Thirdly, we are committed to making the UK the safest place in the world for users to be online. I will come to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, mentioned.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, is right to highlight the importance of awareness and understanding in accomplishing these goals, but we need the skills to be in that position. I do not have time to outline them, but we are making enormous efforts to develop and enhance these digital skills. If I have time, I will come to some of the educational areas that we are looking at. If not, I will certainly write to everyone who has asked a question which I have not managed to get to.
Thanks to these efforts, we are in a position of relative strength on digital skills internationally. However, that is just one part of the story. Increasingly, people need digital skills in every aspect of their lives: shopping, doing their taxes and getting the best healthcare. So we are taking action on every category of digital skills: basic skills, the general skills needed in most jobs, and advanced skills for specialist roles such as cybersecurity. I will not go through those now, because it is important to focus on what the noble Baroness outlined in her very good opening speech.
The technology promises bountiful opportunities and rewards, but it comes with challenges and threats. These threats are to our security, privacy, emotional well-being, mental health and safety—especially the safety of children. Society’s norms, rules and institutions must all evolve so that technological progress delivers a better world for everyone. That is the underlying thinking behind the digital charter that the UK Government will introduce. It will set out a framework for how businesses—including the huge digital corporations mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens—individuals and wider society should act in the digital world. This is absolutely not just a task for the Government. Over the coming months we will work with businesses, academics, charities and the wider public to build consensus around what this framework should be.
An important part of that work will be the publication of the internet safety strategy Green Paper. This will ask for views on a range of options to counter internet harms. We talked a lot about that in the progress of the Digital Economy Bill last year. Through the strategy, we want to agree the balance of responsibilities shared by technology companies, teachers, parents and the Government in keeping people safe online.
I turn to the difficult issue of social media. The Digital Economy Act requires the establishment of a code of practice, to be issued and reviewed if necessary by the Secretary of State. This will offer guidance to providers of social media platforms on action it may be appropriate to take against users of the platform who engage in intimidating or insulting behaviour. We expect online industries to ensure that they have relevant safeguards and robust processes in place and to act promptly when abuse is reported. The data protection Bill will give individuals more control over their data. We are working also towards an international consensus, which is so important in this area.
I return to the concept of digital understanding. The Government have put forward the idea of establishing a data use and ethics body, which will I believe address some of the examples given by the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin. This will establish a sound ethical framework for understanding how data can and should be used. It will address both the needs of the present and the challenges emerging on the horizon as data use becomes ever more sophisticated. Importantly, it will ensure that the public have confidence that their data are being handled properly, that businesses have the assurance that they are handling data with integrity, and that regulators and Parliament are equipped to identify and guard against abuse. We will be very interested in people’s views, and the body will consult widely. Since we mentioned it in a debate in this House in July, we have been working with stakeholders such as the Nuffield Foundation, the Royal Society and the British Academy to identify the roles and functions. So the Government are working with the public, tech companies, education and training providers, and charities such as that of the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, Doteveryone, on this vital agenda.
I will quickly come to as many of the questions as I can. The noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, asked if digital was a priority of this Government. I confirm that it is a priority—which is reflected in the fact that my department has now been renamed the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The noble Baronesses, Lady Lane-Fox, Lady O’Neill and Lady Kidron, asked whether we would make a clear articulation of values online. We absolutely agree with the importance of articulating those, which of course is why we are going to introduce a new digital charter and set out a framework, as I mentioned. Our starting point is that the delicate and careful limits that we have honed over generations for life offline should apply online, too.
It is true that I went to inspect my noble friend Lord Cathcart’s broadband, which I would describe as slow but sure. However, being serious, this is difficult. We are on track to reach 95% superfast broadband. For the 5%, there are problems, but I assure my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, that, in her words, there has been real government support for this. More than £24 million of central government funding has been allocated to better broadband for Norfolk. That has been matched by local council funding, which means that more than 173,000 additional homes and businesses are able to access superfast broadband in Norfolk. I accept that, for people who do not have it, this is a real problem—I have experienced it myself. But I also commend what the right reverend Prelate said about WiSpire fixed wireless providers. They would be particularly appropriate in Norfolk—which, as we know, is very flat.
Baroness Murphy
Could I just ask the Minister whether he has seen trees in Norfolk?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
I realise there are trees in Norfolk. I would have mentioned to my noble friend Lord Cathcart the work we have done on bringing forward 5G, but as he does not have a mobile telephone, there is no point.
The noble Lords, Lord Maxton and Lord Baker, talked about joined-up government activities on education. I cannot go into all the details now—I would be happy to write to the noble Lord—but the DfE is working closely with the DCMS in improving communication and coherence in digital skills. As an example of that, we have DfE officials in the Box today. We were the first country to mandate computing sciences in both primary and secondary schools. As I have said, I will write further to the noble Lord on our whole education provision.
The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, will remember that in the Digital Economy Act we took some time to talk about data in government departments and how they could be used, subject to relevant safeguards. We are making progress with that, but it is very difficult and we have to be careful with the safeguards. None the less, we have made a lot of progress. ID cards are a separate subject, which is probably out of date: it is much easier to microchip the noble Lord than to give him an ID card.
I am coming to the end of my time; I am sorry that I did not have the full amount of time. Lastly, I must add that we are giving attention to lifelong learning, which we take very seriously. As announced in the 2017 Budget, we are spending £40 million to deal with it. My time is now up. I will of course reply to all noble Lords who I did not even begin to answer. I wish I had had more time. These are vital issues, and the Government are working hard to address them, but we need to do so in partnership with academia, business, charities and other stakeholders. I also look forward to many more contributions from your Lordships on this vital subject.
Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho
My Lords, you would have thought that, as a director of Twitter, I would be expert in reducing complicated content to just 140 characters—but even I am flummoxed by how to concertina such an erudite and interesting debate into the few short seconds that I have left. I feel as if I had opened a huge dam—or perhaps that is not the right expression. Anyway, a huge amount has come out and a huge amount of emotion has been expressed. I hope we can continue the conversation. We need to have it, and more importantly, the country needs us to have it. I hope that Sir Alan—or rather, the noble Lord, Lord Sugar—will forgive me: I was on my device, but I was making notes, because I too have learned a lot this afternoon. I thank noble Lords for their contributions.