Armed Forces: Redundancies
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Walker of Aldringham
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proportion of service men and women being made redundant from the Armed Forces are expected to be between the ages of 18 and 24.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, as a result of the strategic defence and security review and the comprehensive spending review, it has been necessary to plan for redundancies in both the Civil Service and the Armed Forces to restore public finances and to better equip and shape the forces for the future. I can advise that some 12 per cent of those selected for redundancy in tranche one of the Armed Forces redundancy programme were aged 24 or below—that is, some 350 people. Selections for tranche two have yet to take place.
Lord Walker of Aldringham
I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. I venture to suggest that the number will end up somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000, but we shall wait to see in due course. These young people will leave the services having been trained at taxpayers’ expense for war—a profession that does not read across easily to other professions. We may well find that they will have great difficulty in getting employment thereafter and merely add to the 1 million unemployed 18 to 24 year-olds. Last year, the Government added £1 billion to the programme. The absurdity is that those made redundant are going to be replaced by the Territorial Army.
Lord Walker of Aldringham
My question is coming. They are going to be replaced by the Territorial Army, which is composed of part-timers whereas those being made redundant are full-timers, whose members will have two jobs, two wages and two paymasters. Will the Government reconsider this issue? It would be perfectly possible to continue to employ those who do not wish to leave the Army, either by giving them some of the £1 billion that the Government are investing in the young or by underrecruiting the unrecruited TA.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I think that I recognise a certain anti-TA bias in that comment, which neither I nor the Government share. The total reduction in the size of the Armed Forces over the next several years will amount to 17,000 and it is estimated that the total necessary redundancies from currently serving personnel will be 11,000. The proportion of those servicemen under the age of 25 will be much closer to 2,000 to 3,000 than the figures the noble and gallant Lord has suggested.
Baroness Wall of New Barnet
My Lords, would the noble Lord assure me and the House that servicemen and women in this age group who may be redundant will be guided towards apprenticeships which we already have in place for service people leaving the services early? It is particularly important that such people are trained up and apprenticeships are very necessary to achieve this.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Of course, many of those who came in as young leaders in the armed services are already being trained in the Army in the sort of skills that are highly valuable in civilian life. There is a resettlement scheme in place which will provide transitional training. In recent times, 93 per cent of those who left the Army under the resettlement scheme have found jobs within six months and 97 per cent within 12 months. I am sure that people with good records in the Army will have much that sort of experience.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
My Lords, redundant personnel will have spent many years living and working in the Armed Forces. Are the Government going to give them training to enable them to find accommodation, food and other essentials? I also find it strange that, at the same time, there are advertisements on television for jobs in the Armed Forces. Can the Minister explain why?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I think noble Lords will understand why continuing recruitment at a lower level needs to continue in order to maintain the correct balance of age groups and skills in the Armed Forces, even as they are reduced. There are opportunities for those selected for redundancy to apply for other skill training within the armed services, so it is not simply one out and another person in.
Lord West of Spithead
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the current machinations about aircraft for aircraft carriers bring to mind the maxim, “Order, counter-order, disorder” and, rather more coarsely, the ouslam bird? Does he not agree that getting rid of the seed corn now will mean that the generation of the carriers will be rather more expensive and far more difficult than it need be?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we all recognise that we are not in an entirely happy situation as far as the carriers are concerned. That is part of the problems which this Government inherited with very large carriers already under way. The question of how far we maintain and renew the skills involved is under active consideration. Our American and French partners will, no doubt, be willing to assist in this. Indeed, discussions are already under way.
Lord Dannatt
My Lords, referring back to a previous question, would the Minister give a further assurance about the importance placed on recruiting 18 to 24 year-olds? The Armed Forces are essentially a group of organisations which rely on young people. Does he agree that it is important to continue to recruit these people, to advertise and to make sure that our training establishments are properly maintained? Does he further agree that there will come a moment when we may have to expand our Armed Forces again and that we do not wish to run down our machinery too much in advance of that?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I entirely agree that we need to maintain a balance in the forces. Many people join the Armed Forces in the hope of staying in for 22 years, but others join hoping to stay in for three or six years. In visiting one or two TA units, I have been struck by the number of people in the TA who have spent time with the Regular Forces or, in some cases, who started in the TA, moved into the Regular Forces and then came out and back to the TA. There is not a simple package or career structure in place. It is very good for some young people to spend some time with the Armed Forces and then come back into civilian life.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno
My Lords, further to the Minister’s answer on recruitment, is there to be a freeze or will there continue to be recruitment to the Armed Forces in the future?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, as I have already said, we are continuing to recruit, but at a lower level as we adjust numbers. I am told that levels of applications to join the Armed Forces at the present time are high.
Lord Rosser
Are these service personnel being made redundant to make savings and keep expenditure within budget, despite the Government being able to afford a reduction in the top rate of income tax, or are they being made redundant because they are not needed to meet current and projected military commitments— namely, that they are surplus to requirements?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I have not yet heard the Labour Party come out in favour of a substantial increase in defence spending in future years. If the Labour Party would like to commit itself to such a substantial increase, much of this would be avoided.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, I missed the Minister’s answer to the previous question.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
There is a range of reasons why some reductions, including in defence expenditure, are being made. As we withdraw our troops from Afghanistan in 2014, for the first time in a very long time we will not be, we hope, engaged in any active military operations; and, as we withdraw our troops from Germany, for the first time in over 200 years we will be within sight of our Armed Forces being mainly based in the United Kingdom. Some real and major adjustments to our Armed Forces will be under way in the next five to 10 years.
Terezin Declaration: Holocaust Era Assets
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness very much for this debate and the opportunity to discuss this delicate and deeply emotional subject. I thank her for her kind words about the efforts that the British Government have been making and continue to make in this area.
The 46 states that signed the Terezin declaration in 2009 made a landmark moral commitment to address some of the injustices related to the Holocaust, including the wrongful seizure of property from families and individuals across our continent, particularly in the eastern part. The declaration set out the principles and measures for the signatories to implement not just in the field of immovable property, which we are focusing on today, but also looted art, Judaica, social welfare for Holocaust survivors, open archives and Holocaust remembrance and research. The guidelines on best practice for property restitution that were adopted by individual signatories were intended to be turned into law and practice.
Like many noble Lords gathered in the House today, the Government are frustrated with the lack of real progress since that declaration was signed. The Government, the noble Baroness and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Janner, played a significant role in the original discussions, and we will again be one of the main actors in the review conference later this year to move its implementation forward. The review conference can provide much needed renewed momentum for property and art restitution across Europe. We are actively involved in preparatory meetings, pressing for practical and meaningful outcomes at the conference. We have suggested case studies from those states that have made good progress and practical seminars with lawyers and financing experts, designed to help member states tackle some of the commonly raised issues.
In researching this speech, I was fascinated and moved by the history of the recovery by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, of some of her family silver. One gets a sense of the importance of history, identity and continuity that that can provide, and the difficulty of being able to re-establish it. It is a wonderful story and I recommend to others that they look into it. Some of the family silver had been hurriedly given to a Polish neighbour who had buried it in their garden, and who discovered only when he read the story of the noble Baroness’s search for the remains of her family property that there was a link and he could at last find someone to whom he could restore it.
We are all conscious of the complexities and, I should say, the agonies of Polish history. Two summers ago I read Timothy Snyder’s book Bloodlands on what happened to all the peoples between Germany and Russia—all the many Jews who lived in that area but also Ukrainians, Poles, Belarusians and others. I note that the family of the wife of Norman Davies, who assisted in the recovery and return of the noble Baroness’s silver, lost their property in what is now Ukraine and were forced to move into other vacant property in what is now Poland—everyone has been forced to push west, of course—that for all they knew might well have been confiscated from Jewish Poles.
The status of Polish property records compared with the Austrian ones, which the noble Baroness rightly holds up as a model, are rather less good than they should be, for fairly obvious reasons—the amount of destruction that Poland suffered during the war. The Polish archives are gradually being digitised but there is still a long way to go. In many parts of Poland, with the boundaries having been shifted so sharply, the layers of claims to ownership are extremely complex and contested.
I also recommend the memoir written by the current Polish Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, about his family’s attempt to buy and restore a house in western Poland. As they began to restore it, there were occasions when others came and looked at it and expressed an interest in re-establishing their property ownership—quite often people from Germany or elsewhere. We all understand that Poland has enormous difficulty in establishing who owned what and when; and the years of Nazi, then communist, ownership have made this extremely difficult.
We are focusing on Poland, but Ukraine, whether or not you regard it as a post-communist country, is another case in point. It failed to attend the conference or sign the declaration, as did Russia. Without naming names, it is fair to say that other states that signed up to the declaration have a patchy record in implementing it.
Several Peers touched on the question of what restitution is intended to restore. The noble Baroness said that Holocaust restitution was not about money but victims. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said that we were talking about moral accounting. As some noble Lords may know, the Austrian central fund has restored a small percentage of the estimated value of the property. In the Polish case, part of our concern we have is that the Polish Government are extremely worried about how large the bill would be once the claims were presented—not only by Jewish former owners but by the much larger number of Polish former owners, many of them no longer living in Poland.
I note from a story in the Jewish Chronicle in summer 2009 that the estimate of the total value of property lost in Poland during the war was around £15.5 billion. It is thought that 80 per cent of it came not from Jews but from Poles who lost land. As the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, suggested, it is quite clear that such large sums simply could not be restored. There is a conversation to be had with the Polish Government about levels of financial restitution, as well as about moral closure, which is what we are all most interested in.
I was asked what activities Sir Andrew Burns, the UK Government’s special representative, is currently engaged in. I found him extremely helpful on several occasions in briefing me on this. He is actively involved in working with the other parties to the Terezin declaration to ensure that this November’s review conference produces some concrete deliverables. He will participate in two preparatory meetings in Prague before November’s conference, and co-hosted a meeting with his American opposite number in London two weeks ago to discuss the November review conference. He is also active in recruiting a new director for the International Tracing Service, which the noble Baroness spoke about, and will lead the British delegation to the 2012 review conference, which will also include members of NGOs and other UK experts.
The noble Lord, Lord Gold, asked whether Poland still had a programme for the restitution of communal property. It does not have legislation for the restitution of private immovable property, but the draft legislation on private property has not been passed because of the EU’s public debt rule. Again, the issue is how far the Polish Government, under their somewhat constrained circumstances, are willing to take on substantial financial obligations to people who, largely, live outside Poland under their somewhat constrained circumstances. The forecast for economic growth in 2012 is 2.5 per cent, after last year’s satisfactory growth of 4 per cent. If Poland adopted the draft legislation on private property, it would breach current EU rules on financial discipline.
We very much welcome this debate, and we clearly need to continue working on this issue. We will be doing our utmost actively to make sure that the November review conference is a great success. I certainly commit, on behalf of the Government, to report back in the most suitable fashion on the developments at the review conference.
Perhaps I might add briefly that Lodz has often been described to me as the Polish Bradford, that it is very much the same sort of city. When I heard that the city was still derelict in some places, I was thinking about some parts of Bradford, in which I was delivering leaflets on Saturday, which need a little bit of restoration still. All of us who know Poland know there are some very beautiful parts that have escaped the rigours of the war. Warsaw, where I am going on Friday, did not escape the rigours of the war and was largely destroyed. Of course, part of the emotional intensity of this on both sides is that the Poles feel that they suffered a great deal in the war and that the rest of the world does not always understand how much they suffered.
I thank everyone for their participation in this debate and the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for the vigour with which she continues to pursue this set of issues. Her Majesty’s Government remain actively engaged in this and we will be taking a very active part in November’s review conference.
Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (Disclosure of Social Security and Revenue Information) Regulations 2012
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (Disclosure of Social Security and Revenue Information) Regulations 2012
Relevant Document: 42nd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am about to discover that I have mislaid my speech—no, I have not. These regulations are the fifth use of the data-sharing powers under the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007. The Disclosure of Social Security and Revenue Information Regulations create a gateway for the sharing of information in relation to individuals in connection with certain social security and revenue payments with the Office for National Statistics. The information that these regulations allow to be shared is held by the Department for Work and Pensions and HMRC. The ONS is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, which is referred to in the legislation as the Statistics Board.
Access to that information will enable the ONS to develop ongoing research as part of the Beyond 2011 programme. This programme is to consider possible alternatives to the traditional census in producing census-type statistics. With this information, the ONS will be able to investigate the feasibility of developing more accurate and cost-effective methods for producing population statistics. The ONS will report the outcome of this feasibility work to Parliament in 2014. The information will also be used to quality-assure and validate the 2011 census counts.
Data confidentiality and security arrangements are being assessed as a fundamental part of the preparation for sharing the information. The ONS already works to very tight confidentiality guidelines and has an excellent data security record. It is putting the necessary measures in place to protect the information and to ensure there is no disclosure of any personal information about individuals. The information provided will be used for statistical purposes only.
Section 39 of the Act makes it an offence for a member or an employee of the authority to disclose personal information it holds other than in tightly defined circumstances. Any unlawful disclosure could result in imprisonment and/or a fine. These regulations allow the ONS to disclose the information to the National Records of Scotland and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, but only for the purpose of assisting the UK Statistics Authority in producing population statistics.
These regulations enable administrative information already collected by the Government to be further utilised.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
These regulations enable administrative information already collected by government to be further utilised, but only for the purposes as set out in the regulations—that is, for the improvement of population statistics.
In summary, allowing access to information in relation to individuals associated with certain benefits and Revenue payments will lead to developments in the production of census-type statistics under the Census 2011 programme. Ultimately, it will lead to more accurate resource allocation, policy development and service planning and delivery. Simply put, better statistics will inform better policy-making. I therefore ask the Committee to support these regulations.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am sure that we are very grateful to the Minister for his comprehensive description of the regulations before us. Of course, as he said, the context in which these regulations are being debated goes beyond the 2011 programme established by the UK Statistics Authority, which is testing and establishing alternative models for census-type statistics. Obviously, there is a great deal of interest in that and in the programme, and I should like to come back to that in a moment. However, the Explanatory Memorandum very helpfully says that the effect of sharing social security and Revenue information will be subject to internal review after 12 months and that the legislation may be amended accordingly. Will the outcome of that internal review be made public?
I also take this opportunity to ask the Minister to explain what will happen to the 2021 Census. Can he also say whether there will be parliamentary scrutiny in the event of the Government deciding to replace the current 10-year Census? Will it be subject to a legislative order or primary legislation or to a debate? It would be helpful if he could clarify that for me.
My understanding is that the UK has carried out a Census every decade since 1801, with the exception of the 1941 Census during World War II. It is of course the only time that everybody in the country is counted and the information is used by the Government to determine spending priorities and to track population movements. In addition, academics, charities and religious organisations all use information gathered in the Census, because it asks wide-ranging questions in relation to people’s households, nationality, faith and marital status. The information is also of great interest to many members of the public. The online publication of the 1911 Census, for instance, was a very great success and hugely popular. I understand that 3 million people accessed the data within a few months of its being established.
I would just like to ask the noble Lord to comment on the remarks of Geoffrey Robertson QC, a constitutional barrister, who said the news was regrettable since some sort of count had been carried out by the monarchical government for almost 1,000 years. He said that future historians will be less able to interpret Britain in the Cameron-Clegg era as a result of this decision. He actually went on to say that perhaps that is the reason for this, but I do not accuse the noble Lord of that. I would also refer him to the remarks of David Green, the director of the Civitas think tank, who said the decision was a terrible mistake. It is a question of whether alternatives are reliable. The Census is expensive but he thinks it is worth the money for historic continuity.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for those comments and can tell him that the Beyond 2011 programme regularly reports to Ministers and these reports will be published on the ONS website, so they will reported in a form that will be easily accessible to noble Lords and others who are interested. The most important question which he posed is what will happen to the 2021 Census. My clear understanding is that the decision will not be taken until 2014 or later, and the purpose of these data exchanges and this data-sharing is to discover, first, how accurate the 2011 Census has been and, secondly, whether there are alternatives to continuing to conduct a Census of this sort.
There are costs, benefits, advantages and disadvantages to maintaining the traditional Census. As I understand it, the first Census was conducted in 1841. I say this from my historical knowledge since I can trace my family back to 1801, precisely because one of my ancestors was 40 in 1841 so one could get him back to where he had been born.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, rather like the sixties, does the noble Lord’s memory go back that far?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I hope so. It is possible that censuses have gone back further. I have at the back of my mind something that says a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. That, of course, was a census of some sort which I think was just before they managed to conquer this country, so “all the world” was a bit of an exaggeration.
The problem of the future of the Census is this: the Census of 1911 and earlier ones are tremendously interesting in their historical information for all of us. I have certainly looked at the 1911 Census and in our hall in Saltaire we have lists of everyone who lived in the house every 10 years from when the house was built to 1911. Yet how much money should one spend to provide historical information to the next generation but one? That is one question with which the Government have to be concerned.
We are somewhat impressed that Census information has got less accurate as family circumstances have become much more complicated. Children live in two houses because their parents are separated and people move around much more rapidly. With a much more mobile society in which young people, particularly young males, do not register with doctors or fill in forms, there are substantial problems in counting population. As we all know, for Government and particularly for local authorities, accurate assessment of how many people are living in your area is of considerable importance, so the purpose of this entire ONS programme is to see whether there are better alternatives to provide efficient and differentiated population statistics. It brings together a range of information now available to different government departments under very strict conditions.
In the discussions that I have had with officials on this, I said that it is quite clear that we will need a Green Paper for 2014 to allow Parliament and the public to discuss the costs and benefits of retaining the traditional Census or of otherwise moving towards a different rolling programme. After all, the data revolution is making life astonishingly different from what it was. There are enormous advantages in the amount of data that can now be collected about us. However, we are all conscious that there are enormous dangers in allowing the state to collect too much information, and that is why this statutory instrument and the others in the programme are wrapped around with so many conditions.
I hope that I have provided sufficient reassurances to enable the Committee to accept the statutory instrument.
Arrangement of Business
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, 41 speakers signed up for the debate. In spite of the wealth of expertise and experience, and the diversity of opinions, may I suggest that if all contributions other than the opening and closing speeches are kept to a maximum of nine minutes, the House may rise at its normal Thursday time of before 7 pm?
House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Steel of Aikwood
I hasten to say that I am not suggesting that we can have no discussions and no amendments—that would be too optimistic. However, we have only two and a half hours and I hope that we will deal with the amendments expeditiously.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, it might be helpful if I say that, in view of the speed with which the Bill has been changing, with parts going in and out, the Government do not have a formal position on where we now are. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that I am not aware of any discussions on the financial implications of leave of absence. However, the Government will look at what emerges from the Report stage today. I am conscious that a number of noble Lords have trains to take, in not the easiest of weather, to other parts of the United Kingdom later today, so we are determined to finish by three o’clock. The Government will take note of what the House decides and see what further progress can be made. If there is a general feeling that common sense is breaking out in this modest step on House of Lords reform, let us hope that common sense breaks out on all Benches in the House in the future.
Lord Trefgarne
I have a few second-order issues to raise during the discussions on the sections which will remain part of the Bill. I do not expect that the Report stage will need to be delayed beyond today.
House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Desai
My Lords, I make the same request to the noble Lord, Lord True. Amendment 280, which was moved but later withdrawn by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, proposes that there should be a right of appeal in case something is not quite right. We must always take the charitable view that if someone cannot pay back what they owe, there may be a reason for that other than intent. We ought to allow room for exceptions in certain circumstances.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I take up the cue provided by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott—I think we are within sight of a relatively limited Act that would command consensus all round the House. However, this proposed new clause would take us beyond the possibility of consensus at present. I think it would be appropriate if the noble Lord, Lord True, would withdraw the amendment. Certainly, I think that a number of us may wish to look at this particularly complex additional matter, but it is important to make some limited progress. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, nods his head. That may be the best way forward.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I echo the words of my noble friend and the Minister. To get consensus on a short Bill that has a chance of going through the other place, we should focus on matters on which there is clear agreement. However, as the Minister was tempted to speak at this point, I will pursue the point that my noble friend has made. In light of the consensus that is likely to be reached today, will the Government find time for the Bill to be discussed in the other place this Session? If he is able to confirm that, it would be much appreciated.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, having been in government himself, I am sure that the noble Lord on the opposite Bench will understand that it takes a little time to get consensus in the Government. I can promise that consultations will continue within the Government but I cannot take matters further than that for reasons he will well understand.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. I understand why the Government will take a little time to find consensus. However, I remind him that the Government have made an announcement. The Deputy Prime Minister made yet another of his speeches on the House of Lords. He said that the Government were minded finally to come round to the view that action should be taken in relation to Members of your Lordships' House who find themselves sentenced to imprisonment. Here is a vehicle to allow that to happen. I know that the Deputy Prime Minister does not think much of this place, but it is actually offering him an early vehicle with which to put his policy into action. Surely he ought to take it with open arms.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I hear very clearly what the noble Lord says. He understands the restrictions under which I must operate. We will take this back and of course consult. This is part of a process that is already under way, as all noble Lords here understand, and that some of us hope will go rather further. This Government are a formal coalition—rather different in shape from the informal and sometimes bad-tempered coalition of our predecessor Government, but we must therefore necessarily discuss this.
Lord Steel of Aikwood
Perhaps I may add that I discussed this matter with the Deputy Prime Minister some time ago, and the last time we did so he agreed to look at it again in the new year. Once the Bill has had its Report and Third Reading, we will know exactly what is in it and what is not, and I will propose a further discussion with him. I am well aware of the difficulty of former party leaders telling current party leaders what to do, but I will do my best.
Gaza
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we have extraordinarily tight timing for the dinner-hour debate. I remind noble Lords that when the figure “2” appears on the clock, that is the end of their time for a two-minute speech. I am told that the European Parliament has entire debates where everyone makes two-minute interventions, but I am sure the House of Lords can do better than that.
Public Services (Social Value) Bill
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am delighted to speak on behalf of the Government to support this small but significant Bill. We support it because it contributes to the ambitions of the coalition Government—which, after all, are not fundamentally different from those of our predecessor Government—to reform public services by ensuring that they achieve optimum value and promote economic growth, as well as strengthen relationships with communities.
The Bill requires relevant authorities to consider how to improve the social, environmental and economic impact of public service contracts at the pre-procurement stage. As noble Lords have noted, it requires commissioners to consider consulting on public services, thereby empowering communities to play a more active role in shaping them. It ensures that commissioners consider the full impact of services on the people they serve, and it will enable them to maximise the social, environmental and economic impact of public money. It does not change procurement law but sits within the existing procurement process. It does not undermine the requirement to award the contract to the most economically advantageous tender, nor is it at odds with the Government's value-for-money agenda and efficiency reforms, and by considering the full impact of a service it reinforces obtaining value for money in procurement and should help to improve the quality and efficiency of public services.
Several noble Lords noted that we are really talking about a long-term culture change and that we still face considerable obstacles in changing that culture. As I sit in the House listening to noble Lords talking about their commitment to localism but insisting that ring-fencing should be maintained on one subject or another—that the Secretary of State should retain full responsibility for the provision of public services and that Whitehall should intervene—I am conscious that we have not ourselves entirely gone through that culture change. As the noble Lord, Lord Wei, remarked, the Bill provides a nudge in that direction. Perhaps we need to recognise that some of us still need to be nudged. The noble Lord, Lord Mawson, remarked that regulation and form-filling still stifle innovation in this area. Centralisation is part of that, as we all know. All noble Lords will be familiar with Unshackling Good Neighbours, the report last year of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, which attempted to tackle that in a number of ways, but we all recognise that we need a major culture change in this area.
After all, many of the public services with which government in any shape is concerned can succeed only if they are embedded in the local community. Bringing vulnerable people back within the links of a strong community is a necessary part of effective delivery. In probation and rehabilitation, for example, one group I have been involved with recently in Yorkshire is Together Women, with which the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, may well be familiar. It is concerned with preventing young women being caught up in reoffending. It can and does save the public purse an enormous amount of money. It demonstrates that keeping people from being caught up in the prison process again is proving to be a considerable saving. That has not been easy to demonstrate. Indeed, I have been lobbying on their behalf to make sure that the Government fully understand the extent to which these unavoidably local bodies—they have to work with local people—provide help.
Mental health support and recovery, as a number of others have mentioned, is a similar activity. I was at the Bradford mental health re-employment awards lunch last Friday. The noble Baroness will be familiar with the Cellar project and a number of the other bodies that are working in that area. There are social enterprises raising money from their activities to fund what they do in partnership with local authorities. Similarly, many groups are already operating in care for the elderly. One needs to ensure when the government outsources activities that the vulnerable people are involved in their local communities. One of the examples pointed out to me is that if meals on wheels are provided by the elderly being brought into a local community centre to be fed, they can mix with each other, it is much easier to work with them and they are back to being involved in the community. That can contribute considerably to their continuing health. There is therefore the integration of service provision at the local level.
Close co-operation among different service providers on the ground can also improve effectiveness. My noble friend Lady Scott and I were extremely happy to be shown round the Bromley by Bow Centre by the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, last week in which the health and housing advice centres have a common counter. People who go to talk about particular health concerns may often be concerned about bad housing, which can be dealt with at the same time. The noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, also underlined the advantage of linking up across the different deliveries of local public services. I know very well from some of the issues that we have in Saltaire, which is not a problem village, that sometimes you have to deal with one bit of bureaucracy that says that something cannot be done and another bit of bureaucracy that says it has to be done. One has to lobby hard against that.
The Bill is a first step. It is part of a long-term process in an attempt to change the way in which government manages public services and co-operates with the not-for-profit or not-for-dividend sector. Where might we move on from here? The Government are now concerned with simplifying the procurement landscape and building the capability of commissioners and those concerned with procurement. We are considering ways in which larger contracts can be broken up into smaller lots where appropriate, and we are also planning a commissioning and procurement academy as a way of equipping commissioners and procurement authorities with the right skills and raising capacity. We are also hoping—this point was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott—to accelerate the measurement of impact. There are a number of ways in which we are concerned to improve the way in which to measure and collect data. We need to increase access to measurement tools and systems and the data that people need.
The legislation does not explicitly favour the involvement of social enterprises or any other particular form of provider in public service delivery. However, its focus on maximising social, environmental and economic value will inevitably ensure that the full contribution of organisations with a social or environmental purpose is recognised. Social enterprises are the prime example of such organisations. The current pressure on all parts of government to make spending cuts is particularly important to ensure that the full value of organisations is recognised. Consultation may clarify social and environmental aspects of the service, which will then be reflected in the specification. Effective consultation can also lead to fewer bureaucratic procurement processes—which is much to be hoped for—and a greater range of suppliers responding, which in turn will drive value for money.
On behalf of the Government, I welcome the Bill. I know that the House agrees that it is a useful and important step in the long-term process of transforming procurement in the public sector and enhancing our work to build what the coalition Government call the big society, what Liberal Democrats call the responsible society and what others call community engagement, active citizenship or local self-government. Whatever we call it, I hope that all parties share the same objective, and I hope that the Bill will help to push us further in that direction.
Lord Newby
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who spoke in the debate. I am extremely pleased to get such support from all sides of the House. The debate demonstrated the degree of experience and expertise on the subject in your Lordships' House, and a deep, common-sense approach to difficult issues. Rather than looking at principles, we look at how things work on the ground. There is widespread acceptance that the Bill will not transform the world, but will play a part in doing so. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, said, it is a step on the journey. As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said, it is a long-term process. As the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, among others, said, we are trying to effect a culture change, which one piece of legislation can only partially do.
It is one of the attractions of your Lordships' House that one normally leaves a debate with one or two new ideas or phrases ringing in one's mind. I will take away two from today. The first is the idea of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, that we are talking not about not-for-profit enterprises but about not-for-dividend ones. We want social enterprises, and they have to be profitable. If they are not, they are not enterprises and they will not be around for very long. The phrase “not for dividend” is not used often enough to segregate this sector from the rest of the entrepreneurial environment. My quotation of the day is from the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, who asked us all to become the Brunels of this generation. I had never thought of myself or my colleagues in those terms, but it is a comparison to which we should all now aspire. With that, I request that the House give the Bill a Second Reading.
European Union (Definition of Treaties) (Republic of Korea Framework Agreement) Order 2012
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the draft order laid before the House on 5 December 2011 be approved.
Relevant document: 36th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 17 January.
European Union (Definition of Treaties) (Republic of Korea Framework Agreement) Order 2012
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the European Union (Definition of Treaties) (Republic of Korea Framework Agreement) Order 2012
Relevant documents: 36th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the framework agreement itself was negotiated in parallel with the EU-Republic of Korea free trade agreement, debated in this Room yesterday, which was signed on 6 October 2010. The agreement provides a structure aimed at strengthening the co-operation of the European Union and its member states with the Republic of Korea in a number of fields. These fields include justice, freedom and security, as well as good governance and taxation. The agreement will also allow for further engagement on global issues such as climate change, security of energy supply and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The agreement gives us another tool through which to discuss and work on important issues with a key ally in the east Asia region. The Republic of Korea is the fourth largest economy in Asia, and growing fast; it will be the 10th largest driver of world growth over the next five years. The Republic of Korea is also an important international player, with troops in Afghanistan and ships in the Indian Ocean off Africa tackling piracy. It is also a fellow leader on green issues. Its partner of choice has so far been the United States, but we hope that the framework agreement will give the EU an opportunity to increase engagement in many of these fields and will therefore contribute to the better implementation of UK objectives in relation to the Republic of Korea. The EU delegation in Seoul is currently in negotiations with the Republic of Korea on what areas of co-operation to prioritise and how best to take this forward.
Her Majesty's Government fully support this agreement. We firmly believe that it will help to enhance and strengthen the relationship between the EU and the Republic of Korea. I commend the order to the Committee.
Lord Dykes
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for explaining the background to this order ready for affirmative resolution and following yesterday’s proceedings on the trade agreement with the Republic of Korea. That, too, is a very important document, with its contents at an early stage; it remains to be seen how that will work out in the build-up of trade between ourselves and the Republic of Korea. This instrument is one of the accompaniments that the EU and its allies and other countries with which we are doing deals like this rightly require. The international practice now is to have agreements along these lines: a framework agreement alongside a trade agreement dealing with all the other matters that the Minister has listed, which are extremely important from the point of view of good governance and civil society being properly looked after in the countries that are parties to this agreement. In this case, that means the member states of the EU and the Republic of Korea. Obviously, right now there is bound to be a certain amount of tension, at least in the margin, because of events in North Korea and the relationship and heightened tension between the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. One hopes that will not have any deleterious effect on the trade agreement that we discussed yesterday or on this agreement.
I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who is a great expert on Korea. He is particularly knowledgeable about South Korea—and, indeed, North Korea—and I would presumptuously guess that he may want to say a number of things about these matters. I will listen with great interest, but with some trepidation. I apologise in advance in case we find our proceedings go on a bit because I am due at a Select Committee where a Minister is attending at 4.10 pm. Therefore, if I depart prematurely, which I would certainly not wish to do because it would be very discourteous on my part, I can none the less rely on my noble friend Lady Maddock to keep me abreast of the developments in the rest of the discussion, and I shall look very closely at Hansard.
On behalf of the other part of the coalition today and in support of the Minister, I express support for this agreement.
Lord Liddle
My Lords, I express the Opposition’s support for the approval of this statutory instrument. One of the real privileges of becoming a Member of the House of Lords, which I did last year, is to listen to people such as the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, who have expertise, wisdom and judgment to offer on things that one knows very little about. I hope that the points that he has raised today, although they are tangential to the thrust of the EU framework agreement, will be taken very seriously and that we will have further opportunities to debate the position in North Korea, about which he spoke so movingly. I thank him on behalf of the Opposition for his work there.
The agreement itself is what they call in EU jargon a strategic partnership, and it is one that is directly linked to the conclusion of the free trade agreement in 2010 between the EU and the Republic of Korea, which I think Europe took about a year to ratify from when it was actually signed. That was not bad when one looks at the position in relation to the United States and its free trade agreements with Korea, which are deeply enmeshed in the problems in the US Congress. Perhaps many people in Britain forget that the EU can be effective and that it still is an important pole of attraction for a very rapidly growing country like the Republic of Korea. The deal on the free trade agreement with the accompanying strategic partnership was negotiated in two years. It arose out of the global initiative that my noble friend Lord Mandelson launched when he was trade commissioner which, given the difficulties of completing the Doha round, was a switch away to bilateral trading agreements with our major trading partners.
The Republic of Korea is extremely significant for us in economic terms. It is the most important trading partner for Europe behind the United States, Japan and China. I discovered that fact when I was Googling away before the debate, but it is a remarkable fact none the less. We on this side welcome the deepening of relations with the Republic of Korea. We think it is right that a trade agreement should have a parallel political agreement, as it were, which sets out a broad range of areas for co-operation and dialogue and we very much wish that co-operation and dialogue to be effective. I am sure that this agreement will play an important role in deepening relationships between Europe and the Republic of Korea, which I hope will assist in a solution being found to the terrible problems that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, described in North Korea. I support the approval of this statutory instrument.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I happily yield to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, as an expert in EU jargon. It is a very erudite subject with which we have both struggled for many years. I feel I am slightly in the same position as I was in last night, when being asked to defend Britain's approach to the OSCE, to which the answer is: we are not entirely sure how this works or what its potential is, but we think it is worth doing. The framework agreements are a new element in EU relations with other countries beyond the European region. They have very wide potential, including on human rights, and provide a formal structure for member states collectively to raise such issues.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his, as always, fascinating and well-informed speech. While nothing in this framework agreement specifically refers to North Korea, relations with North Korea are of course always likely to be an important part of the agenda when we discuss political and human rights issues with our Korean colleagues. All those of us who have been to Seoul know that when you are in Seoul you feel close to the border. The sense of insecurity is not that much less than it used to be when one visited Berlin during the Cold War, so one cannot get away from the North Korean dimension in this relationship. The absence of specific reference to North Korea or to human rights in the framework agreement does not imply that these are outside its structure.
The noble Lord asked a number of specific questions, including one about information on the news of a potential North Korean amnesty for political prisoners. I will inquire further within the Foreign Office and report back. Although I am fully briefed on what is happening in southern Sudan, Kenya, Somalia and Iran, as one jumps from one country to another I have unfortunately not kept up with exactly what is happening in North Korea.
There are problems in developing among the EU 27 a common position on North Korea. Smaller EU member states see North Korea as a distant country, even further away from Europe than Burma. We are therefore talking about the larger EU member states attempting to reconcile their positions, which fits in with their relations with China and their position on nuclear proliferation. Finding common EU positions on distant problems with which not all the smaller member states are directly concerned is not always easy.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
Can the Minister tell us about the position of France? As I recall, France does not even have diplomatic relations with North Korea and since it is not one of the smaller member states, getting a common position would be a pretty good start.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I will ensure that I give the noble Lord a more expert reply on the French position than I could off the cuff. As he remarked, the British took a very balanced decision to reopen relations with North Korea. The Americans and the French did not support it at the time. I think that most of us here think that it was worth doing, in spite of the intense difficulties which our representatives have often had in North Korea since then. We therefore have an advantage over some of our EU colleagues in having a more direct understanding of what is going on in the country.
I will also need to come back to the noble Lord on questions of energy supply. I thank him for the information on the proposals for a direct pipeline and I appreciate its implications. Similarly, in the case of the industrial zone, I am tempted to say that the import into Britain of goods which are partly put together in extremely poorly paid factories and then assembled in higher wage countries is, as we all know, not unique to relations between South Korea and North Korea.
On education, I have heard some fascinating stuff before from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, about the university of which he spoke. We are doing our best to provide some support there. It is a very interesting experiment and is one of the things which suggest that chinks of light are possibly opening up. At this precise moment, with a change in leadership in North Korea, it is difficult for any of us to read exactly how the situation is going to develop. We have to follow what is happening, to intervene when we think that we can make a difference—as we are beginning to do on the educational front—and to see how much more we can manage. The Government share his concerns about the possibility of a local incident moving up the escalation ladder into accidental war. We are all concerned about that, and not only between North Korea and the Republic of Korea. Although not within this framework agreement, it is absolutely part of the multilateral diplomatic process on North Korea—which includes the Chinese, the Americans and others—to try to build those contacts and confidence-building measures which will prevent such an escalation happening.
The comparisons with Burma are not exact. North Korea has remained much more closed than Burma, even through the worst points of the Burmese military Government. We can hope for similar shifts with North Korea but it will take longer and it is much more difficult, precisely because North Korea has been so much more cut off from the world. This framework agreement offers us the prospect to widen the relationship with Korea. We will be pursuing this through a whole range of activities.
Perhaps I may be allowed on a personal note to remark that some noble Lords may not be aware that the Korean parliamentary choir will be coming to sing with the British parliamentary choir and has invited the British parliamentary choir to go out and sing in Seoul in exchange. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on the language point. We are singing Mendelssohn with them and the Korean parliamentary choir has insisted that we sing it in the original German and not in English. I am glad to hear that it is particularly correct in this way.
I conclude by reassuring noble Lords that the Government believe our European partners and Europe institutionally have a role to play in strengthening co-operation between Britain and the Republic of Korea. This agreement will allow for more work to be done in expanding a long-term relationship on a number of very important issues such as the promotion of human rights, international peace and security, energy and climate change, on which the Koreans are particularly active, and global economic co-operation.