Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill (First sitting)

John McDonnell Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Fiona Bruce]

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

[John McDonnell]

[John McDonnell]

[The Chair]

[John McDonnell]

[The Chair]

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Bruce]

[John McDonnell]

[John McDonnell]

[John McDonnell]

[John McDonnell]

[John McDonnell]

[Charlotte Nichols]

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

John McDonnell Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 12th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

It is the principled eloquence of my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) that gives me hope for the future of our country. I feel that the country is safe in the hands of her generation and people like her.

I have listened to the whole of the debate, and I say this. We are in the midst of what in other eras we would have called a plague. Nearly 130,000 members of our community have died. Many of them faced appalling deaths, alone, isolated from their loved ones. Moreover, poverty runs rife among our people. More than 40% of the children in my constituency are living in poverty. It took a footballer to force the Government to act to secure a basic meal for many of our children, and what did he get last night from some of the racist scum populating our country? More racist abuse.

With so much scarring the lives of many of our constituents, with so many wrongs to be righted, what is the House debating? A proposal for a law to legislate against behaviour when there is barely any evidence that it exists. The Office for Students found

“no evidence of free speech being systematically suppressed”.

It went on to say:

“Our experience to date is that providers are working hard to be compliant with their duty under section 43 of the 1986 Education Act.”

Selina Todd has been referred to tonight. She is my friend; I helped her to launch her recent book. I was contacted before the event by a students club urging me not to attend and not to participate. I went ahead, because, as I explained, disagreement with Selina was best dealt with in discussion, and it was left at that: an agreement to disagree.

If any incidences arise of the suppression of free speech, laws and institutions already exist to protect freedom of speech in higher education. There is the Human Rights Act, which, I remind the House, the Conservative party voted against. The Education (No. 2) Act 1986, passed by a Conservative Government, contains section 43, which has been referred to and which requires universities to

“take such steps as are reasonably practicable”

to secure freedom of speech. There are already regulatory bodies to ensure that those provisions are protected and enforced. The Office of the Independent Adjudicator deals with student complaints that cannot be resolved through internal processes of individual universities. Likewise, if academic freedom is being infringed, employment law and employment tribunals can address that.

This is interesting and I have not witnessed it very often, but Universities UK, the National Union of Students, the University and College Union and even the Russell Group are united in opposing this legislation. I say to the Government: do not insult the intelligence of Members of this House or, more importantly, the intelligence of the British people. This is a grubby political stunt, worthy of the derision it has received tonight. It is a propaganda exercise in this Government’s persistent provocation of the culture war, as many Members have suggested. But how far does the logic of this policy go? Who is next—further education establishments, schools, Government-funded charities and community groups? If not them, why are the universities being singled out? The logic of this policy is ludicrous.

If Ministers want to know the real issues in universities, they should go to Liverpool and Leicester and speak to the lecturers who have been forced on to picket lines because they are being sacked. They should visit any college and talk to lecturers about how their profession is being casualised, their wages frozen and cut, and their pension put under further threat. They should speak to the University and College Union and see what its members are up against at the moment. None of the issues that are so relevant to higher education, students and lecturers is being addressed by the Government, who are more interested in divisive culture wars than in solving the real issues faced by our universities and the people of this country.

The legislation should be dropped. I am fearful. As others have warned, be careful what this Government wish for, because they could open up serious division in our society and on our university campuses, and open up a can of worms that the fascist right will exploit.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

John McDonnell Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

It has now been the best part of 24 hours since the Chancellor delivered his Budget. There are some things in it that I would like to welcome. On the sugar tax, we look forward to seeing more detail about how it will be put into practice. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) who said yesterday that we needed a comprehensive strategy to tackle the growing problem of obesity. I regret, therefore, that £200 million has been cut from public health budgets this year—those are the budgets that were to be used to develop that strategy.

We are also pleased that the Chancellor is looking at addressing savings overall, though we wonder whether the new lifetime individual savings accounts will do much to address the scandal of low retirement savings for the less well-off. On the rise in tax thresholds, we welcome anything that puts more money in the pockets of middle and low earners, but we wonder how that aim can sit alongside the Conservatives’ plans to cut universal credit.

It is about time that we had some straight talking about what this Budget means. It is an admission of abject failure by the Chancellor. For the record, in the six years that he has been in charge of the nation’s finances, he has missed every major target he has set himself. He said that he would balance the books by 2015, but the deficit this year is set to be more than £72 billion. He said that Britain would pay its way in the world, but he has overseen the biggest current account deficit since modern records began.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I want to help the Labour party in every way that I can. I want it to be credible at the next election, but the shadow Chancellor took to the airwaves this morning and talked about borrowing more money. Will he give us an absolute commitment that, if he were to become Chancellor, he would not borrow more money than the present Chancellor? He can just say yes.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell]

The present Chancellor has borrowed £200 billion more than what he promised. Let us be absolutely clear that like any company, UK plc under us will invest—it will invest in plant and machinery to create the growth that we need if we are to afford our public services.

Let me go back. The Chancellor promised us a “march of the makers”, but manufacturing still lags behind its 2008 levels. He said he would build his way out of our housing crisis, but we have seen new house building fall to its lowest level since the 1920s. He said that he had moved the economy away from reliance on household debt, but, yesterday, the Office for Budget Responsibility said that his entire plan relied on household debt rising “to unprecedented levels.” He said that he would aim for £1 trillion of exports by 2020. Yesterday’s figures suggest that he will miss that target by the small matter of £357 billion.

When it comes to the Chancellor’s failures, he is barely off the starting blocks. The fiscal rule he brought before Parliament last year had three tests. We already knew that he was likely to fail one of them, with the welfare cap forecast to be breached. Yesterday, it emerged that he will fail the second of his tests. Having already raised the debt burden to 83.3% of GDP, it is set to rise now to 83.7% this year. Therefore, since the new fiscal rule was introduced, it is nought out of two for the Chancellor’s targets.

[Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman started by saying that we needed some straight talking. In order to be fiscally credible, one needs to have concrete figures. The Chancellor has said in his Budget that he will borrow £1 in every £14 in 2016-17. Will the shadow Chancellor tell us what his borrowing figure will be?

[John McDonnell]

Unlike the current Chancellor, we will not set ourselves targets that can never be realised, and we will create an economy based on consultation with the wealth creators themselves—the businesses, the entrepreneurs and the workers. In that way, we will have a credible fiscal responsibility rule.

Yesterday, the OBR revised down its forecast for growth for this year, and for every year in this Parliament—in some cases by significant margins. That is reflected in lower forecasts for earnings growth. The Resolution Foundation says that typical wages will not recover to their pre-crash levels before the end of this decade. It is not just forecasts for economic growth and wages that are down. Those are driven by productivity, which has also been revised down for every year of this Parliament. Any productivity improvements last year have disappeared. As the OBR said, it was, “Another false dawn”. Perhaps that is not surprising. After all, productivity is linked to business investment, which should be driving the recovery, but which plunged sharply last quarter.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

I have noticed that the hon. Gentleman does not like answering the question on how much he would be willing to borrow were he Chancellor. Is there any limit to the amount that he would be willing to borrow and to the debt that he would be willing to pass on to future generations?

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[John McDonnell]

I find it extraordinary that this Government want to talk about debt. Under this Government, the debt that our children will inherit will be £1.7 trillion. Under their watch, the debt has risen significantly—it has almost doubled. When we go forward, we will ensure that our borrowing will be based on sound economic advice from the wealth creators. Unlike this Government, we will create economic growth. This Chancellor is borrowing to fund cuts in public services, not to invest in growth or productivity.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[John McDonnell]

I will press on, and then I will give way—[Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Members may think that this noise is not loud, but it is very loud when you are in the Chair trying to listen to the shadow Chancellor. The problem is that it does not do this Chamber any good in the eyes of the public when they cannot hear either.

[John McDonnell]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.}

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Did somebody wish to comment? Okay, we will carry on.

[John McDonnell]

Let me assure Members that I will give way, but let me proceed a bit further.

As I have said, perhaps the fall in productivity is unsurprising, because productivity is linked to business investment, which should be driving the recovery, but which plunged in the last quarter.

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

rose—

[John McDonnell]

I will give way in a moment. I can tell the House what happened to business investment forecasts—they were revised down again in this Parliament. None of this should be a surprise for the Chancellor, but it seems that it is. At the autumn statement, he said that he wanted a plan

“that actually produces better results than were forecast.” ”.—[Official Report, 25 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 1385.]

[Rishi Sunak (Richmond (Yorks)) (Con)]

rose—

[John McDonnell]

I will come back to the hon. Gentleman. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said this last week about the autumn statement:

“If you can’t forecast more than two months, how in heaven’s name can you forecast the next four or five years.”

That is what we all want to know.

[Jeremy Quin]

Productivity, to which the shadow Chancellor is referring, is also linked to employment. Does he welcome the extra 2.3 million people in work since 2010?

[John McDonnell]

Of course we welcome that employment growth, but we are concerned about the insecurity of that employment. The number of zero-hours contracts has gone up by another 100,000 over the past month, and the insecurity of that employment, unfortunately, is affecting people’s long-term investment plans as well.

Yesterday the Chancellor pointed repeatedly to global economic headwinds as an explanation for his failure. His problem is that we have known about them for a while. Many of us were warning him last summer about the challenges facing the global economy. I spoke about them in this place, as did others on the Labour Benches, but rather than adapting his proposals to deal with the global reality, the Chancellor has charged headlong into another failure of his own making. He has failed to heed our warnings and the warnings of others, he has failed to invest in the key infrastructure that our economy needs, and as a result he has failed to boost Britain’s productivity figures.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

Is it not the case that our Chancellor is being very adaptable, as we heard yesterday? Is it not the case that the Opposition have an economic credibility strategy which essentially reverts to exactly what they did before—more borrowing, more spending, and higher taxes? It did not work then, so why would it work now?

[John McDonnell]

The hon. Lady might describe the Chancellor as adaptable. Most of the media and most independent analysts described him today as failing—failing on virtually every target he set himself under his own fiscal rule.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

Is it not the case that this Budget has failed on growth, productivity and fairness? Is this not a failed Budget that has been sugar-coated?

[John McDonnell]

Regrettably I do not think it has been sugar-coated for many of those who will be suffering the cuts included in this Budget.

On productivity, it is the Chancellor’s failure to boost Britain’s productivity that is at issue. The Office for Budget Responsibility is very clear on this point. British productivity, not global factors, is the reason the Chancellor is in trouble. Robert Chote, the head of the OBR, confirmed in an interview last night that “most of the downward growth revisions were not driven by global uncertainty, but by weaker than thought domestic productivity.” As a result of that, we now see drastically reduced economic forecasts and disappointing tax revenues.

The Chancellor has been in the job six years now. It is about time he took some responsibility for what has happened on his watch. It is not just on basic economic competence that the Chancellor has let this country down. Unfairness is at the very core of this Budget and of his whole approach.

[Lucy Frazer]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[John McDonnell]

I will press on, if the hon. and learned Lady does not mind.

The Chancellor said in 2010 that this country would not make the mistakes of the past in making the poor carry the burden of fiscal consolidation. The facts prove that that is just not accurate. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the long-run effect of all tax and benefit changes in last year’s autumn statement would mean percentage losses around 25 times larger for those in the bottom decile than for those in the top decile.

[Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman and the Opposition are suffering from some form of collective amnesia. Does he not remember that the British economy was on life support in 2010 when the Chancellor took over? The body of the economy was barely twitching. Why does he not acknowledge the fact that since 2010 growth is up, wages are up, employment is up and the deficit is down? He should be praising the Chancellor, not saying the economy is going down.

[John McDonnell]

Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the objective statements of the past 48 hours have demonstrated that all the factors that he mentions are falling back, and that we now face a serious problem that should be addressed by a responsible Government when they see their own fiscal rule and economic policies failing?

Let me repeat what the IFS said so that everyone is clear: the percentage losses were about 25 times larger for those at the bottom than for those at the top. So much for the Government’s statement about the broadest shoulders taking the strain. Furthermore, time and again, it is women who have borne the brunt of the Chancellor’s cuts. Recent analysis by the Women’s Budget Group showed that 81% of tax and welfare changes since 2010 have fallen on women.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not just women who have borne the brunt, but disabled people? Half a million disabled people are losing between them £1 billion. Surely not even Conservative Members can stand this anymore.

[John McDonnell]

I fully concur with my hon. Friend. I will come back to that point.

The distributional analysis by the Women’s Budget Group shows that by 2020 female lone parents and single female pensioners will experience the greatest drop in living standards—by 20% on average. In the case of older ladies, the single female pensioners, the cuts in care are falling upon their shoulders. I find that scandalous in this society.

It is disappointing, too, that the Budget offered no progress on scrapping the tampon tax. The Chancellor is hoping for a deal from the EU on the tax. If there is no deal, we will continue to fight for it to be scrapped.

[Lucy Frazer]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned that productivity was down for domestic reasons, not for international reasons. Can he therefore explain to me why the Congressional Budget Office in the US has reduced its forecast for potential productivity growth by 8.9 percentage points, which is lower than that for this country?

[John McDonnell]

That relates to the US economy. The figures that I quoted were not mine. They were from the Office for Budget Responsibility, which referred to domestic productivity falls.

Young people have also paid a heavy price during the Chancellor’s tenure. It is not just the education maintenance cuts in the last Parliament, or the enormous hikes in tuition fees; it is the dream of home ownership receding into the distance for young people on average incomes. The new Lifetime ISA will not resolve that. With pay falling so sharply for the young, there can be very few who can afford to save £4,000 a year.

We know that so far on the Chancellor’s watch, people with severe disabilities have been hit 19 times harder than those without disabilities. If that were not enough, the Government are now taking over £100 a week out of the pockets of disabled people. Even for a Chancellor who has repeatedly cut public spending on the backs of those least likely or least able to fight back, this represents a new low. I believe it is morally reprehensible.

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

The shadow Chancellor is being very generous with his time. With respect to owning one’s own home, will he not take into account that the Help to Buy scheme has helped thousands of first-time buyers, 82% of whom would not have been able to buy their home without that scheme?

[John McDonnell]

The problem, as the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge, is housing supply. Because of the failure to build homes under this Budget, I fear that the interventions that the Government may make, which I often welcome, may force up prices, rather than allowing access to homes. The hon. Gentleman shares with me the desire that young people should be able to afford a home, and with me he should campaign now for more housing construction. That means investment, and sometimes you have to borrow to invest.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

Will the shadow Chancellor give way?

[John McDonnell]

I will come back to the hon. Gentleman.

On disability, I am appealing to the Chancellor to think again. We will support him in reversing the cuts in personal independence payments for disabled people. If he can fund capital gains tax giveaways for the richest 5%, he can find the money to reverse this cruel and unnecessary cut.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if the Chancellor is not going to listen to the Opposition on the draconian cuts to these benefits, he will perhaps listen to Graeme Ellis, the chair of the Conservative Disability Group, who, as a result of these pernicious cuts, is cutting all links with the Conservative party?

[John McDonnell]

I just say this across the House: this is a very important issue—we will not make party politics of this. As someone who has campaigned on disability issues in the House for 18 years, I sincerely urge all Members to press the Chancellor to think again. This cut is cruel, and it is, unfortunately, dangerous for the wellbeing of disabled people.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[John McDonnell]

With the greatest respect, I have just been reminded that I have spoken for more than 20 minutes, and I know there is a crowded schedule. I have given way extensively, and I would like to press on.

If corporation tax—already the lowest in the G7—can be reduced yet further, money can be found so the Government can think again about making yet more cuts to people with disabilities.

Finally, I want to talk about the future. Yesterday’s Budget does not meet the needs and aspirations of our society. It fails to equip us for the challenges ahead. It fails to lay the foundations for a stronger economy that could deliver prosperity shared by all.

The Chancellor has repeatedly told us we are the builders, and yesterday we heard more of it. On infrastructure, we are back to press-release politics: projects announced with no certainty of funding to complete them—projects that should have started six years ago. It is always tarmac tomorrow. If stories about garden suburbs sound familiar, it might be because we have heard them before. Announcements about garden suburbs have become a hardy perennial of the Chancellor’s announcements.

However, despite all the rhetoric, all the re-announcements and all the photo opportunities in high-vis jackets, one statistic is in black and white in the OBR’s documents: public sector investment as a share of GDP is scheduled to fall from 1.9% last year to 1.5% by the end of this Parliament—a lack of investment in our infrastructure that will hold back the growth of our economy.

On education, it seems that we are back to the politics of spin and stunts. Forcing schools to become academies will do nothing to address the shortage of teachers, the shortage of school places and increasing class sizes. Forcing schools to compete for the extra-hour funding places more bureaucratic burdens on headteachers, with only a one-in-four chance of gaining that additional funding.

We have learned this morning that there is a half-a-billion-pound black hole in the funding needed for the Chancellor’s plans for schools. I would welcome the Secretary of State for Education confirming whether she will find the money to ensure that, if academisation is funded, schools are fully funded for that process.

As for long-term financial planning, it is increasingly clear that the Chancellor is determined to flog off anything that is not nailed down, in a desperate attempt to meet his self-imposed targets.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[John McDonnell]

I have spoken for more than 25 minutes. You have made it clear, Mr Deputy Speaker, that there are many Members who want to speak. I have been extremely generous in giving way—more than any other shadow spokesman before.

Last year, we noted that the Chancellor could meet the conditions of his fiscal rule only by selling off profitable state assets, even at a loss to the taxpayer. Official figures yesterday suggested that taxpayers will face a loss of more than £20 billion pounds as a result of the Chancellor’s decisions on RBS share sales.

Yesterday, again, we learned that the Government are considering the privatisation of the Land Registry. That is despite their deciding against it as recently as 2014. That is despite the Land Registry returning millions of pounds in profits to taxpayers. That is despite a 98% customer satisfaction rate. It makes no difference to this Chancellor: everything must go, everything is up for sale. When will he learn that you cannot keep paying the rent by selling the furniture?

The Chancellor has consistently put his political career ahead of the interests of this country. Yesterday he tried to do the same, and he failed. His disastrous economic failures are the result of putting personal ambition ahead of sound economics.

The Chancellor is clinging to the tattered remains of his fiscal charter, using it to justify brutal cuts to vulnerable people. In contrast to his rule—widely savaged by economists, and now on the point of being torn up by Government statisticians—Labour has a real alternative. Labour will build a society based on a fair tax system, where the wealthy and powerful pay their fair share. In line with recommendations from the OECD, the IMF, the G20, the CBI and the TUC, Labour will invest to grow opportunity and output. Labour will eliminate the deficit by growing our economy. Labour will invest in skills for a high-wage, high-tech economy.

In contrast to the Chancellor’s broken promises, we will balance Government spending, using a fiscal credibility rule developed, and recommended to us, by the world’s leading economists—our economic advisory council. We will balance Government spending, but not, like the Chancellor, by bullying those who will not fight back. We will invest to deliver shared prosperity, with people able to fulfil their potential, and a country meeting its potential.

Let me make this clear: Labour does not want to see the Chancellor drive the economy over a cliff, blinded by his adherence to a fiscal rule that everyone now knows cannot work. In the interests of this country, we are making him an offer: let us work together to design a fiscal framework that balances the books without destroying the economy. However, let me also make this clear: if he refuses our offer of co-operation, Labour will fight every inch of the way against the counter- productive, vindictive and needless measures the Chancellor has set out in this Budget. Britain deserves better than this.

Mining in Goa (UK-listed Companies)

John McDonnell Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

This debate is about the effects in Goa of mining by UK-listed companies, and I called for it because I have a sizeable number of constituents of Goan origin, one of them being my wife. Goans take an absolute pride in the beauty of their state in India, from its architecture—buildings, homes, towns, churches and temples—to the long, unspoilt beaches along its coast and the breathtaking splendour of the mountains of the Western Ghats. That deep feeling for the environmental beauty of their home state has mobilised Goans both at home and abroad to expose and tackle head-on the devastating threat from mining that over recent decades has disfigured its hills, polluted its rivers, undermined its agriculture and put at risk its tourist trade.

I wanted to bring this issue to the attention of the House because a London-listed mining company, Vedanta, and its subsidiary, Sesa Goa, have been at the forefront of the mining practices that have caused such environmental, social and economic devastation. I also wanted to raise the issue because the next few months are a critical time for determining the future of the mining industry in Goa: will we see a return to rapacious profiteering and the exploitation of the Goan environment, or will Goa strike out on a new path, with not only a respect for the environment but the establishment of institutional arrangements that ensure that the past and future earnings from mining are invested in the interests of the Goan people? By offering both moral and practical support, the UK could assist the Goan campaigners who are working so hard and courageously to ensure a sustainable future for Goa’s economy and environment. We can learn much from their recent campaigning to protect their environment.

Goa combines a richness in mineral resources with a rich and diverse environment. The Goa Foundation was established by members of the Goan community in 1986 to protect and promote a sustainable environment for the state. Since the early 1990s, the foundation has worked to achieve a balance between mining and the protection of the environment. In a recent report, the foundation described how in the decades prior to 2012 the environment of Goa became the victim of

“unbridled mining by greedy mining companies and an administration that steadfastly looked the other way.”

The report goes on to explain what happened in the decade up to 2012:

“As prices skyrocketed due to robust demand from China, miners flouted rules to extract as much iron ore as possible while government officials looked on and even joined in the plunder…As a result of reckless mining, our natural environment suffered irreparable damage due to the mining operations, adversely affecting the surrounding ecology and assaulting public health…Since most mining leases are located in forest areas, we lost many hectares of prime forest which can never be replaced…Our streams dried up and our rivers ran red with the mud from the mining dumps…We denuded entire hills and replaced these with new mountains made up of nothing but mining wastes.”

Campaigners also published a short report in July 2011 about what happened at the village of Mulgao that year as a result of unrestrained mining operations at one of the largest mining sites. Visible as one flies into Goa, it is an open-cast iron ore operation that is 14 km in length and carves through tropical forest, cutting across fertile farmland and polluting vital water sources. In July 2011, a large section of the mine’s outer wall collapsed during heavy rain. Thousands of tonnes of silt and mud cascaded into adjacent settlements, swamping paddy fields, polluting lakes, destroying trees and risking lives. The company whose woeful negligence led to the disaster is Sesa Goa, which is owned and managed by the London-registered Vedanta. It was not the first time that the company was held responsible for such a calamity: a similar collapse occurred in June 2009 at two other Vedanta pits in the same area. Vedanta was ordered to close them down but neglected to do so: for two years running, it flagrantly ignored Goa’s air and water pollution regulations.

Thanks to determined and courageous campaigning by the Goa Foundation, in 2012 the Indian Government established under Justice Shah a commission to investigate the mining industry in Goa. The Shah commission exposed systematic illegality, with mining taking place without the necessary licences and outside the leased areas. The commission said:

“The regulatory mechanism has been totally collapsed and irregularities due to maladministration have risen to its peak. In the process, the sole loser is environment, eco-system of the Western Ghats, general public and treasury of Goa State.”

The Indian Public Accounts Committee reported:

“There is a complete breakdown of all machineries provided by the Statute which are required to ensure that mining is undertaken and carried out in a legally permissible manner. The term ‘irregular mining’ is nothing but illegal mining.”

The three reports of the Shah commission and the Supreme Court-appointed Central Empowered Committee exposed the illegal and corrupt practices of the mining companies and their political allies, including the use of force and forgeries. I visited one of the lawyers representing local village communities in their attempts to protect the local environment and their farms from the mining industry. He explained the standard practices of intimidation that the mine owners use against anyone who stood up to them. First, they try to bribe people to stay quiet. If that fails, they send in the goondas—thugs—to threaten people. When that fails, they lodge spurious claims against people with the local police, including, in the case of the lawyer I spoke to, a claim of attempted murder. I pay tribute to the courage and determination of the lawyers, campaigners and honest politicians who have stood up to such intimidation.

The Shah commission estimated that the continuation of mining on such a scale in Goa would ensure the

“complete removal of all mineral wealth in nine years”.

After the commission’s report, mining operations in Goa were suspended in 2012, and the Supreme Court ordered a ban on mining operations in the state in October 2012. Subsequently, in a case brought by the Goa Foundation, the Supreme Court ruled that the mining operations—including the extraction, sale and export of ore from all Goa mining leases—was illegal from November 2007, when the leases came to an end and were not renewed. It held that all mining dumps and dumping outside mines was illegal and that the operation of leases by persons and companies that were not the leaseholders was also illegal. It asked an expert committee to return with a cap on ore production within 12 months, with an interim cap set at 20 million tonnes a year, and gave the environmental Ministry six months to issue a formal notification declaring a buffer zone of 1 km around various sanctuaries and protected areas in Goa.

In the light of the judgment, the Goa Foundation, working with the Natural Resource Governance Institute in Oxford and the Cambridge Judge business school’s Centre for Endowment Asset Management, has explored in expert detail how Goans can halt the loss to the Goan community of the massive wealth that has been generated by mining. The foundation proposed that from now on, funds raised from mining, including the mining of the dumps, should be placed in a permanent fund to be managed and invested independently of the Government. The income from the fund would be used for the welfare of Goa’s citizens, with clearly defined entitlements relating to educational opportunities, health facilities, housing and the rehabilitation of the environment damaged by the mining operations. As a model for the permanent fund, the foundation looked to the Norwegian pension fund, which was created from the sale of oil resources and has amassed $870 billion for a population of 5 million. I commend the Goa Foundation for its creativity and foresight, and I hope that our Government look at some of the developments in the shale gas industry in the same way.

The Supreme Court decided that a Goan iron ore permanent fund should be established, with 10% of the proceeds of all mineral ore sales to be allocated to it. The Goan state government has notified a permanent fund scheme, but the scheme notified is impermanent, which will almost certainly be open to challenge by the Goa Foundation. In addition, the capture rate—the intrinsic value of the mining assets allocated to the fund —was set at 10%, which is viewed by many as unrealistically low. Indeed, under India’s Mines and Minerals (Regulation and Development) Act 1957, the Goan government has a duty to recover all revenues and profits from mining operations conducted without a valid lease.

The Goa Foundation has assessed a minimum amount recoverable from the illegal iron ore mining between November 2007 and September 2012. It looked in particular at the exports of Vedanta’s subsidiary Sesa Sterlite, or Sesa Goa, during that period. Sesa Goa was by far the largest producer and exporter of iron ore in Goa, controlling about 30% of the volume. When the foundation looked at those four years and estimated a price of $60 per tonne, it put the amount payable to the people of Goa for the illegal export of ore by the company at $3.687 billion. Another estimate put the figure even higher. A contribution to a permanent fund of that magnitude would finance significant social investment in the health, education, employment and quality of life of all Goans for the long-term future.

Under pressure from the mining companies, however, the Goan government has decided to renew almost all the mining leases, instead of recovering the significant amounts owed to the Goan community or even auctioning off the leases. Other states, including neighbouring Karnataka, have proposed the auction of the mine leases on a revenue-share basis, with a minimum bid of 35%. That is considerably higher than the 10% contribution to the permanent fund proposed for Goa.

I attended Vedanta’s most recent annual general meeting. I expected to see an impairment written into its accounts to provide for its liability to pay back the $3.687 billion that it had earned from illegal exploitation of the iron ore deposits between 2007 and 2012. Such a figure had not been set aside in the accounts. The annual report made no reference to the illegal mining that the Supreme Court had found the company to be carrying out from 2007. At the time of the publication of the Vedanta annual report, the High Court had not determined the renewal of the leases, nor had the Goan state government. I am suspicious of Vedanta’s confidence that it could exercise sufficient influence over the Government to avoid paying for its illegal mining activities and that it would soon be up and running again in its mines.

I hope that the determined and courageous campaigning by the Goa Foundation will win out, and that the permanent fund will be established with sufficient income from the past illegally mined assets of the Goan people and from future, environmentally sustainable operations. I am confident that the heroes and heroines of the foundation will be successful. Their determination is to be admired. I pay tribute to a number of them: the foundation’s director, Dr Claude Alvares; Rahul Basu; Dean D’Cruz; Carmen Miranda; and Samarendra Das. They all, at some risk to themselves, have stood up to be counted on behalf of the Goan people.

I fear for the future, however, while rogue companies such as Vedanta are allowed to destroy environments, undermine communities and abuse human rights with virtual impunity. Vedanta is a UK-listed company that enjoys the prestige and financial benefits of being listed in London. The UK therefore has a responsibility to monitor and police the company’s operation, in particular its adherence to international conventions and treaties on civil liberties and environmental impacts.

The company has gained a reputation for abuse of human rights, tax avoidance and environmental degradation in its operations in Zambia and India. In 2007, Norway’s Council on Ethics concluded:

“Continuing to invest in…Vedanta would present an unacceptable risk of contributing to grossly unethical activities.”

In response, the Norwegian sovereign pension fund sold all its Vedanta shares. Only last week, Vedanta was involved in yet another scandal when civil servants were arrested for leaking mining industry information to the company. In 2010, the Church of England divested itself of its shares in Vedanta, because

“after six months of engagement, we are not satisfied that Vedanta has shown, or is likely in future to show, the level of respect for human rights and local communities that we expect of companies in whom the Church investing bodies hold shares.”

In the debate on the legislation to erect the new architecture for the supervision of our banking and financial system, I tabled various amendments intended to award the new Financial Conduct Authority powers to supervise the adherence of London-listed companies to international treaties and conventions on human rights, labour law and environmental sustainability. More recently, the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills, in its report on the extractive industries, warned of the negative impacts on local and indigenous communities of the mining industry. The Committee welcomed the Government’s work to increase openness and transparency and the signing up to European Union directives. The report went on to support my view:

“We believe that the Government should consider expanding the FCA’s remit to include not only oversight of financial transparency, but also the social, environmental and corporate governance reporting for companies applying to list on the London Stock Exchange. If it is not felt appropriate for the FCA, the Government should determine which body should have the remit to do so.”

Successive Governments have watched the excesses of the deregulated finance sector and the banks and have done nothing. As a result, we have endured an economic crisis that has produced immense hardship here and across the globe. If we sit back again and do nothing to control and curtail the damaging, divisive and destructive activities of rogue companies such as Vedanta, a UK-listed company, the long-term consequences for our country, its reputation and its standing in the world, and for our environment, could be equally devastating. I urge action on the Government, not only to support the Goan community, of course, but—as importantly—to control the excesses of the likes of Vedanta as they seek to trample over the lives of people and communities throughout the world.

Already there are concerns about the environmental impact if the mines start to operate again in an uncontrolled fashion that will undermine the Goan environment and economy, and the quality of life of the Goan community. I urge the Government to do everything possible to support those who have bravely campaigned to protect the environment of Goa and to secure the rewards of the mineral resources of Goa for the people of Goa.

National Minimum Wage

John McDonnell Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jo Swinson)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) on securing the debate, particularly after his less happy experience on Friday 28 November. I appreciate his frustration about Fridays. I have a vivid memory, from fairly early in my time as an MP, of spending an annoying Friday supporting a Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) on climate change and having the same experience of a couple of Members talking it out. The hon. Member for Barnsley Central mentioned the excellent Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), which would have helped very vulnerable people, and I still hope that we will be able to find a way to take action on those issues. Of course, the opportunity to debate the Bill promoted by the hon. Gentleman was also a casualty of that experience. The procedure for dealing with private Members’ Bills on Fridays is something that I would be keen to see changed.

The hon. Gentleman started by talking about his constituent, Catherine. That is absolutely appropriate, because in discussions about the minimum wage it is easy to get caught up in the numbers of pounds and pence per hour. That is, of course, important, but it is also vital that we remember the individuals at the end of each payslip, who are working on a low wage that represents a minimum or floor.

The hon. Gentleman was right to set out the history of the minimum wage. He highlighted the difficulties that existed before 1997, and the fact that some factory workers earned £1.22 an hour. In 1996, I was 16, and in my first job in McDonald’s, I was paid £2.70 an hour. One of my good friends from school worked in a greengrocer on Saturdays, and she earned £1.90 an hour for lugging around sacks of potatoes.

The introduction of the national minimum wage was absolutely necessary, and the hon. Gentleman is right that it is an historic achievement that should be celebrated. Neither of us was in the House at the time, but my Liberal Democrat colleagues supported the national minimum wage. There perhaps was not agreement from everyone in the House, but the positive thing is that times have moved on and there is now wide acceptance of the national minimum wage’s importance. The Government are strong in our belief and commitment that the national minimum wage is a vital part of the employment protections and basic minimum standards in the labour market. Many business organisations are also strong supporters of the national minimum wage. Recent reports by organisations such as the CBI talk about the importance of supporting household budgets from a wider economic perspective.

The minimum wage level is always likely to be the subject of much discussion and interest, and we clearly need to find the right rate that helps as many low-paid workers as possible, but we must ensure that we do not damage employment prospects by setting the level too high. This year the Government accepted an above-inflation rise in the national minimum wage. In October, workers saw the biggest cash increase in their pay packets since 2008, which helps more than 1 million workers on the national minimum wage and means that anyone working full time on the national minimum wage gets an extra £355 a year in their pay packet. Of course, those workers are also helped by the increase in the tax threshold, which has taken more than 3 million low-paid individuals out of paying income tax and helped ensure that people’s money goes further because they keep more of what they earn.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) for being late. I was in the main Chamber. We seem to miss out young people in these debates. I am not sure whether he referred to the figures: for an 18 to 20-year-old the national minimum wage is £5.31; for a 16 to 17-year-old it is £3.79; and for apprentices it is £2.73. That must be a disgrace.

Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

John McDonnell Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I apologise for arriving halfway through the Front-Bench spokesman’s introduction and for having to leave soon to chair another meeting.

If the Government cannot support the amendments, perhaps they could consider the spirit in which they have been tabled. I refer in particular to amendment 8 and the annual report into the effectiveness of enforcement. I have raised this issue in the House before, and while the Minister was on maternity leave I met the Minister who stood in for her to discuss the failure to pay the minimum wage in the shipping industry, particularly on ferries to the Channel Islands. Condor Ferries is still paying £2.65 an hour. Its ships sail around the Channel Islands, so they are close to, and come to, our shores, but we still cannot get around the current legislation to ensure enforcement. An annual report could give us shared knowledge of where the minimum wage is not being paid and how we can work together to overcome the difficulties. Problems continue, and even if the amendment cannot be accepted, at least the Government could provide us with a regular report into the enforcement challenges.

On amendment 9, in January I helped to launch the fast food campaign, with the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union, to lift living standards, pay and the quality of employment within the fast food sector. It covers all fast food joints operating in this country, such as McDonald’s, KFC and Costa, most of which pay the minimum wage and virtually all of which operate zero-hours contracts. I have not met a fast food worker yet who has voluntarily moved to a zero-hours contract. The right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight), who is not in his place, mentioned end-of-the-pier shows, but the entertainment sector uses fixed-term contracts, rather than just zero-hours contracts, because the latter are so capable of exploitation, victimisation and bullying, as we have found in the fast food sector in particular.

We have stood outside McDonald’s and we have tried to meet the management of McDonald’s, Costa and others to arrange discussions between the trade union, which is recruiting members in that sector, and management, but they have refused to meet and get involved in those negotiations. Recruitment has gone on and there has been some direct action. The fast food campaign will be demonstrating outside this place on Friday lunchtime to expose what is happening in the sector.

I welcome the exclusivity clauses in the Bill—they are really helpful—but even with their introduction, as amendment 9 points out, without the capability to enforce them, they will be almost meaningless. At the moment, the cost and other restrictions over who is entitled to go to an employment tribunal mean that many fast food workers and others on zero-hours contracts will never get their day in court. The amendment is not particularly challenging; it would simply require regulations making it open and transparent how people can enforce their rights. At the moment, it is almost inexplicable to people how they can be enforced.

I think that amendment 10(c), which refers to

“imposing an obligation on an employer to offer a fixed hours contract when a worker has worked regular hours for a continuous period”,

would be welcomed within the sector. Over the past year, I have been working on the fast food sector and have found people being employed on the most exploitative zero-hours contracts. We heard examples of individuals being phoned up and told to race to work to get the hours. My dad was a Liverpool docker in the 1930s. We are going back to the days when the ganger could select individual workers for the day. It means that although some will be selected, others will not, perhaps because of their trade union involvement.

One Costa worker who turned up at a public meeting I arranged had been told that he could not have hours the following week because he had not smiled enough that week. We raised that with Costa, but it was denied; the worker and his colleagues confirmed that it was true. That is the sort of exploitation that goes on. Unless we can get to a situation where we can be completely confident that a person has entered into a zero-hours contract completely voluntarily, people will be open to exploitation.

There is a sliding scale of what people want. Most people want permanent employment; others want to plan their lives over a limited period of time and would want some fixed-contract employment; and others—I think it will be a tiny minority, and not on the present scale—will want zero-hours contracts. The proposed new subsection (1A)(c) in amendment 10 therefore refers to regular employment for a continuous period. The proposed regulations could define that period of time; we could debate the practicality of that. The person should then have the opportunity of having a proper contract rather than a zero-hours contract.

I believe that the amendments are acceptable and advise everyone to vote for them, but even if they are not acceptable to the Minister, the Government need to take it into account the spirit of them. We should first ensure that we are open and transparent about the effect of the enforcement and share the problems of enforcement, so we know what the future agenda will be. Secondly, we must be completely clear that there are practical rights of enforcement. At the moment, I cannot explain to people how under the legislation as drafted we will be able to enforce their exclusivity. Thirdly, there is the issue of continuous employment, which I think needs to be tackled.

Again, all that is being suggested is that regulations should be brought forward to deal with these issues. If the Government are unwilling to accept the amendments, they could at least accept that there is an issue and that draft regulations could be brought forward, enabling the possibility of working on a cross-party basis to make some practical arrangements to protect workers from such forms of exploitation. Let me say finally that I would welcome people to join us on the fast-food demonstration at 12 o’clock on Friday.

[Jo Swinson]

I shall focus most of my remarks on the debate about the national minimum wage and zero-hours contracts, but I would like briefly to set out the effects of Government amendments 61 to 64, relating to the public sector exit payment measures. The measures are designed to enable the proportionate recovery of exit payments when a high-earning individual returns to the same part of the public sector shortly after their exit. The amendments are technical in nature and simply seek to clarify that the obligations can be placed on individuals who received exit payments when it is likely that they will swiftly return to the same part of the public sector.

Universal Postal Service

John McDonnell Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has come up with concrete proposals and a recommendation for Ofcom, but is not the problem that Ofcom has no sense of urgency at the moment? It says that it will not institute a review until the end of 2015 and that the 2011 legislation statutorily barred it from establishing a fund for five years, which means that it will not be able to do so until 2016, unless the Secretary of State acts. There is, therefore, a twin responsibility; on the Secretary of State to act in order to enable a discussion about the fund; and on Ofcom to institute the review now.

[Katy Clark]

There is a great deal of complacency on this issue from not only Ofcom, but the Government. We are seeing the warning signs now and we need the Government to make it very clear that we believe there is a real threat to the universal service. Ofcom needs to look at the matter urgently, carry out a full review and come up with proposals to ensure a level playing field in the postal services market and to protect the universal service.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

These debates are not good for my health. My doctor advises me to stop being so angry about these issues, but I cannot help but be angry about this. The hon. Member for Angus (Mr Weir) said that what we are discussing was predicted and therefore predictable. I was in the House 10 years ago when the European directive was debated. There were three Labour Members: me, my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and, I believe, Tony Benn. The new Labour Government were then implementing the European directive with zeal, in advance of virtually every other country in Europe. They were putting our postal service out to privatisation in a way that, as was demonstrated even then in that debate, would eventually lead to the threat to the delivery service. It was inevitable.

Thank goodness that we now have my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark). The irony 10 years ago was that the former general secretary of the union was then a Minister pushing the legislation through. The Communication Workers Union-associated Members had disappeared that evening; only a limited number of us were here, fighting and arguing in favour of amendments. It was late at night and I remember it well.

We said that the changes would inevitably result in, first, a threat to the postal service and, secondly, in the full privatisation of the Royal Mail. That has happened. It has been done in such a way that we have lost billions as well. This is why I get so angry—what we have done to the postal service in this country is absolute insanity. I remember well the argument put up then: that we could no longer subsidise Royal Mail. But I am subsidising—we are all subsidising—TNT and others now. They do not pay a living wage, so we are subsiding most of their workers through working tax credits and other benefits. That is the irony.

What worries me now is that I believe we are at the tipping point. I repeat what the hon. Member for Angus said: if we do not do something soon, it might well be too late. That is why if we do not act very quickly, we might go past the tipping point and lose it, given the time scales and how slowly Ofcom works. My worry is that Ofcom says it monitors what is happening at the moment and does not feel it needs to act at this time, yet it never defines publicly what the tipping point is. Ofcom does not share information that would demonstrate whether the service is under threat or not.

I listen to the real experts—those whom everyone has cited today and praised to high heaven. They are the people who deliver the mail. They know what is happening on the ground, how they are being undercut by TNT and others and what their prospects are—in the near future, not just the long term. They are saying through their trade union and in direct dialogue that, if we do not act soon, we will lose the universal service.

There is now an onus on the Government to bring Ofcom in and start immediately on two processes. First, there should be an immediate public review. I would welcome it if the Minister went back to the Secretary of State to say that we need to bring Ofcom in now. I would welcome a public meeting involving Ofcom, us and the Minister so that we had full openness and transparency about the monitoring it is undertaking and how it defines where the tipping point will be. What time scale is it working to?

The second issue, raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran, is about the support fund. As has been said, the legislation barred any action for five years unless the Secretary of State intervened. We have all said it now: we know that the five-year period is too long because we may well miss the boat if the Secretary of State does not intervene now. Government action is a matter of urgency. I think there would be cross-party support on these two measures. First of all, we should bring in Ofcom to define where it is at in the analysis of the tipping point of the threat; and secondly, we should start the work on the support fund now. I say that because, as other Members have said, it will take a while to put in place, so we should at least start the work now so that if it is needed, it is readily available. If it is not, fair enough; it does not have to be enacted in its final form, but let us at least get the work undertaken now. Otherwise, we will all regret that we did not act sooner.

The onus, I am afraid, is on the Government. I say that not in a partisan or critical way because I believe I reflect the views of the whole House across the parties in saying that the Government must feel a sense of urgency. Otherwise, we will lose the service that every Member has praised. If that happens, we will be not only letting down the work force of the Royal Mail, but betraying our own constituents as well.

Children and Families Bill

John McDonnell Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Timpson]

We know from research done by Julie Selwyn at Bristol university that for every year a child is not adopted there is a 20% reduction in their prospect of being adopted. By ensuring that adoption is timely and that the matching process has been done in conjunction with the prospective adopters rather than as an adjunct to that process, we will get children into the right placements in a quicker and more quality-assured way than has happened in the past. The longer children wait to be adopted, the less prospect there is of their being adopted. Adoptive placements are some of the most secure and stable arrangements outside the family. Clearly, adoption breakdowns still take place. We are looking at every stage of the process to make sure that the support that is made available and the information that is given to prospective adopters about the child they are adopting is as transparent as possible so that the prospects of any breakdown are reduced to a bare minimum. The right hon. Gentleman makes a key point that we consistently bear in mind as we make these reforms and push them forward.

Not all children in the care system will or should be adopted. But for all children, the difference it makes when someone cares whether they do well at school is crucial. When someone has high aspirations for them, they are more likely to have high aspirations for themselves. Yet in 2012 only 15% of children who had been looked after continuously for 12 months achieved five or more GCSE grades at A* to C, including English and maths. There have been slight improvements in recent years, but these results are simply not good enough. We have a duty to these children as corporate parents—a duty to care for them as we would our own children.

Of course, we should not forget that, thanks in large part to the fantastic foster carers we have across the country, the large majority of looked-after children benefit from their time in care. However, we want to drive up the focus, commitment and effort within our schools, councils and, yes, foster and residential care homes to make sure that the education of children in care is a real priority. The Bill introduces a duty on every local authority to have an officer—the “virtual school head”—to promote the educational achievement of its looked-after children, because these children are our children and they deserve the very best chance in life.

I want to turn to family justice reform. There is no debate about the need for reform of the family justice system. It is simply not acceptable that children wait, on average, over 47 weeks—until recently, over 56 weeks—for their care or supervision case to be resolved. In 2011-12, 21,553 children were involved in care proceedings and subject to this delay.

David Norgrove’s widely welcomed family justice review made the case for setting a clear time limit for the length of care cases, ensuring that decisions are child-focused and aimed at reducing duplication in the system. We know how important family courts are in making sure that vulnerable children end up in appropriate placements safely, but we need to do more to speed up the process to make sure that children can find stability as quickly as possible. To this end, the Bill includes measures to tackle delay through the introduction of a maximum 26-week time limit for completing care and supervision proceedings.

We also want to see a reduction in the number of additional expert reports commissioned, by ensuring that expert evidence is used in children’s cases only when it is necessary and not as a matter of routine. We will make it explicit that when the court considers a care plan, it should focus primarily on those issues that are essential to its decision about whether to make a care order. We will also help to reduce bureaucracy in the system by removing the need for frequent renewals of interim care and supervision orders.

Our private law reforms are also based on the family justice review’s detailed analysis and recommendations. Simply too many children are involved in private proceedings. Just over 56,000 children were subject to new contact and residence cases in 2011-12. For many families involved, the process can be drawn out and emotionally draining. As someone who spent the best part of 10 years practising as a family law barrister, I can testify that this is rarely the best way to resolve family disputes. Taken together, the Bill’s private law provisions keep the needs of children firmly at the centre of the system, while explicitly acknowledging the important role that both parents should play in a child’s life post-separation.

Our starting principle is that separated parents should resolve their disputes out of court whenever possible. The Bill makes attendance at a mediation, information and assessment meeting—known as MIAM—a prerequisite for applying to court for certain types of family proceedings. This support to help parents reach their own agreements will be underpinned by better online support, access to information programmes and encouragement to develop parenting agreements. The material will also emphasise the importance to children of relationships with wider family members, particularly grandparents.

The principle that most children benefit from the involvement of both parents in their lives after family separation is also pivotal to our private law reforms. Too many children lose contact with a parent following family breakdown. One survey suggests that between a quarter and a third of children who do not live with both parents rarely, if ever, see their non-resident parent. We will emphasise in the out-of-court support we offer to parents the importance to the child of both parents playing a role, but we also believe it must be explicit in the court environment.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

The role of mediation has been generally welcomed, but it will require mediators. At the moment, a lot of the mediating is done by court officers and others. Who will play the role of mediator? Their responsibilities will include identifying the safeguarding of children and domestic violence issues. What qualifications and accreditation will be required of them?

[Mr Timpson]

The mediator will not be a court clerk or court officer. An independent mediator will be assigned to carry out the mediation in a particular case. When the Bill goes to Committee, we will go into the detail of exactly how the role will be performed. There is a difference between those who go through publicly funded proceedings and those who do not. I will be happy to provide more information on that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Twigg]

I am wary of ever disagreeing with the illustrious Education Committee—[Interruption.] That applies to the entire Committee, including its Chair. This is such an important issue, however, that using the positive resolution procedure merits consideration, although I welcome the Minister’s assurances regarding the publication of the code so that it can be scrutinised in Committee.

[John McDonnell]

We have had situations where affirmative and super-affirmative resolutions have been used so we can have a wider dialogue. One of the other issues apart from the code of practice is the regulations, particularly with regard to the local offer. The component parts of the local offer should be contained in the regulations. Is it not important that we at least have some sight of them during the Committee stage, too?

[Stephen Twigg]

That is absolutely right and sensible. The spirit of the Minister’s speech, and his and the Government’s handling of this issue—and the fact that he is nodding at me—suggest that my hon. Friend will get what he wants.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

The general view of the House is that the Bill is a good one that could improve the quality of life of large numbers of children. It is not the revolution, to be frank, that some of us wanted, and there is also an underlying fear that the austerity measures being introduced might undermine the Bill’s potential. Let me say to the Minister that if the Bill requires a battle with the Treasury, he has allies on all sides to fight the fight over resources.

As we legislate, we need to learn lessons. For a Bill that relies so heavily on regulations and codes of practice, we need to learn the lesson that it would have been better to have those regulations and codes of practice available to us on Second Reading. I know that it will happen in our Committee consideration, but it would have been good to have them before us today, as without them we will be working on some issues in the dark until the detail of the regulations is revealed over the next few weeks.

I shall concentrate on two elements: family justice, and children and young people. We have all received many briefings on family justice, and I think we should thank those who supply them to us. On the family justice side, I have received briefings from the National Association of Probation Officers, or NAPO, and the Public and Commercial Services Union, which organises Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service workers and others.

I have three issues to raise. The first is about mediation in clause 10. I raised the issue earlier, but we need to know in some detail how mediation is to be organised in the regulations. Who will undertake the mediation; how will it be structured and organised; how will it be resourced? In addition, I raised the point in an intervention, and it was taken up by the Chairman of the Justice Committee, about the qualifications of the mediators. How will they be trained, and what accreditation will they have? They will have to deal with issues such as the safeguarding of children, the identification of domestic abuse and other matters. That is a professional role; it needs to be professionally resourced.

On the child arrangements orders in clause 12, I am anxious that this new procedure is being introduced at a time when legal aid has been cut. I am concerned that in complex cases adequate legal aid must be available to ensure that the children are properly represented by guardians. It would be worth exploring that further with the Minister in Committee; we must have confidence that the resources will be available to protect children and ensure that their voice is heard.

As for clause 15, I am concerned that the Bill amends the Children Act 1989 so that the courts focus on the central issue of whether the child should be removed from their parents, and the scrutiny of the detail of the care plans is to be left to local authorities. Frankly, when local authorities are under significant financial pressure, my anxiety is that that scrutiny might be influenced by that fact. I welcome the role of the courts in that respect. We sometimes need the independence of a judicial view on these matters.

On the special needs elements, I am grateful for the briefings we received from the Association of Educational Psychologists, my own local group the Hillingdon Autistic Care and Support society, and the National Autistic Society itself. Future work will be based on the foundation stones of the assessment procedure. The regulations or the code of practice need to be explicit about what is expected in the assessment. There will be a requirement to draw on very specialist services. I would welcome it if those services were spelled out in some detail in the regulations—for example, that there will be recourse to educational psychologists and to speech and language therapy. It should be obligatory that that sort of service will be part and parcel of the assessment procedure. Again, I fear that in this economic climate some local authorities, for example, might be tempted to save money by using less rigorous assessment procedures or by using under-qualified or inappropriately qualified staff to save money. That can be overcome, I think, only by central direction from the central Government in regulation.

Time limits will be important in these assessments. I am anxious that there are no time limits in the Bill and hope that they will be determined in more detail in regulations. We should set out in regulations the specific time limits on responses to parents’ requests for assessment, on providing a mediation certificate, and on when a plan is to be put in place. There also need to be regulations on the form and content of the plans, because there are anxieties not only about a postcode lottery, as others have said, but about the possibility that form and content could vary across the piece. That could not only create difficulties for parents but make it difficult for the Government to monitor the effectiveness of the implementation of the plans.

On local offers, the regulations need to be very specific not only about what local authorities are saying exists, but about what should exist, in individual services—best-quality standards rather than minimum standards. The regulations should also ensure that schools are required to set out what they are making available in terms of their local offer. Now that school action plans, among others, are no longer to exist, parents will require that information to make their judgment about the placement of their child within a school setting.

With regard to tribunals, I reiterate the point that others have made about the lack of enforceability with regard to health and social services. I cannot understand why we have a different system from Scotland, where there is some enforceability over health and social services in the development of plans. I welcome the encouragement towards mediation services. I am grateful that the Government have listened to parents so that we do not have an obligatory form of mediation, but having dropped the element of compulsion they have introduced a cumbersome certification process that ultimately can only delay matters.

I fear that personal budgets will not cover the specialist services that are required, particularly in educational psychology. We need to be much more specific about how those personal budgets will be spent to ensure that they can draw in the expertise that children need.

Children’s Services

John McDonnell Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to have secured this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Sheridan, and to have the opportunity to discuss this very important topic in such a timely manner. I believe that it provides the Minister with a last chance to allay the concerns about reform of special educational needs provision before the children and families Bill enters Parliament.

I remind colleagues that this is not a marginal issue. There are about 700,000 disabled children in England. One in 15 families with dependent children has at least one disabled child and more than one fifth of children—about 1.7 million—are said to have special educational needs. Far too many of those families feel close to crisis point. I know of no MP whose casework file does not include countless calls for help from parents of disabled children and children with SEN. Parents are forced to fight their way over seemingly endless bureaucratic hurdles to get the support they desperately need for their children. Parents come to me, and have done for many years, exhausted and demoralised, unable to understand why it is such a battle even to get their children’s needs recognised, let alone be given adequate support.

At the heart of the battle that families with disabled children and children with SEN face is the unacceptable lack of support close to home. Scope’s recent report, “Keep Us Close”, found that the biggest issue facing families with disabled children was a lack of local support services.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

When we first come into this place, we all think that it is just an individual problem, but I see from the Scope report the scale of the problem. The average distance travelled is more than 4,300 miles a year. That is staggering. When someone has to travel, it is always a fight to get funding from the local authority to cover even that.

[Angela Smith]

I empathise and agree with the point my hon. Friend makes. I will refer to that issue later in my speech. It is about not only distance, but cost, which in the case of low-income families can be an incredibly difficult burden to bear.

More than six in 10 parents of disabled children say that they cannot get the services they and their child need in their local area. A measly one in 10 parents told Scope that the process of getting local services was simple. Families with disabled children and children with SEN want to use the services that many families simply take for granted: child care, so that parents can work; short breaks, which enable families to rest and a disabled child to enjoy a leisure activity; therapeutic services, to support development such as speech and language; and, of course, the right educational setting, so a child can learn and reach their potential.

A lack of local, accessible services can have a devastating impact on a family’s quality of life. Recent research by Scope found that 80% of the families with disabled children who cannot access the services they need locally report feeling anxious and stressed, and more than half said that as a consequence they missed out on doing family activities together, such as days out or celebrating birthdays.

As my hon. Friend pointed out, families with disabled children travel on average more than 4,300 miles a year —84 miles a week—to access the services they need. The logistics and complicated arrangements necessary to get them to appointments, school and activities on time are vast. Travelling long distances is extremely demanding, particularly for children who tire easily or become distressed if they are contained for long periods. For disabled children and children with SEN, such journeys can be even more stressful. As one mother of a disabled child put it:

“Not being able to access the fun things for my child has left us isolated and almost housebound for most of the month. It is difficult to access things as we don’t drive and no thought is put in to the placement of services for disabled families who need to use public transport. It is always assumed we drive. Therefore public transport costs a fortune and takes at least twice as long. Services are a distance away, so if you don’t drive it means you just don’t go to services at all, which means being housebound and being further isolated.”

In some cases, the immense financial burden placed on families can literally tear them apart, which is the important point my hon. Friend made earlier.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sheridan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) on securing this important and timely debate. I know that she speaks from personal experience, and that she gives support to people in her constituency. I believe that she will be doing that on 1 February when she attends an employment fair for individuals with autism in the city of Sheffield. I hope the fair goes well. She has a strong and sustained interest in the issue and I am delighted that she has taken the time to look carefully at the Green Paper that was brought out by my predecessor and subsequently at the draft clauses that were subject to pre-legislative scrutiny by the Select Committee.

I will endeavour to cover as many points as possible in the short time that is left. In the usual way, I will be happy to write to the hon. Lady to provide full answers to any outstanding points; all her points carry weight and deserve a full response. Let me deal with the specific points that she raised at the outset. In relation to the local offer and where it will sit in the future provision of services for children with special educational needs and disability, clearly the purpose of the local offer is to have, for the first time, a single source of information, which is transparent and which sets out all the services in the local area and beyond. Clearly, there are not provisions for some low-instance conditions in every local area, but it is important that parents and young people know where they can access them if they fall outside their local authority area. Parents need to know how to access all the services in their local area and what support is available to enable them to do that. Where the support is not provided, parents need to know how they can redress that.

The approach of the Scope campaign has been constructive. It has supported many elements of the Bill that we, hopefully, will be introducing shortly. To allay some of its concerns over the veracity of the local offer and over how parents and young people will be able to review the services that are on offer to ensure that they match the need within the local area, it needs to be involved in the consultative stage of the local offer; I will come on to that in relation to the point that the hon. Lady raised about the framework and where it will sit as a national model. I do not see the local offer as a static document. It is important that it is an evolving piece of information and guidance for local people who have the opportunity to review, monitor and influence it to ensure that it reflects everything that is required by all young people with a special educational need or disability within the local authority area. I want to have local people as involved as possible in the whole process, and that is something that I hope to take forward in the Bill, which will deal with many of the issues that Scope has raised.

What will the local offer look like? What we have found from the 20 pathfinders across 31 local authorities is that close involvement of parents and young people in the development of the local offer, through the parent carer forums funded by the Department, is a much more powerful way of ensuring that the services that local authorities will provide match the local need. To drive up national consistency, the code of practice, which is not in primary legislation, will set out a common framework that shows what should be in the local offer. We do not want it to require local authorities to provide only what is in that framework; it must not be a race to the bottom. It will set some parameters so that both local authorities and other agencies and services know their responsibilities and their duty to co-operate and to provide information for the local offer. Parents and young people need an explicit assurance that they will have that information available to them.

[John McDonnell]

That is really helpful. Our concern is that some local authorities will simply re-badge what they have already, and they will not drive up standards. A key role is to ensure that parents and local groups work with the local authority to raise those standards.

[Mr Timpson]

That is a sensible approach and one that we share. As is illustrated in the Green Paper, the redrafted Bill following the Select Committee’s pre-legislative scrutiny, and the subsequent regulations in the code of practice, the whole purpose behind many of these reforms is to put parents and young people at the heart of the whole process—before the assessment and through the assessment, the delivery of service and any redress that follows. That can be done on an individual basis and also with the help of professionals. It can also be done through existing groups such as parent carer forums, which can be a powerful voice for parents in their local area.

The Bill will strengthen the role of young people in the system, which is hugely important. We will move to a single system for those aged nought to 25 with a more co-ordinated assessment and joint commissioning, and increase the opportunities for young people over the current age requirement to take their own case to tribunal where their request for an assessment has been refused. We will also pilot a scheme for children to take forward an appeal if they feel that they have not been provided with everything that they require. That is a huge advance in ensuring that this system moves away from the huge barriers which the hon. Lady rightly referred to in her speech. Too many parents are still finding obstacles in their way, too much duplication of information and that they are having to retell their story again and again. We need to get away from that and have a system that has parents and young people at its heart from the start, rather than when it is too late and when there is too much division between them and the services that should be there to support children.

Autism

John McDonnell Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) for securing the debate and for the sterling work he and others do on the all-party group.

I came to this issue in the same way as most other Members of the House. After being elected in 1997, I dealt with case after case of families trying to fight their way through the statementing system. Families would come to me with packed files of different reports and threats of legal action. In addition, I was dealing with an adult aged 29 who had just then been diagnosed as being on the spectrum with Asperger’s. I accept that Asperger’s is a relatively recent diagnosis, but he had gone through school and into adulthood without any real support.

When I came to the House I sought the support of any other Member who had any experience, and the best advice I received was from Angela Browning, now Baroness Browning. She befriended me and took me step by step through the processes to secure for my constituents at least some access to services and their rights. That is how I became engaged in the subject.

When the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) fought her sterling fight to enact the Autism Bill, I was put on the Committee. It was rare in those days for me to be on any Committee, so it was clearly a subject on which I could not have done much damage. The right hon. Lady led a superb campaign that was subtle as well as incisive. It mobilised organisations and individuals across the country, the letters campaign worked, there were constructive discussions with Ministers and we managed to get a consensus across the House.

I want to touch on two points, one in relation to adults and the other in relation to children. The work that was done then has had a widespread effect on a large range of organisations, some of which would not be expected to engage on the subject. For the first time, the trade union movement has taken up the issue. The RMT is running a series of seminars on autism to support its members at work who are on the spectrum or who have family members who are on the spectrum—a major breakthrough. I pay tribute to Janine Booth, who is on the executive of the RMT. To give Bob Crow his due, the union has supported the seminars 100%. I attended the first one and the second is to be held tomorrow.

What has come out is a thorough discussion of the scale of discrimination encountered just to get into work and once people are in work. There are some appalling examples of people being ostracised. That is why the union now says that it has a role in ensuring that recruitment practices are fair and non-discriminatory, and in representing its members when they are in work to make sure they are not discriminated against. Those discussions have highlighted some real problems and the need to look into employment discrimination and perhaps to tighten the legislation to prevent discrimination.

I have to refer to the Atos system and applications for disability benefits that was set in motion by the previous Government. The Harrington reviews have been conducted, but the system is not working. Those turning up for Atos assessments are being assessed by people with no specialist knowledge of the subject area. That is causing immense distress and, yes, loss of benefit and loss of all income. We need to look again at that process. I have tabled various early-day motions. I am so frustrated by it that I think the system needs to be scrapped and that we should start again.

I pay tribute to organisations that are campaigning on the matter—Disabled People Against Cuts in this country, and Black Triangle in Scotland. It is worth reading the Spartacus report that was published two weeks ago, which gives individual examples. Large numbers of examples have been collected, showing how people have been treated and what they feel. In the cases I have been dealing with, many people who are on the spectrum are lost within the system and as a result lose benefit and are living in poverty. Often they are desperate to work.

The other issue is local authority cuts. In my area, speech and language therapy is being cut again and the local authority is no longer commissioning the service from the local health trust. That is having an impact. I have sat in on speech and language sessions over recent months. They are fundamentally important for early diagnosis and early intervention—pre-school intervention wherever possible. Children’s centres identify children who may not have been picked up in the past. I am worried that the pressure on local authority resources is having an impact on such specialist services.

I echo what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds). I work closely with a group in my constituency, Hillingdon Autistic Care and Support. Some wonderful people set it up and worked with our local authority on a cross-party basis. They have taken over one of our children’s centres and they bring parents together and provide direct services. They display a superb understanding and appreciation of families’ individual needs. A couple of weeks ago, the group held a meeting where all the parents turned up to talk about the new legislative proposals and voice their concerns.

The existing system may have been difficult to battle through, and we were looking for reform to make it easier, but not to undermine some of the basic securities. At least when parents got a statement, they knew what rights they had, what was to be delivered and the time scales involved, and they could use that to enforce the supply of services. Exactly as my hon. Friend said, however, there is now confusion about whether there is still a real right to request an assessment, and anxiety about whether the “best endeavours” wording is specific enough to define the nature of the services that are to be provided, as of right, or the time scales on which they will be provided. There are real worries among families.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

I will discuss that point in my response to the debate, but I think it will help Members if at this stage I clarify what I said to the Select Committee last week about the rights that parents now have in relation to statements and what flows from them, and what we aim to achieve with the new system. Let me make it absolutely clear that the rights parents have in the current system will flow through to the new system—in fact, in many areas they will be enhanced through the introduction of a longer transition up to the age of 25.

[John McDonnell]

I welcome—everyone welcomes—the longer transition, and my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde made that point. It would be useful to get it on the record that people want the specific right of the appeal that has existed since the Education Act 1981 to be endorsed in the new legislation as well. We need to give people security that that will happen, and if that is what the Minister is saying, that is incredibly helpful.

Mandatory mediation also came up in the group discussion. I have never known mandatory mediation to work in any walk of life. If people are not willing to go into mediation, it does not usually work. To have mandatory mediation that involves penalties as well is, I think, completely counter-productive, but it has worried people, and on that ground a rethink is needed, and perhaps further clarification about how that will be introduced is needed. The parents, who got a lawyer to take them through what they envisaged the new system would be, wrote to me to say that what they had seen was extremely complex. My hon. Friend made the point about the difficulty of knowing what is referable to a tribunal. Is it now only education matters? What about health and other matters—where can they be referred to and where can parents appeal? Getting some clarity and simplicity in the system is critical.

In some cases in my area we have had to resort to law, using legal aid. There is therefore some anxiety about some of the restrictions on access to legal aid. Some clarity about that would be extremely helpful.

Everyone has their own experience and some of these cases are the most distressing I have ever dealt with, but I read John Harris’s piece in The Guardian a few months ago and recommend it to other hon. Members, because it summarised for me exactly what many of the parents in my area have gone through. They have been fighting their way through the system and then the Government come along and promise the opportunity of improving it, but now many fear that, in fact, we may be going backwards unless we get secure commitments from the Government.

[Angela Watkinson]

The hon. Gentleman may be aware that a problem for families who have a child on the autistic spectrum that often goes unnoticed or unmentioned is the financial burden. Often, because the child has poorly developed gross motor skills and co-ordination, there is lots of accidental damage in the home, with items such as televisions, washing machines and carpets having to be replaced quite frequently, so in addition to all the challenges he has just listed, there is also a hidden financial burden of which most people are unaware.

[John McDonnell]

I am glad that the hon. Lady makes that point, which I should have made earlier, because it is absolutely critical. We can get all these rights, but we need to be able to finance them, and it is not only local authorities and other services that provide that funding, because families often have to complement it. That needs to be taken into account in the benefits system.

I will give another example. When it comes to housing for families with a child on the spectrum—I have families in my constituency who have more than one child on the spectrum—one of the biggest clamours is for a garden so that they can play outside. I have dealt with one such family who were allocated a house by the local authority—it was in the private sector—that was on a busy road near a roundabout and had no front garden. That was a particular problem, because when the door was opened the child could run straight out on to the road.

There are many issues that must be dealt with when addressing the complex needs of individual families. That is why we had hoped that the new legislation would show a broad understanding and acceptance of the complexity of what individuals and families have to go through and at least have a faster and more simplified system that gave greater security. The message I am getting from the parents and local organisations I have met is that they are very fearful that their existing rights, limited though they may be, and the existing system, however difficult it may be, might be undermined and that everything we were hoping for in the new system will not be achieved.

I hope that, as a result of this debate—this is why I welcome it—we can improve some of the Government’s proposals and that they can then take away some of the concerns that have been expressed today to ensure that we get the legislation we all need and want.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Timpson]

I cannot resist offering my right hon. Friend the answer I gave earlier, which is that it is important that the Government work in a co-ordinated way across all Departments. Of course, I am sure that is something we can try to ensure through my correspondence with the Department for Work and Pensions.

The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington touched on a number of important issues in his contribution. It is good to hear that the trade union movement is stepping up to the plate and looking at the important role it can play in ensuring that autism is thought about carefully when the working environment is considered. On his point about appeals and whether there will be any dumbing down of the right to appeal through the tribunal process, we will in fact be widening the right to appeal. If he looks at clause 28 of the Bill, he will see that it is not just parents who will be able to appeal; young people over the compulsory school age will also be able to. As I iterated only a few moments ago, we are piloting the role children might be able to play in challenging any decisions made on their behalf.

In relation to the restrictions on legal aid, the current arrangements will continue as before. I certainly remember that my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon was instrumental in some of the elements that ensured that legal aid will continue in this area. Over and above that, it will also be available to young people if they decide to take any of these cases to tribunal.

[John McDonnell]

Another point that I raised related to clause 39 on the responsibility on the local authority to use its best endeavours, which replaces the obligation on it to implement the statement. Will there be any discussion or reappraisal of that?

[Mr Timpson]

No. The “best endeavours” provision relates to the school as opposed to the local authority, which will still have the duty that exists now. I am happy to put that in writing for the hon. Gentleman, but I hope that that clarifies his point.

My hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) told us about her visit to TreeHouse school, which I understand has just received an outstanding Ofsted inspection rating, so I congratulate it on that. She also told us about the great work that Squirrels residential unit in her constituency is doing, and about the importance of ensuring that those who turn 16 do not have their opportunities narrowed as a consequence of their reaching that age.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who decided that I might have some culinary skills that I did not know existed, invited me to look carefully at how the reforms on autism are playing out in Northern Ireland. I am happy to do that, both in relation to how they have worked well and to how we can perhaps learn some lessons where they have fallen short of the expectations that were placed in the legislation.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) for his contribution and for his invitation for me to look at what is happening with Autism Cymru and the all-age strategy for autism that has now been running for four years. His experience of teaching prior to coming to this House has clearly given us the benefit of his ability to be a strong contributor to the Bill as it moves forward, and I look forward to his future contributions.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) told us about Thomas Bewick school in her constituency and the inspiring work that it is doing for children with autism. She asked about the work of the Autism Education Trust. For the past two years, the Department has grant-funded the AET to the tune of £1.2 million, but I am pleased to say that there is now a further opportunity for it to apply for the grant that we have offered for the next two years as part of our voluntary and community sector grant funding, as well as a further contract for work with children with autism. I hope that the AET will look at that and see that it could put in a strong bid that we will be able to consider.

My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) told us about a troubling case in his constituency and the importance of training police officers, which comes to the fore when they are dealing with people with mental health problems and those who may display behaviours which, if officers do not have awareness of the condition, may lead them to make a decision that is not based on the best interests of those individuals.

My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) told us about the parents autism workshops and support project, which I need to learn more about to hear about how it is helping many young people in a very innovative way. She asked whether I would like to hear more about the cases that she has raised. Yes, please; we are still at a listening stage in the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill, and anything that can enhance my knowledge and understanding of the effect of the current system on parents and young people can only help to ensure that we get the whole Bill right throughout its passage and into the implementation stage.

I thank the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West for her welcome invitation, as I see it, to work closely and collaboratively in trying to ensure that we get the Bill into the best possible state that it can be so as to help and benefit as many young people and children as possible all the way through from the ages of 0 to 25, as the new reforms will. I look forward to those discussions as we move forward. She is right that young people with autism are a huge asset to our society; they enrich it, and we should always remember that. We should not forget that they want to make a positive contribution, and we should do everything we can to make sure that they can do just that.

There are many more things that I wanted to say and I am sorry that I do not have more time to do so. I am pleased that the debate has managed to flush out many of the issues that are troubling parents as we move forward with the Bill, and that it has given me an opportunity to reflect on many of the excellent points made by Members across the House. As the Minister charged with reforming the SEN system, I am under no illusions about the importance of getting this right. I thank all Members for their excellent contributions and look forward to continuing our discussions as we move through the stages of the Bill. Finally, I commend my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon for his great work.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of autism.