Business of the House

Mark Williams Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I cannot indicate a sudden rush of Government support for the massive legislative programme on which my hon. Friend has embarked so indefatigably—indeed, we have all seen on the BBC how many sleepless nights he had in order to put together this massive legislative programme. As he might anticipate, his Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Abolition) Bill could run into handling problems in the coalition Government, to put it mildly, so I do not expect the Government to perform a sharp about-turn on these issues, but he will have to wait until the day—it will be exciting—to see which Bills the Government object to.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

The work of VisitWales to promote the tourism industry in Wales would be greatly enhanced were VAT on tourism to be reduced. May we have a debate on reducing VAT on tourism, particularly given its importance for rural areas, which are very dependent on the tourism sector, including counties such as Ceredigion and Montgomeryshire, which is soon to be the Leader of the House’s home county?

[Mr Hague]

I certainly recommend to everybody in the country, and indeed around the world, tourism in Wales where they can see many splendid sites, some very fine countryside and great history. That is true in Ceredigion, where I know tourism is a key industry. There are opportunities coming up in the House—Treasury questions on 10 March and then the Budget debate—to raise issues about VAT. In the meantime, I know that the Welsh Government can and do provide support for tourism, and all of us can set a good example of tourism in Wales.

Education for Young People with Disabilities (UK Aid)

Mark Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I do not know how long we have for our speeches, given that this is a long debate and there are not many of us in the Chamber. However, we are considering an important topic. The timing of the debate presented some challenges for Department for International Development Ministers, who are all over the world as we speak, but I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), are present, because it is important that we hear from the Government and the Opposition. I welcome this opportunity for the debate given DFID’s recent commitments, the progress made on addressing the issue of UK aid to education for young people with disabilities, and the report published earlier this year by the International Development Committee and the Government’s largely positive response to it.

I approach this matter as a former teacher—education is important to me, as it is to other Members of the House—and co-chair of the all-party group on global education for all. Education is fundamental to ending the poverty, discrimination and exclusion faced by disabled people in developing countries, but it is estimated that in most countries disabled children are much more likely to be out of school than any other group of young people. Disability has long been neglected as a niche area of development, deemed by many to be either too complex, due to the wide range of challenges that it presents, or too small to be core to development issues.

The millennium development goals fail to mention disability, but disabled people make up an estimated 15% of the global population, and disability is both a cause and a consequence of poverty. Some 80% of disabled people live in developing countries and the United Nations has labelled them the world’s largest minority. It is estimated that there are 93 million disabled children globally and, as I said, they are more likely to be out of school than any other group of children. In Ethiopia, less than 3% of disabled children have access to primary education. In some countries, being disabled more than doubles a child’s chance of never enrolling in school. Disabled children are also less likely to remain in school. There are huge challenges throughout the developing world in keeping children in schools, but that challenge is heightened for children with disabilities. Difficulties also present themselves when attempting to transition to the next grade of education.

The exclusion of disabled children not only denies them their core human right to education, but makes it impossible, unless we address the matter properly, for the world to reach the millennium development goal of universal primary education by 2015. Some 58 million children of primary age are still out of school. While it is undeniable that progress has been made, it has now stalled. It is estimated that disabled children could make up a third of the out-of-school population. Without specific targets to include disabled people, it is clear that many of the millennium development goals will not be reached.

I welcome DFID’s progress in recent years, including through several commitments made under this Government and the previous one. In 2000, DFID was the first donor to develop an issues paper on disability, and development guidance notes on disability-inclusive programming and education for children with disabilities. DFID also commissioned research to help to address some of the evidence gaps around disability. In 2008, under the previous Government, DFID was the first donor to support the Disability Rights Fund, and constructive progress has been made more recently. The Under-Secretary of State for International Development, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone), has been championing the cause, in particular by announcing that UK aid will fund accessible school construction. DFID is working with partners to improve the data on disabled children and education in developing countries. The UK is playing a vital role in championing a post-2015 agenda that leaves no one behind, specifically by saying that no target will be considered unless it will be met for all social groups, including those with disabilities.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on obtaining this debate. It is appropriate that disability issues are being debated in the Chamber and Westminster Hall at the same time. It is good that we have an all-party, no-party approach on the matter. Does he agree that while there has been substantial movement from both the previous and present Governments—I pay tribute to the Secretary of State and Ministers, who are receptive to what is said about this issue—the notion of being a young girl in poverty with a disability in the developing world should concern us all, because those girls are literally at the bottom of the pile? Anything that we can do to focus attention on that in the post-2015 agenda is vital.

[Mr Williams]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his contribution. He speaks with passion on such matters in the all-party group. We have examined targets in the past, and he is right that part of the challenge has involved a narrow focus within the broad issue of getting out-of-school children into school. There are key issues affecting gender and disability, and there is often a critical crossover between the two. I concur with his generosity towards this Government and the previous one, but there is still a huge amount to do. If this debate serves one purpose, it is that of continuing to highlight the real need for action.

I welcome the UK’s position as a leading donor to education, including with the pledge of up to £300 million to the Global Partnership for Education in June, and the way in which DFID Ministers have worked with GPE to ensure that disabled children are prioritised. As co-chair of the all-party group, I have visited Nigeria, Zanzibar and Tanzania during this Parliament. I pay tribute to the DFID staff whom I met in those countries, as well as those throughout the world, who are working hard in the educational field to further our aims on the ground.

The Government published their response to the thorough International Development Committee inquiry early this year. DFID committed to publish a new cross-departmental disability framework, and the work to develop it is going on right now. I believe that the aim is to launch the framework in November. DFID has pledged to prioritise education in the framework, which goes back to the point that the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) made about a cross-sectoral approach. There is a package of issues relating to disability, education, inclusion and gender. I look to the Minister and DFID officials to reaffirm that education is prioritised as a key sector and that the educational needs of those with disabilities will be thoroughly addressed.

The framework is welcome. However, one of the past challenges has been that while DFID produced optional guidance for their country offices that said the right things, it did not incentivise action. The Department has just published a new inclusive learning topic guide for its staff, which is an excellent resource, but it is still just guidance. How will DFID ensure that the new disability framework is implemented after its publication? Will the framework include mandatory, action-orientated requirements for, with strong accountability mechanisms for reporting on, the inclusion of disabled people in aid programmes? That is the situation for gender, and that needs to be the case for disability, too.

Will the Minister outline what DFID will be do to support and train country staff on disability inclusion? That, too, is a key principle. We need to ensure that all teacher training programmes that are supported by UK aid promote inclusive teaching approaches, and that all education aid programmes will measure whether they are reaching disabled children and young people. While I commend the Minister for the positive commitment to ensuring that UK-funded school construction projects are accessible to disabled children, that is not all that is needed.

Physical accessibility to buildings must be complemented by an attitudinal change, and inclusive teaching and learning environments. During a visit to a school in Lagos, I remember that the head teacher was keen to show us the DFID-funded toilet block. There was a dire need for the block, as it was a big school and there were issues to do with water and sanitation, so DFID had addressed that. The head teacher proudly showed us the toilet block, with its accessible ramps and equipment, but I saw very few people with disabilities accessing the facilities in that school.

I also visited a school in Zanzibar that had a wheelchair ramp to assist with access to a classroom, but I then saw in that classroom 60 to 70 teenage children in front of the teacher with no desks and no seats, so there was no conceivable way in which a wheelchair user could have accessed it. We need to be mindful of the teaching and learning environments in which schools operate. A ramp is no good unless the needs of the children who would use it are also met through their education provision.

Children with disabilities have the same right to education as all other children and UK aid can help by supporting the resourcing of inclusive education that ultimately benefits all children, not just those with disabilities, and that helps to change negative societal attitudes and discrimination about disability. It is particularly important that we develop inclusive teacher training so that more teachers in developing countries are equipped to include children with disabilities. The UK is a world leader on aid to support teacher training, so we could make a big difference.

The challenge so far has been to address the shortage of teachers and the need to get more children into schools. Getting more children into schools means that more teachers are required, so we have seen short cuts in some parts of the world, especially in teacher training courses and the professional development that is offered. If challenges on teachers’ pay are not addressed, the teaching profession does not get the esteem that it does in our country. Those multi-faceted problems need to be addressed.

I ask the Minister to make a commitment that UK-funded teacher training will promote inclusive teaching methods and curriculums. That must not be lost in the big challenge of training more teachers in that valued profession to address the growing number of out-of-school children across the world.

Will DFID put in place disaggregated data for its programme and funding to measure how many, and to what extent, children with disabilities are reached and supported into education? The biggest challenge is to identify the scale of the problem that we need to address. Will DFID encourage an increase in its targeting of resources into the area of disability and education, such as through the creation of a disabled children’s education challenge fund? Such a fund would be similar to the laudable girls’ education challenge fund, which I remind hon. Members is an innovative £355 million fund to tackle the extreme marginalisation from education of the poorest girls. May we have something similar for disability? We all know that disabled children suffer from extreme marginalisation in developing countries and that they should be supported with targeted additional investment, as well as mainstreamed, in a twin-track approach. I would be grateful for the Minister’s thoughts on creating such a fund.

I welcome the commitments already made that DFID will work with partners to strengthen data. Lack of data at a national level both reflects and compounds the invisibility of people with disabilities in development efforts. That is a major barrier to the recognition of disability as a core development issue.

Information is often speculative and out of date. I am aware from my friends in the third sector—I pay particular tribute to Results UK, which was responsible for my trips and provided the secretariat for our all-party group—that DFID held a conference on disability data last week, so I would be grateful to know what outcomes arose from those discussions.

What is DFID doing to support the capacity of national Governments and international organisations to collect and use data on children and young people with disabilities. How many of them are in or out of school? We need to ensure that the UK champions the strengthening of data in developing countries so that our development efforts mean that no one is left behind, although I realise that that task is huge.

Let me set out two ideas that could well be used. In Nigeria, I saw that DFID had successfully promoted school-based management committees to try to create a community leadership in schools to encourage young people into school and to liaise with parents and stakeholders in the community. In effect, the committee would operate like a school governing body, but with tentacles that were more developed for attracting young people into schools. We talk about disability issues being hidden, so community engagement and empowerment should be a great tool in assisting those who are currently excluded.

I saw another project, albeit in a health context, in a rural part of Zanzibar, where we were looking at malnutrition and early-years education. Volunteers went out into villages and communities to talk to young mothers about malnutrition. They located children who were suffering from malnutrition and encouraged their mothers to go to the hospital or health centre to get the support that they needed. We know about the hidden problem of disability, so I am looking for strategies to empower communities to make information available so that action can be taken.

Research by the Global Campaign for Education has noted that DFID has undertaken some activities in Nigeria on the inclusion of children with disabilities in its education work. It has supported censuses of out-of-school children, with results aggregated by gender and disability. Good, practical work has therefore been done on the ground, but while the information contains three sub-indicators on inclusion, the Department’s business case makes scant reference to disability. Nigeria is one of the largest recipients of UK aid, including through the education sector support programme, which will provide up to £134 million between 2008 and 2017. The programme is delivered by a consortium headed by Cambridge Education. Given the scale of funding it receives, one would expect that children with disabilities would be a much more prominent element in it.

Finally, our attention turns to the post-2015 agenda. I welcome the Government’s championing of an agenda that leaves no one behind, and that should be our guiding principle, especially as it is expressed in the idea that no target will be considered to be met unless it is met for all social groups, including people with disabilities. As we know, the millennium development goals did not mention disability at all, but 2015 gives us a crucial opportunity to change that.

How are Ministers seeking to ensure that the needs and rights of disabled people are recognised as an agreed priority in the final goals and targets? We particularly need to consider a tangible measure of how we ascertain that no target is met unless it is met for all. International negotiations are always challenging, involving many different agendas, but I hope that the Minister will reassure us that DFID is working with other Governments to consolidate support and ensure that the “leave no one behind” target does not get lost.

I have not mentioned any individual examples and will refrain from doing so, but I should reiterate that behind every one of the statistics, there is a real human story. Handicap International came to see me last week and showed me a charming photograph of Fanta, a seven-year-old girl with cerebral palsy from the Kono district of Sierra Leone. The photograph shows her smiling because, as part of a DFID-funded GEC project, she had just received a wheelchair that will allow her to access her local primary school for the first time. That will be to the benefit of her school, of Sierra Leone, and, above all else, of that young lady.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mark Williams]

On the first of those points and the issue of cross-departmental responsibilities, and given the visits that my right hon. Friend has made to Ghana—hon. Members have no doubt visited other countries where this would apply—does he share my frustration that in the Government Departments of countries I have been to there is all too often a silo mentality, meaning that that the issue gets lost? Kind and generous words can be heard in health, social services and education Departments, but action on the ground is impeded by a failure to work together. I should be grateful for anything we can do to encourage countries to leave the silo mentality behind.

[Tom Brake]

I agree entirely, but even in a well-run Government such as ours, there is still always a risk that there will be a silo mentality and that Departments will not communicate with each other as would entirely befit them. There are ways for us to help, but we have not managed to perfect that even within UK borders.

The third of the four challenges is that we struggle to understand the extent of the problem, because of a lack of disaggregated data by sex, type of disability and level of functioning. That makes educational planning for inclusive learning extremely difficult. Linked to that, the evidence base on learning outcomes for inclusive education for children with disabilities focuses largely on high-income countries—particularly the US and UK—and there are challenges in identifying good-quality evidence from low and middle-income countries. Finally, there has been a lack of the political will and commitment needed to drive improvements in learning for children with disabilities, and that has limited the ability of Governments, donors and others to assess, monitor and address the situation of those children.

I am pleased to say that the UK is at the forefront of seeking to address those challenges. Through DFID’s work, the UK is committed to ensuring that all children are able to complete a full cycle of quality education, and we are increasingly focusing on the most marginalised as part of the “leave no one behind” agenda, which includes a special focus on children with disabilities. In September 2013, we made two public commitments: first, to ensure that all directly funded school construction is fully accessible; and, secondly, to work with partners to improve data on children with disabilities and special educational needs in and out of education. My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion and the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), made the point that getting quality data is one of the keys. It is not possible to deal with a challenge without knowing the scale of it, and it is fair to say that at the moment we do not.

Across DFID’s global and country programmes we are supporting a range of activities to support access to education and learning for children with disabilities. Depending on the context, we are working through either partner Governments or local and international partners. In the majority of our programmes we support an inclusive approach to ensure that all children can be educated in mainstream schools. In our most mature and innovative programmes, such as Pakistan’s Punjab programme, we are looking at new partnerships with respect to children with learning disabilities. The Pakistan office is currently assessing the feasibility of implementing our school construction standards in the £104 million reconstruction and rehabilitation programme. Current projections indicate that 50,000 classrooms may be reconstructed or rehabilitated. That work is really about extending the present programme of ensuring that all new schools are fully accessible. DFID’s policy on accessible construction has since triggered similar commitments among other global partners, including UNICEF.

Often children can suffer many types of disadvantage. DFID’s girls’ education challenge, which targets the most marginalised girls, is funding disability-focused projects in Uganda, Kenya and Sierra Leone, totalling more than £9 million. My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion referred to that and asked whether DFID would be able to create a disability education challenge fund. I suppose the answer is that the girls’ fund is clearly a new model, which has not been tried before, to ensure that 1 million of the most marginalised girls get the quality education that they deserve by 2016. As it is a new programme, its effectiveness will need to be assessed, and we perhaps need to get through that challenge before we embark on a new disability education challenge fund. However, I shall draw the proposal to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Under-Secretary.

My hon. Friend talked about disaggregated data. There is a critical gap with respect to evidence and data on disability prevalence, on which DFID is focusing. As he will know, the Government hosted an important conference jointly with the UN on 23 October to improve disability statistics. During the conference we committed to developing guidance on disability data disaggregation with the UN’s Washington group on disability statistics. We are certainly working towards the goal that my hon. Friend set out of ensuring that disaggregated data are available, and that we can identify where the key problems are and what is effective in ensuring that education reaches the most disadvantaged. To improve education-specific data, we are supporting UNESCO’s institute for statistics in regularly publishing education indicators disaggregated by specific population groups, including people with disabilities, and in developing new standards for school censuses and surveys related to marginalised populations.

As hon. Members know, the true benefits of education accrue only if children achieve good learning outcomes. Our recently published inclusive learning topic guide brings together for the first time evidence on what works in inclusive learning for children aged 3 to 12 years in low and middle-income countries. It focuses on the varied learning needs of children who either are not benefiting from the learning opportunities available to them, or do not have the opportunity to engage in learning at all, owing to their impairments and disabilities. It explores the role of inclusive approaches in contributing to inclusive societies and, ultimately, inclusive growth, and addresses some of the contested and debated issues around terminology, discrimination, and segregated and inclusive schooling. The topic guide supplements our guidance note on educating children with disabilities, and both resources are available freely to all policy makers.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion and the hon. Member for North West Durham asked what was being done to train staff in inclusion. DFID is rolling out training to its in-country staff on the inclusive learning topic guide. Once the framework has been developed, we will consider how we can continue to upskill our country staff. That is work in progress.

At the global level, we are working closely with the World Bank, the Global Partnership for Education, UNICEF, Australia, Germany, Sweden, the United States Agency for International Development and Norway to ensure that more countries eligible for GPE funds implement an inclusive approach to education, with a specific focus on children with disabilities. Our influencing efforts made disability a priority for the June replenishment of the GPE. Twelve countries pledged at that event to do more for children with disabilities, including Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Pakistan, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Zambia and Ghana.

My right hon. Friend the Under-Secretary is an unrelenting champion for children with disabilities and I know that she raises the issue at every opportunity, in every meeting, with ministerial counterparts when she travels to partner countries. I do not know, but I imagine that she has travelled to Nigeria recently. My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion raised the issue of disability not being mentioned in the business case for the Nigeria education programme. I reassure him that the programme is in line with DFID’s three priorities in education: improving learning, focusing on girls and ensuring that the most marginalised can learn. DFID business cases are used primarily to assess the evidence on and financial basis of programmes, and do not contain all the detailed information on programme delivery. Disability will clearly be part of the programme.

The International Development Committee’s recent inquiry into DFID’s work on disability recognised that we are doing some impressive work already, but that more ambition would be transformational. DFID is committed to developing a framework to strengthen our work on disability further, and it will be published on 3 December—I think that my hon. Friend referred to the end of November.

My hon. Friend asked how the framework would be implemented. As he knows, we have made two public commitments: first, about accessible schooling; and, secondly, about improving disability data. Through the second commitment, we are working to develop disability-sensitive indicators, which currently do not exist, to measure progress on disability-sensitive education and inclusive learning. That is how we will be able to monitor that things are, in fact, working, and that this is not just fine words without matched fine action, to which the hon. Member for Wirral South referred.

I thank the hon. Lady for her support. I am sure that the teachers present will have given her top marks for her presentation, so I do not think she needed to worry about that. I hope I have answered most of her questions, but I might need to return to her point about whether DFID has the skills base to develop disability policy. If I do not get inspiration about that point, I will make sure that my right hon. Friend the Under-Secretary hears that that is a particular concern, and I am sure that she will want to respond directly. As my right hon. Friend makes disability issues a priority, however, I am sure that she would not want a situation in which there were not the necessary skills in her Department to deal with that critical issue.

As the 20th anniversary of the Salamanca framework for action passes, we must ensure that co-ordinated action from Governments, donors and other key stakeholders is able to secure better access to schooling and inclusive learning outcomes for disabled children, as well as wider benefits for inclusive societies. The economic and social costs of exclusion are high. Many low and middle-income economies suffer greater losses from maintaining large out-of-school populations than they would from increasing public spending to achieve universal primary enrolment. It is clear that enrolling all children in basic education is a productive and smart investment. The economic benefits of education are well established and the inclusive growth to which it can contribute is, by definition, grounded in societies that are open, equitable, tolerant and just.

As I have just received inspiration, I can say in response to the hon. Member for Wirral South that DFID has increased the specialist headquarters staff to two. We also have a secondee into the Australian Government, who are world leaders on disability policy. There has been some strengthening of the team but, none the less, my right hon. Friend the Under-Secretary may want to respond to that point in writing.

Recognising and valuing diversity within learning communities and welcoming all children into the classroom must be pivotal components in all learning strategies. Leaving no one behind at school and in wider society is essential not only to a sustainable approach to development and poverty eradication, but to the attainment of the freedoms, dignity, tolerance and respect that are fundamental to our common humanity.

Business of the House

Mark Williams Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I will ask my hon. Friends at the Department for Transport if they will respond directly to the hon. Gentleman on that issue, and he may wish to raise it at Transport questions. As far as I am aware—I stand to be corrected—such matters are governed not so much by Government policy but as a consequence of the way train operating companies and Network Rail behave.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

Throughout the world, 57 million children are denied basic access to primary education, and excellent work has been undertaken by the Global Partnership for Education. May we have a debate on its work, and on the need for our Government to renew their commitment and replenish its funds in June?

[Mr Lansley]

I cannot promise an immediate debate, but I know that hon. Members feel strongly about this issue. The renewal of the millennium development goals and our determination to try to meet them is something that we can be proud of, but we need to ensure that we make progress, because we have not always made the progress that we want to make collectively. In this country, we can be proud of what we are doing, because—it is the first time it has been done by any major country—we are achieving the goal of providing 0.7% of gross national income in support of our international development aid. That enables us to speak with great authority internationally when it comes to meeting those objectives.

Business of the House

Mark Williams Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

It is a year since Paul Silk made recommendations for further fiscal devolution to the National Assembly for Wales. Why are we still waiting for the Government’s response to those recommendations? May we have a statement about the Government’s intentions and, better still, legislation?

[Tom Brake]

I know why my hon. Friend is pursuing the matter vigorously; it is clearly of great interest to him and his constituents. The matter is still under discussion in Government. The most sensible thing for me to do is ensure that we write to him setting out the current position.

Business of the House

Mark Williams Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

If I may, I will check the position with the Minister responsible for the fire service, who is assiduous in his duties. I know that he would normally expect to respond to local authorities on this issue; we need to know what happened. It might have had something to do with the summer recess and an attempt to ensure that the local authority received an early reply, but I will inquire into the circumstances.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

May we have a debate on the lamentably slow way in which the banks are dealing with cases of alleged mis-selling of interest rate swap products, which affected many businesses across the country, and on the fact that tailored business loans, in respect of which similar products have the same damaging implications for people’s livelihoods and businesses, are not included in the review at all?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is right to raise these issues and to be persistent in raising them. We need the banks to come forward with their compensation schemes as quickly as possible. I will raise my hon. Friend’s particular point with colleagues in the Treasury and ask them to respond.

Business of the House

Mark Williams Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am glad that there is to be such an opportunity, and may I say, at the risk of flattering the hon. Lady overmuch, it is not just that Birmingham, Edgbaston has been represented by women but that it has been very ably represented? That will get me in trouble at the next election.

The hon. Lady makes a fair point. The subject has been discussed in business questions before and the shadow Leader of the House has rightly raised it. I hope that there will be opportunities for such a debate. Perhaps the Backbench Business Committee will consider it, if the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) and other Members invite the Committee to do so.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

May we have a debate on the mis-selling of interest rate swap products by the commercial banks and, specifically, on why tailored business loans have not been included in the Financial Standards Authority—now the Financial Conduct Authority—review, despite there being similar products and similar evidence of mis-selling, which has been hugely damaging to small businesses up and down the country?

[Mr Lansley]

I will, if I may, take the opportunity to talk to my right hon. and hon. Friends at Her Majesty’s Treasury about that and, through them, to the Financial Conduct Authority, which, as my hon. Friend says, is undertaking investigations. But it is important for the House to recognise the degree of concern of consumers about this matter, and I hope that I get a decent reply.

business of the house

Mark Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

I want to address the issue of the mis-selling of interest rate swaps by commercial banks and to ask in particular why tailored business loans—or fixed-rate loans with embedded or hidden swaps—are not included in the Financial Services Authority’s review. This issue took up a whole Back-Bench debate last June and I know that we will return to it.

The pilots of the FSA’s review into interest rate swaps revealed evidence that up to 90% of products had been mis-sold by commercial banks, but the question is: why is the review not looking at TBLs? Many businesses in my constituency and, I would hazard a guess, across the whole country are affected by them. We need a review of those products if our constituents and business people are to have any chance of redress.

TBLs are remarkably similar to other interest rate swap products: they involve exorbitant exit fees for the businesses concerned, profits are booked immediately to the banks and there are huge incentives to sell them to customers. When the all-party group on interest rate swap mis-selling, ably chaired by the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb), met last December, Clive Adamson of the FSA told us:

“If there is no understanding of break costs given to the customer and if there was a poor disclosure of exit cost, then it was highly likely that there was a mis-sale”.

Yet on the grounds of a mere technicality, TBLs, which are fixed-rate loans, will not be included in the FSA review. That is unjust nonsense.

I can best illustrate that point by referring to two businesses in Aberystwyth in my Ceredigion constituency. First, Huw and Jackie Roberts of Minhafan Estates Property Development took out a £750,000 quaintly named vanilla swap over 10 years, which Barclays bank referred to as a “simple swap”. The breakage clause to get out of that agreement is £155,000 and their business is included in the FSA review. Secondly, the Beechey family who run the Black Lion pub in Aberystwyth took out a £750,000 fixed-rate loan—a TBL with embedded swap—over 15 years with Clydesdale and Yorkshire bank. Their breakage fees are £200,000, but the business is not included in the review. Both of those businesses are in the same constituency and suffering severe financial distress, yet one is in the review and the other is not. Both were involved in a trade call with an FSA-regulated derivatives expert when the hedging product was sold.

For 12 years the FSA has worked on the assumption of a principle-based system of regulation. The results of January’s pilots found that poor disclosure of break costs was one of the most significant issues in assessing compliance. However, banks such as Clydesdale and Yorkshire are telling customers that they have no legal or regulatory obligation to inform customers who have been sold a fixed-rate and that they have no redress whatsoever. If a feature is worthy of regulation when it is contained in one product, why is it not worthy of regulation when contained and concealed in another?

In Ceredigion there are well over 30 types of the Clydesdale and Yorkshire fixed-rate loan with hidden swap, and that is in one community alone. Hotels, pubs, lucrative shops and farms are being targeted by the banks. The stories are heartbreaking. These toxic loans mean that hitherto successful businesses are burdened with unmanageable interest rates. Owners are unable to exit the arrangements because of extortionate breakage penalties of between 20% and 40%.

What about the consequences? Job losses resulting from trading for four years in a severe economic situation while locked into an inappropriate product—a product that has sucked out every surplus the business has generated, preventing development and the engagement of staff and precipitating redundancies—are forcing people in my constituency on to benefits.

The challenge for the Government is to put all pressure imaginable on the FSA and the successor organisation to ensure that such embedded products are considered part of the review, so that the growing number of businesses affected have the redress and justice I believe they deserve. I hope my right hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House answers favourably.

Business of the House

Mark Williams Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I introduced the responsibility deal with my colleagues at the Department of Health precisely because I am concerned about the number of people in this country who are overweight and obese—[Interruption.] Contrary to the sedentary remark from the Opposition Front Bench, the deal is working. I will not go into this at great length now, although perhaps we will find an opportunity to do so. The deal includes the calorie reduction challenge, which is one of the world-leading opportunities for us—not just the food industry, but all working together across the board—to consider the extent to which the virtual abolition of artificial trans fats, the reduction of saturated fats, the reduction of sugars in foods, and a reduction of calorie intake can get us to sustainable, healthy weight.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

Ceredigion county council is one of the latest local authorities to sign the community covenant and appoint an armed forces champion. May we have a debate on the housing, health care and benefit entitlements of veterans and, critically, on how we communicate those entitlements to the veterans to whom we owe so much?

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and he is absolutely right. I value the way my own local authority and his have taken up the commitment to the armed forces covenant. He is right that we should make sure that it is understood, not least by veterans and their families. The first annual report on the military covenant showed good progress, but I know my colleagues, not least at the Ministry of Defence, will be very keen to take up his suggestion to consider how we can do more to publicise it.

Business of the House

Mark Williams Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

As the hon. Gentleman should know, this is an historical problem. It would not arise now because the reconsideration of those rejected applications could not happen under the current policy. My hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration has made it clear that this is being dealt with and that such a situation would not be allowed to arise again. As I have made clear in business questions before, the chief inspector of borders and immigration is equally clear that performance is being turned around. The Minister has said that he is not satisfied with the performance of the UK Borders Agency and the chief executive is not satisfied with it: they are taking every measure to ensure that it is improved in the future.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

May we have a debate on the mis-selling of interest rate swap products by the banks to small and medium-sized enterprises, on the speed with which these matters are being resolved and on the fact that businesses across the country are facing bankruptcy?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, which I know is a matter of concern for many Members that have small businesses across their constituencies. If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I cannot recall precisely who is investigating the problem at the moment—it may be the Office of Fair Trading, but I am not sure.

[Mr Williams]

The Financial Services Authority.

[Mr Lansley]

The FSA—I am grateful to my hon. Friend for prompting me. The FSA is investigating the matter. As we have discussed at business questions before, it is important to try to help small businesses in the interim, but it is particularly important that the FSA pursues its investigation with rigour. I know it will.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Mark Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

I shall address my brief remarks to my amendment 35. It is a probing amendment, whose purpose is to raise and discuss concerns that have already been expressed about the duties of electoral registration officers. A constant theme running through all our Committee discussions so far has been the capacity of EROs to deliver their duties responsibly and effectively to ensure both the accuracy and completeness of the electoral list.

On Monday, we discussed the different approaches taken by local authorities and the need for some measure of standardisation—in the invitations sent out to encourage people to register, for instance. Local authorities have acted in different ways, but it is important to maintain the obligation on all EROs across the country to get everyone entitled to register to do so. I think all parties are agreed on that objective, but there has been some concern that the Bill as it stands will not achieve it. The Electoral Commission, among others, is concerned that schedule 4 will “dilute”—its word—the current responsibilities and requirements of EROs. That is particularly worrying given the findings of the Electoral Commission’s “Report on performance of Electoral Registration Officers” in Great Britain, published in June 2012. As was mentioned by the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David), it expressed particular concern about the issue of house-to-house inquiries, stating:

“ Currently, section 9A(1) requires an ERO to take ‘all steps that are necessary for the purpose of complying with his duty to maintain the register under section 9’.

Section 9A contains a list of non-exhaustive steps which include, on occasions, making more than one visit through house-to-house inquiries.

The Electoral Commission feels that the duty in its current form works well and is an important tool in ensuring that EROs do all the work that is necessary to guarantee accuracy and completeness, including the conducting of house-to-house inquiries when, critically, other methods—we have heard a great deal about, for instance, data-matching pilots and aspirations for online voting—have not yielded the appropriate information. The commission remains baffled by why the Government would want to change the present arrangement.

[Wayne David]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case—so powerful, indeed, that we hope that he will press the amendment to a vote, but if he does not do so, we will.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

After the Committee has heard my reply.

[Mr Williams]

As my hon. Friend says, we must hear what he has to say on the subject first. His intervention is timely, as I am now moved to speculate on what he may say.

Schedule 4(6) adds to section 9A the words

“and for the purpose of securing that, so far as is reasonably practicable, persons who are entitled to be registered in a register (and no others) are registered in it”.

I know that the Government are content with that, feeling that it strengthens the responsibilities that EROs already have, but what risk, I ask my hon. Friend, does the change pose to the accuracy and completeness of the register? I feel that my amendment 35, which deletes the phrase

“so far as is reasonably practical”,

buttresses the obligation of EROs to secure persons who are entitled to be included in the register.

Let me reiterate to my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly—for he is my friend—that mine is a probing amendment, and that, as I said at the outset, I am seeking to clarify these matters for the benefit of those of us who have discussed their concerns with the Electoral Commission. Certainly there is no good reason to reduce the duty imposed on EROs, and, if anything—given the tone of our debate and the cross-party aspiration that has been expressed—we should be enhancing and strengthening it. I should be grateful if the Minister explained the reasoning behind the changes in the Bill, and how they would affect EROs’ current obligations.

It seems to me that the Bill in its current form has the potential to weaken the principle of maximising registration, which would undermine what the Government are attempting to do. I do not believe for a moment that that is their intention, but I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

We have heard from other Members about the expectations that we have of EROs, and the performance standards that are used to assess their role. Let me refer again to the Electoral Commission’s report. Performance standard 3 refers to

“house-to-house enquiries to ensure that all eligible residents are registered.”

Although the Electoral Commission observed that progress had been made—

“the number of EROs who reported meeting or exceeding this standard increased between 2008 and 2010”—

eight EROs did not meet the standard. The commission stated that it had been able to contact them and remind them of their responsibility to “take all necessary steps”. It also stated that in 2011, for a range of reasons, it had heard anecdotal evidence suggesting that a greater number of EROs might not have met the standard in that year, and might not have taken “all necessary steps”. That prompted it to do some research. It contacted EROs and asked them whether they had carried out a personal canvass of all non-responders, and 58 replied citing budgetary restraints and rurality.

There is clearly continuing concern about house-to-house inquiries. The Electoral Commission is worried enough about the present set-up and the present wording of the legislation, but it fears that the position could worsen as a result of the new wording.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

It is obvious from the attendance in the Chamber that the issues we are discussing are hardly setting the heather alight, but they are nevertheless important in the context of the relationship between central and local government. I think that Members in all parts of the Committee agree that there has been substantial consultation on the Bill, and that many key stakeholders—not least the Electoral Commission—have had an opportunity to draw on real-life experience for their prognostications and recommendations. However, I think that the amendments tabled by the hon. Members for Caerphilly (Wayne David) and for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) risk changing a permissive, directional approach from the centre to the Electoral Commission vis-à-vis electoral returning officers to a much more oppressive approach, which would not take into consideration the differences that exist throughout the country in districts, boroughs and cities.

I think that had the Government not taken account of the experience of May 2010—for instance, the performance of EROs at polling stations and the administrative arrangements that caused difficulties in areas such as Sheffield and Hackney—it would have been fair to comment on their performance with regard to registration. However, the Bill does take account of that experience, not least in clause 17, which refers to the

“Inadequate performance of returning officer”.

One of the problems of being too prescriptive and draconian, and including in legislation what is effectively a direction to EROs, is that it fetters their discretion and allows central Government, through the Cabinet Office, to instruct them to do things that may not be appropriate in their areas. The data-matching projects are a good example. In my constituency, there were high levels of registration during our pilot project for the Electoral Commission because there was a very thorough door-to-door canvass. However, it should be borne in mind that the actual matching to the DWP and other databases was only 54% in Peterborough, and that it may be significantly higher in other parts of the country.

I think that it would be wrong to instruct electoral registration officers, who are typically chief executives or borough, city or district solicitors, that the fall-back position should be that they are not doing their job properly and not adhering to the existing legislation. The Bill in its present form recognises that it is imperative to maximise the number of people on the electoral register—and we all welcome that because we believe that it is important to democracy and future civic engagement—while also giving discretion to individuals at local level.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I understand, Mr Williams, that you do not wish to move amendment 35.

[Mr Mark Williams]

indicated assent.

[The Chairman]

I call Wayne David.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mark Williams]

First, may I emphasise how different the Bill that we have deliberated on in Committee is from the one that was first initiated and from the Bill that was expected to be initiated when we had the Opposition day debates earlier in the year? The Government have made this Bill better. The opt-out would have made it difficult for my party to support the Bill. Concessions were made on the annual canvass and the penalty, matters that were also of great concern to those who served with me on the Lib Dem Back-Bench constitutional reform committee. I thank the Government for those huge concessions, as they are significant. They illustrate the fact that the Government have listened, that the pre-legislative scrutiny process has worked and that we have had the necessary response. To be fair to the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David), throughout the Committee stage he has acknowledged the extent of those concessions, appreciating and applauding them. I, too, have concerns about the release of the draft secondary legislation, although I applaud the fact that it came, albeit a little late in the day. We are told by my hon. Friend the Minister that that draft legislation will appear before the deliberations in another place.

The aspirations of completeness and accuracy are shared by all of us, on both sides of the House—or they should be. As the Bill leaves this place, I wish to make some observations. I welcome the fixed penalty. We had a good debate on the scale of the penalty and whether it should be £100—we had a probing amendment from the hon. Gentleman on that. The Chairman of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), dared to suggest that it should be as much as £500. For the people who may stumble into the prospect of having to pay this—some of the hard-to-reach groups we are talking about—a £500 penalty would be dangerous. The debate should be much more about the prominence of the penalty notice, the extent to which the invitations to register reach the people they should and the messages on those invitations, rather than the size of the fine. To some extent it has been about those things, but it should be about the size of the font, rather than the size of the fine. We wait with interest to see what figure the Government come up with, but I tend to agree with the hon. Member for Caerphilly that it should be of the order of a parking fine.

I wish to discuss the position of the annual canvass. Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but I still think there is a huge premium in politicians and agents of Government or local government actually knocking on people’s doors. The annual canvass is not just about those poignant messages on the literature or about reminding people of those all-important implications of non-registration and their civic duty; it is about getting out to those hard-to-reach groups in practice.

We talked about the student community, and the houses in multiple occupation, and my area’s 147 villages mean that there are challenges of rurality that make groups hard to reach. Someone with a serious physical disability who lives in the Cambrian mountains has added difficulties. More prominence should be given not only to their difficulties in accessing polling stations but to the means by which they register. It is important that those in the other place focus on those questions, too.

We debated the dissemination of good practice and the role of the Electoral Commission. I am glad that the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) is in the Chamber. He has been in the Chamber a lot, but every time I have tried to congratulate Denbighshire on the excellent work it has undertaken, which he has brought to the attention of the House, he has not been present. I am glad to be able to say again that some really good work has been undertaken in Denbighshire and I look forward to the Electoral Commission’s being in a position to spread that practice around the country.

Had we made it a little further through today’s business, we would have reached my new clause 10 on ring-fenced resources. I hesitate to call it a probing amendment, because I am quite aware of what happened to my last probing amendment at the hands of the Opposition. New clause 10 was an intentioned attempt to have a debate on the significance of ring-fenced resources. If we agree on the goal and the aspiration, it is that this is about guaranteeing and ensuring that local authorities have the means to undertake the job they need to do.

Finally, I paint a scenario that is a worry, but it is not a worry that leads me into the hands of the Opposition or into the Lobby with them tonight. My worry leads me to remind the Government, as I support them, that it is urgent that we get the resources, responsibilities and delivery of accuracy and completeness right. I have 12,000 students in my Ceredigion constituency, largely living in HMOs and halls of residence. Some 11 Members of this House—two on them on the Labour Benches—have been students at Aberystwyth at some point in their careers. If we do not ensure that all those students have the capacity to register individually, that will have a huge and detrimental effect when we next have boundary changes. The Ceredigion constituency is likely to be altered significantly by the boundary changes, and the prospect of another large, beautiful chunk of mid and west Wales being added to it because we have not registered hard-to-reach groups in HMOs and our student halls of residence is a huge worry. That is why the Government need to tackle that with energy, enthusiasm and vigour and to get it right.

I hope that my friends on the Opposition Benches will not take offence if I say that in the early stages of the debate there was an air of conspiracy theories. I applaud the positive way in which the Opposition have tackled issues of concern, many of which I share, but I regret that that principle of consensus will not be carried forward in the vote tonight.