House Of Commons
Wednesday 1 April 1998
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
Prayers
[MADAM SPEAKER in the Chair]
Train Operating Companies
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. McFall.]
9.34 am
As this is the first debate on 1 April, I should pass on to you, Madam Speaker, the serious warning that I received from Westminster city council: some of the squirrels in St. James's park have been found to have rabies, so nobody should walk in St. James's park today.
I shall now deal with a matter pertaining to people on whom the joke has been played—the railway passengers of the west country, south-central England and south Wales. It arises from the proposed takeover bid by FirstGroup, which used to be called FirstBus, for Great Western Holdings, the franchise company set up in November 1995. The problem seems to have started in November 1997. A week ago, nine Labour Members of Parliament from the affected areas had an extremely interesting meeting with John O'Brien, Director of Passenger Rail Franchising, followed shortly afterwards by a meeting with Mr. Trevor Smallwood, chief executive of FirstGroup. Mr. Smallwood told us that he made the first approach to Great Western Holdings "towards the back end" of last year. He did not specify the month, but I imagine that that means in about November. He also referred to the fact that, as the sleeping partner of the original franchise company since November 1995— FirstGroup had held 25 per cent. of the shares from the beginning—he had decided to use the first two years as a learning curve. FirstGroup had intended to get into rail travel under the privatisation proposals, but as it was a bus operator it was not sure whether it had the expertise. It therefore wanted the management buyout team to lead the field and operate the company while it sat in as a sleeping partner and travelled up the learning curve. Towards the end of last year, the company decided that it had travelled far enough up the learning curve, so it made its first approach to the management buyout company, which had 51 per cent. of the shares of Great Western Holdings. November 1997 is a significant date for four reasons. First, it was the second anniversary of the awarding of the franchise. Secondly, it was the date of the first approach by FirstBus to Great Western Holdings. Thirdly, the Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions had issued new objectives, instructions and guidance to the Director of Passenger Rail Franchising. Thus the company had new OIGs from November 1997. Fourthly, November 1997 was the approximate date on which we all noticed a serious deterioration in the quality of the service. That does not mean that the service had been good up to then; it had been just about passable, and pretty disappointing to people who had looked at the promises made by Great Western Holdings. However, from about November 1997 onwards, matters got seriously worse. Hon. Members need not take my word for that. Mr. Smallwood, the head of FirstGroup, agreed with us about that at the meeting. He said that from about six months ago, the service went seriously downhill. It went from just about passable but somewhat disappointing to pretty catastrophic. People were leaving the train service in droves. I know that I am not the only Member of Parliament to have become a much more frequent user of the car rather than the train to come here in the past six months because of the unreliability of the train service. We do not want to change from train to car, but we find it necessary, because we need as much time as possible here. Mr. Smallwood said that it was better for FirstBus to take over Great Western Holdings because it was a plc, whereas Great Western Holdings was only a limited company. He felt that it was better for a plc to be running the service if it was to build itself up into a powerful operator, to do good deals with the rolling stock companies and raise money on the stock exchange. That leads me to wonder why the franchise was offered two years ago to a limited company. However, that is as may be. Mr. Smallwood said that a plc would be better. That suggests that in November 1995 Mr. O'Brien franchised an unstable company. It was unstable because the sleeping partners—Mr. Smallwood and his FirstBus—always envisaged that the management buyout team, which owned 51 per cent. of the shares, would be a front organisation. It is more politically acceptable to have a management buyout with railway experience and employee participation. That sounds better than giving a railway franchise to a bus company shortly before an election, with all the possible monopoly implications. However, the decision resulted in a group, consisting of 51 per cent. management buyout, 25 per cent. FirstBus and 24 per cent. 3i—Investors in Industry—which would also want to get out at some stage. That would inevitably implode. The management buyout team would be looking for an exit strategy and FirstBus would be looking for an entry strategy, to move from a 25 per cent. shareholding to being 100 per cent. shareholders when it felt that it had travelled up the learning curve. That is the difficulty that Mr. O'Brien, the franchising director, created for himself in November 1995 when he approved the rickety Great Western Holdings structure, which could not last. It was only a matter of time before GWH imploded and FirstBus emerged from being a sleeping partner to take over the company.Will my hon. Friend comment on a peculiar implosion, which leaves the directors getting millions of pounds as a result of the takeover? Constituents from Cardiff to Swindon have seen millions of pounds going to a few people while they wait for better service, improved safety at stations and cheaper fares.
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She has put her finger on why people are so outraged by the takeover bid. The management buyout team, who held 51 per cent. of the shares, have walked away with millions. That appears to have been a reward not for efficient management, but for providing a chaotic and rapidly deteriorating service. The more rapidly the service deteriorated, the clearer it was that that was part of the exit strategy. The management buyout team wanted to cash in their chips when FirstBus was ready to buy their 51 per cent. To do so, they had to provide a justification for the franchising director to approve the takeover.
It is easier for the franchising director to approve a takeover if the service is deteriorating. If it is improving, he has no reason to approve the takeover by the former sleeping partners, which has monopoly implications, given that FirstBus is a big bus operator in Bristol and Swansea, provides long-distance coaches in south Wales and owns 51 per cent. of Bristol airport. However, if the quality of service has been going down, people will be begging for the takeover to be approved. Once the management team have decided that the time has come to execute their exit strategy, they have no incentive to maintain the service. They have a perverse incentive to run down the service, to make it easier for the franchising director to approve the takeover, as he has done at least in principle in the past few weeks. My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Ms Drown) also mentioned that the takeover brings back concerns about fat cats. The previous Government thought that a management buyout was a great idea in presentational terms. The top management, who knew the line, brought in employee participation. Some of those employees—ordinary guards and others—will also have made a good deal of money. That is more politically acceptable than working out the best kind of company to take over such an important rail franchise. However, that merely delayed the problem of fat cats until after the election, once they decided to sell their 51 per cent. That 51 per cent. shareholding is a franchise from the state, on which they are making millions. It was awarded by UK plc—that is what a franchise means—to GWH, but it belongs to us, not them. The management team did not build it up through their own efforts. There was a different Government at that time. Their pre-election strategy put great emphasis on presentation— what sounds best in the run-up to an election. Undoubtedly, management buyouts with employee participation have superficial attractions.As my hon. Friend knows, we had a short Adjournment debate on Monday on Great Western. Does he agree that the root of the problem is the way in which privatisation was set up? The deterioration in service would be understandable if there was a lack of passenger interest and a decline in numbers. However, I am sure that, like me, he has found that the trains are packed. That is a badly kept secret. People want to use the trains, yet the company apparently cannot make money even with overcrowded trains. There is clearly something wrong with the basis of privatisation.
The franchise system was a Heath Robinson contraption that should never have been approved. The Conservatives privatised the railway industry by breaking it up into Railtrack, the rolling stock companies, the train operating companies and the maintenance companies. That had political attractions for the Conservative Government, but it has left the new Government with an enormous problem to unravel.
I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman, who is making some telling points, but is not his argument rather one-sided? Is it not possible that the regulator takes into account positive factors such as investment plans and business plans when he decides on the rights and wrongs of a takeover bid? There is a positive element to the dynamics of privatisation, which does not involve taxpayers' money. The hon. Gentleman should also refer to that.
I should like to finish my response to the previous intervention first.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) made an interesting point. Because of the improvement in the economy, rail passenger numbers are rising by 6 or 7 per cent. I do not think that Great Western is different from the other companies in that respect. Great Western's response has resulted, as my hon. Friend said, in overcrowded trains on which people cannot get a seat. There is not a problem of a shortage of passengers in the present state of the economy. I now come to the points made by the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Sir M. Spicer). The Director of Passenger Rail Franchising can extract additional concessions when there is a takeover bid. This is the problem of the perverse incentive. If concessions are to be extracted, the baseline from which improvements are to be made is critical. If the baseline is lowered by providing an appalling service, it is much easier for the company taking over to say, as in this case, that it will provide better services than those provided over the past six months. I am worried that such a perverse incentive is built into one aspect of the new instructions that were given to Opraf in November. The instructions refer to the passenger dividend, but do not protect against an arranged deterioration. There is a lack of incentive to maintain services, never mind improve them, in the run-up to a takeover bid, as has clearly been going on since November, because it is then much easier to satisfy the condition that there must be something in the bid for the passenger. As far as I am aware, the bid must also include a reduction in subsidy. Indeed, the company will receive £100 million less subsidy by the end of the franchise.Much of the hon. Gentleman's argument hangs on the concept of some conceived, planned or conspired deterioration in the services. Factually, he may be correct; there has been deterioration—although not on the part of the line that runs through my constituency, which I shall leave aside. What evidence has he of some conspiracy, some specific plan? Or is there merely some fluke from which he has conceived some conspiracy?
As I said, it was not me who referred to the fact that there has been an appalling deterioration in services over the past six months. Mr. Smallwood told us in our meeting last week. He agreed that the service had greatly deteriorated, particularly over the past six months. I certainly do not have any access to company telephone conversations or minutes that would enable me to substantiate the principle of a conspiracy to cause deterioration. I am making a deduction from the fact that certain events occurred together.
First, FirstBus approached Great Western Holdings towards the back end of last year—according to Mr. Smallwood. Secondly, there has been a severe deterioration in services over the past six months— according to Mr. Smallwood. Thirdly, new instructions were issued by the Deputy Prime Minister in November last year, when FirstBus decided that its two years on the learning curve were up and that it wanted to make a serious move. I understand that FirstBus first approached the franchising director informally in January to see whether he liked the idea, according to recent written answers and Monday's Adjournment debate, which was initiated by the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) and to which my hon. Friend the Minister for Transport in London also responded. Suddenly, in a great rush in early March, the matter began to move very quickly, with the special request of the management of FirstGroup that the bid be approved with great speed, which was why the period of consultation was foreshortened if not non-existent.Does my hon. Friend agree that it is surprising that at least one hon. Member has not noticed the deterioration in rail services? It has almost become universal that the most dependable aspect of the service over recent months is that trains will always arrive late. Many of us have had to organise and reorganise our timetables and catch earlier trains to ensure that we are here for Question Time. Is it not galling to realise that the result once again proves—this is certainly not a coincidence—that the wages of sin are stupendous?
That is getting on to the same point made by the hon. Member for West Worcestershire—except in a disbelieving sense.
We asked Mr. O'Brien last week whether there had been—to use the crude word with implications of Guy Fawkes—a conspiracy to cause deterioration in services. Mr. O'Brien and his staff said, "Absolutely not; that is an absurd idea." They said that, obviously, a company's shares are worth far more if it is doing well; obviously, a company is worth far more if it is building up rather than running down its assets; and, obviously, a company has every incentive to try to improve the quality of the service because it means that anybody who wanted to take it over would have to pay a higher price. In principle, all that is true, but very special circumstances in this case make that quite likely to be untrue—strange though it may seem. If owners of 51 per cent. of the shares need an exit strategy, they need the approval of the Director of Passenger Rail Franchising in order to implement it. The takeover cannot be made on straight commercial terms because it is a state franchise. The owners have to persuade the agent of the state—not the Minister, but the franchising director—to give his approval. Of course, the franchising director can withhold consent. It is as simple as that. In order for consent to be given, conditions set out in the objectives, instructions and guidance to the franchising director must be met. The owners' shares become worth much more because they are the equivalent of a ransom strip in a property deal—the little shop in the middle of a comprehensive development that developers have to pay a fortune for in order to develop the land. The owners of the 51 per cent. of the shares and the franchising director are the keys to control of the overall state franchise. The takeover bid was not made from the outside, but was made by sleeping partners on the learning curve from the bus industry, who, because of political implications, did not originally want to be majority shareholders. As they explained to us, they were concentrating on the bus industry, but knew that they wanted to get into the railway industry once they had undergone the learning experience. Mr. Smallwood was quite frank and open about that to us last week. He said that, when the two years was up, the company decided to move in. The bus industry has been a very interesting area of competition over the past few years, since deregulation in the mid-1980s. What was originally an idea of letting a thousand flowers bloom has become an industry in which about three dominant companies have survived extremely aggressive competition. A couple of years ago, the bus industry was described as an aquarium, the owner of which had left home about three weeks earlier and forgotten to make any arrangements for feeding the fish. As a result, the fish had to feed on each other. The three or four surviving dominant groups have the financial pulling power in the City to be able to buy rail companies. Some did so directly, but FirstGroup took a more cautious line, first becoming sleeping partners and buying 25 per cent. of the shares. Another point that arose in our meeting with Mr. O'Brien, which baffled us, concerned the advertisement for new rolling stock that was placed by Great Western in the autumn, in the contract supplement of the Official Journal of the European Communities. The point was raised not by any hon. Member but by Mr. Bray of Save Our Railways, who was also present. Mr. Bray mentioned the so-called extracted passenger dividend, in which the hon. Member for West Worcestershire was so interested. In other words, at the time of the takeover one would be asked, "What are you willing to promise in terms of improved services?" Mr. Smallwood and Mr. O'Brien had been praising to the skies the deal that they had done with each other—well, they would, wouldn't they?—and saying that extra orders were now being placed for rolling stock. Then the representative of Save Our Railways asked, "Are those orders really extra? Were they not advertised in the Official Journal of the European Communities last autumn?" Mr. O'Brien's response was mystifying. He said, "Oh no, when you advertise in the contract supplement of the Official Journal, it is not like actually ordering something. It is like putting an advertisement for your house in the local evening paper to see what offers you get, so that you can find out its value. It was not really an order at all." We all scratched our heads in disbelief at that explanation of the purpose of the contract supplement of the Official Journal of the European Communities. We had always understood that in public procurement, advertising in the supplement was a legal obligation for any order in the public domain worth more than £150,000. So far as I know, people advertise in the supplement only because they have to. They never advertise simply to test the market and see how much their "house", or its equivalent, is worth in terms of commercial ordering procedures. To us, the explanation was absurd. The sensitivity that Mr. O'Brien displayed as he tried to knock down the advertisement and imply that it was of no significance, suggested that he wanted to be able to say that he had extracted big benefits from the takeover, along the lines suggested by the hon. Member for West Worcestershire, despite the fact that many of the benefits were due to come through anyway, as the advertisement placed last autumn showed. We wondered why Mr. O'Brien was so sensitive about that aspect. Why was he trying to build up the so-called benefits to passengers, instead of accepting that some of the improvements, such as the rolling stock, were already on the way? Since all the subdivisions were created by the way in which the railway industry was broken up into rolling stock companies, train operating companies and so on, train operating companies do not buy rolling stock; they agree an order that is paid for by the leasing company that will own the rolling stock. The deal is done on a back-to-back basis. The rolling stock company pays the train manufacturing company, then the train operating company agrees a back-to-back lease with the leasing company for use of the trains when they are finally built and delivered, perhaps in a year's time. The significance of the timing of last autumn's order for new trains for Great Western was that it revealed again how rickety was the contraption of the rail passenger franchise issued in November 1995. The company had expertise at the top, because it consisted of the top management of Great Western, but it had no money. The people with the money were the sleeping partners, FirstBus. The top management had 51 per cent. of the shares, and I know that at least one of the managers had to mortgage his house to buy his part of the 51 per cent. When the idea emerged of the majority shareholders having to commit themselves to leasing 20 additional trains, they could not mortgage their houses again two years later so as to expand the equity capital of the company. They could not cope with a big new leasing commitment to a rolling stock company to finance the order for new trains from Adtranz, ABB or whatever, because they had already dug as deeply into their pockets as they could. Those people were never ever going to be able to order new rolling stock. The only way in which they could commit themselves to more leasing was by selling out. They had to get through the election period without ordering new rolling stock, then wait for the right moment to cash in their chips for the 51 per cent., as owners of the majority shareholding. That meant that the company could start to think about ordering new rolling stock before it had to find the money for it. That all seems to have happened at the end of last year. The advertisement, which has a long time fuse, was issued, but the company did not have to commit itself to spending the money. Then the managers had to get out of the industry before anyone came to them for the money for the rolling stock that they had ordered. That was when they had to say to FirstBus, "Time for you to take over. You have learnt the game, and we can get out. The only problem is, we have to get the agreement of the Director of Passenger Rail Franchising." That was the nature of the Heath Robinson contraption set up in November 1995—a totally unstable company in which the top management had the expertise but no money, and the sleeping partners had the money but no expertise. The company had to wait until the post-election period when the need for new rolling stock became critical, at which point the owners of the 51 per cent. had to make their exit. In order to get out, those people needed a justification, and a deterioration in the service is the ideal way of being allowed to execute one's exit strategy and justify the takeover bid.There is another aspect, which was also partly rehearsed on Monday night. Another reason for the poor quality of the service is what Railtrack is up to. Because of all the present goings-on, we have fewer opportunities to put pressure on Railtrack to improve—
Order. I must remind the hon. Gentleman that he is not conducting a conversation with his hon. Friend. He should be addressing the Chair.
I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I just wanted to ask my hon. Friend whether he agreed that the present situation was taking away the chance to put pressure on Railtrack to improve the service. I strongly believe, and I hope that my hon. Friend agrees, that the two are inextricably linked, and it is crucial to ensure that Railtrack comes up with its part of the bargain.
I am grateful for those remarks, and I shall talk about Railtrack as I draw my remarks to a close. However, I hope that my hon. Friend will allow me to continue in the intended order, because I have something else to say first, and Railtrack will be my last point.
I am still talking about the company, whose situation is further complicated by the loss of two of the train sets that Great Western Holdings had when it came into being. When the parliamentary Labour party Welsh group originally met Richard George and Brian Scott from Great Western Holdings about eight months ago, they apologised to us for what was already seen as a pretty poor service, and said that the situation was complicated by the loss of a train set, which I believe took place in 1996. Hon. Members who represent constituencies in the south-west will know more about that than I do. I am talking about the crash at Newton Abbot, which left Great Western one train set short. It had no margin, so the crash at Newton Abbot was a big problem. Then, in 1997, there was the Southall train crash. That made the shortage of available rolling stock much worse, because the company had now lost two train sets and had somehow to scrounge some from elsewhere. There was loss of life; I personally knew well one of the seven people who died, and many people from south Wales knew people who were either injured or among the seven fatalities. A major inquiry is taking place, and I do not want to pre-empt its findings, but we must face the fact that one of its possible outcomes is a corporate manslaughter verdict. That is only one possibility of many, but it could mean some sort of comeback for the people who were at the head of Great Western Holdings at the time of the Southall crash. We do not know what will happen; that is only one of a wide range of possible outcomes. None the less, if that is the result in a year or two, when the public inquiry is finished, people will say, "Ah, was that one of the reasons why they chose to execute their exit strategy in the six months between November 1997 and March 1998?" That is an important issue. What are the responsibilities of the top management of a company that holds a state franchise, if there is a serious crash involving fatalities, and a subsequent public inquiry? If an inquiry finds people responsible, they must be willing to stand up and defend the actions for which they were responsible. Finally, there is the subdivision between the responsibility for track and track maintenance, which is Railtrack's, and that of the train operating companies—the TOCs, as we call them—such as Great Western. That is undoubtedly the easiest method that has ever been devised of transferring blame. The track can blame the train, the train can blame the track and the passenger never knows who is telling the truth—it is a wonderful form of rotating-blame machine. Responsibility for delays cannot be attributed—the finger is pointed in two directions.Will my hon. Friend assist me in compiling a book for guards of the reasons for delays? I am suffering sensory deprivation after hearing time and again the same excuses, and I should like to help the staff by giving them new reasons for delays.
I do not think that April fool's day would be a good day to start that book. Certainly, one feels very sorry for the guards on Great Western, who do not like what is happening any more than the passengers do—it must be sheer hell to have to explain why a service is an hour or an hour and a half late, why two trains have been merged without notice or what the refund arrangements will be if such and such happens. When things are going seriously wrong, employee-passenger relations are the most difficult of all, and I do not think that morale on any service can be as bad as that of the guards on the Great Western who have to carry the can when issuing excuses.
I think that the idea of my hon. Friend the Member for Wansdyke (Dan Norris) is imaginative. No doubt those long hours waiting somewhere between Bath and Chippenham or between Cardiff and Swindon can be spent compiling a list of excuses. I do not think that the guards invent the excuses; I think that the excuses are genuine. The issue is that one cannot get to the nub of the problem. One does not know whether the fault is caused by track or by bad maintenance and shortage of train sets—Great Western is one or two train sets short since the crashes at Newton Abbot and Southall. I have used Paddington for more decades than I care to remember. It is a second home for anyone from south Wales who travels to London—I am sure that the same is true for people from the south-west of England. As soon as one arrives at Paddington in a taxi or on the tube, one feels halfway home—it is an important place for us. During the past two or three years, we were told that the delays at Paddington were a result of the huge works on the three tracks, I think, to accommodate the Heathrow express link, but that when that work was completed, Paddington would be a much better place. That sounded fair enough; it was clearly not an invented story, and the huge investment to link Heathrow with Paddington was welcome. Now that the work is complete, however, things have not got better, as we were promised—they have got worse. The new summer timetable, which starts in about a month, adds a further five minutes to the journey between south Wales and Paddington. A train will take as long as two hours and 10 minutes, which is 20 minutes longer than it took 20 years ago. That is sad, and we look jealously at other parts of the country where train services are being speeded up and where, in a year or two, there will be new trains, such as the tilting trains on the main line to the north-west, which sound good when one reads about them in the newspapers, even if they are never put into service. The service from south Wales is slower than it was 20 years ago partly because of congestion at Paddington, which is now more important because of the Heathrow express link. However, it is odd that every year there is another reason why an extra couple of minutes is added to the journey time. The Government will never be able to green the transport system if trains become slower and less reliable. Because of the emphasis in the passengers charter on reliability, the trains are timetabled to be slower—even though they have the same locomotive power—so that reliability targets are hit more often. That will ultimately have a negative impact on trains. It always seemed insane to drive to London, as that took at least three quarters of an hour longer than the train, but now that is not always the case. The combination of poor reliability and slower timetabling means that more people will use their cars. The Government will fail in their aim to ensure that, by investing in good-quality, reliable, and speedy passenger transport, the majority of journeys between the major metropolitan centres—between London and Bristol, Cardiff or Swansea, for example—are made on trains, minimising the use of the car and the need for extra lanes on motorways. The importance of this debate is that it concerns the first takeover bid for a train operating company. The terms on which that takeover is approved, disapproved or conditionally approved, will set the tone for future takeover bids—they will set the precedents, the guidance and the rules. We shall observe what happens, although I accept that the rules may change when the White Paper is issued or as a result of legislation to establish a strategic rail authority. We are extremely dissatisfied by the way in which the bid was made—especially during a time of severe deterioration in services—and by the lack of consultation. We shall never know whether my conspiracy theory is correct or whether what happened between November 1997 and April 1998 is sheer coincidence—these things cannot be proved. However, passengers in south Wales—I am sure that the same is true in south-west and south-central England—cannot believe that the managers of Great Western Holdings will walk away with millions of pounds as a reward for running an appalling service.10.16 am
I congratulate the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. Morgan) on securing this important and timely debate. In the past couple of months, the House has debated railway issues a number of times, which reflects the great concern about the mess in which the previous Government left rail services.
Takeovers will be one of the last elements to be taken into account in an assessment of whether the regulatory system has been effective. The background is a series of failures—on any measure—to deliver the improvements that were promised on privatisation. Service was meant to improve, but Opraf figures for last year show that performance worsened—season tickets had to be given on six routes, a third of routes failed their passenger targets and reliability deteriorated on almost half the routes. Like the hon. Member for Cardiff, West, I feel sorry for the staff, who constantly tell me of their frustrations with the new system and of their concerns about the way in which it is failing to deliver. On some routes, they express their views in guarded terms—they do not want to be quoted, as they are anxious for their jobs. There is no doubt, however, that people with experience of the system believe that the new structure is failing to deliver. Cost is another measure of that. Pre-privatisation, British Rail received a subsidy of some £1 billion. The year after, that had doubled to £2 billion but, from the figures that I have given, it is clear that passengers have not yet seen the return. Although some passengers get compensation, the negotiated requirements have not delivered it for the great majority of those who suffer delays. On the contrary, the franchise agreements and allowances have delivered fare increases, including above-inflation increases this year on several of the worst-performing lines. We can also measure whether the regulator has been effective by looking at complaints, which have risen massively, reflecting the lowering performance figures that have been referred to. Last summer, complaints were up 96 per cent., and on Connex South Central they were up a whopping 158 per cent. There has been pretty much unmitigated joy, with huge returns from privatisation, for those with a financial stake. Shareholders have been clear beneficiaries from privatisation. Share prices have increased and a substantial number of millionaires have been created on the back of privatisation—not least those who are becoming much richer through the sale of Great Western—but however hard the franchising director and others may have tried, they have failed to deliver the promised improvements. The first takeover is now going through and others may follow, so we must make a judgment on whether the regulatory system delivered the benefits to passengers that could be expected from a renegotiation of franchise terms. That is important, because it can tell us something about what may happen when other franchises come up for renegotiation in the natural course of things. We understand that the regulator was told in January, at least informally, about what was likely to happen, but as far as we can tell, there was no attempt to build in any passenger consultation. It is hard to say what preparations were being made behind the scenes—presumably, some were—but the people who would eventually be on the receiving end were not consulted. My hon. Friend the Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) suggested in his Adjournment debate that there may have been a question of commercial confidentiality, but it was perfectly open to the Rail Regulator to explore with passenger groups what they would like to happen in the event of either franchise renegotiation or takeover. There are likely to be further takeover bids, so the effects should have been explored, but nothing of the sort happened before the formal bid, after which there were only three days of work before the regulator gave approval to a £75 million deal. I understand that the only rail user consultative group that was formally involved was the one that there was a statutory obligation to consult. The regulator first met FirstGroup on 4 March and by 6 March, the deal was announced. It has been suggested that commercial confidentiality prevented consultation; even if that is so, it is a clear failing in the system, because any change of such significance to passengers should surely have built into it a requirement for consultation in the early days, before the announcement of any deal. I cannot accept that such changes should be made so quickly. The regulator said that the company had pressed for an early decision. Clearly, a commercial organisation with a bid on the table would want to get the go-ahead as quickly as possible, but that was not the position for passengers. Passengers—and, indeed, Members of Parliament—had hardly got over the shock of hearing that there was to be a takeover when they were told that there was a closed deal. The Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the House were still saying that everything was up for negotiation even as papers were being signed and press releases issued to say that the deal was done. It is strongly rumoured—I have heard it from several angles—that FirstGroup was expecting a much tougher process, taking much longer and consulting it much more thoroughly. It is hard to prove, but the whispers are strong. It is hard to believe that FirstGroup would otherwise have gone with the best bid so early on. There is a suspicion of some naivety on the part of the regulator. I use Great Western services. Recently, a train was held up about halfway along our route because train staff were awaited. The service is too often delayed, although it is by no means the worst in the country and, to be fair, there has been some good investment in rolling stock. My constituents and I feel strongly that, because it was our franchise for which money was changing hands, we should have got the overwhelming benefit and that funds should not have been diverted to other parts of the country, where the franchise was not up for renegotiation. Good luck to the other areas, which need investment, but this was about Great Western and we expected substantive improvements. We were told that there would be 32 new vehicles, and I thought for a moment that the entire inter-city fleet was being renewed, but it turned out that there were to be only four new trains: hardly a spectacular improvement. Indeed, the huge gain that we were meant to have got had already been advertised and the processes were already under way. The franchising director's excuses are simply incredible. Some so-called benefits have been negotiated. The Minister told my hon. Friend the Member for Northavon that the fines were £1,000 for a train cancellation and £250 for a train being more than half an hour late. Frankly, in terms of the costs of running inter-city trains and the benefits that train companies get, let alone the subsidies, that is a joke. If the company has bothered to stock the buffet properly—in itself a regular problem—the extra profits from the sales as passengers while away the extra time with a coffee and a burger or a Twix, or whatever slim pickings happen to be left, will more than outweigh the £250 fine, quite apart from the ticket sales that have already been made. Whatever the ultimate benefits or the quality of the companies may be, the Great Western takeover has shown the regulatory system failing to deliver the benefits it should deliver. It has failed to deliver passenger consultation, and it has left Ministers powerless. That is the legacy of the previous Government, and we look to the new Government to introduce legislation on this matter early on. I have one question for the Minister. Can we be assured that legislation will be introduced in the autumn for the House to get through as urgently as possible so we do not see these problems again? I have every sympathy for the Minister, but that will give out if the new Government do not take action to deliver improvements.10.29 am
May I apologise for inadvertently leaving my pager on audible mode earlier? I realise the discourtesy to the House that that represents.
The Great Western takeover is the first, and it will set the tone for others. It is important that our feelings be made known. Reading is the first major stop on the Great Western line going west. For the past two centuries, if Reading has not functioned effectively—whether in terms of canals in the early days, rail or road—the western transport network has fallen apart. At the meeting attended by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. Morgan) last week, I was disturbed to hear it said that people using the trains had a choice. The people of Reading, by and large, use the trains to commute to Paddington to go to work. They do not have a choice at all. The point was made that because the trains have got worse, it has become more of an option to drive to London. That is not a realistic option for the people of Reading. I do not believe that the activities engaged in during the takeover should be allowed to continue unchecked as future rail companies change hands. This may be a Utopian vision, but when any rail or bus company changes hands, I would like citizens' juries to be established, made up of the users—the people who will be the victims of any bad practice, inefficiency or incompetence. Those people should have the opportunity to have their say on who should run the railways. A lot of people have become a lot richer as a result of the takeover—that is the way in which the system was set up. Many of us welcomed the changes in the objectives, instructions and guidance last year which obliged any future franchise holder to invest. Under the previous rules, the investor was obliged to get the best financial deal. Now, companies must invest and demonstrate that they would provide better facilities for cyclists and more accessible trains. That is all well and good. We have heard that after the takeover, punctuality has not been a problem. However, passengers cannot have the figures on punctuality on the Reading service because they are commercially confidential. If passengers cannot have the figures, their feelings are based on perception only. Perception only it may be, but I am concerned about the experience of those using the trains. Let us look to the future and change the system if necessary. We look forward to the White Paper and a strategic rail authority, but the important thing in the short and medium term is to have decent rail services which people can use and which offer a true alternative to the car—especially over short distances and close to London.10.33 am
I had not intended to speak in the debate, as I came in to the Chamber to reserve my seat for Prime Minister's questions. I am a Whip's nightmare in this respect—I listened to the arguments and became interested.
The hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. Morgan) is right to raise the subject of getting takeovers right. Precedents are established here—I would not deny that. There was an implication in his remarks that takeovers were bad intrinsically. On the whole, the existence of takeovers is a good thing, as they are a threat as well as a spur to inefficient management. His central argument was whether there was a planned deterioration, and I want to address that. The hon. Member for Wansdyke (Dan Norris) said that an excuse book was needed and suggested that it would be a pretty big book. Under what Labour Members see as the Utopian days of the nationalised system, the excuse book would have been very small because people did not give excuses. No reason was ever given why trains were late, and they were late much more often then than they are these days. No excuse was given because the passenger did not count. There was not the transparency that there is now—although problems occur when there is transparency. The hon. Member for Cardiff, West alluded to the casting of blame between Railtrack and the operator. Of course there is buck-passing, but there is also merit in that the matter is discussed and, on odd occasions, it is provable whether Railtrack or the operator is at fault. The system is much more open and transparent to the customer. We must look at privatisation and the problems of running a railway in the context of greater transparency. The hon. Gentleman said that, in his view, there was some kind of planned intent to run down the railways. He did not want to use the word "conspiracy", but he accepted that he could not find a better word. That is a grave charge, which may even have potentially criminal implications. Before he goes hell for leather on this matter, he needs to produce more evidence than saying, circumstantially, that the company is providing a worse service than before.My argument concerned the perverse incentive built into the system.
I understand precisely what the hon. Gentleman is saying. I am merely playing devil's advocate, as someone needs to come back at him.
The hon. Gentleman stated that due to the previous circumstances of the structure of the company, there would be difficulty in terms of investing in new rolling stock. He said that the management of the company— they are also the owners, having 51 per cent. of the stock—would be unable to afford to buy or lease new stock. That needs careful analysis. A back-to-back deal for a leasing arrangement, as he himself said, is the way in which it could be done. That is a conventional way in which to set up the structures for such investment. Such a deal is typically done on the back of outside financing, and on the basis of a lease being sustainable and providing the payback over a period of time that outside financiers would require. That kind of deal does not require the massive resources implicit in the hon. Gentleman's argument. A central part of the hon. Gentleman's argument was that management could not afford further development, that they ran down companies to impress the regulator and achieve the takeover that they required, and that they then took away the cash in their pockets. There are a number of steps in that argument; hon. Members must analyse them much more carefully than the hon. Gentleman has done before coming to a conclusion about the matter.10.39 am
I sympathise with Labour Members, who raised a catalogue of complaints; I cannot address them all because of time constraints.
It is the job of the Office of Passenger Rail Franchising to resolve such matters. The previous Government set up Opraf in passengers' best interests, to monitor the performance of franchisees and to ensure compliance with franchising agreements. We wanted rail privatisation to work then, and we want it to work now, which is why we gave the Secretary of State for Transport powers to set out objectives, instructions and guidance for Opraf's franchising director as he set about transforming Britain's railways. In his latest annual report on the privatised network, Mr. John O'Brien, the franchising director, stated:"Annual support from the taxpayer for the railways will fall over the next six years from over £1 billion to just under £1 billion. The franchisees are committed to investing over £1.5 billion into the rail business.
That is the answer to the central complaint about quality: Opraf's powers were made available before May 1997, but the director must put them into effect. Guarantees were given for better trains, new services, better security, improved ticketing arrangements and more information for travellers, which is why we gave Opraf the duty to safeguard the existing strengths of rail travel. Mr. O'Brien recognises thatFranchise plan commitments include new rolling stock on 10 franchises, new services across the network, better security measures, new ideas in ticketing and improved information. I believe that these deals offer effective and innovative services to passengers as well as value for money for the taxpayer."
I could not agree more. Labour Members would also agree, although they might ask why problems are occurring. Mr. O'Brien adds that"network benefits such as connections, through ticketing, interavailability and rail cards are particularly important."
That is how he views his powers, all of which were in place before May 1997. He is an uncompromising regulator who is ready to use the powers given to him by the previous Government. His raison d'être is to provide a good deal for rail passengers. We set up Opraf because we wanted a regulator who would make Britain's railways run better, and his powers were set out in the objectives, instructions and guidance. The November 1996 objective, which was the last to be set under the previous Government, was to"it is now my highest priority to ensure that the benefits which the franchise deals promised are secured for passengers. Opraf has put in place a rigorous regime of data collection, review and audit to ensure the delivery of franchise obligations and to incentivise operators to perform better."
"Secure an overall improvement in the quality of railway passenger and station services available to railway passengers."
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
No. I shall not be able to complete my points if I give way.
The Government wanted to impose their own rules. The November 1997 objective wasThe words are almost identical to those in the November 1996 objective, but the Government claim a great triumph over the change of shareholders in the franchises on the strength of that changed guideline. In the Thames Trains franchise, the Go-Ahead group, which is already the majority shareholder, bought back 34.8 per cent. of the shares currently held by the management and employees of Thames Trains. The hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. Morgan) set out the details of the FirstGroup takeover of Great Western Holdings. Before agreeing to the takeovers, the franchising director withheld his agreement to change of ownership until £75 million of passenger benefits and further investment were obtained. The Government were quick to say that that was a result of the new guidance, which was introduced in November 1997. It was nothing of the sort. First, many of the improvements would have been achieved without the intervention of the franchising director and the change of ownership enabled the companies to confirm that further investment improvement was already going to take place. I agree with the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Mr. Taylor): the companies knew that there would be a price to pay the moment that they asked for the regulator's approval for the takeovers. They held back a bit so that they could make an improved offer. Secondly, the improvements could have been achieved without any change of guidance. The franchising director already had powers in the 1996 guidance note and the changes in the November 1997 guidance note do not add up to a row of beans in the takeovers. A cosmetic operation was undertaken by the Government, who wanted to take credit for any long-term improvement in the privatised railways. I believe that, in the long term, there will be an improvement in the privatised railways. It is easy to take a snapshot of the current situation and say that it proves that privatisation of the railways has failed. Investment is proposed by the Virgin group and an announcement was made yesterday by National Express: hundreds of millions of pounds of investment is going into the railways. The travel time to Glasgow on the west coast main line will come down by nearly 90 minutes by 2005. Such improvements will take place in the long term. Labour Members who attended the meeting of the all-party west coast main line group heard directors say that 90 per cent. of delays were caused by outdated rolling stock and that there would be a faster, more reliable service when it was replaced. Every privatisation that was carried out by the previous Government struggled at first. Hon. Members should read newspaper headlines from the mid-1980s, when we privatised British Telecom. The Labour party passionately opposed that privatisation and Labour Members gleefully came to the House with stories of telephone kiosks not working. Today, no one in their right mind would say that BT is a failure and should be renationalised. It is a British success story of which we can be proud."to secure progressive improvement in the quality of railway passenger and station services available to railway passengers."
We are talking about trains.
I am discussing the general principle of privatisation, which is under attack.
The Government have difficult decisions to make over the next few weeks about the channel tunnel rail link, Eurostar and London Underground, and we wish them well. Labour Members should consider the fact that Railtrack would not be a central player in those matters, and the Government could not look to it to provide the investment and expertise required in those projects, if it were still in the public sector. That alone illustrates the success of bringing the private sector to the railways, which will be a success in the long term.10.48 am
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. Morgan) on securing the debate. There has been great interest in it, but all hon. Members in the Chamber, with the possible exception of the hon. Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Ottaway), wish with all their heart that there had never been a need to have it. The root cause of the problems that we have been discussing is rail privatisation. The hon. Member for Croydon, South praised privatisation.
Will the Minister give way?
No. The hon. Gentleman referred to British Telecom as a shining example of the success of such processes. We are, in fact, debating railways and trains and I was not aware that British Telecom received £1.8 billion every year from the taxpayer to subsidise its activities. That is certainly the case for our railways, yet as hon. Member after hon. Member has pointed out this morning, they and their constituents are experiencing difficulties in obtaining what the Government are committed to see that they obtain for those vast amounts of money—namely, a safe, reliable, affordable railway service throughout the United Kingdom.
Would it surprise my hon. Friend to learn that last year, I tried to catch a train from Bristol Temple Meads station, which was not indicated on the departure board? I could not find anyone to give me information. Eventually, I found a man in uniform. I asked him when the train was leaving and from where. He said that he did not know, but that he was the driver so if I stuck with him, I would catch the train.
I wish that I could say that my hon. Friend's intervention caused me some surprise, but I regret to say that that story probably could be replicated throughout the United Kingdom.
This morning, my hon. Friends the Members for South Swindon (Ms Drown), for Stroud (Mr. Drew), for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) and for Wansdyke (Dan Norris) all raised the issue of poor service on Great Western. My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon spoke of her constituents' sense of outrage at the vast profits made via the takeover when their stations were poor and the service was bad. That point was also made about late arrivals by my hon. Friends the Members for Newport, West and for Wansdyke. The hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Mr. Taylor) said that railway staff were fearful of losing their jobs if they complained about what they saw as a deterioration of services. If he or they wish to write to me, I will ensure that their concerns are passed forward without any possible comeback for the individuals who raise them. There should in every industry be a whistleblowing service so that no worker feels that he is under threat as a result of expressing concerns about the failure of the management to fulfil their obligation to provide a high quality of service to the travelling public.Does my hon. Friend agree that not only punctuality of trains, but the circumstances that prevail during journeys cause concern to passengers? I have found on the journey from Cardiff to London that the train shakes extremely on certain parts of the journey. When I was travelling up last week, I was drinking a cup of coffee that went all over me because the train was shaking so much. That is something that I have noticed on journeys especially in the past six months. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is another issue that causes a great deal of concern to rail passengers?
My hon. Friend raises a point that is, or should be, a cause of concern to all Members of the House—namely, the failure to make proper levels of investment in infrastructure, especially rolling stock. It is a scandal and a disgrace that the previous Government allowed the rolling stock companies to be outside any regulation. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions has asked the Rail Regulator to look into the issue. We should be seeing new rolling stock appearing on our networks; we are not. We are, however, seeing the directors of ROSCOs turning themselves into millionaires virtually overnight.
A number of speakers in the debate have expressed concern about the substantial profits enjoyed by the directors of train operating companies as a result of the recent takeovers. Once again, the privatised railway has produced enormous profits for a few individuals, all as a result of the contracts awarded by the previous Government. I regret that there is nothing that this Government can do about those contracts, but what we can and have done is to ensure that the passenger gets the maximum benefits possible from any takeover deal. Passengers on the privatised railway deserve the best service, and we are determined to ensure that they share the benefits of any takeover. That is what we mean by a passenger dividend. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West said, last November, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport issued new objectives—a word that my hon. Friend, in a temporary aberration, could not remember—instructions and guidance to the franchising director. These scrapped the previous Government's guidance—to promote privatisation—and told him to put the passenger first. I am pleased that as a result of these new instructions, he has been able to secure substantial packages of passenger improvements as part of the recent takeover deals. My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister has also asked the franchising director to ensure there is a significant passenger dividend in any future takeover of a train operating company. That dividend has been practically expressed in the franchising director's announcement of improvements worth in excess of £75 million for passengers of Great Western Trains, Great Eastern and North West Trains. Passengers can look forward to £32 million-worth of new rolling stock to be in service by June 2002, a week's free travel for Great Western season ticket holders and more bus-rail through ticketing on nine routes. For the first time, despite the protestations of the hon. Member for Croydon, South, there will be a performance regime for Great Western services under which the operator will pay penalties if trains are late or cancelled. That was not in the original agreement. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West expressed his concern that the newly announced order for rolling stock was an old order that Great Western Holdings had announced, I believe, towards the end of last year. He was right in saying that a rolling stock notice appeared in the Official Journal of the European Union, but I understand that asking for a quote on rolling stock through the Official Journal does not imply any commitment to procure. There is no guarantee that following such an advertisement the rolling stock will be procured. I understand that the package negotiated by the franchising director has converted that possibility that rolling stock would be procured into a firm, contractual commitment. The franchising director must ensure that all such new commitments are met. Opinions certainly vary about the appropriate level of payments made for late or cancelled trains—a point made by the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell. However, if the franchising director had sought higher payments, it is possible that FirstGroup would have reduced other aspects of the passenger dividend, and there is a limit to the value that can be extracted in negotiations of this sort. Before the Great Western deal, there was no performance regime for inter-city services. On Great Eastern services, all 96 slam-door vehicles will be phased out of service by no later than December 2002 and replaced by modern rolling stock, at an estimated cost of £35 million. On North West Trains services, the franchising director's provisional agreement included £1 million for additional passenger benefits, security improvements and—a point that I hope will be noted—better wheelchair access at core stations by the time new trains are introduced. Since the franchising director announced on 6 March the package of passenger benefits provisionally agreed with FirstGroup plc, he has had further consultations and negotiations. As a result, additional benefits for passengers and passenger transport executives in the north-west have been secured and were announced by the franchising director on 30 March. These extra benefits include various payments by North West Trains towards the cost of refurbishing PTE vehicles in Greater Manchester and Merseyside, an additional £200,000 to the £1 million already agreed for additional passenger benefits, and a penalty regime in the event of late introduction of the new rolling stock already committed under the franchise agreement. I also understand that FirstGroup and North West Trains will give Greater Manchester PTE undertakings on bus-rail competition in the Manchester PTE area. The other benefits agreed on 6 March remain as announced by the franchising director, with the addition of a similar penalty regime in the event of late introduction of the new Great Western rolling stock. The franchising director confirmed his approval of the change of control on 30 March. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West referred to the meeting that he and other hon. Members had with the franchising director last week for him to explain the position and answer questions. The franchising director has a contractual power of approval or veto over change of control in franchise agreements. He has used this contractual power to negotiate passenger dividends. However, this does not amount to a full-scale renegotiation—Order. We must now move on to the next debate.
D'oyly Carte
11 am
I promise to set an example of brevity, Mr. Deputy Speaker, both because I believe in it—I have seldom heard a speech lasting 60 minutes that would not have been better delivered in six—and because I know that many other hon. Members wish to speak. Indeed, this debate is in some sense a collective enterprise: by pure coincidence, I understand that several hon. Members asked for the debate in almost identical terms, but mine was the name plucked out of the opera hat, for which I am extremely grateful.
This is not the weightiest issue ever to come before the House, but nor is it negligible. It speaks to our theatre, our music, our tradition, our identity, our sense of history and our sense of humour. We British—I almost said we English; as we have had so many Scottish and Welsh debates lately, let us have an English one—we English have no Mozart, no Puccini, no Wagner but, my goodness, we have Gilbert and Sullivan, who have entertained and illuminated our country and the world for more than 120 years and whose legacy is now in danger. The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company is in danger of extinction unless we act to save it. The time is short, the threat is real; this is the place and this is the time to sound the alarm bells. If this seems to be an April fool's debate, it is an April fool's debate in terms of its timing only; its substance is serious. To set the scene, let me give a little bit of history. Gilbert and Sullivan first worked together in 1871. In 1875, Richard D'Oyly Carte, a genius of stagecraft and the foremost theatrical manager of his time, founded the opera company that bears his name as a vehicle for their often conflicting talents; he brought them together and brought them back together when they quarrelled for more than a quarter of a century. The result was the extraordinary and unsurpassed tradition of English light opera. The music and the company survived through most of this century but, in 1981, it died for a little while and was only revived in 1988 thanks to a bequest from Dame Bridget D'Oyly Carte, the last surviving member of the family. Now it is in danger again and we should understand that there is no white knight, fairy godmother or family benefactor waiting in the wings this time. The company needs £500,000 before June and, if it does not get it, the dates it has pencilled in for an autumn tour will be rubbed out and the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company will be rubbed out as well and it will disappear from our cultural history. The issue is important. In the absence of white knights or fairy godmothers, who can save the company? The obvious candidate is the Arts Council of England which, last year, contributed a one-off payment of £250,000, which enabled the company to put on two productions—a revival of "Iolanthe" and Franz Lehar's "The Count of Luxembourg" in English, of course, because we are speaking of accessible light opera. Those productions were critically acclaimed and a huge success with the public; the company toured the country and charged prices that people could afford and the people loved it. The Arts Council is therefore the obvious candidate to be the company's saviour. However, look at the proposed funding of opera in this country for this year and next: nearly £12 million is to be given to the English National Opera and nearly £8 million to the Royal Opera—about £30 million in all; but for the D'Oyly Carte, the oldest opera company in this country and perhaps the best known, nothing at all, not a brass farthing. It is orphaned and unfunded— a thing of shreds and patches. What then of another possible source—lottery money? The same Arts Council is the sole channel for allocating lottery grants. Those were, until recently, available only for capital projects, but of what use is a capital project to a touring company? Its strength and its essence are its mobility. The D'Oyly Carte brings art to the people, yet it is threatened with going out of business because of the fiscal stringency and, dare I say, the prejudice of the Arts Council of England. Last year, the rules were changed and funding was allocated for something called stabilisation. Fifteen companies benefited, but all were already in receipt of Arts Council grants in aid, which is to say that to those who had was given more and to those who, like the D'Oyly Carte, had nothing was given nothing. One has to wonder—we certainly wonder—what the Arts Council has against the oldest and most distinguished of our opera companies. Perhaps the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company is too popular; perhaps it is too accessible; perhaps people like it too much. Perhaps if it wrapped up bricks in muslin or islands in plastic, it would be deemed worthy of Arts Council funding. Perhaps if it cross-dressed the cast of "The Gondoliers" or had the crew of "HMS Pinafore" clad in black leather and chains, it would be deemed worthy of Arts Council funding. However, it does not do that: it brings light opera to the people and performs the magic of the stage in loved productions that people understand. Those productions are not frozen in time—the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company changes, innovates and brings things up to date. It does not break with its audience, but carries its audience with it. For this, it seems to me, the company is being penalised. I sense cultural elitism and snobbery being deployed by the mandarins and Pooh-Bahs of the arts establishment. Their coded accusation is apparently that the company's repertoire is "unchallenging"—what a weasel word that is. Let us apply it to one of Gilbert and Sullivan's most famous creations, "Iolanthe", which was a parody of this institution, albeit more of the other end than of this. It reaches out to us across a century and more and speaks to us with relevance in the 1990s as it did in the 1880s. Last year's production was updated with material that spoke of the wonders of life in the new Labour age—and so it should have been, because Gilbert and Sullivan created something that is permanently updatable and which speaks to us now. Remember that "Iolanthe" was about a still unreformed House of Lords and one of its leading figures was—I must put this tactfully—a Lord Chancellor who had a certain sense of who he was in the order of things. All it lacks is a wallpaper song and, although I should be happy to abandon my parliamentary duties for half a day to try to compose such a song, I suspect that there are others who could do it better. Gilbert and Sullivan, now as then, argue for a certain freedom and independence of spirit, which is healthy not only in our cultural life, but in our political life. We would do well to heed them in these days of three-line Whips, an entrenched party system and the unspontaneous nature of Question Time, which we shall again have this afternoon. Certain lines reach across the century:- "When in that House MPs divide,
- If they've a brain and cerebellum too,
- They have to leave that brain outside,
- And vote just as their leaders tell 'em to."
11.9 am
:Mr. Deputy Speaker, I have a song to sing, O! I thought that you might break in at that point and say,
but I will not bother to sing my speech. If I did, I would demonstrate a pathetic standard of amateur performance. We need the D'Oyly Carte in order to improve the standard of Gilbert and Sullivan performances in this country. The company is the main trunk of Gilbert and Sullivan provision in our society. It is fantastically popular with enthusiastic audiences. People like Gilbert and Sullivan: it is part of our heritage. However, maintaining that heritage depends on keeping the D'Oyly Carte, which is the professional core of that heritage, going. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell) said—I shall call him that in this non-party political atmosphere—the future of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company is under threat. Unless financial support is forthcoming by June—we are talking about a sum of less than £1 million—the structure will crumble and the company will cease to exist. Many hon. Members applied for this debate to plead with the Arts Council to do something to save D'Oyly Carte. It is irresponsible for the Arts Council to continue to pass the buck. The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company deserves support because it will never be fully commercial, yet it is more commercial than the alternative forms of musical endeavour that the Arts Council supports. In fact, that is its crime: because D'Oyly Carte is more commercial, the Arts Council will not support it. In its letter to hon. Members—which contains a succession of excuses for doing nothing—the Arts Council shifts from one argument to another. First, it claims that the company is not run properly. However, when its management structures are examined and it is proved that the company is run properly, the Arts Council argues that its productions are not of a high standard."Sing me your song, O",
Is it not ironic that the Arts Council, which accuses D'Oyly Carte of not being run properly, should sink hundreds of millions of pounds into the Royal Opera house, which is certainly not well run?
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for stealing my next point—although he almost certainly puts it better than I could. That is exactly the case: the Arts Council would rather pour money into a bottomless pit at the Royal Opera house than provide the minimal amount that is needed to keep D'Oyly Carte going. In defending its position, the Arts Council continually shifts the argument. It claims that D'Oyly Carte's standards are not high enough, although it received positively rave reviews—which commented specifically about the very high production standards—for its last tour.
The Arts Council's letter to hon. Members contains a series of excuses for not doing its duty. Why is the Arts Council not doing its duty by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company? I believe that there are two basic reasons. Reading between the lines, the Arts Council seems to think that, if it supports that company's operating costs— it does not need the sort of institutional support that is given to touring companies—it will open the door and everyone else will want the same kind of support. However, the Arts Council neglects the argument that, if it does not provide that support, the D'Oyly Carte will go under. It is insane for the Arts Council to pour money into the Royal Opera house and invest in theatres and permanent facilities all over the country but not support those organisations that tour the country and can fill those theatres. D'Oyly Carte tours very economically. It costs less to put Burns on seats with D'Oyly Carte than with grand opera, Opera North or other subsidised companies because Gilbert and Sullivan are more popular. D'Oyly Carte tours more often for longer periods and visits more places. Its costs are much lower than that of any other comparable form of musical entertainment or opera. It is right to support D'Oyly Carte in this emergency. The Arts Council's argument becomes a vicious circle: it will not support D'Oyly Carte because it is not on the list, but the company cannot get on the list because it is a touring company that is not institutionally based, and therefore cannot be assisted with institutional funds. That brings us to the nub of the Arts Council's case. It never states its case explicitly—although it sometimes comes near to saying it—so we cannot attack and lampoon it. My hon. Friend was absolutely right to refer to the cultural snobbery on the part of elitists who view Gilbert and Sullivan as popular, middlebrow and beneath their gaze and their contempt. That is why the Arts Council will not support D'Oyly Carte. Furthermore, the Arts Council will not support the company because it is commercial. If it were not commercial, the company would be eligible for the same Arts Council support that is poured into alternative entertainment. I came to know Gilbert and Sullivan's work at Manchester university. As a humble working-class lad, I considered it to be positively upper class. However, the Arts Council considers it to be middlebrow and down-market. It is as simple as that. Today, we must say loudly and clearly to the Government and to the Arts Council: it is no use passing the buck; something must be done. Unless a minimal contribution is made to assist this wonderful national institution, it will go under—and the country will be the poorer if it does.11.15 am
I congratulate the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell) on securing this debate and on putting forcefully the case for re-examining funding for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has a rapport with a particular Gilbert and Sullivan character. Perhaps as a former, much-travelled BBC journalist, he relates to the wandering minstrel; or perhaps—and we shall never know—in some intimate moment in a far-off country, even to Little Buttercup.
I apologise to the House for having to leave the Chamber early, but I must attend the memorial service for Woodrow Wyatt, a former distinguished Member of both Houses of Parliament whose colourful and rich personality could have drawn inspiration from a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) on a good speech which made the point extremely well. Hon. Members will no doubt speak in this debate about revenue funding and capital grants and about the distinction between grant in aid and so-called "stabilisation funds". They will not wish to be detained with the labyrinthine details of arts funding or with the stop-go economics of D'Oyly Carte's recent history. The blunt truth is that, however important those details are, the D'Oyly Carte company needs a significant injection of cash if it is to survive. If it is to get that money from public funds, it will be through the Arts Council of England. I shall not beat about the bush. In my personal view, it would be a cause for national mourning if D'Oyly Carte were refused appropriate Arts Council funding. The company plays to packed houses around the country. Its productions have been seen by more than 1 million people since its revival in 1988, and it is the guardian of a valuable part of our theatrical heritage. Anyone who attended D'Oyly Carte's presentation in the Grand Committee Room in the Palace of Westminster before Christmas will certainly recall a singularly enjoyable and memorable event. The company has been remarkably successful in the arts world in attracting sponsorship and public support. I pay special tribute to Sir Michael Bishop, who matched a £1 million bequest to D'Oyly Carte to enable the company to be relaunched and who has supported it with his leadership and generosity ever since. D'Oyly Carte provides an invaluable introduction to the pleasures of operatic performances for audiences and performers alike. It particularly affords an opportunity for young people to learn about light opera, and the stimulus provided may encourage them to enjoy other forms of opera as well. D'Oyly Carte productions provide entertainment that transcends all age groups. It is a wonderful link to our cultural past—an expression of what has helped to forge us into the nation that we are today—yet, apparently, it is ineligible for an adequate grant because of the attitude of those in the Arts Council who decide these things. There can be no other fundamental explanation for the endless to-ing and fro-ing, false starts and fruitless meetings which have surrounded that funding problem over the years. Apparently, D'Oyly Carte simply is not good enough. The Arts Council says that things have been better since it gave the company some money, but still, somehow, they are not good enough. Press reviews, on the other hand, have been overwhelmingly favourable. Nevertheless, "Could do better"—or, more likely, "We would rather that they did something else"—seems to be the message. It has been suggested to me that light opera is not the sort of thing that the great and the good who run the Arts Council believe that they should spend money on. It does not cater to the taste of a sensitive minority. It is not expensive. It is not inaccessible. It is not experimental. It is not—well, new. In fact, D'Oyly Carte is more than 120 years old. It certainly does not need to be rebranded. The crisis confronting D'Oyly Carte highlights an aspect of the current system of arts funding. Many people feel that, in that system, a cultural elite mysteriously decides what the public should want. Consequently, in order to remain in the charmed circle of so-called clients, theatre and opera companies, galleries and performers must negotiate a perpetually changing series of obstacles and requirements. Often the public feel that, the more obscure and irrelevant the offering, the better the chances of success. Is it acceptable that the Arts Council should pay so little attention to popular taste? Gilbert and Sullivan is genuinely popular; indeed, a new CD of the most famous songs is currently a best seller. Today's debate is an interesting lesson for the Government in accurate terminology. I do not know how many things have been renamed "for the people"; I imagine that the Soviet Union still holds the record for that, if not by much. However, here is something that really deserves the people's name. The Secretary of State has talked about making the London opera companies more accessible to people, but here, surely, is the real people's opera—for the many, not the few. The one refreshing departure in arts funding in recent years has been the introduction of the national lottery, yet, regrettably—this is part of the continuing problem—the proposed new opportunities fund is robbing money that would have gone into the arts, and undermines the core basis on which the national lottery was originally established. An enormous number of people love light operatic music, and have as much right to a slice of the Arts Council of England's funding as have other minority interests that benefit from it. There is now new leadership in the Arts Council. If money is not found by June, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company may well cease to exist. That would be a tragedy for an enduring element of the country's cultural life. The changes currently being undertaken at the Arts Council provide a real opportunity to consider the company's plight sympathetically. After some of the Arts Council's more controversial decisions, the changes afford it the chance to reconnect with a large number of people in this country, in satisfying their true cultural interests. I appeal to the new chairman of the Arts Council to consider carefully what has been said in the House this morning and the many representations that he has received. Let him cut through all the complexity and obfuscation of the past few years in a truly decisive way, like a real modern Major-General.
11.23 am
I suspect that I am alone in the Chamber this morning in being entitled to wear a D'Oyly Carte necktie. It is given to those who have toured Gilbert and Sullivan opera abroad and played outside this country's shores; more than 20 years ago, the fact that I was able to do that gave me one of my introductions to performing music. I am sorry to say that those neckties are no longer given out by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company—it can no longer afford to do so. Unfortunately, I am no longer able to wear mine because of the over-zealous support and enthusiasm of my wife for a local jumble sale some months ago. Otherwise, I would certainly have sported it in the Chamber this morning.
My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) started by singing that he hadand had you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, been Elsie, you might have responded by saying,"a song to sing, O"
The song that was sung was, of course, that of a lovelorn loon—the song of a forsaken love. If you look at the history of the relationship between the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and the Arts Council of England, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I think that you will see, in that tale of rejected love, an example that might have been taken from the song. I want not only to comment on the way in which the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company has provided sheer enjoyment for millions of people in this country, but to focus on the value for money that it has provided. Since 1988, the company has performed to more than 1 million people, giving 174 weeks of performances in 40 major touring theatres throughout the country. Crucially, it has earned more than £8.5 million at the box office. That has been done, not by charging exorbitant rates but, as the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell) said, by charging a modest entrance fee to hear and to be entertained for an evening of sheer joy. In fact, almost 89 per cent. of the funding of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company has come from its own efforts, not from public sector support. Slightly more than £11 million has kept the company going since 1988. Only 11 per cent. of that has come from the public sector."Sing me your song, O".
I have followed the hon. Gentleman's argument closely. I warmly support the views that have been expressed, and agree that it would be a tragedy if the company were allowed to close. In the period in which the company earned that money, by how much did the Arts Council subsidise other operas and artistic productions?
I am happy to have that cue, because I was just about to consider the way in which the finances of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company compare with those of other institutions sponsored by the Arts Council of England.
In just one year—1998–99—there is a spend of £31 million on a total of 11 opera companies, ranging from the Royal Opera, English National Opera and Opera North down to the very small and excellent opera groups, Pimlico Opera, Opera Circus and Opera Factory. In the eight years from 1989 to 1997 public sector support for the D'Oyly Carte amounted to just £1.25 million, and most of that was not from the Arts Council of England, but from other public sector support.To help the House, can the hon. Gentleman tell us how much the Arts Council gave the D'Oyly Carte during the period that he mentioned? Was it £50,000? Was it £30,000? I think that the company received £50,000 for that entire period. Only in the past year, by way of compensation, has it received a little more. Am I right in thinking that, in nine years, the D'Oyly Carte was given £50,000?
Yes. That demonstrates graphically the disparity of funding for a company which, despite moving its base twice during that period, has managed against all the odds to give sheer pleasure to more than 1 million people in this country. Its performances have been of a consistently high standard—one has only to read the reviews in The Times to note that—and it has branched out into other aspects of light opera over that period. The company is giving great enjoyment and providing great value for money. The Arts Council must now take it on board and give it long-term sustainable funding.
11.31 am
I am delighted to take part briefly in the debate. I begin by congratulating the white knight who introduced it with an elegant speech and who spoke passionately for us all.
I take issue slightly with my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), who spoke disparagingly about amateurs. I got my love for Gilbert and Sullivan at the Theatre Royal, Cleethorpes, when at the age of eight I was taken by my parents to see "The Mikado". The rhythm and tunefulness of the music, and the enthusiasm and spontaneity of the production, gave me a love for Gilbert and Sullivan that has never left me. I remember taking my own children to Wolverhampton to the touring D'Oyly Carte in the days before 1981. It was one of the formative experiences of their lives. Both my sons share the enthusiasm and delight that I take in Gilbert and Sullivan. That is not unrepresentative of people in all walks of life all over the country. If the chairman of the Arts Council, who after all came to fame through his achievements with Granada, wants to help the people who have helped him, he should say to his colleagues on the Arts Council, "Here is a cause that is really worthy of support." As I speak, I think of the D'Oyly Carte that was revived in 1988. I went to the two opening productions. I remember a wonderful production of "The Yeomen of the Guard". I was thrilled, as so many were, that the D'Oyly Carte was back on the road. It would be an appalling indictment of our arts subsidy if we all had to put on black ties—I certainly would—in June or July this year. Arts Council snobs who think that poetry should not rhyme and music should not have tunes are on my list. As far as I am concerned, they would not be missed. If the Arts Council, for which I have some regard, is to deserve a reputation for helping the arts in all forms, and if heaps of scrap metal and daubs that are incomprehensible to the majority of the people of this country merit major subsidies, and tinned turds at the Serpentine are worthy of public subsidy, surely Gilbert and Sullivan, that wonderful marriage of marvellous music and superb verse, deserves Arts Council help. I hope that the Minister, who brings a United Kingdom dimension to the debate, will speak up for that quintessentially English duo when he replies. I know that many people in Scotland deeply appreciate Gilbert and Sullivan, and I am glad that the Minister is nodding. I hope that he will realise that throughout the United Kingdom and far beyond, if the flagship that is D'Oyly Carte is sunk without trace, many, many people will be sad. It must not be sunk. I shall not continue, as many of my hon. Friends—we are all hon. Friends in the Chamber today—want to take part in the debate. Let the united message of parliamentarians go out to the Arts Council, emphasising that D'Oyly Carte is a thing of great worth. Sir Arthur Sullivan was a composer of high renown. We do not want a sad and plaintive playing of "The Lost Chord" this summer. Let the Arts Council follow the example of our white knight in the Chamber, and come to the aid and rescue of one of the most marvellous institutions that we have.11.35 am
I have been a lover of Gilbert and Sullivan for many years. The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) said that amateurs were not performing it as it should be performed, but I agree with the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) that the D'Oyly Carte company has always been an inspiration to amateurs.
Last week I went to see "Iolanthe" by the Houghton players—the Southport Gilbert and Sullivan society— who have been going for 35 years. They gave a remarkable performance. At the end, the young gentleman who changes to the politician came forward in a white suit. I though that that was a good touch. They were certainly up to date with their choreography. That politician was supposedly half-man and half-fairy, but we cannot say that of the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell). However, we saw the triumph of the knight—the white suit. I see many amateur performances and speak to the performers. They say that the D'Oyly Carte company inspires them because it tours so much. We have heard that it visited 40 towns and cities, but the true figure is 36, mainly towns. We know that the English National Opera and other major companies occasionally venture out at great expense into the sticks, especially in the north-west, so we rely on the D'Oyly Carte to bring Gilbert and Sullivan to us all. Not many people know that the D'Oyly Carte has a music library, where music is computerised. There are 1,000 clients on its database. The advantages of computerised music are many: a clear and more modern image, greater consistency, and the elimination of copying errors accrued over time. That has huge benefits for Britain's professional and amateur musicians as performance standards inevitably rise. The company's revenue pays for the library—another item that D'Oyly Carte has given to the country. Having acted in many amateur performances, I know that not all the seats are always filled. For D'Oyly Carte, we are talking about 80 per cent. Burns on seats and a level of sponsorship that no other company has ever achieved. The D'Oyly Carte is a first again. I read last week that the Royal Opera had totted up 77 per cent. Burns on seats, but the cost is high. Seats for the D'Oyly Carte are, at most, £23, which amateurs can afford. That is not the case with other opera companies.The hon. Gentleman serves with me on the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport. He may recall that, during its period of touring, the Royal Opera was able to achieve an average of only about 45 per cent. Burns on seats, as the hon. Gentleman—I nearly called him my hon. Friend—so eloquently puts it.
That is correct. The Select Committee has criticised its failure to fill the seats.
With 80 per cent. Burns on seats, the D'Oyly Carte is looking for only 20 per cent., which means about £500,000. That would take it out of trouble and lead it into a new era. The figure of £50,000 was mentioned before, but from all grant systems, the D'Oyly Carte has so far managed to raise a total of £350,000, but that is over the past four years.Ten years.
Yes, 10 years. Most of the other companies have received £31 million this year, so we can see that the figures are disproportionate.
Like many other hon. Members, I wonder whether the Arts Council needs a shake-up. We thought that there had been a shake-up last year, but there is obviously still some dead wood. Perhaps this is the time for a rethink on funding distribution. Since 1985, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company has been performing Gilbert and Sullivan operettas and has been the custodian of a unique British musical history. For the past 15 years, the Arts Council has resolutely refused to acknowledge the achievements of the company, which is now the largest and most prolific touring company in the United Kingdom not in receipt of any regular financial support. The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company is the national light opera company and should be saved. Nobody should say that the floodgates will be opened if the grant goes through because that will not happen. In fact, millions of people will say, "About time too."11.42 am
It is appropriate to be sitting in a green room given the theatrical nature of today's debate.
I want to deal with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and its mass audience appeal. As has been mentioned already, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, by virtue of being a touring company, has regularly visited more than 40 theatres the length and breadth of Britain. I should like to put in a plug by saying that it has visited Bournemouth on several occasions. I am proud to say that I visited the company there and appreciated what it performed. Its audiences do not have to take lengthy car journeys to London or elsewhere and stay in expensive hotels. That is the uniqueness of what it offers as a touring company. The composers at the heart of the repertoire are British and all the foreign operas are sung in English. That is particularly refreshing for a philistine like me. The top price is about £23 and that is less than a west end musical. It is less than the top price for the Royal Opera's "The Merry Widow" at the Shaftesbury theatre, which is about £40. No one can say that the D'Oyly Carte opera is not cheap for all those who go. I know that one can get tickets for as little as £5. That makes it far more accessible. It is affordable and appealing. The D'Oyly Carte has always had enormous appeal as the backbone for British audiences—family groups, works outings, groups of friends and many others attend. I should like to declare an interest by confessing to the House that, before being plucked from relative obscurity and talent-spotted to become a Member of Parliament, I performed in Gilbert and Sullivan. We must look at the issues currently surrounding the D'Oyly Carte. We must have realistic funding so that it can survive and so that we can ensure that the people's opera can reach the public on a more regular basis with a wider and improved repertoire. As has already been said, there is a cultural prejudice. It has a low-brow appeal for some people. So be it. It is provincial, but that is what is wanted by the people who go to see it.The hon. Gentleman mentioned the provincial nature of Gilbert and Sullivan. When I was in Russia last year, either at the Marinsky or the Bolshoi, I saw "Iolanthe" being performed in Russian. It is not simply a provincial British operetta, but is recognised throughout the world as being of great cultural value.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman, it is provincial not just to this country but to other countries around the world. That gives it even more enduring appeal.
While hon. Members are talking about Russia, I must tell them that, when I was involved with re-equipping the studios at Radio Moscow, I thought that I was going to see "Iolanthe" at the Bolshoi. I sat through "Iolanthe" in Russian. There is, of course, "Iolanthe" by Tchaikovsky and I wonder whether the two have been confused.
I am not sure whether that intervention was for me or for the hon. Member for Brent, North (Mr. Gardiner). The length of my performance might increase as I take more interventions, so I will press on.
My hon. Friend was touching on the provincial nature of Gilbert and Sullivan, and discussion has taken place. I am sure that he was going to talk about—if he was not, I am sure that he will now—the importance of D'Oyly Carte and Gilbert and Sullivan in schools. Many young people are introduced to classical music in that way. They may find Wagner and Shostakovich a little heavy, but Gilbert and Sullivan is their introduction to light music and classical music. Does my hon. Friend agree that the D'Oyly Carte company has been the flag carrier for that message in schools?
I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. It does provide an introduction for many people to music generally as well as to light opera. It is palatable and, as I said earlier, if I can accept and understand it, I am sure that many others will.
We must look at what the Arts Council is doing. My fear is that the Arts Council finds it beneath itself to support this company. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant) has already said, we can compare the D'Oyly Carte company with the Royal Opera house. I am also a member of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, which has just conducted an inquiry into the Royal Opera house, where generous funding lives alongside poor management controls on expenditure and the Arts Council could be regarded as having thrown good money after bad. As the Select Committee has already reported, that is not good enough. I should like to see more money going towards a touring opera company such as the one mentioned today, rather than into other projects which we know are inherently badly managed and where money is being wasted. Those who enjoy light operetta have just as much right as those who prefer the more bona fide opera that is touring this country to expect their chosen form of entertainment to be subsidised. The D'Oyly Carte company has never received lottery money, yet the principle of the national lottery was to provide funds to restore our heritage and promote projects which will become a source of national pride. I argue that the work of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company has achieved that over many years. For the Arts Council, lottery money has been used to top up existing lottery grants to the favoured few. We must overcome that in the future. Hon. Members would surely rue the day if we, and those who love Gilbert and Sullivan and other composers, were to lose for ever some of the classical operas such as "Iolanthe", which is being plugged heavily this morning and in which a certain Lord Chancellor's lot is not a happy one. If I may, I should like to quote from it because its relevance today is particularly uncanny. I will not sing the words:- "When you're lying awake with a dismal headache,
- And repose is taboo'd by anxiety,
- I conceive you may use any language you choose
- To Indulge in, without impropriety;
- For your brain is on fire
- The bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder you;
- First your counterpane goes, and uncovers your toes
- And your sheet slips demurely from under you;
- Then the blanketing tickles—You feel like mixed plckles
- So terribly sharp is the pricking
- And you're hot, and you're cross
- And you tumble and toss
- Till there's nothing 'twixt you and the tickling."
11.50 am
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell) on his skill in obtaining this important debate and on his wonderful speech.
Why are we having this debate? I wonder if anyone has thought about it. It is simply because a unique British institution is on the point of being closed because the Arts Council, the custodian of the arts, is refusing to put it on its client status list, which allows regular and annual funding to artistic and opera companies. It has failed totally to respond to public demand. The important point is: why are the Government standing by and letting that happen? Unlike any other opera company, the D'Oyly Carte takes music to the people. It is the only national touring light opera company to do that. All the other opera companies are administratively based in large buildings and have enormous overheads to meet, whereas the D'Oyly Carte is entrepreneurial, commercially managed and has survived on £50,000 from the Arts Council over nine years. In fact, the D'Oyly Carte's problem is that it has been too commercially successful. Its innovations include recently doing a deal with a Harry Ramsden fish and chip restaurant in Nottingham, where every month Gilbert and Sullivan is performed by the D'Oyly Carte to people enjoying fish and chips. Harry Ramsden may become synonymous with Gilbert and Sullivan. Whenever people go to eat fish and chips, they will be singing a merry little tune. D'Oyly Carte also has highly skilled management. The royalty rates of the D'Oyly Carte recordings have just been renegotiated.My hon. Friend mentions trying to succeed commercially. In my constituency, I have a fine theatre, the Yvonne Arnaud, which has tried to succeed commercially and feels that that is exactly why it has such a hard job in getting any money at all out of the Arts Council.
Clearly, the Arts Council has come in for criticism. I hope to add a little more, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention.
The D'Oyly Carte is an opera company with deep roots in what it is to be British—in our heritage and culture— retaining the original Gilbert and Sullivan qualities: it has the lyric sheets, song scores and choreography. It is more accessible to the people than any other. Perhaps most significant, it has lower production costs than any other national company and, I believe, higher artistic quality, so what is wrong with the Arts Council? Why are all of us in here today? What is happening there? I fear that much has been happening. I suspect that, if the D'Oyly Carte were a Stockhausen quartet playing in a wine bar in Ludlow or Cheltenham, the Arts Council would be throwing money at it. There is some truth in the accusation that Gilbert and Sullivan is viewed by the Arts Council as low-brow, down-market, popular and not musically correct. Having been trained for a short time as a pianist at the Royal Academy of Music, I know what it is to be musically correct. There is no doubt about it: Gilbert and Sullivan is not musically correct and Arts Council officials just do not like it. It is true that some Arts Council officials are on their own private trips to suit their personal idiosyncrasies. There has been blatant discrimination against Gilbert and Sullivan and the D'Oyly Carte. I make a serious charge: the D'Oyly Carte has been badly misled by the Arts Council. As joint chairmen of the D'Oyly Carte Gilbert and Sullivan parliamentary group—I am not sure whether they are hon. Friends or hon. Members, but I am happy to say it in this case—my hon. Friends the Members for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) and for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes), we have seen what has been going on in the Arts Council for the past two years. The D'Oyly Carte has been misled by the Arts Council for so long that it has built up debts as a result. The Arts Council must repay the debts that it has allowed the D'Oyly Carte to build. The D'Oyly Carte was led to expect that it had an excellent chance of obtaining funds under lottery stabilisation. I pay tribute to the Secretary of State for National Heritage in the Conservative Government, my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey (Mrs. Bottomley), who persuaded officials that they needed to change the lottery rules specifically to allow lottery money for touring. That was called stabilisation and it was to help pay off any debts or accumulated deficits. The lottery rules were changed. Arts Council officials were told that that would allow them to help organisations that had built up some problems over the years. The problem, however, was that those officials were so arrogant in their selection of who should benefit from stabilisation that they totally disregarded the Government's intention and—this is perhaps significant for the Minister to understand—used the stabilisation fund, which they said would be limited to £5 million, but which they doubled unilaterally to get themselves out of a tight corner financially. In its briefing paper to both Houses of Parliament yesterday the Arts Council said thatyet all the money from stabilisation has gone to those already on its client status list. It was totally deceptive as to what it was doing. It needs to make a statement today as to why it did that and to explain how it is that debts of £6.8 million that were faced by English National Opera were written off. The House deserves a statement by the chairman of the Arts Council as to why his predecessor allowed stabilisation money to go to organisations that it was already funding, rather than do what it was told to do by the Government. We call for an explanation and the Minister should demand one. Perhaps he will give us an answer in his winding-up speech. There is worse to follow. The Arts Council misled the D'Oyly Carte into believing that it was just a matter of time before it would find ways of funding it. In fact, the D'Oyly Carte was strung along. Because it was strung along, its debts have doubled. In the belief that it was a serious candidate for stabilisation, the company commissioned an independent report—by Bonnar and Keenlyside, approved consultants—on the company's future. The report cost the D'Oyly Carte £30,000, but the Arts Council immediately rubbished it, as it did not say what the council wanted to hear. Two months later, in April 1997, the Arts Council—as if by way of compensation—provided a one-off grant of £250,000 to enable the company to undertake an autumn tour. Why should the D'Oyly Carte put on an autumn tour, and why should £250,000 of public money be granted if the company was not to continue? The chairman of the Arts Council allowed that to happen. Why? The Arts Council, contemporaneously with granting £250,000, insisted on yet another report, this time from a Richard Crossland, who was—Arts Council approved, of course—wheeled in to investigate. D'Oyly Carte had to foot another bill, this time for £15,000. Richard Crossland was intimately connected with English National Opera. He failed to disclose that he was contracted to Newcastle city council at the time when the city was talking to D'Oyly Carte. As hon. Members will know, he had other connections with English National Opera. The D'Oyly Carte company had a long and successful period working in conjunction with Birmingham city council. What drove the company out was very simple: the theatre in which it was working went into liquidation. It was a private company that went to the wall. It has been said that Newcastle wanted the D'Oyly Carte up north. However, the Newcastle theatre, and the man behind it, is in a position similar to that in Birmingham. That does not mean that the theatre will go bust, but—as it is not a charity—it would still be in a vulnerable position if the D'Oyly Carte went there. As important, no extra money will be provided by Newcastle. The amount of money offered by the property developer who would like D'Oyly Carte to come to Newcastle is no more than is currently being offered in Wolverhampton, where the company is currently based. Therefore, that promised commercial sponsorship is no more advantageous."Arts Council for England stabilisation money is intended to stabilise so that organisations do not require further revenue funding from the Arts Council for England",
That myth—which keeps coming back, particularly from the Arts Council, as part of a circular argument—about Newcastle should be laid to rest. It is that the Arts Council will not help the company because it should have gone to Newcastle. However, that was not a realistic offer and offered nothing more than was offered in Wolverhampton. It would not have provided the type of money necessary to keep the D'Oyly Carte going. It was not a reasonable offer.
In the past 18 months—perhaps the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not comment further on this—the Arts Council has been in great turmoil. It has had no general secretary and little continuity or policy. The company is currently based in Wolverhampton, where it has considerable support. The Arts Council seems to want it to have a larger base and larger administrative costs, and keeps talking about the north-east. The council does not like the fact that 89 per cent. of the D'Oyly Carte's running costs come from the box office and private sponsorship. The council resents the company's independence, and has never cared for its music.
There is either gross incompetence in the Arts Council—which the Minister will undoubtedly be concerned about—or some conspiracy. The manner in which one of our most revered institutions has been allowed to reach the point of winding up—for the sake of less than £1 million—is almost a national scandal. The D'Oyly Carte has been bedevilled by excuses about why it cannot be put on the list. It was misled about stabilisation, and then its management was attacked. Its artistic standards were attacked, and now its management is again being attacked. In a nutshell, the Arts Council wants to kill off the D'Oyly Carte, and it has nearly succeeded. I hope that the Minister will not offer platitudes in his reply, because they will come too late. Can hon. Members imagine the Italians allowing an opera company that is intrinsically linked with Verdi to go to the wall? Would the French allow a company involved in the light operetta of Offenbach to fail? The D'Oyly Carte will go anywhere to save the Gilbert and Sullivan tradition. It is not against moving to Belfast, Newcastle or Scotland. The company will go wherever it is told to go. Those in the Arts Council are the ones who will not allow it to go anywhere. The Government have to realise that, as they are from the people's party, they have to save the people's opera. There must be a future for something that we all love.12.4 pm
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen)—whom I always think of as the hon. Member for South Hams—who has been a doughty champion of this cause over the immediate past years. I should declare an ancient interest, in that my grandfather illustrated published editions of Sullivan's songs.
This is a brief debate. I shall be even briefer than I usually am, and seek to avoid repeating hon. Friends and other colleagues. However, I know that all hon. Members will want to congratulate the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell) on his masterly opening speech. Without wishing any ill, or intending any read-across towards the relevant Minister in the current Administration, I remind the hon. Member for Tatton of that other continuing contemporary resonance—from Pooh-Bah's speech in "The Mikado", when he is illustrating the ironically Chinese walls in his Department—in the words that, as Paymaster General, he could so fix the accounts that, as Lord High Auditor, he could not work out what he had done. I shall concentrate on a solution, rather than condemning those who have so far not been able to provide one. I was once the Arts Council's Secretary of State. I cannot plead innocent to the charge of having reduced its funding, although today's issue had not yet arisen when I took that decision. I have sympathy with the Arts Council, which has fewer funds than it has sometimes had in the past. If the arm's-length principle means anything, it means that it is for those on the Arts Council to make the decisions. I will not substitute my judgment for theirs. However, I cannot help thinking that genuine public support for public funding for the arts is more likely to be forthcoming and sustained—such public support is very important to the Department, for which the Minister will reply—if some of what the Arts Council funds has a welcome echo of recognition from the public. Not for nothing do we know that Oscar Wilde himself looked forward to the first night of "Patience". I am not without confidence of a solution. The Minister is an enthusiast for British films. He arrived in office confronted by Treasury orthodoxy, and he has personally slain that dragon on behalf of British films, and has been widely saluted for having done so. I realise—I fear that his speech today might reinforce it—that his Department regards the problems surrounding Gilbert and Sullivan as every bit as daunting as those which confronted him in the context of films. However, I hope that he will confirm that, as part of our national culture, Gilbert and Sullivan means as much to him as the British film industry. I myself have profound confidence in his ingenuity. One footnote is worth making in territory other than that of the Arts Council of England. The Minister is preoccupied with film distribution. In Northern Ireland, where I also served, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland looks after both Opera Northern Ireland and the Grand Opera house in Belfast. It is unfortunate—if, as I fear, it is true—that, in a manner worthy of Pooh-Bah, the Grand Opera house is being denied to the D'Oyly Carte company on the ground that it would threaten the interests of Opera Northern Ireland. That is a good example of the Arts Councils, collectively and in the plural, deflecting public support, rather than encouraging it.12.7 pm
I apologise for not having been in the Chamber for the earlier part of the debate, particularly for the speech of the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell). I was detained in Committee, where we were taking important evidence. However, I look forward to reading the debate, with profit and pleasure.
I have never seen any contradiction in enjoying and believing in public support for both classical and light opera—for both so-called high culture and popular culture. I was brought up, musically at least, on both "The Mikado" and "The Messiah", and had the great good fortune as a schoolgirl to sing in productions of both. I shall not detain the House today with performances of either. That was in a different part of the British Commonwealth, Australia, where arts policy is not muddled up with class structures. I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) about the real root of the difficulties facing D'Oyly Carte: the snobbery of so much of the arts establishment, and so many members and staff of the Arts Council of England. Arts policy and the Arts Council should be about supporting excellence across a wide range of artistic forms. The Arts Council should seek to promote the widest possible accessibility to excellent music and art among people from all communities throughout the country. What do we see when we look at the D'Oyly Carte company? We see excellence in production standards and musical performance. Many right hon. and hon. Members had a chance to enjoy some of that excellence when, for the first time in the history of this Parliament, some members of D'Oyly Carte performed for us in the Grand Committee Room. The excellent quality of the company's productions is testified to by several music and opera critics. The company is popular, commercially successful and accessible, as it is in essence a touring company, but it will not survive unless it can add to that commercial success a very modest amount of public support. I hope that I shall win the Minister's support for my final comment: snobbery towards popular art forms and popular opera should play no part in a modern arts policy for this country. I hope that the Minister and the Arts Council, under its new direction, will ensure that D'Oyly Carte, which has enjoyed such a glittering career for the past 120 years and provided enjoyment for millions of people in this country and abroad, will continue to play a glittering part in this country's artistic life.12.11 pm
I, too, will be brief in the hope that all those who want to speak will be able to do so.
If this were a trial by jury, the charge would be: found guilty as proved. It is probably as well that the debate was introduced by our independent friend, the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell), because that is evidence of the all-party, non-party, cross-party nature of the case. I thank him for his characteristically colourful and effective speech. I shall not repeat points made by others. I am the product of a Gilbert and Sullivan upbringing. For a very high price I shall reveal a photograph of me at the age of 13 dressed in a costume as Katisha. When I was at school, I went to London to see D'Oyly Carte and found it inspirational. It was the first non-children's performance that I saw in the theatre. At home, we sung the scores round the piano with family and friends. It was an easy, accessible and enjoyable activity, but it was also educative—dare I say, it was my first introduction to politics. I learnt from Gilbert and Sullivan of the scepticism that one needs in politics. In passing, I should like to thank Wolverhampton borough council for housing D'Oyly Carte in recent years. Long may it continue to be as supportive. We are discussing a company that is local, amateur, regional and provincial. Its work is national but also goes beyond England. My school was in Wales, and over the border it was as valid an education as it was in England. Moreover, the company has said that it will perform not just Gilbert and Sullivan but Offenbach, Strauss, Lehar, Noel Coward, Novello and Stephen Sondheim. It is about light opera, which is a whole class of cultural activity, not a limited cultural island. Nor is it limited to this country. The great thing about D'Oyly Carte is that, unlike the Church of England, people know what they will get, but they always get more. It has a guaranteed minimum and one is often excited by the updating and the extras. I wish to send a message to the Arts Council: please listen to us, because we were elected and the Arts Council was not. The elite and innovative are valuable, but the popular is equally valuable. One cannot have a diet of nouvelle cuisine without decent meals. We must have parity of funding—the famous level playing field. This company is the best of British—the best of British politics, law, establishment and music—and it tells us about Britain. The Arts Council's credibility is at stake if it does not deliver. We may not be the main players, but we are a mighty big chorus and I hope that the Arts Council hears us loud and clear. I know that the Minister and his colleagues want to be helpful. There are ways forward. To use words from somewhere else, they could be "bloody, bold, and resolute" and tell the Arts Council what to do. That might have to be the solution. The Government could amend the lottery rules and, if they need the House to help them, we shall do so. They could afford the facility for a loan, which would provide an immediate solution. Alternatively, they could dip with a small hand into the Contingency Fund, which is regularly raided when there is a crisis and money is needed. The money exists, and £500,000 would not be noticed by 11 Downing street. I urge the Minister to be positive. I know that the Secretary of State will want to help us. If he wants a summit over the weekend so that people can work out a solution, we are willing to attend. This House believes that the money is available, and it must be forthcoming soon.12.16 pm
I am pleased to speak in this debate because we all seem to be singing from the same score. I just hope that the Minister will join in the chorus.
D'Oyly Carte has meant a lot to the culture of this country. When I was a young boy more than 30 years ago, I went to listen to D'Oyly Carte. My interest in opera has broadened since then, as has my waistline. I regard myself as an everyday young manOpera has also held some interest for me in my new career in this place, and I recall the lines:"who is fond of his dinner and doesn't get thinner on bottled beer and chops."
"I always voted at my party's call
I realise that times have changed. The Arts Council made a one-off grant, a condition of which was that D'Oyly Carte would be subjected to a consultants' report. The report was pretty denigrating. I think that the consultants simply did not understand how good D'Oyly Carte's performances were. The Sunday Times compared its production of Lehar's "The Count of Luxembourg" with the Royal Opera house's "The Merry Widow", and D'Oyly Carte's performance came out well on top. The Arts Council has chosen to ignore something as vulgar as public opinion in this matter. The council may consist of people with great brains; I do not say a word against brains—indeed, I have great respect for them and often wish that I had some. There can be no better way to encourage people to take an interest in opera than through encouraging accessible light opera, particularly Gilbert and Sullivan. People are fed up with the Arts Council and want to know why it can find £30 million to subsidise other areas of opera, but cannot find the relatively small funds needed to support a unique and very British institution. I sincerely hope that my rapid and unintelligible patter will be heard because, to many thousands of people, this does matter.And I never thought of thinking for myself at all."
12.18 pm
We have had a magnificent debate. We are all grateful to the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell). The voice of Parliament has come across loud and clear from both sides of the House. This is Parliament at its best, speaking with influence.
I agreed with almost everything that the hon. Member for Tatton said, but I have to let him down gently on one point. He appeared to detach himself from the rest of us who have been elected to this House. I have news for him—he is a politician like the rest of us now; he has joined the club. Even Gilbert and Sullivan would have recognised that. In "Iolanthe", they wrote:- "The prospect of a lot
- Of dull MPs in close proximity,
- All thinking for themselves is what
- No man can face with equanimity."
I did not mean to give that impression. When stressing the quintessentially English nature of Gilbert and Sullivan, one does not want to minimise their universal appeal.
In the spirit of the debate, I am pleased with that clarification.
Many important points have been raised during the debate. If I do not have time to deal with all of them, I shall write to the relevant right hon. and hon. Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) and the hon. Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant) talked about the Royal Opera house. The two companies do different things. We have made it clear that we unreservedly want wider access to the Royal Opera house. Sir Richard Eyre's review, due to report in May, will examine that. The Arts Council has provided £4 million for a range of accessible touring operetta in the three years to March 1997. That funding continues. I cannot dodge the clear messages to the Arts Council from hon. Members on both sides. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I believe that there are two essential messages for the Arts Council. First, there is strong support across the House for the work of D'Oyly Carte. Any assessment of its value as a company should be based on the quality of its work rather than on preconceptions about the nature and worth of light opera. Secondly, I must tell the Arts Council candidly that it must support—and be seen to support—a range of artistic activities covering a variety of genres. The hon. Member for Southport (Mr. Fearn) raised a number of important points about the principle of arts funding. Decisions on the funding of arts organisations, including D'Oyly Carte, are taken by the Arts Council and regional arts boards. Those decisions are taken at arm's length from Ministers—for a good reason. It would not be appropriate for me to intervene in those discussions. The hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) raised a number of pivotal issues in his excellent and probing speech that require a response from the Arts Council and from D'Oyly Carte. We want clarification on the Newcastle offer. The hon. Gentleman's arguments lead me to conclude that there is a conflict of evidence. Although I have made it clear that it would be inappropriate for me to intervene on the general issue of funding, I shall seek a response from the Arts Council on that significant point. Like the previous Government, we accept that D'Oyly Carte is an independent company, responsible to its board and backers for its operational decisions. The Government's role is to ensure the most appropriate framework to enable all the arts to flourish. Within that framework, the Arts Council of England is responsible for administering funds and support to arts organisations based in England. It is for the council to take decisions on the balance of support between art forms and the allocation of grants without the involvement of Ministers. The hon. Member for West Suffolk said that the Government bear the responsibility. That was the only discordant note from the score that the rest of us were singing from. We were elected on a pledge to maintain public expenditure for the next two years at the levels planned by the previous Government. The £184.6 million allocation to the Arts Council announced in December reflects that commitment. Contrary to some of the comments that I have read, the Arts Council has been aware of that figure for 18 months. It is the responsibility of the Arts Council to decide on the balance of funding within that figure.The Arts Council's lottery fund has £250 million. It goes on providing money to build more and more theatres. Will the Minister take action to stop that?
I am sure that the Arts Council will pay careful attention to that point. I understand that it has difficult decisions to take on allocating the available resources, but that is its responsibility.
The House would expect no less than a full spirit of glasnost and open government. No one would be happier than my hon. Friend the Minister for Arts—who is unable to be here because of ministerial responsibilities—to see D'Oyly Carte put on a sound financial basis. I am sure that all hon. Members accept that he has done a great deal to further discussions. It is clearly up to the company to pursue all the options, including, if appropriate, resuming correspondence with the Arts Council—to which we would expect an urgent response.Two months to go.
Indeed. My hon. Friend the Minister for Arts has also offered the possibility of a further meeting with the all-party group, and I hope that that will be taken on board.
The Government are keen to see the great British tradition of Gilbert and Sullivan flourish in every part of the land and internationally. The tradition is inextricably linked with the name of D'Oyly Carte. The Government hope that D'Oyly Carte will be able to work with its supporters to identify viable ways of continuing to delight audiences all over the world. I should make it clear that the arts in this country are funded, and have been funded over many years, on the basis of an agreed format involving important principles. I know that the Arts Council has strong views, but it ought to feel confident enough to debate them with us in public. I understand that, as a condition of the Arts Council grant in 1997–98, D'Oyly Carte commissioned—Order. I call Mr. Tom Levitt.
Deaf Awareness Training
12.30 pm
I first met a profoundly deaf sign language-using person 12 years ago. It is unusual that I should have gone for so long without doing so, since one in 1,000 people in this country have sign language as their first or only functional language. That experience was very moving—although not quite as moving as my speech, judging by the number of hon. Members leaving the Chamber, which I hope is not an indication of their interest in the issue. As a district councillor, I vowed from then on to promote the political cause of deaf people's access to services and information. I studied British sign language and I wrote a charter for local government. In collaboration with the—
Order. The hon. Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Connarty) should not stand in front of an hon. Member who is addressing the House.
In collaboration with the British Deaf Association, I went freelance and became a research consultant on access issues for people with sensory impairment. I even went so far as to write a book on the issue for the Local Government Management Board, and to deliver deaf awareness training courses.
Some 8.7 million people in this country are hearing impaired—one person in every seven, or one in every six adults, which reflects the high incidence of deafness among older people. Some are profoundly deaf; others are deafened; others are hard of hearing. Some are partially deaf; some have one-sided deafness; some are deaf in both ears. Some are pre-lingually deaf; others acquire their deafness as they get older, for one reason or another. Some have tinnitus with their deafness; others do not. For some, deafness is of genetic origin; for some it is caused by war, industrial damage, loud noise, loud music or accident. Some people's deafness is caused by diseases such as meningitis or rubella. Some deaf people are visually impaired as well. Others use sign language. Some lip-read. Some cope with their everyday life, but many do not, and effectively opt out of what we would regard as the mainstream. One could almost say that no two deaf people have the same communications requirements, yet we, the hearing majority, tend to bundle them together. We talk about being deaf and dumb, which is an insult if one takes the pejorative meaning of the word dumb as stupid. We talk of being "deaf as a post" or use the phrase, "Are you deaf?" as an insult. We assume that deaf people are inadequate, suffer from their deafness or are alienated from the mainstream. Those are all self-fulfilling prophecies: the attitudes of the hearing majority often cause them to come true. Such attitudes are born of ignorance—often among service providers, be they the Government, local government officers or the private sector. I suspect that such attitudes may even be shared by some hon. Members, although I hope that that is not true. I hope to use this debate—this dialogue with the Minister—to help Members and the nation to give people who are deaf, deafened and hard of hearing the respect and dignity that they deserve. I hope to return to related issues in later Adjournment debates. There are many ways in which the communication needs of people with hearing impairments can be supported: sign language interpreters, text telephones or minicoms, loop systems to aid the use of hearing aids and lip-reading classes. I hope to talk about them on other occasions. None of those ways of assisting communication for deaf people addresses the problems of all deaf people. Each of them is only of partial assistance or a partial solution for a particular group. Only one thing helps all deaf people: increased awareness of their communication needs among the hearing majority. I shall give some examples of how communication problems can arise. A common case occurs in the hospital waiting room. The name of the next patient is called out, but because he or she is deaf, the appointment is missed. No one checks; it is just assumed that the person is not present, and the staff move to the next patient. A deaf friend of mine is frequently affected when it is announced over the Tannoy on a railway station platform that the train that he is expecting will depart from a different platform: because he cannot hear the announcement, he misses his train. I was at a party a little while ago, where I got talking to a building society manager. When he heard what I did, he said, "Oh yes, we have one of those purple signs with the ear and the bar across it on the door of the building society." It had been there for many years; unfortunately, the manager did not know what it meant. That clearly shows that the deaf awareness training that some of his staff had had was not appreciated, and had therefore probably not been used. There are instances of loop systems failing to operate for months or years before somebody notices and can put them right. Deaf people are not renowned for coming forward to complain when things are not as they would wish them to be. Even background music in supermarkets, which may be pleasant for some, makes it very difficult for people who have a hearing impairment to hear what is being said to them and to conduct a normal conversation. Hearing aids do not confer perfect hearing. There is an assumption among hearing people that hearing aids confer brilliant, pristine hearing—but they do not. Most hearing aids do not produce the high-quality audio signal that we as hearing people hope and expect to receive. If they are damp, dirty or ill-fitting, for example, hearing aids can be less than perfect. At best they assist some deaf people with their communication needs; they cannot be regarded as solving the problem. I am sure that all hon. Members have been guilty at some time of taking deaf people for granted or ignoring them. We may have talked on the doorstep to a constituent and found that his or her hearing impairment made conversation difficult and tried our patience. We may have ignored the one in the group of constituents who says nothing—perhaps because they cannot hear what is going on. We have all been taken aback when an apparently normal-looking person starts to speak in a funny voice— as we would define it, because we do not understand that, if a deaf person cannot hear his or her voice, it cannot sound like a hearing person's voice. We may all have dismissed sign language as mere mime and gesture, which is a major mistake. British sign language is a wonderfully expressive and rich language, and it is the first or only functional language of 50,000 people in this country. That makes it the second most widely used endemic first language among inhabitants of these islands. Recent research by the Royal National Institute for Deaf People exposes far too many examples of communication needs of deaf people going unmet. As public figures, hon. Members need to be aware of the communication needs of their constituents. Shop assistants need to be aware of the needs of their customers. Waiters, council officers, swimming pool attendants, nurses, doctors and people in the voluntary service all need such awareness. Everyone who comes across members of the public in his or her work needs deaf awareness training to be able to break down the communication barriers that exist between themselves and those with hearing impairment. We can start here. I am sure that whenever a deaf person is trying to communicate with you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you are aware of five simple rules to follow that will make it easier for the deaf person to lip-read. If you face the deaf person, about 1.5 m away in a quiet place, he or she will get the best view of your face. If you keep your face still and in the light, the deaf person will be able to lip-read more effectively, and if you do not chew or smoke, do not shout, and do not have a beard—the Minister might pass that advice on to his boss, the Secretary of State—you diminish the possibility of misunderstanding even more. You must also be prepared to repeat yourself and write down phrases when necessary. Above all, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the secret of assisting deaf or hard-of-hearing people to understand you through lip reading is to be patient. Those five simple rules, which are easy to understand, are all that is needed to assist communication with most, or at least very many, people who are deaf or hard of hearing and rely to some extent on lip reading. Last year about 5,000 people took the brief experience of deaf awareness training that I have outlined rather further, and achieved a certificate of deaf awareness under the auspices of the Council for the Advancement of Communication with Deaf People. The number of those who do so has been doubling year on year recently, as employers, especially in the public sector, add that training to the portfolio of training opportunities available to their staff. I have taught that course to voluntary workers in citizens advice bureaux, and I have never had a student fail. Deaf awareness training is an excellent course, which I recommend to all those who come into contact with the public in their work. I hope that the Government will continue to give the CACDP practical encouragement in making its work available to the widest possible audience. In the House, many of our Committee Rooms, and the Chamber, have loop systems to help hearing aid users, but there is not a system in every Committee Room, and it is not clear to passers-by which Rooms have them and which do not. There are no signs, as one would expect, to let it be known that a loop facility is available. I understand that should a profoundly deaf, sign language-using member of the public wish to use a sign language interpreter in this place, one can be provided for the Strangers Gallery—but I do not know how, or even whether, the service is publicised, and I do not know how one goes about booking an interpreter. I am sure that deaf people who require sign language interpreters do not, by and large, know that the facility exists. Finally, there is no access to parliamentary information using the text telephone or minicom—the deaf person's equivalent of using the telephone. I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will take up the recent generous offer by British Telecom to provide 100 minicoms for their constituency offices, to enable them to get in touch with some of their deaf constituents. I also hope that they will sign early-day motion 888, which congratulates BT and the RNID on their initiative and calls for minicom access to the House. I hope that Members will actively make contact with their deaf constituents, rather than simply assuming that social services will look after all their needs. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for coming to reply to the debate. However, I am sure that the presence of a Health Minister does not suggest that the Government believe that deaf issues are merely health issues. They are not. It is essential that we approach all disability questions according to the social model of disability rather than relying on medical definitions. Deaf people have a right to access all the services that the hearing majority take for granted. I hope that my hon. Friend will tell us that the national health service intends to lead the way in making its services accessible to deaf people. I believe that, as yet, there is no concerted strategy to do so. A profoundly deaf woman who had been injured in a car crash once told me that she found the casualty department more frightening than the accident, because she did not know what was going on. A couple of years ago, the British Deaf Association and I tried to find independent funding to conduct research into deaf people's access to services and information within the NHS, but none was available. That is why I welcome this week's publication of the "Deaf Women's Health Project", produced by the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities, whose message is that all is not well with deaf access within the NHS. There is an example on page 7, where we read that when in-patients were interviewed on a hospital ward, more than one deaf woman did not know why she had had surgery, as information and communication support were not available. One said:Deaf awareness training is already being provided for the Employment Service officers dealing with young deaf people as part of the new deal. That is welcome, and I look forward to the same caring and positive approach being applied to the benefit integrity project and other aspects of the Government's front-line benefit and other services. I understand that the RNID is contemplating offering deaf awareness training directly to hon. Members later this year. I know that the Government are committed to implementing part III of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, and that, too, is welcome. We are also committed to establishing a disability rights commission, amid much evidence that deaf people at work continue to suffer discrimination in recruitment, retention and promotion. None the less, deaf people are growing anxious. They expect great things from the people's Government—and they are right to do so. It would be good news indeed if the Minister could give us today some idea of the timetable according to which progress towards those two aims will be made, and an assurance that the NHS will be in the forefront of that progress. The Minister should rest assured that the experience of the Americans with Disabilities Act clearly demonstrates that reasonable access for deaf people, and disabled people generally, to services and information is not expensive. I have, I hope, demonstrated today how a little awareness goes a long way. There are hearing-impaired Members of the House of Commons and of the other place. Those are the ones who can cope; nevertheless they know what I have been talking about. Too many others find that they cannot cope, and our awareness is literally their greatest opportunity for emancipation. May I use British sign language to accompany my final comments,Mr. Deputy Speaker, so that I can address my friends who use it as their first language? Deaf people are people first and deaf second. Their communication needs are very important, and our awareness needs to be improved to help them."Ward rounds can be awful. Sometimes nurses will give information, but we never get full information like hearing people. The doctors shout at us, and all the ward hears about our problems, but we don't know what is wrong. Shouting does not help us."
12.48 pm
My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Mr. Levitt) deserves the congratulations of the whole House on having secured time to debate this important issue on behalf of deaf people, and on the way in which he has raised the issue, which is profoundly significant to many millions of people in our country.
As my hon. Friend rightly said, the Royal National Institute for Deaf People has confirmed that, in Britain, one person in seven has a form of hearing impairment. Some were born deaf, some became deaf in later childhood and others were deafened or became deaf or hard of hearing in later life. We all have personal experience of having aging relatives who are becoming increasingly hard of hearing and increasingly frustrated by our inability to communicate with them. Each hearing-impaired person will have developed his or her own specific communication, and we in the hearing community must learn to adapt our responses to them. I agree with my hon. Friend that we need to do more to raise general awareness among the public of the difficulties faced by deaf and hard-of-hearing people. The important principle is that the initiative lies with the hearing world, not with people who are hard of hearing. The Government regard disabled people—including those with hearing impairments—very much as full and productive members of society. We want people, regardless of their disability, to contribute to their local communities, to the wider society and, where possible, to the wider economy. All too often—we must be frank about this—they are hampered in their efforts by the barriers that the rest of society erects against them. Whether we do that deliberately or inadvertently, it is discrimination, which the Government are committed to tackling. In addition to our overarching commitment to combat social exclusion, our manifesto promised, as my hon. Friend will recall, comprehensive and enforceable civil rights to protect disabled people from discrimination. Last October, the Government set out their three-part strategy for meeting that commitment. First, we established a disability rights task force, which is chaired by the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment, my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, East (Mr. Howarth), who is responsible for equal opportunities. The task force met for the first time in December. Half its members are drawn from disability organisations, and 12 members are themselves disabled. Its task is to report, by July next year, on how best to secure the comprehensive and enforceable civil rights that the Government have promised. Its early meetings have been extremely productive—so much so that it is now ready to make recommendations. The task force's most urgent priority has been to consider the role and functions of a disability rights commission, which is the second part of our approach. We have always maintained that anti-discrimination legislation for disabled people needs to be supported by an enforcement body. A disability rights commission will help to make anti-discrimination legislation more effective; it will ensure that disabled people receive the protection to which they are entitled. It will also ensure that everyone—disabled people, people in business and their advisers and so on—can receive the guidance that they need. My hon. Friend will understand that I cannot be specific about the final shape of the disability rights commission or exactly when it will be set up—that will depend on the parliamentary timetable—but he will know that it is a matter to which we attach great importance and on which we are determined to deliver as soon as possible. The task force's next job will be to consider the wider framework of rights for disabled people. That is the third part of the Government's strategy, which may take longer to deliver than the commission. In the meantime, however, we are committed to implementing the outstanding duties created by the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Although the Act is flawed—it is neither comprehensive nor easily enforceable—it offers some worthwhile additional protection for disabled people. The remaining duties will require service providers to make reasonable adjustments to help disabled people to use their services. For example, they must take reasonable steps to provide auxiliary aids and services which would enable disabled people to use a service, such as installing minicoms and induction loops or providing British sign language interpreters. We hope to announce the timetable for implementation shortly. In the interim, it will make sense for many service providers to invest in deaf awareness training in preparation for their new duties. My hon. Friend expressed concern about the lack of a comprehensive approach to deaf awareness, but he will realise that there is much good local practice on which to build. I note with interest that there have been several exciting initiatives in his constituency to raise the awareness of hearing people to the needs of hearing-impaired people. Deaf awareness training for staff is currently a key focus in North Derbyshire health authority's hearing impairment strategy, and the authority is working jointly with the local social services to develop training programmes for staff throughout the district. The training is intended for key staff—such as those in the ear, nose and throat ward at the acute trust and those in general practice—precisely to address the concerns that my hon. Friend has raised on behalf of deaf people, who have had a far from happy experience of contact with front-line service staff. I want other parts of the country to follow suit in implementing the good practice that exists in my hon. Friend's area. That is why a good practice guide, called "Equality for Disabled People in the New NHS", will shortly be produced, as well as a video about deaf and hard-of-hearing people's use of hospital and health care services and about how good practice can be achieved. It is not only in the national health service that progress needs to be made. The social services inspectorate, for example, recently inspected local authority services for deaf and hard-of-hearing people. The inspections revealed inequalities of service and highlighted a need for more deaf awareness training. To follow up that report, the Department of Health intends to produce positive practice guidelines on services for people who are deaf and hard of hearing. The social services inspectorate has produced its first video to inform deaf and hard-of-hearing people, who have additional difficulties, about current social service policies. Our efforts will be targeted at front-line staff. For many people, the first port of call for support and information is the reception area of a general practitioner's surgery or of their local social services department. Those front-line staff are the initial service providers, and their reactions to hearing-impaired people can prejudice future relationships. That is why we attach importance to one of the most widely used mechanisms for encouraging training in deaf awareness for all front-line staff, both specialist and non-specialist, in local authorities—the training support programme, which is also used to support the development of national vocational qualifications for care staff. My hon. Friend mentioned the Council for the Advancement of Communication with Deaf People, which receives support from the Department of Health in its role as an examiner and validator of training courses in deaf awareness and in interpreting, including British sign language. In a bid to raise awareness of training courses, the council has published, with Department of Health support, a directory of training opportunities and material for staff working with deaf people in the personal social services in England. As my hon. Friend said, deaf awareness is not only relevant to health and social services but has implications for all walks of life and for all Government Departments. I understand that in the transport industries, for example, increasing emphasis has been placed over recent years on the need for disability awareness training for staff who work directly with the public. A number of videos have been produced, including one by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, and intensive training programmes are now used by rail and bus operators. All those programmes include material on deaf awareness. All those steps are important; they signify a growing realisation by the Government and in public services generally that if public services are genuinely to serve all the public, they need to have greater awareness of those who are deaf or have hearing problems. The Government are committed to taking seriously deaf awareness training and the wider question of services for deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Much progress has been made, with the help of hearing-impaired people, their voluntary organisations and service providers, but we realise, of course, that we still have much to do to ensure that hearing-impaired people live their lives to the full and as independently as possible. I have no doubt that my hon. Friend's comments will have concentrated minds in the public service, in Government Departments and in the House on the steps that need to be taken to make that vision a reality. I think that he has done a service both to the House and to the large community of people who are deaf or who have hearing problems. I very much hope that, jointly, we can make progress in the future.
Kingskerswell Bypass
12.58 pm
I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the subject of the Kingskerswell bypass, which has had a remarkable history. It was first set down as a route in the county development plan as long ago as 1951, and my researches show that it was clearly mooted for 15 years before that.
For those hon. Members who are not here today, but will avidly read Hansard tomorrow, I am talking about the four-and-a-half-mile stretch of road between Newton Abbot and Torquay. It is called a bypass, and I suppose that when it was first thought of that might have been an accurate description, inasmuch as it bypassed the old village of Kingskerswell, but these days it effectively cuts the village in half. There are many things that one could say about the bypass and people's attitude to it, but I am anxious to give the Minister time to respond, and I know that the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Sanders) will also want to play a part in this debate. The most significant factor to explain what the bypass is all about is the traffic flow figures. I am reliably informed that about 35,000 vehicles a day use the road. It is customary in debates such as this to say that the traffic gets much worse in summer, but in fact it gets only slightly worse: there is no more than 10 per cent. more traffic. My plea, and the case that has always been made for the Kingskerswell bypass, cannot be misrepresented— or, to use a more neutral term, misunderstood—on the basis that the present road is a perfectly happy little road until the tourists come down and the traffic explodes. A huge volume of traffic uses the road, with only a slight increase in summer. When the present road gets blocked, traffic backs up all the way from Torquay to the Penn Inn roundabout. Anyone travelling to Newton Abbot, let alone Torquay, will immediately feel the effects. The effect on people's quality of life is bad enough, when their community is divided by a steady stream of polluting traffic and they have to resort to using rat runs to get to and from work, not to mention how people feel in adjacent areas when that traffic goes through their locality—all that is true, and if time allowed one could say much more about it—but there are also effects on the area's economic viability to be considered. The Newton Abbot-Torquay-Paignton area is defined as a main area of economic activity. The effect of not being able to travel sensibly from Newton Abbot to Torquay is completely to seize up the potential of the land that lies beyond where the end of the bypass would be. That says something about Torquay, and a great deal more about the other areas. Devon's excellent county engineer, Edward Chorlton, said:"The Newton Abbot to Torquay corridor already experiences severe congestion throughout much of the day and … is directly affecting the locational decisions of local businesses, with a number of local companies having relocated away from Torbay as a consequence of difficulties experienced in maintaining a reliable and predictable means of highway access.…
From the above it can be appreciated that the Newton Abbot to Torquay corridor is not only of great importance in terms of accommodating movement within the area but also of strategic
Anyone who knows Edward Chorlton's reputation will realise that he is a national figure in such matters. Obviously, he is concerned about a local scheme, but he has used his words carefully and precisely. In terms of the social, commercial and environmental consequences, there is absolutely no case to be made against the bypass. It is often said, when Members of Parliament meet in the stilly watches of the night to say how much they appreciate the contributions that their constituents make from time to time, that there are no votes in bypasses. That is probably true, but the extraordinary fact about this bypass is that I could count on the fingers of one hand—with some to spare—the number of letters of objection to it that I have had. The Kingskerswell bypass is unique for this reason, if for no other: that there is no opposition to it. There is no lesser crested aphid out there in the elephant grass waiting to reveal itself and hold up the scheme. Everybody, be they environmentalists, residents, holidaymakers or people with an interest in the commercial destiny of that part of the world, agrees that the scheme is vital. It is not surprising that the Department of Transport took up the scheme in 1990, believing that the road should be trunked, and accorded it priority one status. When major schemes were halted—indeed, cancelled—in 1995, this scheme was not cancelled, but adjourned indefinitely. When it suddenly emerged that the scheme was not to go ahead, there was an outcry. That is an over-used word, but there was an outcry none the less. The then Minister with responsibility for the west country, my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry), initiated a review to find out whether it would be possible to revive the scheme by other means. With all-party agreement, following visits from Ministers and meetings with Devon county council, the rules on the private finance initiative were altered so that it would be possible for the local authority to take over the scheme. As the authority would be continuing work that had already been started, it had to be given assurances that it would not have costs dumped on it without recourse to Government help.importance in terms of providing the principal connection between Torbay and the wider area of Devon and the rest of the Country. It is also crucial to ensuring that the development potential of the area is unlocked."
I congratulate my hon. Friend on landing this debate. The issue is extremely important and concerns all his constituents and most of mine. I support him to the hilt, and I feel sure that the Minister will respond as helpfully as she possibly can.
That is certainly my expectation, too, for reasons that I shall reveal in a moment or two. I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That says it all: this is of infinitely more significance than a matter affecting merely one constituency.
The PFI scheme went ahead swimmingly. It received the support, as it had to, of the public-private partnership programme—the four Ps—and proceeded straightforwardly. It was attractive to those interested in PFI. The shadow tolling arrangements, which would have been the very basis of a PFI solution, are highly attractive to any company that might consider such a scheme. The figure of 35,000 people a day speaks for itself. I was assured only this morning that there had been a great deal of interest in the scheme. One can easily imagine the disappointment when, in February, the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, in the person of the head of branch, local transport policy, wrote to Devon county council about the latest list of endorsed local authority PFI units:That was it. At that stage, Devon county council—quite properly— had to ask itself whether it could continue to spend substantial sums on preparation when it had been given the clearest possible indication that the matter would not go ahead. At a stroke, defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory. The scheme was tantalisingly close, but apparently it has now disappeared into the ether. That is not acceptable. What do we do now? This is not any old bypass. There are Members of Parliament—I am not one—who will paint a picture of a local scheme as having global, international or cosmic relevance. However, this scheme is not one of those. The facts are clear—the scheme's significance goes far beyond Teignbridge, important though that is. The PFI scheme exists and is waiting to be used. Work has been done. If it is not taken forward, it will represent a substantial waste of money, apart from the disappointed hopes of those who relied on that work. Even if today is the first part of the process, merely accepting the status quo is not an option. I am not expecting the Minister to say that she will reverse everything. That would be unfair to her, and I would not dream of doing that—I have been here too long. I do not wish to embarrass the Minister—but if I do, I am doing so in the House of Commons, so it will get very little publicity. I have been impressed on two specific occasions in relation to constituency matters where I expected a stock reply from her, but I did not get one. The first part was a stock reply from a word processor, but the second part contradicted the first part, and showed that the Minister was keenly involved. It is clear that when hon. Members write to her about matters of real concern, she gets stuck in. Effectively, that is what I am asking her to do today. I am not asking the Minister to reverse everything— I am asking her to take a personal involvement. She is responsible for road traffic matters, and whatever emerges from the overall strategic plan for roads, it is inconceivable that the Kingskerswell bypass will not form part of it. That would be common ground among everyone involved. The Minister may say that the Government's position is what it is, and that the justification was as Mrs. Lister said. I hope that she will agree to meet a properly constituted delegation from the area—the names of whom will be given in advance—so that she can hear local people explain why this is so important. She can hear directly why the rules were specifically altered to allow the scheme to take place. I am asking the Minister to come back to me in due course to consider the proposition that the project is unique, and to say that it can be looked at afresh. Merely saying that it is all very sad, but that nothing can be done, would give credence to an attitude I detect from many of her hon. Friends—although not from her. Their attitude is, "Does the west country matter? Will it be necessary to have Labour Members of Parliament from the south-west region to achieve a second term?" No, it will not. That is not the attitude I have had from the hon. Lady, following correspondence. I am asking her to say, without criticising Government policy, that she will look at the scheme, and tell us how she might deal with it."This does not include any new transport projects as Ministers have decided not to endorse significant transport schemes for the moment. In reaching this decision they were concerned that a decision to endorse such projects now would have to be taken outside the context of a strategic framework for the assessment of schemes of this nature."
1.14 pm
With the permission of my hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls)—and, I hope, the Minister—I wish to make a one-minute intervention.
Order. Did the hon. Gentleman ask the Minister before the debate commenced?
No.
As a courtesy, he should do so. Is the Minister agreeable?
indicated assent.
Perhaps in future the hon. Gentleman will make that arrangement before the start of the debate.
Normally, I would do so, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I was heavily involved in the previous debate on the D'Oyly Carte. I am grateful to the Minister.
My constituency borders the Kingskerswell bypass, and I was delighted by the boundary changes which meant that my constituency did not include Kingskerswell—which is a nightmare. It is the one bottleneck in south Devon, if not the whole of Devon. The Minister may remember the Exeter bypass 20 or 30 years ago, where cars and caravans were blocked nose to tail throughout the year. The bypass is a blockage from morning to night. One may try to avoid the bypass, but Torquay suffers badly because tourists cannot get in and out. I see the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Sanders) in his place: I am not suggesting that we should help him, but we do want to help Torbay. I have more than one third of Torbay in my constituency, and it would provide enormous help to tourists if some of this absolute nightmare could be relieved. The strange thing is that, whatever time of day or night one travels on the bypass, it is full. There is always a blockage, with cars turning right or left, and one can never drive through, even at the 40 mph speed limit. It normally takes about half an hour to an hour, on a good day, to go on the Kingskerswell bypass. I am dispassionate, in the sense that the bypass is not in my constituency, but I receive letters virtually weekly from constituents who say that it is the worst jam they have ever seen. They get furious; if one is concerned about road rage, one should be concerned with this bypass. I agree whole-heartedly with my hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge, who espoused his cause so well. He is well known as a tremendous and courteous fighter for the west country. I join forces with him today in saying that we are listening with keen interest to what the Minister has to say.1.15 pm
I congratulate the hon. Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls), not only on obtaining the debate, but on the passion and detail with which he espoused his cause. I say that entirely objectively, although I am grateful for his gracious words.
It is clear that this matter is of overwhelming concern to the local community, and I am sure that all hon. Members can understand the desire for a solution to be found. I say "the local community", but the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) also pointed out the concerns of his constituents. Concerns have been expressed from as far away as Plymouth, Sutton. On 29 July, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport received a letter from my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mrs. Gilroy), in which she raised the concerns of one of her constituents about the bypass. The bypass is an important factor in the economic development of Torbay. On 17 June, the head of parliamentary affairs of the Federation of Small Businesses wrote to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport, highlighting the fact that the federation was involved in a campaign on the Kingskerswell bypass. The hon. Member for Teignbridge claimed that this was a unique scheme, but Kingskerswell, regrettably, is not alone in suffering increased levels of traffic. Many towns and villages are damaged by the relentless increase in road traffic, and the revised traffic forecasts published in October 1997 show it increasing by nearly 40 per cent. over the next 20 years. This is quite unacceptable, and it is therefore clear— there is widespread consensus about this—that, if current policies are not adjusted, congestion will worsen, the impact on the environment will be more severe, and those who do not have access to private transport will find it increasingly difficult to get around. It is for that reason that the Government embarked on fundamental reviews of transport policies last year. It is important that we develop a sustainable and integrated transport system, which makes best use of the contribution that each mode can make and ensures that all options are considered on a basis that is fair and is seen to be fair. We have three broad options for roads: first, to make better use of existing infrastructure; secondly, to manage demand; and, thirdly, to provide new infrastructure. Using existing infrastructure is the obvious first choice, because it has been provided at substantial financial and environmental cost and we must make best use of that investment. However, we must also seriously consider the two other, harder options. Management of demand is a vast subject, which encompasses reducing the need to travel by land use planning, assessment of the extent to which a shift to other modes could be encouraged, and, inevitably, control of demand by pricing or rationing mechanisms. Providing new infrastructure is a difficult option, financially and in terms of environmental impact. Our starting point is that we shall not proceed with major new road construction unless we are satisfied that there is no better alternative. Even then, there will be difficult choices to be made, because limited resources are available. We have conducted a wide-ranging public consultation exercise on the development of an integrated transport policy, and a White Paper, which will be published in the spring, will set out the framework of our sustainable transport policy for this Parliament and beyond. No final decisions on policy options have yet been taken, but underlying principles are already clear. We are committed to facilitating the mobility of the British people in a more environmentally, economically and socially sustainable way. We must provide choice between various modes of transport and aim to encourage people to use their cars less. We want better, more integrated transport systems, especially better public transport. The Government also want more responsible use of cars and lorries in terms of safety and of environmental performance, and greater emphasis on walking and cycling and on the particular needs of disabled people, the elderly and children. We recognise that, in some circumstances, provision of new road infrastructure would be the best way of tackling transport problems. Bypasses in particular can have beneficial effects in certain circumstances, by removing through traffic from communities. The hon. Member for Teignbridge detailed the benefits that would accrue to his constituents if a bypass was built. The hon. Member for Teignbridge also referred to the high volumes of traffic passing through Kingskerswell on the A380, and to the environmental damage it causes to the community. Traffic flows through Kingskerswell have increased considerably in recent years, from 20,000 vehicles a day in the mid-1980s to nearly 35,000 in 1995. Growth on such a scale is unsustainable, and shows graphically why we must tackle such problems with new policies and attitudes.We have heard a great deal about jams today, but the Minister's remarks suggest that we shall have jams tomorrow. What specific measures could be taken now to reduce traffic congestion on that road? Even if she said today that a bypass would be built in the shortest possible time, we would face at least five years of increasing congestion. We need action to be taken now to reduce or remove the congestion. Could she give advice to the relevant highway authority— or take a specific measure—that would reduce traffic congestion now?
The Highways Agency published details of its tool kit and the range of methods for traffic management on our trunk network. Local authorities have powers of restraint, but there are particular difficulties with this stretch of road, because it is a single carriageway that runs between two dual carriageways. I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman in detail, if he will allow me to do so because of the time constraint that we are under.
Will the Minister send me a copy of the letter?
By all means. I should also be happy to furnish the hon. Member for Teignbridge with a copy, if he wants to be patched in.
I am aware that there have been proposals to bypass Kingskerswell for many years, and they were developed as a trunk road scheme in the early 1990s in association with a proposal to trunk the A380 once the bypass had been built. However, decisions to remove the scheme from the active trunk road programme, in 1995, and from the programme altogether, in 1996, mean that responsibility for developing solutions to Kingskerswell's problems now falls to the local highway authority, Devon county council. That is not to say that the Government wash their hands of the problem: it is almost inevitable that implementing whatever solution the county council chooses to take forward will require central funding, but responsibility for developing a detailed solution rests firmly with the local authority. Since 1996, the council has continued with preparation of the Kingskerswell bypass with a view to its becoming a candidate for funding under the private finance initiative. The hon. Member for Teignbridge referred to a recent letter to Devon county council from my Department which detailed the announcement in February by my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Housing of the latest endorsed local authority PFI projects. The list did not contain any new transport schemes, and it may help if I elaborate on the reasons for that. An important part of the integrated transport and roads reviews is the development of a new open and fair framework for assessing transport projects. It will embody the fundamental criteria that we have set for transport projects, such as environmental impact, economy, safety, integration and accessibility, and will cover the extent to which various options, including public transport provision, might resolve the problems. The framework will enable us to take forward decisions about which schemes or projects should be funded within our new transport policies. We hope to publish details later this year, but thought it right and proper to advise authorities such as Devon county council which are working on PFI schemes that they might wish to postpone further development work until they know what the new framework involves.The Minister makes a helpful point. If I have understood the county council's position correctly, it takes the view that it would be irresponsible to continue to spend money after receiving such a letter as Mrs. Lister's. Is she saying that councils should hold on and wait for the review, because the Government could say within a matter of months whether councils should go ahead? Is the position for the county as awful as that which followed the action taken by the previous Administration in 1995, or is it a temporary blip?
I understand that the Kingskerswell bypass would require several years of planned development work before it reached any possible date of contract signature. The new strategic framework will be in place in good time for any decision on whether it will have priority for PFI credit support. In the light of what I have said, Devon county council will be aware that it should hold on, and that it will know how to proceed when the new framework is in place.
The Government fully support appropriate use of PFI for transport schemes. We of course understand local disappointment that the Kingskerswell bypass was not on the list of endorsed PFI projects. However, our proposed solution—that transport problems should be assessed against a new, fair and open framework—means that it was only right to warn the county council about the risks of carrying out further work on the bypass scheme before the new framework is published. I trust that my answer to the question asked by the hon. Member for Teignbridge will assist it in any further consideration.
Tibet
1.28 pm
I am delighted to have obtained this debate on Tibet. I am a member of the all-party parliamentary Tibet group, and I pay tribute to its members and officers, such as Lord Weatherill, a former Speaker of the House; my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Stevenson), the chairman; the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson), Lord Avebury and Lord Willoughby de Broke, the vice-chairs; my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin), the secretary; and the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth).
Last month, my colleagues and I attended a wreath-laying ceremony at the monument to innocent victims of violence at Westminster abbey. Many Tibetans are innocent victims of violence, and the debate takes place at a good time, because the Asian leaders summit is taking place in London this week. China, one of the great powers in Asia, will be represented. I have great respect for the progress that China has made, especially economic and social progress, but it should not expect to flout long-accepted international standards without serious criticism. It has flouted those established standards to a major extent in Tibet. I hope that the Government will tell the Foreign Minister that colonisation, imperialism—a word that they will understand—attempts to extinguish a unique cultural heritage and the denial of proper human rights in Tibet are unacceptable. If China is to be a truly great player in the world and respected throughout the world, it now has to adopt internationally accepted norms of democracy, human rights and the tolerant acceptance of diversity, especially of cultures of long standing and of religious beliefs. China is not meeting those norms in Tibet. The legal status of Tibet has a long history, but it was a de facto independent state between 1913 and 1950. Central Tibet was ruled from Lhasa. It demonstrated all the conditions of statehood generally accepted under international law. It was a people, a territory, and it had a Government who conducted their domestic affairs free from any outside authority. Then came the Chinese invasion. In 1951, a 17-point agreement between Mao Tse-Tung and the Dalai Lama was signed. The Dalai Lama had no choice but to sign it in the wake of the Chinese takeover. It was a fait accompli. Even the 1951 agreement has been violated in main part by the Chinese. They undertook to maintain the existing political system in Tibet, to maintain the status and functions of the Dalai Lama, to protect freedom of religion and the monasteries, and to refrain from compulsory reform. They have not done so. They have proceeded with a policy of absorption of Tibet into China. That has been recognised and objected to by the United Nations in its resolutions of 1959, 1961 and 1965. A report was published in December last year by the International Commission of Jurists, which has consultative status with the United Nations. The report is a 390-page indictment of Chinese rule in Tibet. It focuses not only on the entire period since the Chinese invasion of central Tibet in 1950, but on events in recent years. It finds that repression in Tibet has increased steadily since 1994. It refers to the third national forum on work in Tibet, a key Chinese grouping of senior officials. The forum has embarked on a campaign to curtail the influence of the Dalai Lama and to crack down on dissent. The ICJ report says that, from the beginning of 1996, there has been further escalation of repression in Tibet, with a re-education drive in monasteries, and intimidation of monks and nuns. It says that, in 1997, the forum labelled Buddhism a foreign culture. That is in Tibet, the home of Tibetan Buddhism. The report is damning in many regards. On autonomy, it says that there is a centralised dominance of the Chinese Communist party, and that Tibetans are excluded from meaningful participation in regional and local administration. Where Tibetans are in positions of nominal authority, they are shadowed by much more powerful Chinese officials. The ICJ says that that is not in keeping with the concept of autonomy. The report refers to threats to Tibetan identity, and quotes the United Nations resolutions, which talk about the suppression of the distinctive cultural and religious life of the Tibetan people. The report refers to the 1991 sub-commission on prevention of discrimination and protection of minorities of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which expressed continuing concern at the reports of violations of fundamental human rights and freedoms which threaten the distinctive cultural and religious national identity of the Tibetan people. The ICJ report refers to population transfers. Since 1950, there has been a large influx of Chinese into Tibet. Tibetan urban centres have been sinicised. It is estimated that Chinese people now account for one third of the total population of all areas within the Tibetan autonomous area. Tibet's cultural heritage is also referred to in the ICJ report. It says that, in the early years of Chinese rule, there was a destruction of the monastic system, and that that was carried on in the cultural revolution. Few of Tibet's thousands of monasteries have survived. Traditional Tibetan architecture has been demolished, and entire neighbourhoods of Tibetan houses have been razed to the ground. The report says that the Chinese language dominates in every walk of life, and that the Tibetan language has been marginalised. Even subjects such as Tibetan art are taught in Chinese. The report recognises that the Chinese have brought in modern technologies of health care, transport and communication, but says that development has marginalised Tibetans, excluding them from effective participation. The livelihood of most Tibetans has been neglected, receiving little of the Chinese investment. The report says that, in the 40 years since the Chinese takeover, most Tibetan wildlife has been destroyed, and much of the forest has been cut. Watersheds and hill slopes have been eroded, and downstream flooding has heightened. Degradation of the rangelands has resulted in the desertification of large areas capable of sustaining both wild and domestic herds. The extent of the grassland deterioration threatens the long-term viability of nomadic Tibetan civilisation. The report says that a primary stated goal of the justice system of the Chinese in Tibet is the repression of Tibetan opposition to Chinese rule. Many Tibetans, especially political detainees, are deprived of even elementary safeguards of due process. The report refers to the low quality of educational facilities and teachers for Tibetans, and their difficulties in access to education. Their rate of illiteracy, which is triple the national average, is indicative of a discriminatory structure. Education in Tibet serves to convey a sense of inferiority in comparison with the dominant Chinese culture and values. The report refers to discrimination and false evictions of Tibetans, and the demolition of their homes. On the right to health, the report acknowledges that important improvements have been introduced by the Chinese, but says that there are signs of discrimination in their application. The infant mortality rate of Tibetans is three times the national average, and there is a serious problem of child malnutrition. There is a shortage of trained village-level health professionals to help Tibetans in villages. The ICJ report refers to arbitrary detentions. Tibetans are detained for long periods without charge, or are sentenced to imprisonment for peacefully advocating Tibetan independence or maintaining links with the Dalai Lama. It quotes the number of political prisoners as having risen in recent years to more than 600, and some Tibetan organisations put the figure at double that, which is an horrendous number. The United Nations working group on arbitrary detention has criticised China andHowever, there has been no response from China. The report states:"called … for the release of dozens of Tibetans detained in violation of international norms guaranteeing freedom of expression and freedom of religion."
involving the use of electric cattle prods and beatings with chains and sticks. The ICJ says:"Nuns account for between one-quarter and one-third of known political prisoners… Torture and ill treatment in detention is widespread in Tibet",
On extra-judicial and arbitrary executions, the report states:"Women, particularly nuns, appear to be subjected to some of the harshest, and gender-specific, torture, including rape using electric cattle-prods and ill treatment of the breasts."
The ICJ refers to freedom of expression being severely restricted, and says that the Buddhist religion is subject to "pervasive interference" by the authorities. What a damning report the ICJ's is. The Panchen Lama is the second most important person in Tibetan Buddhism, and, by tradition, the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama verify one another's reincarnation. The Chinese decided to interfere with that process, and to draw lots for the choosing of the Panchen Lama. A senior Tibetan abbot, Chadrel Rinpoche, sought a consensus between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese to get Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the boy chosen by the traditional methods, accepted; but, for his pains and because he had consulted the Dalai Lama, he was imprisoned for six years. The Chinese returned to their system of drawing lots, and Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, his parents and all his family vanished, taken into so-called protective custody by the security forces in China. In New Delhi, six members of the Tibetan Youth Congress are conducting a hunger strike. Their demands include that the UN resume its debate on Tibet based on its previous resolutions, and that a special rapporteur be set up to investigate the human rights situation in Tibet. I pay tribute to the Dalai Lama and to his representatives and followers in this country—for example, the Tibet Society. The Dalai Lama is a Nobel peace prize winner, and anyone who has met him or heard him speak knows that he deserves that honour. He is a peace-loving, compassionate and wise man, who constantly opposes the use of violence in his people's struggle to regain their liberty. That non-violence is remarkable, in view of the suffering and injustice endured by the Tibetan people. The Dalai Lama stresses the case for negotiation between him and his representatives and the Chinese Government to achieve a peaceful settlement, and, although that has not been taken up, it remains the way forward. The Chinese say that they moved in to get rid of feudalism, and that they were bringing Tibet forward. The Dalai Lama has moved away from feudal structures, toward a more modern democratic model. In that way, he has surpassed the Chinese in modernity. The Foreign Secretary in 1947 wrote a memorandum that forms the basis of the United Kingdom Government's position on this matter. It states:"A number of unclarified deaths of political prisoners, including young nuns, have occurred in Tibetan prisons in recent years, allegedly as a result of torture or negligence… The imposition of the death penalty in Tibet—which was reportedly used 34 times… in 1996—is devoid of the guarantees of due process and fair trial."
Well, Tibet is not truly autonomous. In a letter sent to the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood, the vice-chairman of the all-party group on Tibet, the Government say that they believe that human rights improvements in China could best be achieved"Tibet has enjoyed de facto independence since 1911 and that the British Government had always been prepared to recognise Chinese sovereignty over Tibet but only on the understanding that Tibet is regarded as autonomous."
I ask the Minister to be specific about how and when he expects those discussions to result in human rights improvements in Tibet. There should be a special co-ordinator for Tibetan affairs, either of the UK Government, or of the European Union. The US State Department has set up such a co-ordinator, and there is a European Parliament resolution calling for the EU to follow suit. I hope that the Minister will support such a move. The special co-ordinator could argue for the human rights of the Tibetan people, and ensure that they were properly respected and monitored. He or she could press for human rights organisations such as Amnesty and the Red Cross to be allowed to operate freely in Tibet. It is shocking that even the Red Cross cannot work in Tibet. He or she could press for negotiations with the aim of achieving real autonomy for the Tibetan people. The ICJ report's executive summary says:"through the EU's substantive human rights dialogue with China, supported by practical co-operation."
It states that the Chinese currently operate an "alien and unpopular rule", and that self-determination should be established. To call what is happening in Tibet repression is the kindest way of putting it; one might call it an inexorable cultural and religious genocide; but, whatever one calls it, it is not acceptable in a modern civilised world. It is Maoist fundamentalism—a form of nationalism that incorporates racism, insists that only Chinese standards are acceptable, and does not allow diversity or different cultural or religious beliefs. That fundamentalism is not the modern way, and the Chinese need to be told as much. I hope that the Government will tell China that it needs to move away from Maoism in respect of Tibet, as it has already done in other respects. I await the Minister's reply with interest, and I hope that he will speak up for greater autonomy and human rights for the Tibetan people."These abuses of human rights and assaults on Tibetan culture flow from the denial of the Tibetan people's most fundamental right—to exercise self-determination."
1.47 pm
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr. Cohen) for raising the subject of Tibet and China and the related issues of human rights and the UK's relationship with China. I shall reply to his speech by making a few general points, then turning to human rights and China, and finally making more specific points relating to Tibet. In that way, I should be able to answer the points he raises.
We as a Government are deeply concerned about reports of human rights violations wherever they occur, not only in Tibet, but elsewhere in China and in other parts of the world. The House is fully aware of the Government's commitment to the promotion of human rights—indeed, it is a centrepiece of our foreign and domestic policies. We are committed to the principle of the universality of human rights: human rights— economic, social, cultural, civil and political—are for all people, regardless of their sex, age, ethnic origin or where they live. All human rights are interrelated and interdependent: as my hon. Friend says, people cannot fully realise their economic rights in those countries where their civil rights are consistently violated. We share with my hon. Friend a strong commitment to the promotion of human rights. My hon. Friend also mentioned the fact that the Asia-Europe conference takes place this week. Asian leaders will be visiting the United Kingdom, and the conference marks the first overseas visit as Prime Minister of the new Chinese Prime Minister, Zhu Rongji. My hon. Friend knows that, since the smooth transition in Hong Kong last year, the relationship between the United Kingdom and China has moved on to a new, more constructive footing. We hope that Premier Zhu's visit this week will strengthen that relationship. We will continue to build upon that, but our desire for a better relationship with China does not mean that the Government will turn a blind eye to the many serious concerns about the observance of human rights in China, including Tibet—far from it. We believe that, in the context of a broad, co-operative new relationship with China, we will be able to address those human rights issues directly and to work with China to bring about concrete improvements on the ground. That will be a long process, but I believe that we are already beginning to see the first fruits of the policy. As my hon. Friend asked a direct question about it, I shall list the areas in which we believe that the United Kingdom-China and European Union-China dialogues have led to some action on the human rights agenda. I shall then give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Stevenson). First, as part of the dialogue, we have raised human rights issues directly with the Chinese Government. Since this Government were elected on I May last year, Ministers have taken every opportunity to raise the subject of human rights with the Chinese Government. We have done so in eight separate Foreign Office meetings, and, most recently, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary raised the matter during his visit to China in January. We shall continue to press the Chinese Government—as the Foreign Secretary and I have done—to live up to international standards. The Prime Minister and the President of the European Commission will address human rights issues in their meetings with the Chinese Premier tomorrow. Secondly, in September last year, we established a bilateral human rights dialogue with China. In October last year, the EU resumed its human rights dialogue with China. There have already been a total of four rounds of talks, and three more are scheduled to take place this year. Thirdly, in support of this dialogue, the European Union and China have agreed a package of practical assistance, which includes projects in the areas of civil and political as well as economic and social rights. Projects range from support for village-level democracy to help for orphans. Those projects are in addition to our own bilateral assistance programmes, such as the training of lawyers and judges, which are already in place. Before I talk about the results of that process, I give way to my hon. Friend.I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. He will know that the troika of the European Union is due to visit Tibet in May this year. Given that it has requested to sight and make contact with the imprisoned Panchen Lama, and that the Chinese authorities have noted that request, will my hon. Friend take the opportunity presented by meetings with Premier Zhu to repeat that request on behalf of the troika with a view to obtaining a definitive answer?
I shall come to the details of our relationship with China in terms of Tibet in a moment. My hon. Friend is correct to state that the troika wishes to see the Panchen Lama. We welcome the recent press reports that information about the child's whereabouts was given to the Austrian Foreign Minister when he visited Tibet in March. That is a step forward, and we hope to build on that move in terms of our relationship with China.
I shall briefly address the tangible results of the human rights dialogue and the approaches that we have made so far. I can cite nine positive results of that dialogue. That is not to say that that is the end of the story: we believe that it is a continuing process. However, it is important to recognise that there have been some results from the process so far. I shall list them for the benefit of the House. First, the Chinese have signed the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights. That is very much a step in the right direction. Secondly, the recent announcement by the Chinese that they are preparing to sign the international covenant on civil and political rights is a further step in an appropriate direction in the area of human rights. Thirdly, we welcome the release of Wei Jingsheng, who, as hon. Members will know, met me two months ago and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary last month. Fourthly, the Chinese have agreed to transmit Hong Kong reports under the United Nations covenants, which was one of our major objectives. That means that there will be separate reporting of Hong Kong human rights issues. Fifthly, the European Union technical co-operation package has been agreed. I mentioned that earlier as part of the on-going process. Sixthly, and very importantly, the Chinese have invited the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, to visit China later this year. We welcome that move. Seventhly, the UN group on arbitrary detention visited China in October last year, as part of the process of more open relations. Eighthly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South said, an EU troika will visit Tibet in May. That is a good and positive sign regarding the on-going relationship with China. Finally, the EU-China seminar on the administration of justice and human rights, attended by legal experts, academics and Government officials from both sides, took place in Beijing in February. I make two points to my hon. Friend. First, we are addressing the human rights issue. Secondly, we have a strategy and a process that we believe are beginning to bear some fruit. I hope that I have set that out for my hon. Friend. I turn now to the issue of Tibet, about which my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead has expressed such knowledge and his understandable concern regarding the situation in that country. Tibet is, rightly, an issue of special concern to both the public and Parliament. I think that every hon. Member regularly receives letters from constituents about that issue. We in Government share the deep concerns expressed by many inside and outside the House, and we are actively addressing those concerns with the Chinese through our human rights dialogue. The situation in Tibet features prominently in that dialogue. My hon. Friend referred to the legal status of Tibet. I must remind the House that successive British Governments have regarded Tibet as autonomous, while recognising the special position of China there. That continues to be the Government's view. Tibet has never been internationally recognised as independent, and the Government do not recognise the Dalai Lama's "Government in exile". However, we strongly believe that Tibetans should have a greater say in running their own affairs in Tibet, and we have urged the Chinese authorities to respect the distinct cultural, religious and ethnic identity of the Tibetan people. My hon. Friend referred at some length to the case of the Panchen Lama, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima. My hon. Friend is correct to say that that issue raises particular worries, which not only he but other hon. Members have raised with me several times. The boy is now aged only eight, but he was detained following his recognition in 1995 by the Dalai Lama as Panchen Lama, the second highest religious figure in Tibet. The Government cannot and will not hold a view about the child's religious candidacy as the Panchen Lama, which we believe is a matter for the Tibetans alone to decide. However, he is a child, and therefore we are deeply concerned about his welfare. His is one of the individual cases that we shall continue to raise with the Chinese at each and every opportunity. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South mentioned the EU troika visit. In view of the special nature of the situation in Tibet, the European Union suggested that a delegation of EU troika ambassadors in Beijing should visit Tibet as part of the EU-China human rights dialogue. I am pleased to announce today that the Chinese have now agreed to that suggestion, and the ambassadors of the EU troika will make a week-long visit to Tibet in May in order to assess the situation there. We welcome that development. The troika programme is not yet finalised, but the ambassadors are expected to have a range of meetings not only with the Government of the Tibet autonomous region but with religious leaders and ordinary Tibetans. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South will agree that that is very good news. I hope that, in the brief time available to me, I have outlined the Government's policy on human rights, our dialogue with China and the special importance that we attach to the question and status of Tibet. I am sure that I have persuaded the House that we take those issues seriously. There is an on-going process, and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead will be pleased to hear about the EU troika ambassadors' visit. We look forward to that visit, and to their report.It being Two o 'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
Sitting suspended, pursuant to Standing Order No. 10 (Wednesday sittings), till half-past Two o'clock.
Oral Answers To Questions
Duchy Of Lancaster
The Chancellor was asked—
Better Government Programme
2.
If he will make a statement on the involvement of local government in his better government programme. [35802]
Local government is a key partner in the better government programme. Our White Paper will address working across the organisational boundaries in the public sector so that all involved can deliver simpler, more effective, more coherent and more cohesive government.
I thank my hon. Friend for that answer, and welcome the fact that the Government are involving local government in the better government programme. I am sure that he will welcome the enthusiasm and commitment of local government workers—the front-line workers. How is he involving those workers in the better government programme?
The commitment of front-line delivery workers is a sine qua non for the success of the better government agenda. To that end, I have conducted seminars as far north as Edinburgh and as far south as Southampton, meeting front-line workers and finding out their concerns and their priorities for the better delivery of service.
Freedom Of Information
3.
What recent representations he has had on his freedom of information proposals. [35803]
9.
What response he has received to his White Paper on freedom of information. [35810]
I have received more than 550 responses to the freedom of information White Paper "Your Right to Know". The great majority of the respondents supported our proposals. I am today placing in the Library a list of those who responded and copies of the responses received, except where confidentiality was requested. Moreover, I shall place that information on the internet.
Does my right hon. Friend recall that so neurotic were the previous Government in their intense 18-year denial of information programme that it was necessary for me to go to the United States Congress to have questions tabled about an accident that occurred in my constituency, and that information about a death from mustard gas in my constituency in 1943 was obtained only through the United States navy?
Now that a freedom of information Act is on the way, will my right hon. Friend tell the House what he intends to do, before the Bill is considered in the House, to ensure that we have improved freedom of information?I well remember my hon. Friend's valiant efforts to obtain the information about his constituents. The fact that those efforts were required emphasises the necessity to introduce freedom of information legislation in this country, and the Government intend to do so. Meanwhile, we shall continue to operate the code, but we believe that there are other initiatives that we can take.
I have ensured that quangos make their annual reports publicly available, and that public appointments and Departments' plans for tackling the millennium bug are placed on the internet. We believe that the internet is a powerful tool for making government more open, and that the new technology now available goes hand in hand with open government.I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer, but may I press him further? Given the tremendous interest in a freedom of information Act, when will he publish the Bill, so that there may be the fullest possible discussion about what should be in it?
We are currently considering the responses from the formal consultation. We have already issued instructions to parliamentary draftsmen, as it is our hope that a draft Bill will be published before the summer, so that we can have a further period of consultation to make sure that we get matters right.
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that this is all about more open government? Does not that become increasingly ludicrous when we see press stories of the Secretary of State for Social Security and her Minister of State being reprimanded by the chief press officer at No. 10 for going on "Woman's Hour" and other programmes without having cleared it with him first? Is it not a pathetic representation of Government when members of the Cabinet must get clearance from press officers at No. 10 before they are allowed to speak to the general public? I cannot believe that any Minister in any of the Governments over the past 18 years would have countenanced such a situation. How can one talk about more open government when that situation is allowed to prevail?
I thought that the hon. Gentleman would speak about more open government. The points that he made were nothing to do with freedom of information.
Further to that, have any of those who responded to the White Paper commented on the quality of information supplied by Government? Does the right hon. Gentleman believe that the way in which information and news management is handled by No. 10 in particular is compatible with his ideas of what true freedom of information should be?
There was very little in the responses that referred to the present Government's openness, which is certainly far greater than the previous Government's. While we await a more perfect form of freedom of information legislation, we are using the previous Government's code, so that people still have some access to Government papers.
Charter Programme
4.
If he will make a statement on the future of the charter programme. [35804]
The Government are committed to making real improvements to all aspects of public services and as part of that, we intend to relaunch the citizens charter programme. I shall provide full details on the shape of the new programme and how we plan to take it forward when it is relaunched later in the year as part of the wider better government initiative.
I thank my hon. Friend for his commitment to renewing the charter after the disrepute into which it fell under the previous Government, when it was left with about as much respect as the cones hotline. Does my hon. Friend agree that the best way in which to ensure that the charter systems meet the real needs of the public is to ensure that standards of service are met? Can he tell the House what proposals he has to ensure that?
I agree with my hon. Friend that it is important to ensure that standards are met. To that end, we have established the people's panel, to find out what the scientific view is of the quality of service that is being delivered. The charter mark, which is going from strength to strength, shows a marked correlation between better standards of service delivery and whether or not organisations obtain the charter mark.
In seeking to achieve higher standards, has the Minister considered whether there would be benefit in providing incentives to civil servants for coming up with suggestions for savings in the public service?
The hon. Gentleman made available to me information about such schemes that proliferate in America. I made myself aware of similar schemes available in the United Kingdom, including one in the Ministry of Defence, which is extremely successful. That information is being assessed and evaluated by the charter unit, with a view to possible inclusion in the charter programme to be launched later this year.
Freedom Of Information
5.
What provision he has made for people with disabilities to contribute to the consultation process on the freedom of information White Paper. [35805]
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me an opportunity to answer this question. Freedom of information is a right that should be enjoyed by all our citizens. The White Paper "Your Right to Know" is available in Braille and large print formats. We have also produced a freedom of information summary leaflet, which is also available in Braille and large-print formats and on audio cassette.
I thank my right hon. Friend for his reply. I know, from speaking to disability organisations in my constituency in Milton Keynes, that they very much appreciate the ability to participate fully as citizens in consultation procedures such as this. What responses has my right hon. Friend received from disability organisations and what provision is he making to provide information in accessible formats?
I have received formal responses from the Royal National Institute for the Blind and from the Greater London Association for Disabled People. Their views are very welcome and will be fully taken into account as we develop our proposals. Under our proposals, wherever possible, applicants for information will be able to specify the form in which they would like the requested information or record to be supplied. Of course, that provision will extend to people with disabilities.
Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the situation that existed a few years ago when journalists were finding themselves gagged, unable to report on issues that were in the public interest, such as the dreadful affair of Robert Maxwell? Will the right hon. Gentleman consider including in a freedom of information Bill a freedom to allow journalists to investigate those things which are in the public interest rather than just matters of public salacious curiosity?
Having heard the earlier complaints from the hon. Gentleman's hon. Friends, I thought that that was exactly what the press were doing.
Is the Minister aware that the entire population of Northern Ireland suffers from the disability of being excluded from membership of the British Labour party? Is he aware of Government policy in a recent document whereby the Government will suppress information about opinion polls that might influence Government policy? Is he aware of a policy to suborn leading public figures to support Government policy without their knowledge? If he is, what steps will he take to allow the people of Northern Ireland to have full freedom of information about Government policy?
I am certainly not aware of that point. It seems a far cry from the question, which is about disability, but if the hon. and learned Gentleman writes to me, I will look into it.
European Union Regulations
6.
What discussions he has had on improving the quality of European Union regulations. [35807]
Last month, I hosted a presidency conference on better European regulations in Manchester. Over 250 delegates attended, including Ministers, senior regulators, consumer representatives, business people and the social partners. The aim was to work together to find ways in which to improve European regulation. The event was a huge success, and we have drawn together the key messages into an action plan for better European Union regulation which I hope we shall be able to promote with the Commission and other member states.
I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. I very much welcome the drive to bring about better-quality regulation for the benefit of business and citizens. I am glad to hear about the success of the conference. Can my right hon. Friend share with us any specific outcomes to reform European bureaucracy arising from that conference?
The whole House will share in our efforts to improve regulations emanating from Europe. I want to keep the issue high on the European political agenda, which is why I published a 10-point plan of action as a result of the Manchester conference. I have also reached an agreement with the Austrian Government, who take the presidency after us, that they will continue with this theme. We are playing a leading role in the European business test panel, which will improve consultation with businesses on regulations emanating from Brussels. I believe that Europe could also use the citizens first dialogue with the citizens service to learn more from ordinary people about the rules that they find too complex and bureaucratic.
Will the right hon. Gentleman accept that businesses in my constituency would like to see not only better European legislation, but less of it? Will he tell the House whether, at the conference that he chaired in Manchester, there was any discussion about compliance with regulations, especially in member states other than the United Kingdom?
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. Unnecessary red tape is not only frustrating, but reduces trade and costs jobs. We are determined in our presidency and in succeeding ones to drive ahead efforts to simplify and to reduce the amount of legislation that comes from Brussels. It is clear that regulations need to be clear, focused and understood. It is also clear that compliance should be universal and on the same basis throughout the European Union.
Departmental Responsibilities
7.
If he will rename his office to reflect his public service responsibilities. [35808]
Ministerial titles and functions are matters for the Prime Minister.
I was not expecting that reply but, in this day and age, is not the title Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster a complete anachronism, straight out of the pages of Gilbert and Sullivan? Should we not be trying to make government accessible to the people, rather than obscure? Even hon. Members are not entirely sure of the full range of important responsibilities that my right hon. Friend has, so people outside must be absolutely mystified.
As my hon. Friend knows, the Prime Minister technically is primus inter pares in the Cabinet and it would be extremely difficult, as well as unprecedented, for a Secretary of State to be subordinated to another Minister therein. If my hon. Friend is so concerned about redundant titles, may I suggest that he considers the title Leader of the Opposition?
There certainly seems to be little leadership and even less opposition from the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague).Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is nothing more accessible than Gilbert and Sullivan, and will he direct the Prime Minister's attention to this morning's excellent debate on that subject in the House, when everyone sang from the same hymn sheet?
Which, as the hon. Gentleman knows, is exactly the function of the Prime Minister's chief press officer.
Freedom Of Information
8.
What representations he has received on his proposals to ensure the protection of privacy under his freedom of information proposals. [35809]
The White Paper set out proposals to achieve a balance between personal privacy and freedom of information. About 40 respondents to the White Paper specifically commented on that. I am also aware of the evidence that the Data Protection Registrar gave to the Select Committee on Public Administration, which my hon. Friend chairs.
I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. Does he agree that one man's freedom of information can all too easily be another man's infringed privacy? Does he, therefore, agree that we need to ensure that, when the new data protection and freedom of information Acts are introduced, we do not need an ombudsman to resolve disputes between the Data Protection Registrar and the new freedom of information commissioner?
My hon. Friend raises a real problem. It is an issue that we have thought much about and that will be addressed in the draft Bill. We take the point that the right of personal privacy must be protected and we believe that that can be achieved, as it has been achieved in virtually every other modern society. I noted that, at a sitting of the Select Committee on Public Administration, the Data Protection Registrar ended her evidence by saying that she looked forward to working with a new information commissioner.
Better Regulation Task Force
10.
If he will make a statement on the work of the better regulation task force. [35811]
Since I appointed its members in September 1997, the better regulation task force has made an excellent start in its programme. Christopher Haskins is proving to be an excellent and valuable chairman. On 21 January, the task force published its principles of good regulation, which state that regulation should be transparent, accountable, targeted, consistent and proportionate. The task force will also soon publish the first of its sectoral reviews on consumer affairs.
I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. I agree with his general aims in making the task force's work more consistent and focused, and in making it easier for regulations to be understood. Will he share with the House which matters he is investigating and will be reporting on in future?
The Government are determined to cut all unnecessary red tape, but realise that some regulations are vital for protection of the citizen. Regulations should, first and foremost, deliver benefits to ordinary citizens. They should be fair, properly costed, simple to understand and practical to comply with. The task force is currently examining four key matters: consumer affairs, employment law, charities' funding and social care.
Career Exchanges
11.
What proposals he has to encourage greater exchange of careers and experience between civil servants and local government officers. [35812]
Encouraging exchanges between the civil service and local government officers is a key part of the Government's interchange initiative. We are working with local government and other sectors of the economy to promote such exchanges of personnel and good practice.
Does my hon. Friend accept that the two services do, indeed, have a great deal to learn from one another, but also that, in the past, relationships between civil servants and local government officers have not been too good? Does he have long-term plans to encourage institutional exchanges between the two services?
The Prime Minister has stated his own vision of such a long-term objective, which will be considered soon within the Office of Public Service. Very good examples of current practice in exchange include Michael Bichard, permanent secretary at the Department for Education and Employment, who worked previously in local government at Gloucestershire county council; and Mr. Nick Gurney, who—in a reversal of the process—left the Department of Health to become chief executive officer of Portsmouth city council.
Will the Minister give an assurance that, after the devolution measures for Scotland and Wales are completed, civil servants serving the new Parliament and assembly will similarly exchange places with those working in local government, and that boundaries will not be erected within the United Kingdom that prevent the free exchange of such experience?
I assure the right hon. Gentleman that there will be no restrictions on the interchange of public servants within a unified civil service.
Millennium Compliance
12.
If he will make a statement on progress towards resolving the millennium computer compliance problem in central Government. [35813]
I am pleased to make a statement on that matter. The progress reports that I published on 3 March show that many central Government organisations have reached the testing stage, and in some cases completed work, for significant systems. Furthermore, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has announced the establishment of a new year 2000 team in the central IT unit in my Department, to follow progress and provide advice to Departments and the wider public sector. He has also extended the remit of the ministerial sub-group, which I chair, to promote action on year 2000 issues across central Government and the entire public sector.
I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. As getting our act together to beat the millennium bug is clearly vital, I greatly welcome the Minister's and the Prime Minister's commitment to achieving that goal. However, time is running away with us, and urgency is the order of the day. We will have to ensure that action is taken comprehensively and in a timely manner. Will my hon. Friend assure me that such action is being taken?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to remind the House that we have to solve the problem for the sake not only of people in Britain, but of everyone in the global economy. No one is more aware than I am of the need for action. Since taking office, I have established a rigorous and totally open system for monitoring the progress of central Government in tackling the issue. [Interruption.]
Order. I cannot hear the Minister.
The role has been expanded to cover the wider public sector, with the remit to chase progress and identify solutions across Departments. The inaugural meeting of the new ministerial Committee, which I chair, will be held later this week. The new unit appointed to oversee that work will be based in my central IT unit and will be headed by Mrs. Mayer, who has just been recruited to the post. We have also selected Ernst and Young to carry out a risk assessment study for the key areas of our national infrastructure. I hope that the company will give me its initial report by May.
Yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health received returns from national health trusts throughout the country outlining progress on millennium compliance. I assure the House that the Government have a real sense of urgency in tackling and beating this problem.In the light of the view of the chairman of Action 2000 that many organisations will not be able to solve the year 2000 problem in time, and the Prime Minister's admission that Government costs for millennium compliance are £3 billion and rising and that all costs will have to be met from existing departmental budgets, so cuts in services will take place, will the Chancellor now arrange for a Minister regularly to answer questions at the Dispatch Box about progress on millennium compliance? After all, if we can have a specific question session on the millennium dome, is it not more important that the House can ask specific questions on the millennium doom?
I have reported to the House regularly on the millennium bug problem and have appeared before the House every month so to do. Had the previous Administration left us anything other than a skeleton approach to tackling the problem, we would have been well on the way to solving it. When we took over government, we found the cupboard absolutely bare. Not a single ministerial action or plan had been laid down to try to tackle the problem, which we all knew was looming on the horizon.
Small Businesses
13.
What measures he has taken to reduce the burden of bureaucracy on small businesses. [35814]
The Government are taking action on a number of fronts to minimise burdens on small businesses, not least in the excellent Budget that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer put before the House on 17 March.
Half of our better regulation task force's members have small business interests, and I expect all task force reports to address business burdens. My Department has developed a direct-access Government internet site giving small firms instant access to the regulations, guidance and forms that they need.I thank my hon. Friend for that reply and welcome his determination to cut unnecessary red tape. In keeping with the Government's commitment to help central and local government work together better, will he tell the House how the business community has responded to local business partnerships being set up around the country?
The short answer is that the business community has reacted extremely well. Local business partnerships provide a forum within which local business communities and local authorities can discuss all regulatory and enforcement matters. We now have more than 100 local business partnerships and up to 100 more are in the pipeline. To that end, I have travelled the length and breadth of the country encouraging the formation of new local business partnerships.
Has the Minister assessed the impact on small businesses of the welfare-to-work proposals and the abolition of family credit, which was very simple for small businesses to administer? Is it because the new system is so complicated that the Government decided to delay introducing the policy until October next year, well after the date on which they had promised to do something for single mums?
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has set out in full the reasons behind his Budget proposals and the methods of implementation. Small businesses are enthused by his proposals and those of my Department on local business partnerships.
Lancashire
14.
If he will make a statement on his responsibilities in relation to Lancashire. [35815]
As Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, I am responsible to the Queen for the administration of the Duchy. My particular responsibilities in relation to Lancashire include the Duchy's estates in the county, the appointment of magistrates, the Keeper of the Rolls and four other appointments. I have appointed the lord-lieutenant of Lancashire and the chairman of Lancashire county council as trustees of the Duchy benevolent fund.
Does my right hon. Friend, who formerly represented a Yorkshire constituency, believe that a case can be made for having a Minister answerable in the House on Yorkshire affairs?
My hon. Friend will be aware that our hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) took an opposite view a little while earlier. As a result of the war of the roses—this may embarrass my hon. Friend—I have considerable responsibilities in Yorkshire, including appointing governors to schools, looking after a number of castles and appointing four Duchy church livings.
Prime Minister
The Prime Minister was asked—
Engagements
Q1.[35831]
If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 1 April.
This morning, I launched the Labour party's campaign for a yes vote in the coming referendum. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall this evening host a dinner for the Taoiseach to discuss the talks process and renew our determination to bring it to a successful conclusion.
Who requested that the Prime Minister make his call to the Prime Minister of Italy on Wednesday 18 March?
As I have said consistently, I am not going to disclose details of my conversations with the Italian Prime Minister or anyone else. As my press spokesman has pointed out, the call was made by the Italian Prime Minister to me.
Is my right hon. Friend aware that they will be celebrating in the highways and byways of Norfolk tonight? Not only have we seen the demise of the East Anglian mafia, some of whom were more Bugsy Malone than Al Capone, but there has been clarification on the admissions policies for four-year-olds: they will all have the opportunity to go to a nursery, playgroup or school. Does my right hon. Friend welcome the renaissance of education after the death of the nursery voucher?
The nursery voucher was a disastrous idea introduced by the previous Government. We have removed it. We are ensuring nursery education for all four-year-olds. We shall then be well on the way to getting nursery education for three-year-olds as well. That is a Labour Government delivering on their election promises.
When the Chancellor said yesterday that uncertainty over the single currency was contributing to the strength of the pound, what exactly did he mean?
Exactly as he explained. Of course, before the single currency is introduced, there will be a lot of uncertainty about whether it will work.
Is not the uncertainty of which the Chancellor spoke the danger of a weak and fudged single currency—a danger that the Prime Minister refused to recognise last week? Is that not contributing to driving up the value of the pound? Manufacturing is on the brink of a recession. As the current president of the European Union, the Prime Minister is one of the few people in a position to do something about the issue. When does he propose to make up his mind and take action to save British jobs and British businesses by taking a stand against a weak and fudged single currency?
First, may I point out that we have made it clear all along that the criteria should be adhered to? There are many reasons for the current strength of the pound. No Government actions that the right hon. Gentleman has suggested would have any consequence, other than probably an adverse consequence, on the position of the pound. The position that he is advancing is confused and economically illiterate.
How can the Prime Minister simultaneously say that the criteria must be adhered to, while looking at a range of criteria that are not adhered to, and say that this issue is not being fudged? Fudging of the criteria is contributing directly to the high exchange rate, damaging our exporting industries. Why does the Prime Minister not use his influence with the Italian Prime Minister? He uses it for everything else, and can probably even remember the telephone number if he thinks hard enough. Why does the Prime Minister not act in the interests of British jobs and businesses and of the whole of Europe and be clear about the fact that the single currency is being fudged and he should do something about it?
Let me point out to the right hon. Gentleman that there could be nothing more disastrous than the course that I assume that he is advocating, which is for Britain to stand up now and say that it would oppose a whole series of countries going into the single currency. [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes."] That is what the Opposition are saying. First, actually, Britain is not in fact in a position to veto that, since the matter is decided by qualified majority voting. Secondly, it would cause complete mayhem were we to advocate it. Thirdly, it would be utterly pointless. In other words, it would be a combination of all those things that once characterised Conservative Government foreign policy.
With regard to the snide asides in the Leader of the Opposition's supplementary question and in the question of the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Mr. Flight), taking into account this over-the-top, hyped attack on the Prime Minister's press secretary— [Interruption.]
Order. I want to hear the question.
In responding to such attacks, will my right hon. Friend take into account the fact that Conservative Members above the Gangway are the party of Sir Bernard Ingham, who misused a letter from Law Officers against the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), who described a member of the Cabinet as a
and who was described by John Biffen as"semi-detached member of the Cabinet",
That being so, will my right hon. Friend treat with the contempt that it deserves this pathetic apology for an Opposition, who do not deal with crime, jobs, welfare and all the issues about which people care?"the sewer rather than the sewage"?
Yes, I certainly will. There is one reason why the Opposition attack the press spokesman: he does an effective job of attacking the Conservative party. In all the Prime Minister's Question Times, the Leader of the Opposition has not once raised health, education or crime—not once. That is an example of a poor Opposition.
Surely the real issue is not who said what, when and to whom, but whether the Prime Minister understands why there is so much widespread concern about the seemingly unstoppable growth in media power and political influence of Mr. Rupert Murdoch.
Of course I understand the concerns that people have. The only issue is whether BSkyB is treated differently from any other media company or significant British company. The answer to that is no.
The Prime Minister's case seems to be that Mr. Rupert Murdoch is just an ordinary business man, who can be treated like every other ordinary business man. If the Prime Minister believes that, he is just about the only person left in Britain who does. The reality is that one cannot treat somebody who owns a media outlet in the same way as one treats somebody who owns a beans factory. The Prime Minister must realise—I do not understand why he does not—that we must do something about media ownership. The only way of doing so is to amend the Competition Bill, which is to come back before the House in the next few weeks. Will he now see that that is done?
I do understand why it is different, which is why the Competition Bill includes specific new powers to deal with a range of competition issues, including predatory pricing—the issue that has been raised.
As for newspaper proprietors, I meet all of them regularly; I know all of them. I regard that as a sensible part of being the leader of a major political party. As a matter of fact, I have no illusions about any of them. They are all highly able, highly ruthless and dedicated to the success of their businesses, as I am dedicated to the success of mine.As it is 1 April, has my right hon. Friend had the same problems that I have had in distinguishing fact from fiction today? I am thinking of two stories in particular—one about the Liberal Democrats' numeracy courses and the other about a Tory truce on Europe, both of which appear to be wrong—while, for the Government, 1 April is a date on which we can put new money into health and education. Will my right hon. Friend comment on that?
I am delighted that the Secretary of State for Health has announced today that the pledge given last November, that there would be no 18-month waiters on the waiting list, has been delivered by the Government, as we said it would be.
Q2.[35832]
The Prime Minister will know that many disabled people throughout the country, and their carers and relatives, are concerned about the benefit review that the Government are undertaking. Will he rule out today the possibility of taxing disability living allowance?
As my right hon. Friend the Minister for Welfare Reform said when he announced our proposals to the House last week, we have no proposals to tax that benefit. Obviously, all taxation matters are matters for the Chancellor, but there are no such proposals in the Green Paper. I think that disability groups have welcomed the Green Paper, because they know that reform is necessary. They know, for example, that it is right to make changes to incapacity benefit and disability living allowance to make the gateways fairer, clearer and better, as well as trying to get more help to those who are severely disabled. They also welcome the fact that we shall consult them on how to proceed. That is the right way to make radical reforms, while reassuring people who need reassurance.
Q3.[35833]
Has my right hon. Friend heard the rumour that the Conservatives may abandon their opposition to the national minimum wage, despite the fact that they kept the House up about it all night a few weeks ago? Does he not welcome their grudging conversion to one of Labour's big ideas?
Order. I remind Back Benchers that they should ask about Government policy at Question Time. The Prime Minister is responsible for Government policy, not for the activities of the Opposition. Mr. Quentin Davies.
When and where did the Prime Minister last meet Mr. Rupert Murdoch?
As I said earlier, I meet newspaper proprietors, all of them, regularly, and I shall carry on doing so—as, I have no doubt, every serious political leader does.
Q4.[35784]
May I congratulate— [Laughter.] April fools!
When does the Prime Minister expect to conclude the talks with the Confederation of British Industry about the vexed problem of trade union recognition rights and voting by a simple majority? Is he aware that, the way that they are going on, they will probably take longer than the Northern Ireland peace agreement? Does he accept that, when the political history of this century is written, the workers' struggles will spring from every page, whereas the CBI and the media moguls will finish up with a footnote in the appendix?I have to say that that is not quite the new Labour authorised version.
Obviously, we are in a process of consultation, because the issue is important. In the manifesto we stated that trade union recognition would be given if a majority of the relevant work force wanted it. We said that in government we would consult and negotiate on what that meant, and that is precisely what we have done. It is important to strike the right balance between the right of an individual to be part of a union and to be represented by it, if that is what the individual wishes, and the need of an employer to run an effective business, and that is precisely what we will do. The introduction of the minimum wage now has considerable business support, and I want the other part of our fairness at work agenda to be implemented in the same way.I understand that the Prime Minister has been busy launching Panel 2000, which is about rebranding the UK. What contribution does he think that the Foreign Secretary has made to promoting our image abroad?
The Foreign Secretary has done an immense amount for British business abroad. It is only a pity that, when he does so, he is attacked and undermined by Opposition Members. I believe that the Foreign Secretary's job is not only to promote business, but to stand up and do what is right—that is what he has done.
Q5.[35785]
My right hon. Friend will be aware that last night, thanks to the hereditary peers, the Government suffered their 18th defeat in the House of Lords. There is growing impatience among Labour Members about when we will reform the House of Lords and get rid of these historical throw-backs and hill-billy inbreds. Can my right hon. Friend ascertain whether the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) shares our view on the House of Lords, or whether—on this, as on every other issue—he is still thinking about it?
We will of course proceed as soon as we can in reforming the House of Lords. It would be easier if we knew that we had the Opposition's support in doing so, but, as on so many other policies, their position remains completely shrouded in mystery. We keep saying to them that, if they will agree with us, we can remove the hereditary peers as quickly as possible, but they simply will not state what their position is.
Has the Prime Minister seen the figures that were produced by the House of Commons Library showing that, over the 18 years of Conservative Government, national health service spending rose by 3 per cent. a year, and that next year it will rise by 2.2 per cent? Are those figures correct?
I am delighted that my earlier remarks have had such a swift effect on the right hon. Gentleman. The figures indeed show that to be the case over the 18 years, but in the two years before the election—during which he was a member of the Government—national health spending rose in real terms by less than 2 per cent. This Government have significantly improved on that.
The truth, then, is that this Government are not matching the previous Government's performance in increasing NHS spending. All that the Prime Minister has done is to do what all Governments have done—take money from the contingency reserve for the health budget, except that he has not been as generous as previous Governments. Will he acknowledge that, under his spending plans, the increase in spending is now less than it was under Conservative Governments over those 18 years?
No, I certainly will not agree with that, as it is plainly wrong. First, we are putting far more money into the NHS—now, more than £1.7 billion—than was proposed in the Conservative spending plans that were published before the election. Secondly, even this year, we are spending far more— more than £300 million—than the Conservatives were due to spend, and that money does not come from the contingency reserve. The right hon. Gentleman is wrong on every count.
The Prime Minister's answer bore so little resemblance to the truth that he could probably get a job in his own press office before long. He promised the British people so much on health: he promised to reduce waiting lists, but they are now bigger; he promised to increase spending on the NHS, but the Government have cut growth in spending; and he promised to keep open specific hospitals, but the Secretary of State for Health has been busy closing them. Is that not a step-by-step betrayal of the NHS?
What a cheek, honestly. We are spending more money—[Interruption.]—far more money, than the Conservatives would have spent, according to their spending plans published before the general election. Waiting lists were going up for two years while the right hon. Gentleman sat in the Cabinet doing nothing about it, and they will come down under Labour, as we promised. The British people know perfectly well that the Conservative party in government did everything that it could to undermine the national health service. The Labour Government not only are spending more money but have got rid of the internal market and will put the national health service back on its feet, as we promised.
Today marks a new beginning for the Medway towns: 250,000 people in the largest conurbation in the south-east will have a new unitary authority, dedicated to better education and economic regeneration. Will my right hon. Friend join me in wishing that council success, on behalf of the people of Chatham, Rochester and Gillingham?
Yes, I have no doubt that the new plans will do an awful lot for the people in my hon. Friend's area, not only in education but in economic development.
Q6.[35786]
Will the Prime Minister confirm the front-page report in today's The Times about an extra £3 billion for the national health service? Is so, will he ensure that the Secretary of State for Health intervenes to halt the closure of four Cornish hospitals, with the loss of up to 100 beds and the sacking of 300 nurses?
Obviously, I cannot confirm reports of spending figures that are matters for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. I repeat: we are putting into the national health service far more money than not only the Conservatives but the Liberal Democrats were prepared to put into it.
The decision on the particular hospitals lies with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health, but it is fair to point out that the chief executive of the local health authority has said that the changes are being made not for cash reasons but for reasons of internal reform. That said, my right hon. Friend will consider in detail the points that are being made, and he will announce his decision in the normal way.Q7.[35787]
Jobs paying £1.75 an hour have recently been advertised in my constituency. Research has shown that subsidies for such poor employers cost the taxpayer up to £7,000 a year. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Conservative opposition to a minimum wage is wrong morally and economically and that his policies have the support of the vast majority of people?
One reason for a minimum wage is to reduce the benefit bill, running at £3 billion or more a year, which goes on subsidising low pay. Another reason is that it is better for employers to compete on the basis of skills and productivity, not lower pay. It is morally right that there is a threshold beneath which wages do not fall. I very much hope that, despite anything that the Conservatives have said in the past, they will join us in supporting a policy that is both economically and morally right.
Official Visits
Q8.[35788]
What plans he has to pay an official visit to Essex.
I am afraid that I have no plans to do so at the moment.
That is a big disappointment. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I should have liked the Prime Minister to meet some of the staff of various training centres in Essex, who as of today have lost their jobs because the funding given to Essex county council is insufficient. For those people, some of whom have been there for 20 years, that is not so much welfare to work as work to welfare.
Does the Prime Minister agree that all parties on Essex county council—Labour being the largest—would have liked to keep the centres going, but that closure was the inevitable consequence of the previous Government's underfunding of local government? Does he further agree that, if the present Government had funded local government properly, those jobs could have been saved?I hope that, as his hon. Friends cheered him, the hon. Gentleman will not mind my pointing out the fact that the Liberal Democrat manifesto made it quite clear that his party was also pledged to keeping within the spending limits on local government. That point needs to be made.
The particular training centre to which the hon. Gentleman referred is the SEAX training centre. The decision to close it was made by a committee chaired by a Liberal Democrat. The reason why work under the welfare-to-work programme was not given to that centre was that it was due to close, but other activities that are funded under the welfare-to-work programme will directly benefit his constituents.May I tell my right hon. Friend how welcome the new deal initiative is to the people of Harwich, one of the unemployment black spots of Essex? Does he agree that it is nice to see the Liberal Democrats and Tories of Essex joining in and supporting the new deal for the Essex people? The people of Harwich have suffered 8 or 9 per cent. unemployment for the past few years. It is right that Opposition Members should notice that they were wrong not to vote for the new deal—
Order. I urge Back Benchers to put a question to the Prime Minister and not make a statement.
The new deal has resulted in more than 1,000 young people getting into work in different parts of the country. That is just in its initial stages. It is important because these youngsters are often being given the first chance to get a job in their lives. It will reduce the cost to the state and will give them opportunities. It is a £3.5 billion programme, funded by the windfall tax. It is extremely important that we get the scheme going throughout the country, where it is generating enormous enthusiasm—and rightly so.
Q9.[35789]
What plans he has to pay an official visit to the Vale of York.
I am afraid that I have no immediate plans to do so.
May I express the disappointment of the Vale of York that the Prime Minister has no immediate plans to visit us? We would impress on him the distress caused to farmers and to manufacturing industry by the Government's failure to tackle the strong pound. What would he say to those workers who have lost their jobs at Samsung this week and to those farmers losing their living because of the inability of his party to tackle the strong pound?
Let us be clear about what the hon. Lady means when she says that the Government
should tackle the strong pound. The only way of doing that would be to tighten the fiscal position of the Government even more than it has been tightened. The Government have tightened fiscal policy enormously, but that has been opposed every step of the way by the hon. Lady's party. If we had followed the policies outlined by the Conservative Opposition at the moment, we would have had a worse problem than we have. We would have had higher interest rates and our economy would have been deteriorating. As a result of the measures which we are taking, we have the best chance of avoiding the boom-and-bust scenario. It is vital that decisions in respect of the pound and economic policy are taken on a long-term and not a short-term basis, so that we never go back to Tory boom and bust.Engagements
Q10.[35790]
Is my right hon. Friend aware of the widespread concern in all parties in the House about the latest developments in Cyprus? What action will the British Government take to get the Cyprus talks back on track?
It is an extremely difficult situation. Although we very much welcome the start of the accession negotiations with Cyprus, it will be far more difficult for the accession to take place properly within the context of a divided island. We have made sure that a settlement should not be a precondition of access, but we want the Turkish Cypriots to participate in the process. We are doing all that we can to make that happen and will continue to do so. In the end, we cannot make this work unless both parts of the island want to work together.
Q11.[35791]
Will the Prime Minister give the same help to parents who stay at home to look after young children as he is giving to parents who go out to work and need help to afford child care?
What we will do, as we have done, is to raise child benefit substantially for that section of the population. We are raising child benefit for everybody, but it is important that those women who want to, and sometimes have to, work for their family income should be given help with child care. We need extended nursery provision and a tax credit for the cost of child care. That should be supported by the hon. Gentleman's party.
What would the Prime Minister say to those employers who have not yet signed up to the new deal about how they can contribute towards providing jobs for Britain's young people, who were abandoned and left to unemployment by the previous Government?
I would say, "Sign up," because the new deal offers opportunities not only for young people, but for employers. Employers will get highly motivated, well-trained staff coming to work for them, so it is good not only for young people, but for employers. I hope that they sign up to it.
Q12.[35792]
Will the Prime Minister confirm the view expressed by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland last week, that a referendum will be held in Northern Ireland only if agreement is reached by the political parties in the present talks? Will he also confirm that the supreme authority of this Parliament over all persons and matters in Northern Ireland will remain undiminished?
Of course any agreement that is reached, and the referendum on it, will have to be agreed and will have to pass through the House as the sovereign body. That is absolutely clear. The position in respect of the referendum, and the arrangements for it and for the talks process, which we outlined at the beginning of the process, remains in being. I urge the hon. Gentleman and others like him to help constructively in reaching a deal and a negotiated settlement. We have the chance to do that in Northern Ireland—an historic opportunity has come in this generation, but it may not come in future generations. Rather than shake his head, the hon. Gentleman should help us to get to where the vast majority of the people of Northern Ireland want to be.
Points Of Order
3.30 pm
On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Last Thursday, the Government made an announcement by answer to a written question, but it had been trailed to the press that morning. The announcement, which was of great concern to people living in the Vale of York and elsewhere in North Yorkshire, was that the Government have allowed National Grid's proposal to transport electricity by pylon through the Vale of York and elsewhere in North Yorkshire. Is it proper to release such an announcement to the press, and for the constituency Member of Parliament to hear about it in telephone calls from the press? If so, how can a Back Bencher hold the Government to account and represent the interests of constituents?
It has been the custom of all Governments to issue such statements by written question. Indeed, the hon. Lady made the point that this announcement was made in such a way.
rose—
Order. I have not finished speaking.
As for accountability to the House, I remind the hon. Lady that she has just had an opportunity to question the Prime Minister about it. She had a specific question about her constituency, the Vale of York, to the Prime Minister, and she had the perfect opportunity to hold the Government accountable for their actions.On a point of order, Madam Speaker. You will have heard the Prime Minister boasting a few minutes ago that his chief information officer does a good job in attacking the Conservative party. If I am right in thinking that the chief information officer at No. 10 is a civil servant, is it not most improper for the Prime Minister to encourage a civil servant to behave in a way that deserves to be disciplined by the head of the civil service?
It is not a matter for me, and I am not responsible for ministerial answers.
Bill Presented
Criminal Procedure (Intermediate Diets) (Scotland)
Mr. Secretary Dewar, supported by Mr. Henry McLeish, presented a Bill to amend, with retrospective effect, the law in relation to intermediate diets in summary criminal proceedings in Scotland: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed [Bill 168].
Legal Reform
3.33 pm
I beg to move,
I must emphasise that the Bill has nothing to do with the Lord Chancellor or any problems that he may have had, and I deprecate the media's efforts to make an association between it and the Lord Chancellor. The Bill is concerned with the gap that is emerging between the people and the law. They need the law—it empowers them, and they need it to serve their purposes in all sorts of roles, ranging from employment, consumer and domestic affairs to the assertion of their rights against big organisations. They need the law more and more, but are less and less able to afford it, because, with constant escalation of costs, it is pricing itself out of the range of ordinary people. Any cut in public provision through cuts in legal aid, which seems to be available primarily to a few millionaires and to people on benefit, will make that situation far worse. The problem that we face and that my Bill attempts to solve is how to provide a popular community legal service that is efficient, cheap and available, like the health service, to people as they need it. I propose to solve the problem by enacting a right to representation and by providing that representation through a public service of paid solicitors and barristers. That is the most efficient and cost-effective way of providing legal services, in competition with private practices, which would continue to serve the people as before. The service would be established in law shops in each community, based on the law centres, which have done such successful work, but which now face drastic cuts in their services. High street law shops would provide a type of citizens advice bureau service to channel people to the advice service or legal service that they needed. That could be for civil or criminal matters. I hope that the criminal service of the law shops would grow as it developed into a public defender service, which we need in this country. It is the most efficient way of providing criminal law services to the mass of people in an urban society in which there is sufficient concentration and throughput of people. I intend to finance the structure out of the money currently devoted to legal aid—£1.4 billion or £1.5 billion—plus fees in proportion to ability to pay, and local government grants to improve the service of the law shops in their area. The private sector would compete by charging contingency fees, which the Bill allows, and conditional fees, which the Government propose, and by cutting out restrictive practices, especially those at the Bar, which amplify the costs of legal services to everyone. I want to create competition to serve. That is the only way in which we can provide the service to the people. There would be two structures and people would choose which structure could best help them. That would improve the service in both sectors. The private sector would give estimates as part of its competitiveness, exhibit charges in solicitors' offices, develop computer services and attempt to serve people more effectively than it has done until now. The whole structure would be supervised by a legal services commission—an independent body that would provide finance for the service, so that it was independent of political control, and ensure that the service was up to standard. It would be backed by community legal councils rather like community health councils, supervising local provision of legal services in the community. My other reforms are structural reforms of legal services. They are not dictated by any news items about the Lord Chancellor. Most of them come from the Labour party 1992 election manifesto and from work done by the Legal Action Group in the past decade. Those are proposals for which I and my hon. Friends have argued for the past decade. The office of Lord Chancellor is in a sense a mediaeval relic, ripe for the modernisation that the Labour party is undertaking in so many other sectors of government. His three-in-one role could perhaps be performed by the Almighty, but it is something of a difficult role for a mere mortal, which I understand that the Lord Chancellor is. I propose to take away judicial appointments and set up a judicial appointments and training commission, responsible for the selection and training of judges. We need a judicial service that is more representative of the whole community. That would not be politicisation. Judges are, in effect, already political figures, in that their politics range from right to extreme right to lunatic right. The system of training and appointment would make them better trained and more representative. I would also set up a Ministry of Justice, with a Minister here in the House of Commons and answerable to it. Here is where the problems and grievances of the people are raised and where complaints about the adequacy of structures and their operation need to be addressed. The Minister of Justice would also be answerable to a Select Committee of the House of Commons for performing the brief of modernising the whole system and ensuring that it serves the purposes of the people. My Bill is a modest Bill. It sets out the framework of a modernised legal service, which we cannot achieve or provide through a programme of piecemeal cuts that is Treasury driven and designed to save money at the expense of unbalancing the legal system against the people if those cuts go through. We want a community service that comes from an employed public service framework competing with the private sector to serve the people, so that the people are empowered by the law and not deprived of it and so that that service industry serves the interests of the people and not its own pecuniary self-interest. I commend the Bill to the House.That leave be given to bring in a Bill to constitute a national community legal service; to create a right to legal services and legal representation; to establish a legal service of employed lawyers and legal advisers throughout England and Wales under the superintendence of a legal services commission; to set up a Ministry of Justice; to modernise the judiciary, legal services and the legal professions; to curtail the power of courts martial; and for related purposes.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Austin Mitchell, Mr. Tony Benn, Mr. Nick Harvey, Dr. Lynne Jones, Mr. Gordon Prentice and Mr. Alan Simpson.
Legal Reform
Mr. Austin Mitchell accordingly presented a Bill to constitute a national community legal service; to create a right to legal services and legal representation; to establish a legal service of employed lawyers and legal advisers throughout England and Wales under the superintendence of a legal services commission; to set up a Ministry of Justice; to modernise the judiciary, legal services and the legal professions; to curtail the power of courts martial; and for related purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 3 July, and to be printed [Bill 169].
Regional Development Agencies Billmoney (No 2)
Queen's recommendation having been signified—
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Regional Development Agencies Bill it is expedient to authorise any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable out of money provided by Parliament under the Superannuation Act 1972.—[Mr. Clelland.]
3.41 pm
I am slightly, but only slightly, surprised that we do not have a Treasury Minister here to speak to the resolution. It strikes me that it would be a courtesy to the House were a Treasury Minister to come here to explain to us what the words on the Order Paper mean. They read rather ominously to me, because I have not been given any explanation. The resolution that we are being asked to approve gives a completely blank cheque to the Government, the Department or the Secretary of State to spend any money under the auspices of the Regional Development Agencies Bill.
The wording of the resolution is:At the stage of the money resolution—which is an important part of parliamentary procedure, when the House is asked to authorise the expenditure of taxpayers' money in the furtherance of the Bill's objectives—and when a Bill has returned from Standing Committee, where it has been scrutinised most carefully, surely it would not be unreasonable for the House to expect at least a range of costs to be given by a Treasury Minister. Given that the resolution stands in the name of a Treasury Minister, one might have expected a Treasury Minister to come and tell the House, fairly briefly, the sort of moneys that might be expected to be spent arising from the Bill and under the terms of the money resolution. I say that because I suspect that the sort of costs that will arise from the Bill will fall into two broad categories. The first could be described as administrative costs, for example, those arising from clauses 1 to 3, in which reference is made to between eight and 15 members of each of the nine proposed development agencies. On reading that, one can immediately envisage the sort of structures and bureaucracy that might arise from such a provision. There are to be nine agencies spread across the country and, inevitably, each will have offices, staff, expenses and all the other things that go with such bodies."it is expedient to authorise any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable out of money provided by Parliament".
My right hon. Friend's concern is a proper one. He might not have had time to study the Standing Committee proceedings in detail, but I am sure that he would like to know that Conservative members of the Committee moved an amendment to place a cash limit on the pay that could be given to RDA boards, the pensions that could be paid to members of RDA boards and the compensation that could be paid to non-executive members of boards for loss of office. The Government rejected that amendment.
I am not surprised to hear that. My hon. Friend brings to this matter a sense of financial responsibility and probity of the kind that we expect from Conservative Benches. Equally, I am not surprised that the Government rejected his proposal. Within that vignette lies the fear that I am trying to express today: substantial expenditure could flow from the provisions of the Bill as it has emerged from Standing Committee. That expenditure could flow from the nine agencies, their staffing needs and so on. One has only to glance through the Bill to see the scope for expenditure that it provides.
I fear that the direct costs will be bad enough—and, given my hon. Friend's comments, I suspect that there will be little opportunity for effective control. Even worse than that, clause 4 outlines the range of activities that the agencies would undertake, all of which will require substantial expenditure. The House is being asked today to approve that considerable expenditure without having any idea of the range of costs involved. I am now aware of your views regarding money resolutions, Madam Speaker. I believe that they should provide an opportunity for the House to consider, as part of our general scrutiny of legislation, the sorts of costs that would arise from a Bill. In this case, we must focus particularly on those financial aspects. It has been my experience—my hon. Friend may wish to correct me in relation to this legislation—that Standing Committees are not always able to examine the totality of costs that may arise from a Bill's provisions. That may not be the case with this legislation, but although my hon. Friend made a valiant effort to provide a mechanism for restraining the costs that might arise, the Government rejected his suggestion. Therefore, I think that we are entitled to be even more suspicious. My suspicion increases when I read clause 7, which states:"A regional development agency shall—
The formulation and review of a strategy suggests an on-going mechanism that carries with it a considerable cost. We are given no idea of the sorts of cost that may be involved. In that context, I suggest that, when a money resolution of this or any other kind is put before the House, the Treasury Minister in whose name the money resolution is made should routinely seek to catch your eye, Madam Speaker, in order to explain the amount of money that might be involved. If we have no such explanation—and I am afraid that there is none in this case—the House must remain uninformed as to the nature of the expenditure and the general range of costs involved. Therefore, we are being asked to sign what I would characterise as a blank cheque. It is not the first time that this has happened.(a) formulate, and keep under review, a strategy in relation to its purposes".
Does my right hon. Friend remember the debate in which he and I participated on the morning after the House sat all night? He and I waited up to debate the money resolution on the Road Traffic Reduction (United Kingdom Targets) Bill, which both my right hon. Friend and I wholly support. That was one of the few occasions when the House had the opportunity to debate a money resolution. Hon. Members were able to debate how much ordinary taxpayers should spend on a legitimate and important piece of parliamentary legislation. The point is that the House had the chance to debate that important question.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding me of that, because he well illustrates the fact that our eternal vigilance on money resolutions must never slack or cease. I remind my hon. Friend, in the same regard, that on that occasion we received no answers from the Minister to satisfy us about the amounts of expenditure that would be involved. I hope that this will be an important parliamentary occasion, in that it will be the first time since the general election when the House will be told by a Minister about the range of costs associated with a money resolution. I suspect that my hon. Friend will not hold his breath waiting for that to happen, but we must all travel hopefully, in the expectation that we may, eventually, arrive at a state of erudition.
My eye lit upon clause 10, which says:We are being asked, in approving the money resolution, to approve that blanket provision without any idea of the range of costs involved. I should have thought that it would give rise to very considerable levels of expenditure."The Secretary of State may, with the approval of the Treasury, make to a regional development agency grants of such amounts, and on such terms, as he thinks fit."
rose—
I hope that it is a shorter intervention.
It will be a very short intervention, Madam Speaker. Is my right hon. Friend aware that I hope to catch your eye, Madam Speaker, later in the debate—
In that case, turn your very pleasant face to the Chair.
I apologise. You know that no disrespect would ever be intended towards you, Madam Speaker.
Is my right hon. Friend aware that within clause 10 falls the whole logic of the point that he and I debated on that long, cold spring morning, when we debated how the Rio declaration would fit with the aspirations of the National Federation of Badger Groups? Does my right hon. Friend remember?Yes, I do. It is burnt on my memory. The reference that my hon. Friend made—as only he could—to both the Rio declaration and the friends of the badgers, contributed significantly to that debate. I hope that, if the House is very lucky and behaves itself extraordinarily well, he might remind himself how both Rio and badgers are relevant to the money resolution— and if he managed to get that round you, Madam Speaker, I would admire him even more than I do now.
The simple point that I want to make about the money resolution is twofold. First, there is a procedural question: whether it should be mandatory for Ministers in whose name the money resolution is laid before the House to do the House the courtesy of coming here and setting out, briefly, the nature of the money resolution, its background and, most crucially, the range of costs that might be involved, so that the House may take a proper view of the matter and pass its own judgment. The second matter, which flows naturally from the first, is the substantive point in the money resolution. I suspect that, in this case, the amount of taxpayers' money that may be spent as a result of the Bill and money resolution is significant and substantial. Surely it is right that we should be told of the range of expenditure that might be involved, so that the House might properly come to a conclusion. If the House is not given that information, I and some of my hon. Friends—I do not know how many— might be sorely tempted to feel that it is our duty to express, in a Division, our view that we are entirely dissatisfied, not only with the procedural aspects, but with the lack of substance so far offered to the House.3.53 pm
My hon. Friend and I—
Right hon. Friend.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) and I appear to be the only two people in the entire House other than you, Madam Speaker, who really believe that is the job of Members of Parliament to hold the Executive to account, so it is a great moment for the House of Commons under the present Administration that we are entitled—indeed, permitted—to debate the money resolution.
I remember a morning not long ago: a cold, damp, spring morning, after the House had been sitting all night. Regrettably, Madam Speaker, you were not in the Chair; you were attending to other administrative matters. One of your incredibly efficient and excellent Deputies was in the Chair, and he will recall to you, Madam Speaker, the moment when my right hon. Friend and I thought it fit to draw to the attention of the House the opportunity that we had in our consideration of the Road Traffic Reduction (United Kingdom Targets) Bill to debate the money resolution. The scene that passed before our eyes was one from older days, when you, Madam Speaker, were on the Back Benches, when—Order. I am much obliged to the hon. Gentleman. I must bring him back to the motion on the Order Paper. He is romanticising and taking me along with him, but I must attend to the business of the House. I bring him back to the motion which, he will notice, is a very limited motion. It deals only with superannuation costs. I am sure that he can read it correctly and will understand that. We will come back to superannuation costs now. Thank you.
It is because the money resolution deals with superannuation costs that I am able to remind you, Madam Speaker, of days that you will well remember, when Bob Cryer, a gentleman whose loss is much lamented and who was so sadly taken from us, often used to detain the House on the money resolution on superannuation motions for the greater benefit of the House, and the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) used to support him. It is a source of great pleasure to me and to hon. Members on both sides of the House that Mr. Cryer's fine widow and splendid son are now in the House to deal with such matters.
As you rightly reminded us, Madam Speaker, we are dealing with the money resolution relating to the Superannuation Act 1972. I support my right hon. Friend in respect of clause 10 of the Bill, which states:Whether those sums are voted by the Government on a superannuation basis or on any other basis, they are worthy of being debated by the House which, if it does not express the views of the ordinary electorate in the voting of Supply, has no right even to exist. The points expressed by my right hon. Friend in relation to the motion should be taken seriously by Ministers. It is a matter of regret to me that the Financial Secretary—a woman who, for whatever reason, commands the universal admiration of Conservative Members—is not in her place. Her parents were constituents of mine, when I had the honour to represent the Crawley seat. Indeed, she is an esteemed alumnette of the Thomas Bennett community college in Crawley. It may be that her training in that previous existence led her to draft clause 10, which states—"The Secretary of State may, with the approval of the Treasury, make to a regional development agency grants of such amounts, and on such terms, as he thinks fit."
Order. We shall deal with clause 10 in due course, when we come to it. For the moment we will deal with the money resolution. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be neither tedious nor repetitious, but will come to a conclusion now.
I will come to a conclusion, Madam Speaker, and it has never been an ambition of mine to be either tedious or repetitious.
Clause 10, which relates to the Superannuation Act 1972, states:or, in the case of the Financial Secretary, as she thinks fit. It is wrong for a Government to have the right to make fit applications of that type to the House of Commons. It is wrong for it to be done without permission and without any estimate of the size of the request that the Financial Secretary will make. We are asked to pass on the nod a money resolution dealing only with superannuation, and we do not know how much money will be made available to the Financial Secretary. Madam Speaker, like your predecessors were and your successors will be, you are all that remains of that thin gap between the Government and the outside world, which can hold the Government accountable and protect the right of the House to vote Supply. As we understand it, the House is being asked to vote an unlimited sum on superannuation. The Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning is ready to reply to the debate. He is a good and straight man and a good Minister. He will do his very best. As I have said on another occasion, he will have been furnished with a brief that is impeccably written by honourable civil servants who are charged with drafting legislation for the House with parliamentary clerks and parliamentary counsel. He will bring before the House the money resolution and ask us to vote, on the nod, for unlimited Supply on superannuation. If I were to say to you, Madam Speaker, that you could have unlimited Supply for your pension, you would say to me, "I would like to have unlimited Supply, but that is quite wrong. I could not have such a thing without it being approved by the House of Commons." We are saying that the liberty that is given to you, Madam Speaker, should be given to Conservative Members, whose only job in life is to try, on the few brief occasions available to us, to deal in straight and open debate with the Labour Government and the amount of money that is voted on the nod on issues such as superannuation. We have to ask ourselves—[Interruption.] I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles)."The Secretary of State may, with the approval of the Treasury, make to a regional development agency grants of such amounts, and on such terms, as he thinks fit"—
rose—
I am ready to put the Question. Does the Minister wish to reply?
4.2 pm
I must put some comments on the record. The hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) has had a very good lunch and seems a little emotional, if not a little tired. If hon. Members look at column 485 of Hansard on 14 January, they will see that there was a money resolution open for debate. I do not think that any Conservative Member rose to speak on that resolution. Indeed, it went through on the nod. I think that a little twinge of hypocrisy prevails this afternoon.
I will put the case for the money resolution. As you have said, Madam Speaker, it invites the House to authorise that part of the amendment to the Regional Development Agencies Bill on RDA pensions, to be debated later, which would create a charge on public funds. The amendment will have the technical effect of increasing the sums payable out of money provided by Parliament under the Superannuation Act 1972, if necessary. We are advised that the money resolution agreed by the House on Second Reading is unlikely to be wide enough to cover the additional sums. The net effect on the public purse is likely to be minimal. By far the bulk of RDA staff are to transfer from Government offices, English Partnerships and the Rural Development Commission, some of whom have existing public sector pension entitlements, and all of whom are paid from the public purse. With that short explanation, I hope that the House will agree to the money resolution.Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Regional Development Agencies Bill it is expedient to authorise any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable out of money provided by Parliament under the Superannuation Act 1972.
Regional Development Agencies Bill(Programme)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 82 (Business Committee),
That the Report [31st March] from the Business Committee be now considered.—[Mr. Clelland.]
Question agreed to.
Report considered accordingly.
Resolved,
That this House doth agree with the Committee in its Resolution.—[ Mr. Clelland.]
Following is the report of the Business Committee [31 March]:
That it had come to a Resolution [31st March] in respect of the Regional Development Agencies Bill, which it had directed him to report to the House:
That each part of the Proceedings on Consideration shall, if not previously brought to a conclusion, be brought to a conclusion (in accordance with the Programme Order of 27th March) at the time specified in the following Table:
TABLE
| |
Proceedings
| Time for conclusion of proceedings
|
| New Clause 2 and New Clause 1 | 5.30 p.m. |
| New Clause 3 | 7.15 p.m. |
| Remaining New Clauses and Amendments to Clauses 1 to 19 | 8.00 p.m. |
| Amendments to Clauses 20 to 23 | 9.00 p.m. |
| Remaining Amendments | 10.30 p.m. |
Report to lie upon the Table.
On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I would not want you to pass this moment by without agreeing that it is important that money resolutions are debated in the House. Do you agree that it is not to the advantage of the House of Commons that money resolutions are rarely debated? Do you further agree that, when they are, it is important that the Opposition be given a chance to lay before a greater public the arguments relating to that particular legislation?
The hon. Gentleman will know from his long experience in the House and certainly as a Minister that there is often opportunity to debate money resolutions. There was three quarters of an hour for today's money resolution debate. There has been ample opportunity for the Opposition: only two hon. Members sought to debate it in three quarters of an hour.
Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. I am sorry to be a bore, but do you agree that there are few occasions on which a money resolution is capable of being debated because of a short-sighted act by members of my party when in government, who agreed to money resolutions on major Government business not being debated? Do you agree that it is an eternal failing of the procedures of the House that we do not debate money resolutions?
This is not a point of order.
It is a point of order. It was only because of people such as Bob Cryer and the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) that money resolutions were debated—they always used to debate money resolutions as a matter of principle. Now that we do not, do you agree, Madam Speaker, that that is a deficiency in our life in the House of Commons?
The hon. Gentleman is never a bore; he always has something interesting to say. It was barely a point of order, but there was an opportunity today to discuss the money resolution. The Opposition have had an opportunity to do so and have done so. Whenever there is an opportunity to discuss a money resolution, no doubt hon. Members such as himself will seize that opportunity. That is as far as I can go with his point of order.
Orders Of The Day
Regional Development Agencies Bill
As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.
[Relevant documents: First Report from the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee, Session 1997–98, on Regional Development Agencies (HC 415) and the Government's Response thereto (HC 645); Fourth Report from the Education and Employment Committee, Session 1997–98, on The Relationship between TECs and the proposed Regional Development Agencies (HC 265).]
New Clause 2
Stamp Duty
'.—(1) Stamp duty shall not be chargeable on—
(2) No instrument or agreement which is certified as mentioned in subsection (l)(b) shall be taken to be duly stamped unless—
(3) Section 12 of the Finance Act 1895 shall not operate to require—
and shall not apply in relation to any instrument on which, by virtue of subsection (1), stamp duty is not chargeable.
(4) In subsection (1), "transfer scheme" means—
Brought up, and read the First time.
4.7 pm
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
With this, it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments Nos. 13 and 14.
New clause 2 is a technical change to the Bill. It exempts transfers of property that are made under the Bill from stamp duty. As such exemptions are allowed only in the case of transfer between public sector bodies, we have tabled amendments to clauses 39 and 41, which limit the use of those powers to transfers from the Rural Development Commission and English Partnerships to other public sector bodies.
It would clearly not make sense for stamp duty to be paid on transfers made from one public sector body to another, as the Exchequer would, in effect, be funding the payment of a duty to itself. In view of that, I hope that Conservative Members will agree to the inclusion of new clause 2 and to consequential amendments Nos. 13 and 14.Conservative Members have no objection to the new clause, which seems to be essentially technical in nature. However, I believe that it is grouped with new clause 1—[HON. MEMBERS: "NO."] Is it not?
May I clarify the matter for the hon. Gentleman? We are dealing with new clause 2 and Government amendments Nos. 13 and 14.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 1
Activities Of Agencies In Rural Areas
'(1) The Secretary of State shall cause an annual assessment to be made of the effect of the activities of each regional development agency upon the rural parts of its area (if any).
(2) The Secretary of State shall lay before both Houses of Parliament a report containing the assessments made under subsection (1) and his proposals (if any) to deal with any matters identified in the assessments.
(3) Any report made under subsection (2) shall also contain a statement in the respect of each regional development agency as to whether, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, it has fulfilled its purposes under section 4(2).'.— [Mr. Yeo.]
Brought up, and read the First time.
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
With this, it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 1, in clause 7, page 3, line 39, at end insert
'and(d) the needs of the rural areas within any region.'.
New clause I would require the Secretary of State to assess the impact of regional development agencies on rural areas, and to report the results of that assessment to Parliament. Amendment No. 1 would require the Secretary of State, when issuing guidance to regional development agencies on their strategies, to take account of the needs of rural areas within their region.
I very much regret the necessity for the new clause and the amendment. I had hoped that, after almost a year in power, the Government would have at least begun to realise that rural areas have special needs, and that policies that are tailored for the urban areas, which they so much favour, are not automatically suitable to be applied to the countryside. We have had a year in which the Government have systematically removed resources from rural local authorities by changing the funding formula under which standard spending assessments are calculated and under which the revenue support grant is distributed. Changes to the methodology for calculating standard spending assessments have removed £94 million from rural local authorities. We have had a year in which protection of the countryside through the planning system has been ruthlessly undermined. We have had a year in which respect for rural traditions has been steadily eroded, and in which the incomes of farmers and others who earn their living from the land have been steadily falling. Against that background, it is perhaps not surprising that the Government's Bill establishing regional development agencies has completely neglected the needs of rural communities. The Government's policy on the countryside has moved from denial, to panic, and into confusion. Ministers started by denying that there was a problem. Subsequently, they panicked at the extent of public hostility to their attitude. They are now in confusion about what to do. They are not only confused about what to do: they are confused about who should do it. Only a month ago, at the time of the countryside march, there was an unseemly struggle over who was in charge between the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The same hostility towards the countryside which characterises the Government's general approach has been apparent throughout the Bill's consideration. During the Second Reading debate and the Standing Committee's 13 sittings, we looked in vain for a single sign that the Government appreciate the real fear—a widespread fear—that those regional development agencies will be urban-based and urban-focused, that they will have urban-dominated boards, and that—at the request of the Secretary of State—they will pursue an urban agenda. At one point in the Standing Committee proceedings, the Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning seemed to take on the part of an Agriculture Ministry mole. His ignorance of rural matters constituted a powerful argument for transferring responsibility for countryside policy from his own Department to the Ministry of Agriculture. On 12 February, in the Standing Committee, the Minister managed to confuse the Rural Development Commission with the Countryside Commission. Last Friday, the Government announced the merger of those two bodies—a somewhat drastic solution to the problem of a Minister who had not done his homework. The extent of the Government's determination to prevent regional development agencies from having to consider the rural dimension was shown when they argued against and defeated an Opposition amendment that would have required the Secretary of State to consultThe amendment reflected the Opposition's concerns, but it also reflected the concerns of many organisations that had taken the trouble to respond to the Government's consultation exercise last year on regional development agencies. We know how much importance the Minister attached to that exercise, because he referred to it not only many times in Committee but right at the start of his speech on Second Reading. He said:"such persons as appear to him to represent rural interests in the agency's area."—[Official Report, Standing Committee E, 29 January 1998; c. 73.]
Some of the organisations that responded to the consultation process found that their views were quoted in the White Paper. Unfortunately, the full text of their responses is not available to hon. Members in the Library of the House. The full texts are not even available to the organisations that the Minister quoted in the White Paper. They are available only to people who go to the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions in person and study them in its library. 4.15 pm The full texts will repay study. People who take the trouble to study them will see how selective the Government were in the White Paper."our consultation paper received more than 1,500 responses, which universally supported the case for development agencies in England to match those which have worked so successfully … in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland."—[Official Report, 14 January 1998; Vol. 304, c. 373.]
On the subject of omissions, when the hon. Gentleman was discussing elements that affected the decline of the countryside and the problems faced by rural communities, I did not hear him mention BSE. Does he accept that BSE was caused by the Conservative Government's deregulation of the food chain?
I regret having given way to the hon. Gentleman, given the limited time available. The idea that Ministers are directly responsible for diseases is patently absurd. If that were the case, I presume that the present Government continue to share exactly the same responsibility.
I was drawing to the House's attention the selective nature of the quotations in the White Paper, which is particularly apparent when it comes to rural issues. For example, the National Farmers Union is quoted on page 45 of the White Paper. The words chosen by Ministers are:a supportive quotation, as one might expect given that it has been carefully hand-picked. Elsewhere in the response from the National Farmers Union, in a part that is not available in the Library but is kept well out of sight in the basement of the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, we find something rather different. I quoted the NFU in the Standing Committee on 29 January as saying:"There is clear merit in having one agency take a strategic overview of the needs and potential of a region"—
Clearly, that quotation puts a different gloss on the matter from the quotation in the White Paper. A similar example occurs in the case of the Country Landowners Association. The Minister was very ready to quote the CLA in the White Paper, and on page 16 he quotes it as saying:"The legislation which creates Regional Development Agencies should require them to have regard to the needs of their rural areas and reflect those needs in their policies and programmes."—[Official Report, Standing Committee E, 29 January 1998; c. 74.]
However, the CLA had much more to say about regional development agencies, although for some reason its other comments were not quoted in the White Paper, and, as in the case of the NFU, they were not available in the Library. In the same response from which the Government chose to quote in the White Paper, the CLA said:"The test for RDA involvement must be when the issue is too big to be resolved by a single County Council or Unitary Authority, yet not of a scale requiring national intervention."
The CLA, the NFU and the Opposition share the same concerns as many other individuals and organisations outside the House. Those concerns prompted us to table new clause 1."There is a real danger that Regional Development Agencies will be biased towards representing urban interests."
Has the hon. Gentleman considered clauses 7 and 8? Clause 7 says that the regional development agencies must follow a strategy in their work, and clause 8 says that a regional chamber must be set up in each RDA area and the strategy discussed with that regional chamber.
As the regional chambers are representative of all areas that fall within the region concerned, I should have thought that rural interests, as much as any other interests, would have a full opportunity to be consulted, to make observations and to participate in formulating the strategy.I assure the hon. Lady that I have considered those clauses in great detail. Clause 7 allows the Secretary of State to give directions to a regional development agency about its strategy—the formulation of that strategy, the subjects that it can consider and the other matters that it can take into account when making a strategy. The clause gives complete control over the strategy of every regional development agency back to the Secretary of State, whose record over the past 11 months has shown that he cannot be trusted on countryside issues.
Clause 8 gives the Secretary of State the power to decide which body constitutes the regional chamber. That is not a matter for the RDA, the local authorities or the people of those regions to decide; it is solely for the Secretary of State. Almost every decision on RDAs ends up on the desk of the Secretary of State, who has proved beyond doubt that he cannot be trusted with the English countryside.Will my hon. Friend consider new clause 4, which has not been selected for debate? It highlights the question whether regional development agencies should have regard to the general interests of rural areas and the agency to be created from the Countryside Commission and the Rural Development Commission when formulating their strategies. It would be highly desirable if RDAs should statutorily have regard to the general situation of rural areas.
My hon. Friend is right. I heartily endorse the sentiments expressed in new clause 4, which has not been selected for debate. It contains much good sense. The Minister could show the Government's sympathy for it when he replies.
This afternoon provides an opportunity for clarification on the Government's merger of the Countryside Commission and the Rural Development Commission. The concerns expressed by the CLA, the NFU and the Opposition are widely felt outside the House. I hope that the House will show this afternoon that it shares those concerns. It is difficult to understand why the Government may want to resist amendment No. 1. However, given their past form, I fear they may, so we are offering them new clause I as an alternative. It would force the Government to come clean about what regional development agencies are doing in rural areas. The need for the new clause is best illustrated by the tortuous history of how the Labour Government dismembered, and are now destroying, the Rural Development Commission. Back in December, the Government announced that the rural regeneration work of the RDC would be transferred to the regional development agencies. That decision provoked the resignation of the chairman of the RDC in protest. Then came the publication of the Bill, which provides in clause 39 for the Secretary of State to wind up the RDC. That clause provoked questions about the Government's intentions towards what was left of the RDC—a rump of a body whose viability many people were questioning. Initially the Minister was, perhaps uncharacteristically, rather coy. On 3 February, he claimed that, until the comprehensive spending review had been finished, nothing could be said about the future of the RDC. On 19 February, following the occasion on which he confused the Rural Development Commission with the Countryside Commission, he told the Standing Committee that the outcome of the comprehensive spending review might result in the retention of the Rural Development Commission. Just five weeks later, we are being told that the RDC is to be merged with the Countryside Commission. That is a fast-changing policy, in which the only loser is the countryside. With this Government, the interests of the countryside always come last. Will the Minister assure the House that all the existing functions of the Rural Development Commission will continue? Will he guarantee that a sum equivalent to the budget of the RDC will be added to the budget of the Countryside Commission, and will continue to be spent in rural areas? Will the Minister today end the uncertainty over the future employment of Rural Development Commission staff who have suffered protracted anxiety about their jobs for more than three months? No amount of spin-doctoring has been able to prevent the public from realising what a miserable record the Government have in rural areas. Today's debate is yet another chance, after so many have been thrown away, for the Government to rescue their position. To regain a shred of credibility in the countryside, they merely have to accept the new clause and amendment No. 1, which I commend to the House.I did not have the opportunity to serve on the Committee, but, as a member of the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee, I had the opportunity to receive evidence on the most important issues facing the new regional development agencies.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) mentioned that the Government do not seem to realise the importance of the countryside. I think that I have found an occasion when they did. In their response to the Select Committee report, the Government say:I am sure that we would all share that sentiment. However, the risk that the agencies become such bodies is very great. Given the size of the RDAs—they are giant; there is nothing about them that is even vaguely local—it is only natural that major urban centres will dominate, and that most of the expertise will come from such urban centres. Given the shock wave that seems to have hit the Government, following two very large and important countryside marches, they have made a number of concessions to the countryside. Such concessions are against the backdrop of significant reductions in funds available to county councils and district councils in country areas. We know that changes with regard to green-field sites came on the back of the two marches. We know that, apparently, no village school will close without the Prime Minister's decision. We know that the Government are looking at the future of cottage hospitals in rural areas. We are suggesting, in a fairly constructive way, that we pull together all the expertise and experience in order that we may see once a year what is happening to rural areas. There is a need for a distinct voice for the rural economy among the new giant RDAs. The Select Committee is currently taking evidence about housing needs, and some would argue that there is quite a lot of pressure on urban areas, where various civic authorities want an uprating of the economy. They look to the provision of jobs and manufacturing, and want services largely to be supported from suburban areas and the countryside. As one hon. Member said this morning, that is part of the process of civic uplift. If we are not to become a country dominated by the suburbs and ignoring the needs of the countryside, the countryside must have—and deserves—a distinctive voice. The countryside was not set in aspic, in some rural dream, when we began passing Town and Country Planning Acts; it is a living place. We must understand that there are some real issues that need to be addressed. Let me give a simple example. Because of changes in agriculture, there are now many redundant farm buildings, and one of the great challenges is how they should be used. The easiest solution, which is often favoured, is that they all be converted into dwellings. However, several authorities have taken the sensible view that the most appropriate way to deal with redundant buildings would be to introduce some light industry, so that jobs start to come back into the countryside. Several authorities have tackled that question, but, given the size of rural England and the nature of the problem, even the giant regional development agencies will not be able to concentrate on such needs. 4.30 pm That is why it is important that, once a year, we should receive a report outlining what is happening. After all, the restrictive nature of some of our present development plans would almost certainly have ensured that blacksmiths, for example, would never have been seen in the countryside. We need to ensure that the regional development agencies do not take an anti-countryside view. Such a view was best expressed by Mr. Tony Travers, I believe, in a recent article in the Evening Standard suggesting that one way to deal with the problems of the countryside would be actively to ensure that the services available there deteriorated—reducing health and education services, for example, so that people would leave the countryside and return to the urban areas. I do not believe that anyone sensible would suggest that we repeat some of the mistakes of the 18th and 19th centuries, when our countryside was depopulated. Nor would we wish to suffer the fate of some rural places in France that are becoming depopulated, in which smaller and smaller groups of people pay for increasingly restricted and decrepit services. What would be the key task of the annual report? One of its responsibilities would be to reduce commuting in the countryside, and to bring back life with light industrial and high-tech developments. There are examples of that in and near my constituency, and I have seen how a dedicated local authority has intelligently tried to attract such development. We do not want isolated communities, because all the jobs are a long way away. We want communities in which people do not normally have to travel far to earn a living. We must see the countryside as a living place, not as a place to visit at weekends. That is why the old Rural Development Commission was so useful, because it could bring in expertise from people in Essex, for example, and apply it to, say, Somerset or Gloucestershire. It could spread the cost of such work and of research. Breaking it up into nine areas will make that more difficult. That is why it is so important to have an annual report, to concentrate people's minds on the subject at one particular time. I started by talking about the Select Committee report and the Government's response to it, and I shall finish with another quotation, from paragraph 27 of the Government's response:"It is the Government's aim to ensure that the rural and non-rural areas are treated equitably according to their needs, and that RDAs do not become urban-centred bodies that neglect the needs of their rural areas."
If the regional development agencies are to do that, it would make sense to gather the reports together and present them, as we suggest in the new clause. That would give us an opportunity to debate the subject every year. Our principal concern is that if the House does not accept the amendment, the countryside will be swamped by the needs of the urban sprawl."It is envisaged that RDAs will design rural regeneration programmes targeted on the particular needs of their deprived rural areas. They will monitor, consult and report on rural programmes and how they are being tackled."
The fact that regional development agencies need to address the real concerns of rural areas is unquestioned. I have the privilege of representing a middle England seat that is 50 per cent. rural—the urban areas of Ashby and Coalville have a population of 44,000 from a total in North-West Leicestershire of 88,000.
Rural villages deserve their share of attention, and would protest vigorously if they were neglected or overlooked. We need to monitor the progress of rural regeneration in the new RDA structures, but it would be costly and unnecessary to require yet another report to be laid before Parliament each year. Existing and planned reporting mechanisms are more than adequate. Most of the North-West Leicestershire and South Derbyshire rural development area is in the two former mining areas of my constituency. I am pleased to say that the Rural Development Commission has been an unqualified success in its local activities. It has pursued a strategic, needs-led economic and social development programme, led by local partners with strong local government involvement. Its emphasis has always been on a planned partnership approach to rural regeneration, catalysing public, private and voluntary sectors to secure lasting economic and social improvements that reflect local circumstances. The local RDA strategy, which was first prepared in 1994, was thoroughly reviewed in 1996, and further changes were incorporated last year. Three of its reported key aims are to improve the local transport infrastructure, the skills of the local work force and the image of the rural development area, to attract more inward investment. The realisation of those objectives is urgently needed to prevent the former coalfield areas from becoming an offshore island of the east midlands economy—low-pay, low-skill, low-tech ghettos that are cut off from mainstream development and surrounded by the relics of two centuries of mining. Recent Budget announcements on rural transport and welfare-to-work initiatives on training, and the more coherent approach to rural regeneration that the Bill will provide, will tackle the RDA strategy concerns that I have mentioned. They have been widely welcomed throughout the rural villages of my constituency, including the one in which I live. We currently receive regular and helpful RDC reports, but we want continued action, in the form of projects such as the "Heart of the Forest" rural challenge at Moira, a large former mining village surrounded by derelict land and continually threatened by opencasting and landfill— the two ugly sisters of the minerals world. That £5 million project—with an RDC contribution of £1 million—will create a major tourist attraction at the former British Coal Bathyard site, with the potential to encourage a further 150,000 visitors a year to our area. It will provide a visitors centre, training workshops, office accommodation and a forest experience trail. The "Heart of the Forest" project has, in many ways, levered in a further massive £6 million lottery grant towards a £12 million millennium scheme that will transform the immediate vicinity. I need no convincing of the virtues and successes of the RDC. At the other end of the financial spectrum, the most recent RDA report referred to the £100,000 Concept network, which is a project to increase the supply and access of information technology and training advice and information through the establishment of four resource hubs in North-West Leicestershire. The Concept network will allow local people to take advantage of changing employment trends in rural villages, offering necessary training, access to information technology resources and on-site child care. I am confident that such RDC successes will feature regularly in the annual reports of the new RDAs. The future East Midlands RDA will report to the Secretary of State, who will lay a copy before each House of Parliament, under clause 17. That is a more coherent channel of accountability than exists at present or would exist under new clause 1. Our rural development area in North-West Leicestershire and South Derbyshire has been supported by both single regeneration budget and RECHAR 2 finance. English Partnerships has also contributed cash via the derelict land grant programme. My local village, Ibstock, won a national competition with a prize of £100,000 for development and improvements to our area, led by Ibstock Community Enterprise, of which I am a management committee member. Co-ordinating all the agencies has been a real challenge. I am optimistic that the new East Midlands RDA will provide a more coherent strategy, tighter co-ordination and better reporting than currently exists, but it will have a hard act to follow in North-West Leicestershire, where the Rural Development Commission has been an outstanding success. In Committee, Conservative Members expressed ad nauseam their alleged concern for rural areas, and said that they had been neglected by the new Labour Government. That belated concern apparently fuels the new clause. If there were regular reports to Parliament from the previous custodians of rural interests, I am wholly unaware of them.Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that the widely acclaimed White Paper "Rural England" was the subject of an annual update under the previous Government—a procedure that the present Government have stopped?
I am aware of that, and I have read the report; but the debates that took place after its publication were most unhelpful, and scarcely critical of the previous Government's record.
Reports not actions, and words not deeds, would have been the order of the day from a party that in government closed 450 rural primary schools, built on vast tranches of green-field sites, and walked away from the 25 per cent. of the rural population who live in or on the margins of poverty. Under the previous Administration, we who live in the villages experienced an unacceptably indiscriminate approach to rural development in many areas, simply encouraging footloose businesses to abandon the towns and cities, and doing little or nothing to meet the specific needs of rural communities. The born-again rural advocates in the Conservative party are urging on us the need for a new and separate reporting mechanism for rural areas. Had that existed at the end of the previous Government's term of office, the annual countryside report would have condemned them for incoherence, inertia and incompetence in policies for the rural areas, the majority of which are now represented by Labour Members.Would it be fair, then, to say that the hon. Gentleman is opposed to the annual report because he fears that it may be critical of the Government?
We have nothing to fear on our track record so far. We are but 11 months into government. I am surprised that we have not had an eleven-twelfths-of-a-birthday card from the Conservative party. The Government will transform the prospects of rural areas in a way that was not their fate in the previous 18 years.
The deathbed conversion of the Conservative party to the need for a distinctive approach to regeneration in the countryside fools no one, least of all the rural voter. The Conservatives espousal of openness and accountability in rural reporting is absolutely at odds with their record in government. I endorse the view that the momentum built up by the flexible and well-planned regeneration work undertaken by the Rural Development Commission must be maintained by the new RDAs. I welcome the new role that the RDC will undertake after its merger with the Countryside Commission, and I am sure that it will carry it out with distinction. I am confident that the needs of the rural areas will be more coherently addressed in the future regional development agencies, whose reporting and accountability mechanisms, as spelt out in the Bill, will be more than adequate. The new clause is unnecessary and would be costly, so I do not support it.When the Government announced the introduction of regional development agencies early in their programme, there was considerable optimism and support—particularly from rural areas, which felt that, for a substantial period, their needs and requirements had been ignored. The destruction of the public transport system following bus deregulation; the closure of many small businesses in our high streets because of the indiscriminate building of out-of-town shopping developments; and the reduction in the number of post offices and other services made many people in rural areas feel that their livelihoods and way of life were being attacked.
4.45 pm Since then, the Bill has been published and some of the optimism has been eroded: people increasingly feel that some of the early hopes may not be fulfilled. I hope that the Government will press on. There is no doubt that one of the most important parts of the Bill and the strategy is to address the needs of rural areas in each of the regions. These areas are fundamental to the remit of the RDAs and to the strategies which each and every one of the RDAs will draw up. RDAs will need to ensure that rural areas and their needs are properly addressed. In many regions, there are significant differences between the different areas. In the south-west, people are aware of the plight of Cornwall, as opposed to the more prosperous areas of Bristol and Swindon. Any large RDA will need to address clear disparities within its region. It would be wise to ensure that the RDAs address the issues not just by drawing up strategies or action plans, but by carrying them out. New clause 1 seeks to ensure that the Secretary of State can guide, direct and monitor the RDAs. We hear that great words have been spoken and great reports written, but people are looking for action.Does the hon. Gentleman agree that what is so worrying about the Bill is that very point—the contrast between the prosperity of many of the towns and the great difficulties of the rural areas?
It is the RDAs' role to ensure that that disparity is properly addressed so that, no matter where people live, they have the opportunity to participate in the economic prosperity of their region and of the country.
New clause 1 seeks to ensure that the strategies, directions and policy papers of all the RDAs are translated into action. The Secretary of State will have the opportunity to review those programmes to ensure that action is taken. I understand that the view of the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (Mr. Taylor) was that the measure was unnecessary and costly, but that is not the case. I am sure that the Secretary of State and the Department will ensure that each and every RDA reports regularly—at least annually. That will happen anyway. It will not be beyond the wit of the Department—or cost too much—to bring the reports together into a formal report by the Department, under the Secretary of State, and to lay that before this House.The hon. Gentleman is exactly right. In their response to the Select Committee report, the Government stated that it is a responsibility of the RDA to monitor and to report annually. He is quite right—it will involve no extra expenditure to bring the reports together, as the RDAs have to report precisely on rural matters.
I thank the hon. Gentleman, who reinforces my point. I hope that the advantage will be that rural areas will continue to be considered regularly by hon. Members. We could ensure that plans drawn up and implemented by RDAs were working, and could compare the relative performance of RDAs. There should at least be a competitive edge between them, which would ensure that they do as much as they can and that best practice is used. I hope that the cost would not be huge and that the profile of rural regional affairs would be raised.
Rural areas clearly have special requirements. Firms operating in them are often small; employment is fragile at times, and often seasonal. They will need special assistance to ensure that employment generated by small firms helps those who are looking for new jobs. Transport is important for people in rural areas. The issue of public transport must be tackled more vigorously if people are to be able to travel to work, visit people and enjoy a social life. The cost of housing in rural areas must be considered. Although we agree with the Government that green-field sites should not be taken up, policies must address the cost of housing in smaller towns and villages and the problems of second homes. The social side of rural life is becoming low grade. Low wages and the high cost of transport—or the lack of it—make it difficult for people who live in villages and small towns to lead an active social life. Those issues, under the guise of sustainable development, must be addressed in the round. Pockets of deprivation, which exist in many rural areas, must also be addressed. The sparsity factor is connected to those issues and must be included in any calculations for provision of services in rural areas. Overall, we support the principle of establishing regional development agencies. We want to ensure that they are introduced as quickly as possible to address the economic deficit. New clause 1 and amendment No. 1 would not impose additional cost and would raise the profile of the problems of regional rural areas in the House. The functions of RDAs, and their successes and failures, could be properly examined so that the regions of England could move forward positively, not only in urban but in rural areas.On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Although a number of hon. Members feel disquiet because Front Benchers are able to place their feet on the Table, I acknowledge the tradition. But is it appropriate for Back Benchers to place their feet on the Bench in front of them? I refer, with great respect, to the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames). Surely it is a bad example to set in respect of posture.
:Whatever it is, it is not out of order.
rose—
After that—
Order. I thought that the hon. Gentleman was responding to the point of order. I have to strike a balance across the House. I was distracted for a moment. I must call an hon. Member from the other side of the House. I call Ms Jenny Jones.
I wish to speak briefly to amendment No. 1.
Clause 7 charges regional development agencies with developing economic strategies for their regions. The problem with amendment No. 1 is that nothing in clause 7 suggests that the needs of rural areas will not be met by RDAs. Most, if not all, the nine regions will contain large rural areas. It is for the Secretary of State to ensure that RDAs do their job properly. Clause 7(3)(a) states that RDAs must develop strategies relating to "the agency's area". They cannot help but understand the needs of the rural areas and meet their needs. That is one of the major jobs of the RDAs. Most regions have strong sub-regional identities. In my region, West Midlands, that is especially so. Last month I went to a large, well-attended conference in the midlands region on the proposed West Midlands RDA. The local authorities, businesses, voluntary sector bodies and colleges from the rural areas—there are large rural areas in the West Midlands region—were well represented and made their case. No one denied the needs of rural areas. There was no dissent. If anything, there was an acknowledgement that, if the West Midlands RDA was to do its job properly, it had to ensure that rural needs were not only properly represented on the board but represented in any strategies. Amendment No. 1 is unnecessary because clause 7 already makes it clear that a regional development agency has to make a strategy for its entire area. Amendment No. 1 is also potentially divisive because it implies that an RDA will not understand the rural needs of its area. As I have said, if the boards are properly constituted and do their work well in representing the constituents within the areas, they cannot help but represent rural needs.I rise to support new clause 1 and amendment No. 1 especially in relation to new house building arrangements for rural areas. I am aware that a subsequent amendment deals with RDAs not acquiring specific planning powers, and that the Government intend to accept the amendment, but I am concerned that RDAs will acquire the present structural planning powers of county councils in a new and changed form. When we questioned civil servants in the Department as part of the housing review undertaken by the Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs, they gave the distinct impression that that was the way in which they understood developments would occur.
Yesterday, the citizens of West Sussex presented a petition signed by 28,000 people against the well-known demand by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions for the building of an additional 12,800 houses. The petition represented only a part of the county.Is my hon. Friend aware that, last week, representatives of Mid-Sussex district council of all parties, led by myself, presented a petition signed by some 10,000 people, in addition to those who signed the petition to which my hon. Friend refers? It was addressed directly to the Prime Minister at No. 10 Downing street and expressed concern about the appalling consequences of the Labour party's proposals for the rural health of West Sussex.
I thank my hon. Friend. There are, indeed, more to come from all parties.
It is widely believed that the Deputy Prime Minister made the decision on this famous issue not out of the blue but on the advice of the south-east regional office. The advice was given on the ground that, if West Sussex was permitted to get away with it, other county councils within the south-east area would do likewise. It seems to me that the Government office for the south-east is indeed going to be the handmaid and bureaucrat of the new South East RDA. The Government's new-found intent to abolish plan, predict and provide and replace it with manage and consult—more of a bottom-up approach—risks being defeated by RDAs if they drive through broadly regional strategies for housing numbers and force them on county councils by using their increased power. I support the new clause specifically in relation to the subject of housing. The experiment in West Sussex of a bottom-up environmental capacity study is precisely what other county councils should be doing. In housing and many other matters, citizens relate to their county councils or to their metropolitan districts. The danger is that, in future, central Government will say that they have devolved powers down to RDAs on questions such as the number of houses and where they are to go; county councils and metropolitan authorities will say that they have lost their real power to the RDAs in such matters; and a bureaucratic, undemocratic body in the middle will be driving forward that crucially important issue, about which citizens care passionately.5 pm
Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the Conservative Government's rather threadbare record on the use of brown land for development purposes? Despite a 50 per cent. target late in the day, their achievement was 42 per cent. over their whole period in government.
The Labour Government are aiming to achieve 60 per cent. and will probably achieve an even greater proportion. West Sussex was more threatened in the 18 years of the Conservative Government than it will be under the Labour Government of the next 25 years.First, I am talking about the future, not the past, and, secondly, I am talking about how decisions are to be made. As for the past, the House will be well aware that the proportion of green land that was being used declined. In their last two years in office, the Conservative Government realised the error of the country as a whole in building too much on green land and they went into the election with a specific target.
However, with all due respect, I am not making a party political point. I care passionately about the preservation of our countryside, as, I hope, do Labour Members. I do not want decisions about building on green land to be taken by unaccountable bureaucrats who cannot be got at in the House, or at county council level.I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute briefly to the debate on new clause 1. It is terribly important that we understand that we are talking about the establishment of a quango and that it is in the nature of quangos that, if one does not set out from the beginning what is intended in terms of their accountability for specific purposes established by Parliament, it is easy for them to pursue their own agenda. Notwithstanding the provision in the Bill for a regional chamber, we have to be clear that it should have particular regard to the purposes agreed by the House during the passage of the Bill.
In East Anglia, there is a substantial rural component, which will be reflected in the regional chamber and, I hope, in the membership of the regional development agency. Even so, there is a feeling that, when the RDA comes to consider the strategy to be established under clause 7, it will be under pressure to deliver targets and measurable outcomes—large numbers of jobs, good figures on inward investment and so on. The RDA's response to that pressure will be to target areas which have the highest concentrations of unemployment, which will tend to be urban areas; and to compete for some of the higher-profile inward investment projects, which, by their very nature, will come from large firms that are essentially interested in locating in or near urban areas and not in rural areas. One example of a drift in that direction was seen in policing in Cambridgeshire. For a couple of years, Cambridgeshire's crime statistics were not dropping in the same way as other police force statistics from around the country. To restore its reputation as a police force that was succeeding in reducing crime in its area, Cambridgeshire's response was to target resources inside Peterborough and Cambridge—urban areas in which there are relatively high concentrations of crime. The net result is that we do not see police in villages. The same thing will happen in other areas if regional development agencies are allowed to proceed unconstrained to set their own strategies and report on them. They will concentrate on urban areas to the exclusion of rural areas.In saying that regional development agencies must be accountable to the House, does the hon. Gentleman seek to relegate the importance of regional chambers in influencing the work of the regional development agencies? Is he aware that the regional chamber in the North West is due to meet this week and that it has the full support of all partners in that region, including many partners from rural areas?
I am sure that you will stop me if I elaborate too much on that, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but it is an important point. The hon. Lady and other hon. Members must understand that it is not acceptable to establish regional development agencies on a relatively non-accountable basis, with the Secretary of State designating regional chambers as and when he chooses. It is not then sufficient to say that the regional development agencies are not accountable and that regional government is required in order to make them accountable.
Regional government is not desired in East Anglia—or, I suspect, in other regions of England. We require that the regional development agencies be accountable to the House. There must be a structure of accountability—we shall discuss that issue later—for regional development agencies to local authorities. That is my point. The hon. Lady has an interest in local authorities, as do I as an honorary vice-president of the Local Government Association.Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
No. I have given way once and time is pressing. Regional development agencies should be increasingly accountable to local authorities. Through that accountability, the agencies will place greater emphasis on rural issues. If they respond only to a regional chamber where rural interests will be once again submerged by a larger body, it will be difficult to identify from the aggregate figures and reports what is occurring in rural areas.
I hope that Labour Members understand that point—I know that my right hon. and hon. Friends do. We can often operate on the basis of aggregate statistics and larger numbers in urban areas, but we cannot do that in rural areas. For example, it is not satisfactory to say that there have been X number of successful projects or that certain organisations have come, by way of inward investment, into a rural area. Such factors tend to affect only one village. It is important to understand—it is a difficult, labour-intensive operation—what is happening in rural areas, village by village. The requirements of each village may differ. I do not claim that the regional development agencies will be able to report village by village, but the mechanism in new clause 1 and other measures will require the agencies increasingly to have regard to the diverse needs of rural areas. That will involve relationships even with parish councils, because such bodies often have a distinct and entirely legitimate view about what is required in their areas. I have one other general point. Even if regional development agencies do not have general planning powers, they will none the less be powerful in relation to the acquisition of land and the dispersion of industry. It is important that they understand that they cannot simply try to create jobs in aggregate numbers without recognising the need to balance those jobs in rural areas. South Cambridgeshire is the fastest growing district in England where there is a heavy emphasis on technological development and high-tech industries. Left to its own devices—a regional development agency may view it as an attractive option—the Cambridge phenomenon could spread to most of the villages that surround the city, and thus create a relatively large number of jobs in those areas. However, those villagers would not necessarily feel that they had been well served if, 10 or 20 years later, the only jobs available were high-tech jobs that were filled by people who had moved into the area for that reason. If we are to sustain the character of rural areas at a time when there is a relative reduction in jobs in agriculture and related industries, we need to ensure that a balanced set of other jobs comes into the area, such as service jobs and light industrial jobs—jobs that the young people will be able to take, to allow them to remain in the villages. If we do not, young people without the appropriate skills or qualifications will move into urban areas, and people from urban areas with higher qualifications relevant to high-tech industries will move out into the villages. Once and for all, we shall lose the character of those villages; we shall lose those communities; and we shall lose many of the young people who have a deep understanding of the countryside, of the way in which it works, and of the jobs that have been taken in the countryside in the past. On that basis, although the Government reject other options—such as a rural development agency, as suggested in new clause 4, or the Rural Development Commission—I find it difficult to see why they resist what is, on the face of it, a modest requirement that the regional development agencies should set out clearly, for report to the House and, if necessary, for debate, how they are responding to the specific and diverse needs of rural areas.This has been an important debate. Although we rehearsed quite a lot of its substance in Committee, it is good that matters have been raised on the Floor of the House, and I thank hon. Members, especially my hon. Friends, for their contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (Mr. Taylor) made an excellent speech, showing real understanding of rural issues.
The debate has given us a snapshot of the Conservatives' current thinking, as well as of the position that they adopted in government and the failures of many of their policies. The policies which they relentlessly pursued in government were effective only in creating divisions within the country. They broadened the gap between the rich and the poor, between those with work and those out of work, between the north and the south, and between themselves and the majority of the electorate. That was made clear on 1 May 1997. The Conservatives' view of life is dominated by the conflict between seemingly irreconcilable opposites—left and right, wet and dry, pro and anti. It comes as no surprise therefore that, throughout, they have tried to base much of their opposition to the Bill on the division that they see between the country and the town—between urban and rural areas. Their amendments to the Bill would only perpetuate those divisions. The Government, by contrast, believe in diversity, not division. We want to harness the different parts of each region so that they can contribute to increasing regional prosperity overall. We believe in an integrated approach. Of course, there are important differences between urban and rural areas, and our proposals will cater for them; but it is also important to look across regions as a whole. Rural and urban areas do not exist in isolation from one another, and should not be treated as though they do.Will the Minister give way?
No; I must continue. If the hon. Gentleman had spent less time on points of order earlier, we would all have had more time to contribute to the debate.
We need to understand the specific needs of rural areas, and to address them within an overall framework for each region as a whole. The Opposition always claim that we do not understand the needs of rural areas; nothing could be further from the truth. As Labour Members have said, we are getting on with delivering on our commitments to build a decent society and tackle the real problems of the rural areas. We are putting more money into health care in rural areas, to treat more patients and set up projects such as night nursing care and nursing and residential homes. The shire counties are receiving £447 million extra in the year ahead, to raise standards and tackle the backlog of school repairs left by the previous Administration. We are linking every school, however remote, to the information super-highway. We are releasing £900 million from council house sales to provide new social housing and refurbish existing stock, to help to avoid young people having to move away from the village where they were born.Will the Minister give way?
In a moment.
On that point.
No; I shall give way in a moment.
Our view of those living in rural areas includes rural workers, who will reap the benefit of the national minimum wage.Does the Minister agree that the credibility of the RDAs will depend on who is appointed to them? Does he agree that part of the problem that the national parks have in their relationship with the wider area is that they do not have on their governing authorities people who command the respect and understanding of those who live in rural areas? Does he agree that it is extremely important that the RDAs have that full rural representation?
When it comes to appointing the RDAs' boards—a subject which I shall discuss shortly—we shall factor in very much the concerns of the rural areas.
The countryside march was mentioned several times in the debate, but it was about ordinary people, from communities throughout the country, coming together to express their fears about the future and to help raise awareness throughout the country of the vital roles that farming and the wider rural community play. To a Government built on belief in the community, that was very welcome. However, in the main the march was about joining up the towns and the country, about which the previous Administration did little. 5.15 pm The RDAs will be regionwide bodies, responsible for economic development and regeneration of rural as well as urban areas. Those outside London will be given a specific remit to serve the rural areas of their region, and at least one member of their board will be a person with rural knowledge and expertise. By taking on the rural regeneration work currently carried out by the Rural Development Commission, and by having its associated staff transferred to them, RDAs will be able to take a broad view of regeneration needs throughout their areas. In our White Paper, we said that our strong commitment to rural regeneration would continue to be reflected in the RDAs' funding for rural areas. The hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) raised that point. Rural funds will be separately allocated, to ensure that rural areas' needs continue to be addressed. We shall give RDAs guidance on how they should use their budgets for the rural areas, including the determination of rural areas of need. At least initially, RDAs will take over the RDC's existing regeneration programmes, which are targeted at the priority rural development areas. Earlier this year, the new chairman of the Rural Development Commission, Miles Middleton, wrote to me, offering the RDC's help in developing guidance to the RDAs. I was very pleased to take up the suggestion, and my officials have been in discussions with the RDC staff about how to take that forward. Despite what Conservative Members may say, we are receiving full co-operation from the RDC in setting up the regional development agencies.When the Minister said that there would be separate funding for the rural elements within the RDAs, what did he mean? Will the money that comes to an RDA be divided into two piles, as it were? Will there be one specifically earmarked for rural affairs? How will that be defined, and how will the Minister know that the money is spent on such matters? The hon. Gentleman said something that I have not heard him say before, and I should like an explanation.
The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point. The RDC's budget is about £40 million, about £25 million of which goes into regeneration work in rural areas. When matched against what the single regeneration budget covers—we announced the fourth round of the SRB earlier in the week—that pales into a much smaller amount. About £150 million to £200 million of SRB money is going into rural areas, compared with £25 million from the RDC. I am informed that, following the RDC's regeneration work in the rural areas, the RDC's money will be specifically earmarked; I hope that it will be. I believe that the great success of the RDC has been, not the amount of money that it has been given, but the skill that it has shown in levering in public and private money.
We are committed to retaining a focus at national level for expertise, advice and information on rural matters. As has been said, as part of the comprehensive spending review it has been decided that the Countryside Commission will merge with the RDC, to create a new body. I spell that out specifically for the hon. Member for South Suffolk. The new body's remit will include the role regarding expertise, advice and information, and it will also have responsibility for conserving and enhancing the countryside. When it has been set up, the new body will take over from the RDC the role of advising Government on the content of any further guidance to be issued to RDAs in respect of the rural areas. It will also provide a national overview on rural economic and social issues, using information that the RDAs will be required to provide. One of the main functions of the RDAs will be to produce a strategy for their region, reflecting the five purposes set out in clause 4, which form the heart of the Bill: to further economic development and regeneration; to promote business efficiency, investment and competitiveness; to promote employment; to enhance the development and application of skills relevant to employment in the area; and to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development in the United Kingdom where it is relevant to the area to do so. One of the objectives of the Bill is wealth creation and tackling the weakness of our competitive base. It may be helpful if I inform the House of the statistics that were made available this week. We were challenged in Committee because we cited the 1993 figures to show that, of the 10 English regions, only two marginally came up to the average of the European regions in gross domestic product per capita. In the past week, the 1995 figures have been released. Every region in the United Kingdom, and specifically in England, is performing worse than in 1993. The figure for the United Kingdom as a whole has gone down by three percentage points. Gross domestic product per capita has gone down in the north-east by 3 per cent.; in the north-west and Merseyside by 2 per cent.; in Yorkshire and Humberside by 1 per cent.; in the east midlands by 3 per cent.; in the west midlands by 2 per cent.; in the eastern region by 3 per cent.; in London by a staggering 8 per cent; and in the south-east and south-west by 1 per cent. The hon. Member for South Suffolk said in Committee that, when the new figures came out, they would be considerably better in terms of wealth creation in our English regions, but they are considerably worse. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will comment on that, in the light of what he said so forcefully in Committee. Everything that we said in Committee has been borne out by the statistics, which show our under-performance. Now only London is above the average of the European regions. That is a pathetic performance, and it is the legacy that the Labour Government must address.The Government made great play of justifying regional development agencies on the ground of the under-performance of British regions compared with those on the continent. Would the Minister be prepared to set a target for the relative performance of our regions compared with those on the continent, to judge whether the RDAs have been a success? Will he tell us what he would expect that relative performance to be five years down the road, so that we can assess whether, by his own standards, RDAs have worked?
As we are creating the RDAs to tackle the competitiveness weaknesses and wealth-creating potential of our regions, we obviously want a better performance than there has been to date. It would not be wise for any politician to set such targets. We must address the legacy of the previous Government and the fact that only London comes up to the average of the European regions in wealth creation. That is poor by any standards.
In light of the up-to-date figures that are now available, it is worth reiterating that even in the region from which I come, the supposedly prosperous south-east, the figures show that there has been a fall. In Committee, the Opposition, particularly the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo), argued that the up-to-date figures would show that the RDAs were not required. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should withdraw his words, as the Opposition case now falls.
My hon. Friend expresses the position succinctly. We shall no doubt return to the matter in our discussion of later clauses.
An RDA's strategy will provide a framework for economic decision-taking in the region and, to be effective, will have to command the support of the regional partners. Clause 4(2) makes it clear that the RDAs' purposes apply equally in rural and in non-rural areas. Therefore, it follows that RDAs' strategies will have to relate to all parts of the region. Clause 7 provides for the Secretary of State to give guidance and directions to RDAs on various issues that the RDAs should take into account when framing their regional strategies. The clause makes it clear that that may include issues relating not only to an RDA's own area, but to the area of another RDA or to any part of the UK outside England. Amendment No. 1 would add to that the needs of the rural areas within any region. The amendment is unnecessary. The Secretary of State would already have powers under clause 7 to issue guidance or directions to RDAs on the necessity to take into account the needs of the rural parts of its region, as rural areas will be part of an RDA's area. We do not wish to create a lengthy and all-encompassing list of issues on which guidance and directions might be issued. The Bill allows for flexibility on issues that might be covered in guidance, and we wish to retain that flexibility. The amendment would not require the Secretary of State to give guidance on rural issues, nor is there any need for the Bill to do so. On 19 February, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary informed the Committee that it would indeed be appropriate to give RDAs guidance on rural issues. We expect such guidance to cover matters such as how RDAs should assess and monitor rural needs, but there is no need to set that in statute. As I have already said, the RDC is involved in the preparation of draft guidance. New clause 1 would require the Secretary of State to make an annual assessment of the impact of RDAs' activities on rural areas, and would require that assessment to be laid before each House. Again, that is an example of the Opposition singling rural areas out for special treatment, as if they existed in isolation from the region as a whole. Clause 17 already requires RDAs to submit annual reports of their activities to the Secretary of State. I hope, therefore, that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the motion.This has been a valuable debate, although not for the reasons that the Minister may have imagined.
My hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) reinforced the fears that people have about the effects that regional development agencies will have on the countryside. The hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (Mr. Taylor) recognised the value of the Rural Development Commission's work, but I was sorry that he did not also recognise the value of the White Paper that the previous Government produced on rural England, and the value of the annual update of that White Paper that the previous Government started to produce and the present Government have discontinued. The hon. Gentleman made an astonishing intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Mr. Flight) about housing in West Sussex, apparently ignorant of the fact that the Labour party has joined the Conservatives on West Sussex county council to oppose the Government's decision. The hon. Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed) rightly stressed the point that, contrary to some of the Government's claims, the cost of producing a report of the kind required by new clause 1 would be negligible. My hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs referred to the impressive petition signed by 28,000 people, which is powerful evidence of the public concern about the Government's approach to building new homes in West Sussex. He also highlighted the sense of identity that many people feel between themselves and their county. That goes back for generations, or even centuries. It is hard to imagine that that will be replaced by a similar sense of identity between individuals and the South East regional development agency. My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) quoted from his direct experience in Cambridgeshire of how resources and effort can be diverted from rural to urban areas. The Minister claimed that the Government were addressing the needs of rural areas. Let us consider law and order, an issue that is important to many people living in rural areas. This year, as a result of the Government's decisions and the changes that they have made to the formula, the standard spending assessment for the police has been cut in Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and Wiltshire—all rural areas. It has been cut in dozens of shire districts, including the one where I am a resident and council tax payer—in Babergh. It has been cut in south Cambridgeshire, Chichester and Cornwall. In every case where the Government have a choice, they favour the urban area and neglect the rural area. This is a Government who are trying to berate their predecessor for creating divisions during their term of office. The Government have embarked on a systematic attempt to discriminate against rural areas.rose—
I am sorry, but there is no time to give way.
The Minister gave some assurances about the future use of funds previously spent by the Rural Development Commission. I should like to examine that to see exactly what he was saying. I am not sure that the House has had an assurance that the funds will continue to be allocated in full to the rural areas. If we have had such an assurance, we welcome it. The Minister also referred to some 1995 figures for regional gross domestic product. I will examine those. However, it is scarcely up to date to say that 1995 figures can be used to judge the position in 1998. In any event, they are wholly irrelevant to the question whether the new clause is needed. Nothing that the Minister said has allayed the fear of Conservative Members that regional development agencies are likely to operate to the disadvantage of rural areas, unless the check that we—It being half-past Five o'clock, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER, pursuant to the Order [27 March] and the Resolution [this day], put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time:—
The House divided: Ayes 166, Noes 295.
Division No. 240]
| [5.30 pm
|
AYES
| |
| Ainsworth, Peter (E Surrey) | Duncan, Alan |
| Allan, Richard | Duncan Smith, Iain |
| Ancram, Rt Hon Michael | Evans, Nigel |
| Arbuthnot, James | Faber, David |
| Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy | Fabricant, Michael |
| Atkinson, David (Bour'mth E) | Fallon, Michael |
| Atkinson, Peter (Hexham) | Fearn, Ronnie |
| Baker, Norman | Flight, Howard |
| Ballard, Mrs Jackie | Forth, Rt Hon Eric |
| Beggs, Roy | Foster, Don (Bath) |
| Beith, Rt Hon A J | Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman |
| Bercow, John | Fox, Dr Liam |
| Beresford, Sir Paul | Gale, Roger |
| Blunt, Crispin | Garnier, Edward |
| Body, Sir Richard | George, Andrew (St Ives) |
| Boswell, Tim | Gibb, Nick |
| Bottomley, Peter (Worthing W) | Gill, Christopher |
| Brady, Graham | Gillan, Mrs Cheryl |
| Brazier, Julian | Goodlad, Rt Hon Sir Alastair |
| Breed, Colin | Gorman, Mrs Teresa |
| Brooke, Rt Hon Peter | Gorrie, Donald |
| Browning, Mrs Angela | Gray, James |
| Bruce, Ian (S Dorset) | Greenway, John |
| Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon) | Grieve, Dominic |
| Burns, Simon | Hague, Rt Hon William |
| Butterfill, John | Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archie |
| Cash, William | Hammond, Philip |
| Chapman, Sir Sydney (Chipping Barnet) | Harris, Dr Evan |
| Harvey, Nick | |
| Chidgey, David | Hawkins, Nick |
| Chope, Christopher | Hayes, John |
| Clappison, James | Heathcoat-Amory, Rt Hon David |
| Clark, Rt Hon Alan (Kensington) | Horam, John |
| Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth (Rushcliffe) | Howarth, Gerald (Aldershot) |
| Hunter, Andrew | |
| Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey | Jackson, Robert (Wantage) |
| Collins, Tim | Jenkin, Bernard |
| Colvin, Michael | Johnson Smith, |
| Cormack, Sir Patrick | Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey |
| Cotter, Brian | Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham) |
| Cran, James | Kennedy, Charles (Ross Skye) |
| Curry, Rt Hon David | Key, Robert |
| Davies, Quentin (Grantham) | King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater) |
| Davis, Rt Hon David (Haltemprice) | Kirkwood, Archy |
| Dorrell, Rt Hon Stephen | Laing, Mrs Eleanor |
| Lait, Mrs Jacqui | St Aubyn, Nick |
| Lansley, Andrew | Sanders, Adrian |
| Letwin, Oliver | Shephard, Rt Hon Mrs Gillian |
| Lewis, Dr Julian (New Forest E) | Shepherd, Richard |
| Lidington, David | Simpson, Keith (Mid-Norfolk) |
| Lilley, Rt Hon Peter | Smith, Sir Robert (W Ab'd'ns) |
| Loughton, Tim | Soames, Nicholas |
| Luff, Peter | Spelman, Mrs Caroline |
| Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas | Spicer, Sir Michael |
| MacGregor, Rt Hon John | Spring, Richard |
| McIntosh, Miss Anne | Steen, Anthony |
| MacKay, Andrew | Stunell, Andrew |
| Maclean, Rt Hon David | Swayne, Desmond |
| McLoughlin, Patrick | Syms, Robert |
| Major, Rt Hon John | Tapsell, Sir Peter |
| Maples, John | Taylor, Ian (Esher & Walton) |
| Mates, Michael | Taylor, John M (Solihull) |
| Maude, Rt Hon Francis | Thompson, William |
| Mawhinney, Rt Hon Sir Brian | Townend, John |
| May, Mrs Theresa | Tredinnick, David |
| Michie, Mrs Ray (Argyll & Bute) | Trend, Michael |
| Moore, Michael | Tyler, Paul |
| Moss, Malcolm | Tyrie, Andrew |
| Nicholls, Patrick | Wallace, James |
| Norman, Archie | Walter, Robert |
| Oaten, Mark | Wardle Charles |
| Öpik, Lembit | Waterson, Nigel |
| Ottaway, Richard | Webb, Steve |
| Wells, Bowen | |
| Page, Richard | Whitney, Sir Raymond |
| Paice, James | Widdecombe, Rt Hon Miss Ann |
| pickles, Eric | Willetts, David |
| Prior, David | Willis, Phil |
| Randall, John | Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton) |
| Redwood, Rt Hon John | Winterton, Nicholas (Macclesfield) |
| Rendel, David | Woodward, Shaun |
| Robathan, Andrew | Yeo, Tim |
| Roe, Mrs Marion (Broxbourne) | Young, Rt Hon Sir George |
| Ross, William (E Lond'y) | |
| Rowe, Andrew (Faversham) | Tellers for the Ayes:
|
| Ruffley, David | Mr. Stephen Day and
|
| Russell, Bob (Colchester) | Mr. Oliver Heald.
|
NOES
| |
| Adams, Mrs Irene (Paisley N) | Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V) |
| Ainger, Nick | Campbell-Savours, Dale |
| Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE) | Canavan, Dennis |
| Alexander, Douglas | Cann, Jamie |
| Allen, Graham | Caplin, Ivor |
| Anderson, Janet (Rossendale) | Casale, Roger |
| Armstrong, Ms Hilary | Caton, Martin |
| Ashton, Joe | Chapman, Ben (Wirral S) |
| Atherton, Ms Candy | Chisholm, Malcolm |
| Atkins, Charlotte | Church, Ms Judith |
| Austin, John | Clapham, Michael |
| Banks, Tony | Clark, Rt Hon Dr David (S Shields) |
| Barnes, Harry | Clark, Dr Lynda (Edinburgh Pentlands) |
| Battle, John | |
| Bayley, Hugh | Clark, Paul (Gillingham) |
| Beard, Nigel | Clarke, Eric (Midlothian) |
| Begg, Miss Anne | Clarke, Rt Hon Tom (Coatbridge) |
| Benn, Rt Hon Tony | Clarke, Tony (Northampton S) |
| Bennett, Andrew F | Clelland, David |
| Bermingham, Gerald | Clwyd, Ann |
| Blackman, Liz | Coaker, Vernon |
| Blears, Ms Hazel | Coffey, Ms Ann |
| Boateng, Paul | Cohen, Harry |
| Bradley, Keith (Withington) | Coleman, Iain |
| Bradshaw, Ben | Colman, Tony |
| Brinton, Mrs Helen | Connarty, Michael |
| Brown, Rt Hon Nick (Newcastle E) | Cooper, Yvette |
| Brown, Russell (Dumfries) | Corbyn, Jeremy |
| Browne, Desmond | Corston, Ms Jean |
| Buck, Ms Karen | Cranston, Ross |
| Caborn, Richard | Crausby, David |
| Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge) | Cryer, Mrs Ann (Keighley) |
| Cryer, John (Hornchurch) | Iddon, Dr Brian |
| Cummings, John | Ingram, Adam |
| Cunliffe, Lawrence | Jackson, Ms Glenda (Hampstead) |
| Cunningham, Jim (Cov'try S) | Jackson, Helen (Hillsborough) |
| Darling, Rt Hon Alistair | Jamieson, David |
| Davidson, Ian | Jenkins, Brian |
| Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli) | Johnson, Miss Melanie (Welwyn Hatfield) |
| Davies, Geraint (Croydon C) | |
| Davies, Rt Hon Ron (Caerphilly) | Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside) |
| Davis, Terry (B'ham Hodge H) | Jones, Mrs Fiona (Newark) |
| Dawson, Hilton | Jones, Helen (Warrington N) |
| Dean, Mrs Janet | Jones, Ms Jenny (Wolverh'ton SW) |
| Denham, John | |
| Dewar, Rt Hon Donald | Jones, Jon Owen (Cardiff C) |
| Donohoe, Brian H | Jones, Dr Lynne (Selly Oak) |
| Doran, Frank | Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S) |
| Dowd, Jim | Jowell, Ms Tessa |
| Drew, David | Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald |
| Drown, Ms Julia | Keen, Alan (Feltham & Heston) |
| Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth | Kelly, Ms Ruth |
| Eagle, Angela (Wallasey) | Kennedy, Jane (Wavertree) |
| Eagle, Maria (L 'pool Garston) | Khabra, Piara S |
| Edwards, Huw | Kilfoyle, Peter |
| Efford, Clive | King, Ms Oona (Bethnal Green) |
| Ellman, Mrs Louise | Kingham, Ms Tess |
| Fatchett, Derek | Kumar, Dr Ashok |
| Field, Rt Hon Frank | Ladyman, Dr Stephen |
| Fitzpatrick, Jim | Lawrence, Ms Jackie |
| Fitzsimons, Lorna | Laxton, Bob |
| Flint, Caroline | Lepper, David |
| Flynn, Paul | Leslie, Christopher |
| Follett, Barbara | Levitt, Tom |
| Forsythe, Clifford | Lewis, Terry (Worsley) |
| Foster, Rt Hon Derek | Liddell, Mrs Helen |
| Foster, Michael Jabez (Hastings) | Linton, Martin |
| Fyfe, Maria | Lloyd, Tony (Manchester C) |
| Galloway, George | Love, Andrew |
| Gardiner, Barry | McAllion, John |
| Gerrard, Neil | McAvoy, Thomas |
| Gibson, Dr Ian | McCabe, Steve |
| Gilroy, Mrs Linda | McCafferty, Ms Chris |
| Godman, Dr Norman A | McCartney, Ian (Makerfield) |
| Godsiff, Roger | McDonagh, Siobhain |
| Goggins, Paul | McIsaac, Shona |
| Golding, Mrs Llin | McWalter, Tony |
| Gordon, Mrs Eileen | McWilliam, John |
| Grant, Bernie | Mallaber, Judy |
| Griffiths, Jane (Reading E) | Mandelson, Peter |
| Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S) | Marsden, Gordon (Blackpool S) |
| Griffiths, Win (Bridgend) | Marshall, David (Shettleston) |
| Grocott, Bruce | Marshall, Jim (Leicester S) |
| Grogan, John | Martlew, Eric |
| Gunnell, John | Maxton, John |
| Hain, Peter | Meale, Alan |
| Hall, Mike (Weaver Vale) | Merron, Gillian |
| Hall, Patrick (Bedford) | Michie, Bill (Shef'ld Heeley) |
| Hamilton, Fabian (Leeds NE) | Milburn, Alan |
| Hanson, David | Miller, Andrew |
| Harman, Rt Hon Ms Harriet | Mitchell, Austin |
| Healey, John | Moffatt, Laura |
| Henderson, Ivan (Harwich) | Moonie, Dr Lewis |
| Hepburn, Stephen | Moran, Ms Margaret |
| Hesford, Stephen | Morgan, Ms Julie (Cardiff N) |
| Hinchliffe, David | Morris, Ms Estelle (B'ham Yardley) |
| Hodge, Ms Margaret | Morris, Rt Hon John (Aberavon) |
| Hoey, Kate | Mudie, George |
| Home Robertson, John | Murphy, Denis (Wansbeck) |
| Hood, Jimmy | Murphy, Jim (Eastwood) |
| Hoon, Geoffrey | Naysmith, Dr Doug |
| Hope, Phil | Norris, Dan |
| Howarth, Alan (Newport E) | O'Brien, Bill (Normanton) |
| Howells, Dr Kim | O'Brien, Mike (N Warks) |
| Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N) | O'Hara, Eddie |
| Humble, Mrs Joan | O'Neill, Martin |
| Hurst, Alan | Palmer, Dr Nick |
| Hutton, John | Pearson, Ian |
| Pendry, Tom | Stinchcombe, Paul |
| Perham, Ms Linda | Stoate, Dr Howard |
| pickthall, Colin | Stott, Roger |
| Pike, Peter L | Strang, Rt Hon Dr Gavin |
| Pond, Chris | Straw, Rt Hon Jack |
| Pope, Greg | Stringer, Graham |
| Pound, Stephen | Stuart, Ms Gisela |
| Powell, Sir Raymond | Taylor, Rt Hon Mrs Ann (Dewsbury) |
| Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lewisham E) | |
| Prentice, Gordon (Pendle) | Taylor, Ms Dari (Stockton S) |
| Prescott, Rt Hon John | Taylor, David (NW Leics) |
| Primarolo, Dawn | Thomas, Gareth (Clwyd W) |
| Prosser, Gwyn | Timms, Stephen |
| Purchase, Ken | Tipping, Paddy |
| Quin, Ms Joyce | Todd, Mark |
| Radice, Giles | Touhig, Don |
| Rapson, Syd | Trickett, Jon |
| Raynsford, Nick | Truswell, Paul |
| Reed, Andrew (Loughborough) | Turner, Dennis (Wolverh'ton SE) |
| Ross, Ernie (Dundee W) | Turner, Dr Desmond (Kemptown) |
| Roy, Frank | Twigg, Derek (Halton) |
| Ruane, Chris | Twigg, Stephen (Enfield) |
| Ruddock, Ms Joan | Vis, Dr Rudi |
| Russell, Ms Christine (Chester) | Walley, Ms Joan |
| Salter, Martin | Ward, Ms Claire |
| Sarwar, Mohammad | Watts, David |
| Savidge, Malcolm | White, Brian |
| Sawford, Phil | Whitehead, Dr Alan |
| Sedgemore, Brian | Williams, Rt Hon Alan (Swansea W) |
| Shaw, Jonathan | |
| Sheerman, Barry | Williams, Alan W (E Carmarthen) |
| Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert | Williams, Mrs Betty (Conwy) |
| Simpson, Alan (Nottingham S) | Wills, Michael |
| Skinner, Dennis | Wilson, Brian |
| Smith, Rt Hon Andrew (Oxford E) | Winterton, Ms Rosie (Doncaster C) |
| Smith, Angela (Basildon) | Wise, Audrey |
| Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent) | Woolas, Phil |
| Soley, Clive | Wray, James |
| Southworth, Ms Helen | Wright, Dr Tony (Cannock) |
| Spellar, John | Wyatt, Derek |
| Starkey, Dr Phyllis | |
| Steinberg, Gerry | Tellers for the Noes:
|
| Stevenson, George | Mr. Clive Betts and
|
| Stewart, David (Inverness E) | Mr. John McFall.
|
Question accordingly negatived.
New Clause 3
Access To Meetings Etc Of Regional Developmentagencies
'.—(1) In the Schedule to the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960, there shall be inserted—
"(1) regional development agencies."
(2) In subsection (1) of section 100J of the Local Government Act 1972, there shall be inserted—
"(g) a regional development agency".'.—[Mrs. Ballard.]
Brought up, and read the First time.
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 20, in clause 7, page 3, line 27, at end insert—
No. 21, in page 3, line 27, at end insert—'(1A) In formulating a strategy under subsection (1), a regional development agency shall have regard to regional planning guidance for the agency's area.'.
No. 29, in clause 9, page 4, line 17, after '9', insert—'(1B) In formulating a strategy under subsection (1), a regional development agency shall have regard to local authority development plans for the agency's area'.
'( ) It shall be a duty of a regional development agency to set an annual budget before the beginning of every financial year.
No. 30, in page 4, line 20, after 'the', insert 'other'. No. 2, in page 4, line 36, leave out 'him' and insert( ) An annual budget shall be set under subsection (Al) only after the regional development agency concerned has consulted each local authority within its area.'.
No. 3, in clause 10, page 4, line 40, at end insert—'the local authorities in the region concerned.'.
No. 17, in clause 18, page 8, line 19, at end insert—'(2) No grant shall be made under this section in any financial year in which the standard spending assessment of any local authority in the region of the regional development agency concerned has been or is proposed to be reduced.'.
'(5) As soon as reasonably practicable after a public meeting has been held for the purposes of subsection (2), the regional development agency concerned shall publish a record of that meeting, setting out how it will take account of points raised at the meeting in its activities in the following year, and shall send a copy of the record to the Secretary of State, who shall lay it before each House of Parliament.'.
The new clause would add regional development agencies to the list of public bodies in the schedule to the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960 and to the appropriate section of the Local Government Act 1972. Amendments Nos. 20 and 21 are about the need for RDAs to have regard to regional planning guidance and to local authority development plans.
The Liberal Democrats voted for the Bill on Second Reading and broadly welcome it, but we have always had some concerns, which we voiced in Committee. They include the constitution of the boards, the need for RDAs adequately to represent rural areas, which we have just debated, the link with local authorities and regional chambers and the need for openness in the work of RDA boards. Accountability has informed every one of our concerns. New clause 3 and our amendments attempt to deal with that issue by ensuring that RDA board meetings are as open as possible, given the need to respect commercial and individual confidentiality, and that RDAs have regard to the views and policies of people with a local mandate in planning matters. No one who wants RDAs to succeed—as the Liberal Democrats do—would wish them to come into conflict with the aims of local communities. Amendments Nos. 20 and 21 would ensure that the chances of that were reduced. New clause 3 is important in ensuring that RDAs pay real regard to openness. The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Angela Eagle), said:That is not good enough. RDA boards may decide that they do not need to consult regional chambers or local authorities to any meaningful extent. That is why we believe that it is important that the public should be entitled to attend board meetings when appropriate. It is a small measure of openness, but its presence in the Bill would signify that RDAs should pay regard to the principle of accountability and openness in advance of the Government's introduction of a freedom of information Act. 5.45 pm The new clause does not mean that RDAs would be unable to conduct confidential business without an audience of local people and the press. The Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act makes it clear:"Different RDAs may have different ways of reporting back to their regions; some may want much closer contact with the population."—[Official Report, Standing Committee E, 10 February 1998; c. 255.]
What is important is that there is a presumption that meetings should be open. If the new clause is not accepted, the opening of RDA board meetings will be in the gift of board members, and local electors could do nothing to change the composition of a board that might be unnecessarily secretive. People have a right to know about decisions that are taken by a body that spends public money and which is not directly democratically accountable, but which will have a significant influence on their region's development. In opposition, the Labour party opposed quangos—we still do—because of their secretive nature, the difficulty of finding out what they were up to, not knowing how appointments were made to quangos and, above all, their lack of a democratic mandate. I know that the Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning has expressed his new-found enthusiasm as a member of the Government for quangos. He said:"A body may, by resolution, exclude the public from a meeting (whether during the whole or part of the proceedings) whenever publicity would be prejudicial to the public interest by reason of the confidential nature of the business to be transacted or for other special reasons stated in the resolution".
I am surprised at the speed of his conversion."There is nothing wrong with quangos."—[Official Report, Standing Committee E, 29 January 1998; c. 71.]
I hope that the hon. Lady will quote what I went on to say in Committee—that we were proud to put on the statute book in 1975 both the Scottish and Welsh Development Agencies, on which we are modelling RDAs. In the early days, they were also quangos until we were to get an elected Scottish Parliament and Welsh assembly; well, I hope that we shall get them. It is in that context that I said that quangos were useful. We did not misuse them, as the previous Administration did, by making them political toys.
I shall come to political toys in a moment.
There is a precedent for non-elected public bodies to hold meetings in public. Indeed, the Secretary of State for Health has already signalled that hospital trust boards should hold their meetings in public. If they should, why not regional development agency boards? I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us what he thinks is the radical difference between the two. Amendments Nos. 20 and 21 concern the RDAs' impact on the planning system. Again, they are concerned with the accountability of RDA boards. The Bill as originally drafted would have allowed RDAs to assume planning powers that usurped the role of democratically elected local councillors. Liberal Democrats warmly welcome the Minister's damascene conversion in Committee, and we are pleased that clauses 24 to 27 will be consigned later this evening to the ministerial bin, but I hope that it will not be the recycling bin. However, Liberal Democrats are still worried that proposals for RDAs could seriously disturb the plan-led system. In their response to the report of the Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs, the Government said that there would beand that, apparently,"no hierarchy between Regional Planning Guidance and RDAs' regional strategies"
The Government also said that it will"they will be parallel and complementary regimes, the one influencing the other in an iterative way".
What form will that guidance take, and will such guidance address the potential for conflict if RDAs promote sites for development that do not conform to policies in regional planning guidance? Despite lacking a statutory framework in which to develop, regional planning guidance has established some consultation with local people and local representatives. There is a danger that the policies of RDAs—which have not established and demonstrated their accountability to local people—will destabilise that system. As I said, regional planning guidance has developed through practice rather than a statutory framework. I am concerned that it could be vulnerable to tensions caused by the establishment of RDAs. Amendment No. 20 is designed to address that issue. Today, I should like to hear from the Minister the Government's view on the issue. How will the Government ensure, in their guidance to RDAs, that those potential conflicts do not occur? Do Ministers plan to put RPG on a statutory footing? Amendment No. 21 deals with the RDAs' potential for conflict with local authority development plans. The Council for the Protection of Rural England has given examples of problems in the north—where, it says, inward investment agencies have promoted sites for economic development with no regard to the agreed regional or local planning framework. Those sites have included green-belt and green-field sites. RDA regional economic strategies, regional planning guidance, structure plans and local authority development plans each serve different purposes, which means that the potential for conflicting with one another may be even greater. Reliance on "having regard to" or "informing each other" may not ensure compatibility or consistency. I live in hope that the Government will accept new clause 3 and our two amendments. If not, I hope that the Minister will be able to assure us that the plan-led system will not be overridden by secretive, unelected RDA boards."be open to Ministers to issue guidance or directions".
I very much agree with the spirit of the comments made by the hon. Member for Taunton (Mrs. Ballard). Two issues are raised by the new clause and the amendments in this group, tabled by the Liberal Democrats and by ourselves. The first issue is the openness of meetings and the matter of accountability, and the second is the position of local authorities, particularly in financing RDAs.
As the hon. Member for Taunton said, accessibility and accountability are the crucial issues. RDA members will be appointed by the Secretary of State. We do not have to go into all the arguments on that, but that is the position. RDAs will not be elected or directly accountable to the public. If a member of an RDA board is a councillor, for example, he will continue as a board member even if he loses his council seat. Even those who support RDAs deplore the "democratic deficit" implicit in them. Opposition Members are not convinced by the arguments to establish RDAs. Nevertheless, because of the Government's majority, we accept that the Bill will be enacted. However, if we are to ensure that RDAs are directly accountable—as councillors are to their own electors—it is vital that every opportunity is taken to ensure that the agencies' proceedings are as open and transparent as they can be. The public have an absolute right to know what is going on in the RDAs, for two reasons. First, RDAs are being financed by public money. It therefore must be right that the public should receive the maximum information about what is being done with their money and in their name. Secondly, RDAs' entire purpose is to serve the public in the regions, not to serve the Secretary of State or the Government—although all the levers of power seem to be exercised by the Government. We want to monitor the agencies' success as they develop. We have tabled amendment No. 17 in an attempt to ensure that there is some accountability in RDAs' public meetings. We ask that, after a public meeting has been held, the RDANow, we also have new clause 3, which deals with section 100 of the Local Government Act 1972—which is particularly well known, especially to anyone in local government. Section 100 enables openness in local government, and information to be given to the public and the press—which will disseminate the information to a wider public. As an hon. Member and as a journalist, I support both those objectives. Section 100 is basically about the right to information in local government. One of our objections to the Local Government (Experimental Arrangements) Bill is that it will curtail section 100. The House requires a Second Reading debate on that Bill, so that the issue can be dealt with. We support new clause 3 because of its effect on regional development agencies. If RDAs are to be appointed bodies—which they will be, at least for the lifetime of this Parliament—they should act openly. Their real responsibility should be not to the Secretary of State but to the public in the regions, which will require the maximum in openness, frankness and accessibility."concerned shall publish a record of that meeting, setting out how it will take account of points raised at the meeting in its activities in the following year, and shall send a copy of the record to the Secretary of State, who shall lay it before each House of Parliament."
Given Ministers' support for the principle of a freedom of information Bill, does my right hon. Friend think that it would be sensible for Ministers—in the spirit of openness, transparency and freedom of information—to accept new clause 3?
I rather hope that, like us, they will accept new clause 3. It would be perfectly sensible for them to do so. If Ministers were still in opposition and we were in government, they—like many Labour Back Benchers, I suspect—would be urging us to accept it. I very much hope that, in the spirit of openness, Ministers will sustain and accept our argument.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley) made a serious point. Regional development agencies are bodies appointed not locally but by the Secretary of State, Whitehall and the Government. It is therefore incumbent upon the Government to make RDAs' proceedings as open to the public as possible. If they do not, not only accountability but openness in RDAs' proceedings will be denied.The right hon. Gentleman seems to have had a draconian change of mind. No public access was allowed to the quangos established by the previous Government, which were shrouded in great secrecy. I ask him directly—after his comments, with which I agree, on the importance of regional development agencies in serving the people of the regions—whether he would support direct elections either to the agencies or to the chambers that will hold those agencies to account.
This discussion is going far beyond the scope of the new clause. We have already stated our opposition to the agencies. I am arguing that if we are to have agencies, which we clearly are, given the Government's majority, they should operate as openly as possible. The Government have made it clear that they will do nothing during this Parliament to alter the position. That enables us to monitor closely the agencies' success, which is what we shall do.
Amendments Nos. 29, 2 and 3 seek more definition from the Government of where the money for the agencies will come from. The fear that lies behind the amendments is that elected local authorities' resources will be top-sliced to finance the agencies, which should be separately and discretely budgeted. We are anxious to underline the primacy of local authorities in that respect. It would be wrong for local authorities, and therefore the public, to suffer because the RDAs were taking money away from them. That would disadvantage local people and the regions that the RDAs are meant to serve. 6 pm Amendment No. 29 would ensure that, before RDAs set their budgets, they consulted their local authorities. Amendment No. 3 would ensure that no grants were made to RDAs in regions where the local authority's standard spending assessment had been reduced that year. The amendment is basically designed to protect the interests of local government, which the Bill threatens in any event. The work carried out by local government will be reduced if the agencies use resources that would otherwise be used by local government. This year, more than 80 local authorities are having their provision cut in cash terms, yet the Government are introducing a new layer of unelected quangos.Will the right hon. Gentleman explain why, when he was in government, he supported top-slicing and quangos meeting outside the public gaze with no record of their meetings, but has now changed his mind on those issues?
This is a new proposition about which I am sceptical. If the hon. Gentleman wants to join us in voting against regional development agencies on Third Reading, I should be happy to see him in our Lobby. We are starting from the premise that the Government are introducing regional development agencies. I am never impressed by such an argument. Now that the Labour party is in government, it has perpetuated certain issues that it opposed when in opposition. For the past 18 years, we have not had regional development agencies—had we had them, the Bill would not have been necessary. We had a better system, which brought a record amount of inward investment into this country.
This discussion may go a little beyond the scope of the new clause and amendments. I am happy to continue it, or to return to the matter on Third Reading. Before the hon. Gentleman crows about RDAs, he should recognise the Conservative Government's tremendous achievement in bringing inward investment to this country. The amendments aim to get clear guidance on the financing of the RDAs. Do the Government accept that RDAs should not be financed at the expense of local authorities? We are not the only ones to be interested in the answer to that question; local authorities and the general public are interested.Will my right hon. Friend give way?
I see consultation taking place on the Government Front Bench, so I shall give way to my hon. Friend and allow it to go ahead.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government have been at pains to suggest that the RDAs would not simply take unto themselves the responsibilities of local authorities? Does not it follow that they should not take the money from local authorities? I presume that local authorities' responsibilities remain unchanged, and that their financial requirements therefore remain unchanged.
That is exactly what I am trying to get a clear statement about on the Floor of the House. It is a matter of concern in local government and on the part of the general public. If the Minister can make a clear statement that under no circumstances will local government suffer financially and say precisely where the money will come from, everyone will be reassured. It is a double-barrelled question.
The amendments have two themes: first, the financing of the RDAs and the position of local authorities along the lines that my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) described; and, secondly, the arrangements for the openness of RDAs. Over the years, many people have taken tremendous steps in making local government more open, not least the noble Lady Thatcher when she introduced a series of reforms. We should like to see the spirit of that openness in regional development agencies.As a former joint chief executive of a regional development company, I have taken a great deal of interest in the Bill's progress through the House, although other commitments meant that I could not serve on the Standing Committee.
Although the Bill is not as far-reaching or radical as I or some members of the Government would have liked, it is a much-needed, solid piece of legislation, which will help to bring about a more strategic approach to economic development in England's regions, and it must be widely welcomed. Nobody who has seen the activities of Scottish Enterprise or the Welsh Development Agency in the past 20 years or more can deny the impact that they have had. In 20 years' time, people will find it unimaginable that the Conservative party could have opposed the establishment of regional development agencies in England. In my region, the west midlands, all the leading business organisations, local authorities and voluntary organisations have warmly welcomed the Bill. We are now in the business of getting on with making the legislation a reality. Last month, we had a major conference, at which more than 300 organisations were represented. I am doing all I can to ensure that the west midlands has an effective regional development agency. I share the sentiments behind new clause 3, as it is important that RDAs are seen to be open and accountable. However, I remind the House that RDAs will still have to conform to the code of practice for public bodies. I hope that a freedom of information Bill will be enacted later this year. Other means of accountability are stipulated in the Bill, particularly in clause 18. I do not want RDAs to be transformed into the equivalent of local authority economic development sub-committees. They should be fleet-footed, commercial, entrepreneurial organisations. They need to be accountable, because they are spending public money, but there are sufficient safeguards in the Bill and the directions and guidelines that Ministers can offer.Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the fact that a meeting is open to the public and the press will not stop those involved being fleet-footed and efficient in the conduct of their business? Will the Government's proposed legislation on freedom of information come into force before the RDAs are up and running?
The timing of Government legislation is not a matter for me. We are debating whether there should be a requirement in the Bill, or whether it should be left to RDAs and ministerial guidance. The latter is the preferable route.
The White Paper says on page 54 that some board meetings will be held in open session. It is clear from the White Paper and what was said in Committee that Ministers lay great emphasis on the need for partnership, accountability and consultation. I do not see the problem. Inserting a specific requirement in the Bill is overly restrictive. When they are up and running, RDAs will have a number of open meetings, including open board meetings, but they might also want to hold closed board meetings in which they deal with confidential business. The new clause would create barriers to that.How would the freedom of information Bill or the provisions set out in the White Paper deliver transparency and openness? The hon. Gentleman seems to be suggesting that that legislation will take into account what we are asking for.
The freedom of information Bill, the requirements in this Bill and the code of practice that public bodies must adhere to will provide sufficient accountability even for the hon. Gentleman.
Local authorities are also governed by legislation on openness for meetings. Would the hon. Gentleman be content with simple generalisations of good will for them, with only an aim for openness that was not governed by legislation?
That is a spurious question. The right hon. Gentleman is talking about completely different organisations. I have absolute confidence that Ministers will be extremely vigilant in ensuring that the public get the information they need on the operation of RDAs, bearing in mind the policy directions and guidance that are issued to other public bodies.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Not at the moment. I have already given way three times, and the time available for debate is limited.
Liberal Democrat amendments Nos. 20 and 21 would require RDAs to have regard to regional planning guidance and local authority economic development plans. That is a statement of the obvious. It is almost the equivalent of saying that night follows day. It is an insult to any economic development professional working for an RDA to remind them to take notice of local authorities or regional planning guidance. The Bill is based on partnership. The RDAs will work closely with other regional bodies and local authorities. The planning process will be iterative. I hope that RDAs will influence local authorities' planning processes, and perhaps local authorities will influence RDAs' planning processes. 6.15 pm Conservative amendment No. 17 is similar. It would require a record of a public meeting following an annual report to be published and laid before Parliament. I hope that every RDA will adopt consultation procedures to keep Members of Parliament informed of its activities regularly. We might consider setting up regional Select Committees in the House. The amendment is unnecessary, and misses the point, which is that we are decentralising. Accountability mechanisms should focus primarily on the regional and local level. I am sure that Members of Parliament will want to know what RDAs do. The other four amendments relate to money. Amendments Nos. 29 and 30 also state the obvious. They would require an RDA to consult local authorities before setting its budget. We want a partnership approach. Of course local authorities will be consulted. We do not need such a requirement in the Bill. Amendment No. 2 provides for the unlikely circumstance of an RDA producing a capital or revenue surplus, which a Minister decides should be transferred to the Government.Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
In a minute. Let me explain to the hon. Gentleman what the Conservative amendment says. It says that a surplus of an RDA may be transferred—not back to the Government, which provided the money in the first place, but to local authorities.
That may be a convenient peg on which to hang the whinge of the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) about local authorities, but it is bare-faced cheek for a party that spent 18 years trampling on the interests of local authorities to have the gall to say that any RDA surplus should go to local authorities. That is a pathetic attempt to show that the Conservatives are interested in local government when they clearly are not.Talking of pathetic attempts, the hon. Gentleman has talked about trusting the Minister and being sure that he will not do anything wrong. What is the point of having a Bill? Why do we not give complete power to the Minister? If no provisions should be added to the Bill, what is the point of the debate? What is the point of trying to protect people's freedom?
The hon. Gentleman has been a Member of Parliament longer than me. I am sure that he knows that primary and secondary legislation and policy guidance and directions from Ministers are part of the way in which this country is governed.
It is our duty as Members of Parliament to scrutinise legislation. We must be confident that legislation is robust and transparent, and that it has proper mechanisms of accountability. That is true of the Bill as it stands. The hon. Gentleman seems to be suggesting otherwise. The amendments merely state the obvious. They are wrecking amendments.Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Not at the moment.
Amendment No. 3 demands that the Government should not give RDAs any money if, for whatever reason, any standard spending assessment of any local authority has to be reduced. I understand the debating point behind the amendment, but I cannot imagine that, as a Minister, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield would ever have countenanced such legislation.Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I shall finish my point, and then I will gladly give way to the hon. Gentleman, if he persists.
SSAs could conceivably change over time for a number of reasons. There might be changes in SSA methodology or in local authority boundaries and responsibilities. To put such a requirement in the Bill would—We should trust the Minister.
No, the issue is that such a requirement would shackle an RDA if any Government—this one or any subsequent one—changed the SSA funding formula or local authority boundaries and responsibilities. The whole basis of legislation for grant-aiding and funding RDAs would fall. That is obviously ridiculous.
The hon. Gentleman's argument against the amendments comes down to one word: partnership. Does he not understand that there are circumstances in which the RDA may be in conflict with local authorities in its area? That is why we want to lay statutory duties on the RDA to consult on, for example, its budget. Does he not understand mat we want to do so because we want to regulate relationships between different statutory bodies?
It is quite true that RDAs may, from time to time, fall out with local authorities, just as local authorities, from time to time, fall out with each other. That does not mean that the requirement to consult, which will be in ministerial guidelines and is already in clause 18, or the code of practice for public bodies will suddenly disappear. There are sufficient mechanisms for consultation to reassure even the most sceptical Conservative Member.
In the west midlands, we have been competing head to head as a region with Baden-Wũrttemberg in Germany and Emilia-Romagna in Italy. In comparison, our gross domestic product per head has declined. They now have a 40 per cent. advantage over us. We stand at 90 per cent. of the EU regional average. That is not good enough; it is an appalling legacy of 18 years of Conservative neglect of the regions. This Government want to change that. I have no doubt that the Bill will play a major part in helping to narrow the gap between GDP in the west midlands and other English regions and our European competitors. I commend it to the House.If anyone else mentions an iterative process in this debate, I shall take an early recess. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] The Minister and I may be the only two people in the House who are not quite sure what it is. All I can say is that it is not much used in Yorkshire, and I hope that it will not become much used in the House. Management-speak has crept into the Chamber. Why does not the hon. Member for Taunton (Mrs. Ballard) say "discussion" instead of "iterative process", if that is what she means?
My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) was correct to raise the issue of local authority funding and its relationship with regional development agency funding. The RDAs, as such, will have very little money; the funding streams diverted to them are relatively small. Therefore, unless they are able to work as part of a broader strategy with local authorities, their impact will be quite minimal. It follows that there needs to be some stability in funding flows, from wherever they come. There is a great deal of uncertainty at the moment about local authority funding, over both how and in what shape it will be delivered. We all know the basic facts about what is happening. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield and my hon. Friends are right in saying that there has been a diversion of funding effectively towards northern metropolitan local authorities. In fact, however, funding has been diverted from inner London as well. That is due to adjustment in economic factors and indicators for elderly residential care and social services. That has meant—we debated this in relation to the countryside—in North Yorkshire, for example, a 13.4 per cent. increase in band D council tax bills. If the Government raise the capping limit but do not provide the money to follow, as night follows day council taxes will increase. Local government finance is very much at a watershed at the moment. The Government have issued a series of papers on the future of local government. Three more papers—a slightly ambitious trilogy—were published at the beginning of this week, the most important of which was about the future of funding and the Government's decision in practice to fund capping. They are proposing to make no change to SSA methodology for two years and to divert staff resources into a more fundamental view of the way forward in SSAs. That opens the way eventually for some quite radical changes in the way in which funding is directed toward local government, which are bound to have an effect on the way in which strategies can be delivered between local government and development agencies. We are supposed to have regional chambers in order to monitor, work in partnership and keep an eye on RDAs. We will have a regional chamber in London if the people of London vote for a mayor and an authority. The Government say that, in future Parliaments—if they are still in a position to do so—they will introduce regional chambers elsewhere, but for the moment, such regional chambers will effectively be quangos at one remove from the electorate. Two other Government policies are crucial. The first is that the Deputy Prime Minister wants us to develop on what we can no longer call brown-field sites—we must use some more euphemistic expression. If he is to be logical about that, he must recognise that it costs a great deal more to develop an inner-city brown-field site than a suburban or green-field site. There would be intellectual and financial logic in funding flows that reflect that increase, because it is bound to have an enormous impact on the relative distribution of funding in, for example, Yorkshire, Humberside and the north-east in comparison with the south-west, simply due to the geographical positions of those regions. The second policy concerns the fact that the Government, like their predecessors, have spent much time trying to solve the riddle of the area cost adjustment. If they were to do so, it would have a significant impact on where money is directed in local government. It would, for example, cause a tremendous cut in resources—I use the word "resources" although I prefer the word "money" because it is more direct—going to Cornwall, which would be a major sufferer. That would impact on the ability to deliver the regeneration programmes of the partnerships about which we are talking. The degree to which RDA spending and local government complement one another is important. The pattern of local government expenditure in the shires is fairly consistent. Local authorities tend to underspend on highways, which is, after all, quite an important development matter, but tend to spend above their SSA on education, simply because many choose that as a priority. Many of us would not quarrel with that. In addition, there is not only a review of local government expenditure and a review of regeneration policy expenditure—the Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning, who is in charge of that, is no longer in the Chamber—but a fundamental spending review. That review will have an impact on the funding available for other parts of local authority expenditure that, although they do not flow through the revenue support grant, are none the less crucial to regeneration and to the broader development process. Housing expenditure, including funding for the housing benefit system, is one example. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield is therefore correct to say that one cannot discuss the development agencies in their own right as autonomous bodies, without reference to their immediate hinterland in terms of governmental and financial institutions. They must work under a common strategy, yet there is much uncertainty associated with local authority funding now, and a real possibility of quite a radical change. There may well be justification for a change; I do not condemn it in advance. There may be a good argument for redirecting the flows of local authority funding. However, the regional development agencies would then be set up on a foundation that could begin to change almost immediately they were established. The House needs to take note of that possibility, and I am grateful to my right hoh. Friend for tabling an amendment that has enabled us to do so.6.30 pm
The hon. Member for Dudley, South (Mr. Pearson) made an interesting speech. At a certain stage of our political careers we all go through a toady phase—although I would like to think that even when I was going through mine I would not have made such a speech. I do not mean that rudely, but the hon. Gentleman would have been wise to duck out of the Tea Room when the Whips were looking around for a Labour Member to make a speech.
The hon. Gentleman's arguments were the same as those that were used to support the idea that local authority and health authority meetings should not be open to the public. The essence of the argument is, "Trust the Minister; he will do no harm," but I do not favour that argument. [Interruption.] I see that my Whip is leaving the Chamber. There is much criticism in the press these days about the role of the Chamber and the new presidential style of government. People say that the House of Commons does not matter any more. If the House is to mean anything, we must be able to hold the Executive to account. Therefore, we must be able to put things on the face of the Bill. We should not start from the proposition that we may occasionally have the odd open board meeting, with members of the public being brought in, given a cup of tea and allowed to sit down and listen to our deliberations, like an open day at a hospital or school. It is not acceptable to say that we can take care of the democratic deficit in that way. We should not start from the idea of holding meetings in secret but with certain exceptions, when meetings will be held openly. We should turn the argument around and say that meetings will be open to the public unless there is a compelling reason why people cannot observe them. What could those compelling reasons be? Commercial confidentiality is obviously one, but a sensible authority could organise business so that the discussion about economic regeneration would be held in public, while the names of the firms were kept private. What other reason could there be? There could be a need to protect the rights of individuals and to keep confidential information private—but in a sensible process, that too could be planned for, so that the substantial discussion could take place in public, and private matters concerning individuals would be dealt with in private. A few years ago, when I was a councillor, I, with others, started the experiments that eventually led the Government to legislate on opening our deliberations to the public. Now there is a tendency for local authorities to rest on their laurels and to try to ensure that, as well as the official power structure through the committees, there is another power structure inside local authorities. Most people looking at the structure of a council would see the full council on the top, with the various committees and sub-committees underneath. Section 100 of the Local Government Act 1972 provides that members of the public can almost always attend the sub-committees, the committees and the full council. As my right hon. Friend said, one of our concerns about the experimental local government arrangements is that they will deny the public access to deliberations. However, inside local authorities, as is the case inside most political parties, there exists an informal power structure whereby, by the time matters arrive at a sub-committee, they are already determined and set in concrete, so the sub-committee has no chance of making a substantial change. We believe that it is time to open up regional development agencies and local authorities to ensure that the public have access to wherever the informal discussions take place.Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government's proposals for modernising local government, with the talk of Cabinet government and of different structures of government, may, depending on how they are managed, tend towards more closed government rather than more open government?
My right hon. Friend is right. That is why my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) said that we should have a Second Reading debate on the Local Government (Experimental Arrangements) Bill, so that such matters could be discussed on the Floor of the House as a matter of principle.
I agree with what the hon. Gentleman says about opening up meetings and open government, but as he mentioned health authorities, may I ask him whether he protested when a previous Government introduced changes into the health service that had the effect of closing meetings of health authorities and trusts?
Yes, I did. That is a matter of public record; I have a record of supporting freedom of information, and I believe that it is important. Just because a Conservative Government had approved something, I would not stand up when we were in government and say, "Trust the Minister; he is a nice person; he will do nothing wrong." That essentially is the argument that Labour Members have advanced.
My hon. Friend did not have, as I had, the privilege and honour of serving on the Standing Committee. Is he aware that the Government originally took a different position on some parts of the Bill? Is not the fact that Ministers and the Government have changed their minds on key clauses a prime reason to ask why on earth, if they cannot make up their minds and settle on a policy while the Bill is in the process of going through Parliament, we should trust such a Minister?
My hon. Friend is right. We cannot rely on individual Ministers' discretion to look after everything. There are individual rights. After all, the Government are about to legislate on the declaration of human rights. If they do not think it important to enshrine rights in law, perhaps we should simply go back to the proposition supported by the hon. Member for Dudley, South, and simply trust the Government.
Why not table an amendment to that effect?
As the Whip, from a sedentary position, says, no doubt the Government would welcome an amendment to that effect. Every clause would simply say, "This House unreservedly trusts the Government to do the right thing." There would be no scrutiny and no consideration of individual rights.
Yet contained within the Bill are immense powers over economic affairs, and powers to take away individuals' property. Those powers should be out in the public domain. Public bodies should be open. We are setting up what will probably be the most powerful quangos ever set up by the House, yet essentially they will be poodles of the Secretary of State. Moreover, we shall soon see regional assemblies that are also poodles of the Secretary of State.My hon. Friend has hit upon an important point, closely bound up with the new clause. The truth about the Bill, which came through to me strongly in Committee, is that, rather than being based on the idea of creating new development in different areas, it is an excuse for foisting regional government on this country. The Bill is a blind, designed to hide the facts from the people of this country. Is that not what it is all about?
After the sensible decision to remove the planning powers and some of the provisions on employment and education, little is left in the Bill—the measures will have to operate through other players. All that is left is a form of regional government.
My hon. Friend suggested that the RDAs would be mighty quangos, but I suggest that he has not read the proposals for the Food Standards Agency. If he were looking for a position of real power, he might choose to serve on that body.
My right hon. Friend is right to tick me off. As soon as the debate is through, I shall read up on the Food Standards Agency—perhaps he will spend some time taking me through the major points. I shall rephrase what I said: the RDAs are the most powerful quangos of which I was aware. However, I do not think that it matters whether they are the most powerful or the second most powerful—they are still powerful.
The hon. Member for Taunton (Mrs. Ballard) made a particularly important point about the appointment of members to the agencies—that they will rely on the Secretary of State's good will. If elected councillors who are members of the agency are defeated at an election, they can remain as members. I have some experience of such situations; regardless of how diligent or conscientious councillors are, their primary purpose in serving on a board—to represent their electors or their authority—disappears when they lose an election. I believe that a defeated councillor should step down. It is ridiculous to trust the Minister to decide whether such a person should remain in power. Open government is also important in this instance, because we are establishing new quangos. RDAs should be set up on the basis of good principles—on the presumption that their meetings will be open to the public. As we are starting something, we should at least get it right. The relationship between economic regeneration and planning will be anomalous. The various planning conferences will, we are told, have a much longer planning horizon than the RDAs—they will have to look 10 to 20 years ahead. The RDAs will operate under them, and the local authorities will operate more practically under the RDAs. If the regional planning and local authority meetings are open, why should RDA meetings, which lie in the middle, be held in secret, especially as RDAs will have enormous powers over individuals in terms of compulsory purchase and land assembly? As my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield said, we should also be clear where the money will come from. I think that top slicing has already occurred; the money for shire and district authorities has been reduced. I hope that the Government will accept new clause 3, to ensure that the RDAs are put on a proper democratic footing.I want to deal with some of the points made by Labour Members about openness. The hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (Mr. Taylor) said that Conservative Members' concerns about the Bill were belated. As a new Member of Parliament, my concern is not belated—I have a genuine concern for the present and for the future.
My constituency will be part of the new West Midlands regional development agency, but I have not detected unmitigated public enthusiasm for the new body. As a participant in the West Midlands Regional Economic Consortium, which has acted almost as a precursor to the RDA, I have seen evidence that has given me real grounds for concern. 6.45 pm I draw the attention of the hon. Member for Dudley, South (Mr. Pearson) to a document produced by the WMREC, which illustrates the source of my concern. The document is an interpretation of the integrated transport system—another Government initiative—in our region. It concludes that the need for improved rural transport in the west midlands is of "lesser concern". I represent a constituency with a mix of rural and urban areas, so that gives me great concern about what will happen when decisions pass to the regional tier and the rural interest is diluted by the majority concern of the urban areas. The document also expresses the WMREC's support for the expansion of Birmingham International airport. My constituency is part of the Solihull borough, in which the airport also falls. The hon. Member for Dudley, South will perhaps know that the carefully drawn development plans for the airport—which I concede is of regional significance—were born of hard-won negotiation about the erosion of the green belt. I know that the Solihull local government representatives are greatly concerned that their minority view will be subsumed under the urban-dominated RDA.The hon. Lady has set a number of hares running, and I think that I should correct her on some points. First, the West Midlands Regional Economic Consortium is committed to ensuring that the integrated transport system has an effective rural dimension; indeed, it flagged it up as an issue on which to lobby. It also wanted the RDA to be stronger. Proposals for Birmingham International airport have gone, and will always go, through the usual planning process. The WMREC identified nothing in the Bill that would change that in any way.
The meeting about the airport was an important guide to where the priorities lie. My constituents and the Solihull local government officers fear that they will have a minority voice in an urban-dominated RDA; nothing that I have heard has allayed my present and future concerns.
That is why I strongly endorse the new clause, which would formalise a process of consultation, which is one of the only securities that elected officers in local government have at present to ensure that the views of the local community that they represent are adequately taken account of by the new RDA.Would my hon. Friend be happy for deliberations on priorities for local areas to be held behind closed doors, or would she prefer to ensure that her electors can hear the discussions?
I am grateful for that intervention, because I have grave concerns about the lack of openness in creating a powerful quango comprising a board of 12 members including, as the Secretary of State assures us, only one representative to take account of rural interests. That quango, meeting in camera, will have to respond adequately to the proper democratic process, which can be expressed only at the ballot box.
As the legislation stands, the only way in which my constituents can manifest their concerns about the newly created quangos is indirectly, through local government and parliamentary elections. The Bill does not ensure adequate accountability so that the views of my constituents and others in the borough will be taken into account in extremely important decisions.Sometimes, when a group of amendments is under consideration, one singles out one and commends it, while perhaps damning the others with faint praise, but this is not such an occasion, because the new clause and the amendments would all, in their various ways, improve the Bill.
I intend to be brief, because we have heard no coherent argument from Government Members against the propositions severally advanced in the new clause and the amendments, so we must give the Minister time to accept them, or to explain more cogently she he should not do so. We all know that there are circumstances in which non-departmental public bodies have to exercise their functions without full public accessibility, and the same will no doubt apply to regional development agencies. I know from personal experience at the Department of Trade and Industry that it would be impossible to undertake the necessary negotiations on inward investment, for example, in a publicly accessible body. There will certainly be circumstances, however, in which the agency does not undertake an executive or administrative task, for which policy is established by others, but is itself a policy-making body, establishing what may be a more significant policy for its region than some of those determined in county council chambers, which are rightly open to the public. The desire for an agency's meetings to be accessible to the public is entirely consistent with that. When an agency is formulating its strategy, we should not simply rest on clause 7 and the guidance to be issued by Ministers, but set that alongside the views of local authorities as expressed in their development plans. There is an inherent danger that the guidance offered by the Secretary of State will be strategic and of general application, whereas in many instances it will have to be implemented alongside the specific considerations of individual districts or even smaller areas, as laid out in development plans. For example, regional development agencies will often want to bring specific projects to their region and they may do that by designating in their strategy certain areas where it would be desirable for such projects to go. It would be inherently undesirable for an agency to specify a project that it wants to attract, and to designate some areas where that project should go, in pursuance of departmental guidance but in contradiction to some of the underlying principles either of the regional planning guidance or, more particularly, of local development plans. The Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning may shake his head and say that that will not happen, but we will go on to debate some of the issues, and I suspect that there will be circumstances in which the regional development agency tries to pre-empt the local authority's development plans and impose some of its own strategic ideas. It would be much better for the agency's intentions to take explicit account of the local authority's democratically determined development plans. If the regional development agency is to pursue functions that are additional to those of local authorities and to add value—the Local Government Association questioned whether it would add value, and I confess to being sceptical on the subject—it should do so on the back of a budget that does not detract from the value of local authority activities. The hon. Member for Dudley, South (Mr. Pearson) spoke about the difficulties of standard spending assessment methodology, but that is not a great problem. It is a requirement laid on the Government to compare SSAs on an equitable basis, year on year. In counties and shire districts such as South Cambridgeshire, where the SSA has been reduced by £350,000, reductions have taken place even when the demands laid on the local authority have increased. My constituents may well wonder of what value it is to them to have their services cut to provide money for a regional development agency that will simply devise strategies and leave it to the local authority to try to implement them. They would regard that as unacceptable. New clause 3 would, quite rightly, lay on the Government an obligation not to proceed down that path and set budgets for regional development agencies while undermining local authorities by cutting their grant.We have had an interesting debate about the accountability and openness of regional development agencies and their relationship with local authorities, and about local authority lead strategies, including planning guidelines. There has been some confusion between economic and land use planning, which are entirely distinct and have different systems attached to them.
It is important for the Government to get the balance right between the devolutionary principles that lie behind the Bill—taking powers down to the regions—and turning round and being terribly prescriptive about how the powers are used. We do not want to resort to the bad old ways and be over-prescriptive about how the devolved powers are used. We had many interesting discussions about that in Committee. The Government are as keen as ever to move quickly to implement our manifesto commitments on the regional agenda in England. We know that the interests of the English regions have been neglected for too long and we aim to reverse that neglect. Our first step is to establish regional development agencies to provide for effective co-ordination of economic development and social regeneration, in partnership with local organisations. Some Conservative Members have wrongly suggested that we want to convert regional development agencies into a form of local authority. They are economic development agencies, with the five core aims that are set out in clause 4. They are similar to Scottish Enterprise and the Welsh Development Agency, and I did not hear the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles), when his party was in government, complaining that the meetings of those bodies were not open to the public. He must not mix up local authorities with what are essentially economic development agencies. Later, I shall explain how the Bill gives far more provision for openness than any Bill before it.
7 pm
If the Scottish and Welsh bodies had had any effect on Essex, I would have taken enormous interest in them being open to the public. The Minister seems to believe that some RDA meetings should be open. Will she define which should be open and which should not?
We do not want to be too prescriptive at a national level, but I shall come to that in due course.
RDAs and their links with regional chambers, and our proposals for reform of the regional planning process are a first step in an evolutionary process which will lead to the English regions being able to choose a greater measure of decentralisation. There is a lot that we believe we can do now within the present democratic structures to build up the voice of the regions by building on the informal structures that the regions themselves are setting up. Local authorities are already coming together with businesses and other partners to form regional chambers to create a more integrated regional voice. Progress is being made in all regions. Only last week, my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister was present at the launch of a regional chamber in Yorkshire and the Humber. RDAs will be required to take full account of regional interests. Organisations representing such interests—and, above all, the democratically elected local authorities— can expect to contribute to the work of the RDA. We intend that regional chambers should provide a mechanism for meaningful consultation. The Bill provides a framework within which the RDA will have regard to views expressed by the chamber in the formulation and review of its economic strategy, and it will allow the RDA to consult the chamber on the exercise of its other functions, to provide information, to answer questions and to give an account of itself to the chamber. This, we believe, will give the chamber not only a powerful voice in the regions, but influence over the work of the RDA itself. Chambers provide a mechanism for the representatives of local government—who will be in the majority in the chamber—to exercise this influence. The hon. Member for Taunton (Mrs. Ballard) mentioned that the Secretary of State for Health recently announced that health authority meetings were to be in public. He did not do that by putting it in a Bill in primary legislation—he merely announced it. This is what we are doing with the RDAs. Amendments Nos. 20 and 21 would place a requirement in the Bill for the RDAs to have regard to regional planning guidance, which we propose will still be within a local authority framework. There has been some misunderstanding that somehow RDAs will have direct planning powers. By removing clauses 24 to 27, we have taken all planning powers away from RDAs. They do not have those powers, which rest with the democratically elected local authorities—where they will stay. One might have gained the impression from listening to some of tonight's speeches that, somehow, RDAs could run roughshod over local authorities and proceed without planning permission. That is not the case. They will need planning permission for any regeneration project. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar went on about this, but his Government's record in this matter was not ausplcious. The urban development corporations had planning powers, were not open to the public and were anti-democratic. They were a creation of the previous Government. One of the core functions of the RDAs will be to develop and implement a regional strategy in relation to its five purposes, and clause 7 provides for this. In many respects, this process of developing and implementing their regional strategies will be the main role of RDAs. Although there has been much good economic work done in our regions for many years—such as the development of regional competitiveness strategies—no one body has been charged with pulling together all the various strands, co-ordinating, in a way that commands consensus across the whole region, the effort that people are devoting to economic development initiatives. We want the RDAs to do this. It will be essential that there is a close relationship between the RDAs' regional strategies and other strategic work at the regional level, including regional planning guidance, which sets the regional strategic framework development plans. Regional planning guidance and the RDAs' strategies will clearly have to be related, but they have different purposes. It is important that the messages of both are compatible and consistent. However, the relationship will not be hierarchical. RDAs' regional strategies will have to have due regard to regional planning guidance. That is the structure within which they will work. In turn, through the work and the advice they will be able to give, RDAs will have a vital input in the review of regional planning guidance. It is right that the planning framework should remain in the democratic process— where it will stay—but it would not be sensible for RPG, approved by the Secretary of State, to ignore the economic needs of a region as identified in the regional strategy. Thus, integration of these two areas of work is vital, but neither will have predominant importance. They will be parallel and complementary regimes. Those developing strategic thinking will need, on both sides, to have regard to the views and needs of the other—a slightly different way of working, but one which we believe will be more effective. The relationship between RPG and the RDAs' regional strategies is an important one to get right. I understand the concern that has been expressed that, in the absence of a formal hierarchical arrangement, there is a danger that the two strategic documents will not be consistently drawn up. However, as in the case of the other areas in which the work of the RDA will have to take account of national policies—such as skills policies—it will be open to us to give guidance or directions to RDAs, if needed, about how they should take account of RPG in developing their regional economic strategies. I should point out that we have not put a specific list in clause 7 about matters to which RDAs should have regard in drawing up their regional strategies. We do not want to do this; however lengthy and wide-ranging the list might be, it could limit flexibility to respond to new policy developments. This is a matter that we can deal with through subsection (2), which allows for the Secretary of State to give guidance and directions if necessary. Amendment No. 21 refers to the relationship between the RDAs' regional strategies and local development plans. We do not believe that it is necessary to have a statutory requirement for RDAs to have regard to local development plans in devising their regional strategies.Will the Minister give way?
I have hardly any time left, and I want to deal with all the amendments if I can.
At present, a local planning authority is required by statute to have regard to the local development plan and decisions are to be madeThe RDA, like any developer, will have to apply for planning permission as appropriate. It follows that an RDA will not only have regard to local development plans; it will have to comply with them if its economic strategy is to succeed. Amendments Nos. 20 and 21 are unnecessary, as the provisions that they propose are either already in place, or will be covered better by guidance. Amendment No. 29 would place a new duty on RDAs to produce an annual budget and to consult local authorities on it. This amendment is unnecessary. As non-departmental public bodies, RDAs will be required to produce a corporate plan which will be agreed by the Government. The annual budget will be presented to Parliament in the Department's annual report and will be monitored by Ministers. We must not lose sight of the fact that, ultimately, the corporate plan is a working document between central Government—who will be providing the RDA with its funds—and the RDA. It is therefore a document that will primarily be a matter for them to determine. None the less, the corporate plan will reflect the RDA's economic strategy, which will be determined by the RDA in full consultation with the region and the chamber. The Bill provides a framework within which we expect the RDA to consult the regional chamber on its corporate plan. We do not propose to extend this to local authorities in the area, as it is our intention that those authorities, along with other regional partners, will be represented— indeed, predominant—in the chamber. If, however, it became apparent that a suitable chamber was not to be established, we could issue guidance and directions on the RDAs' consultation with regional interests—including local authorities—on both its corporate plan and economic strategy. Amendment No. 30, which is consequential upon amendment No. 29, is also unnecessary. Clause 9 allows the Secretary of State to set the financial duties of the RDAs and to recover surplus money from RDAs. The same power is available to the Secretary of State in respect of English Partnerships— again, Conservative legislation—but it has never been used. I hope that the power in clause 9(4) as drafted would also not need to be used in respect of RDAs. RDAs will be non-departmental public bodies, which normally receive grant in aid from the Government each month to ensure that they do not carry large amounts of public funds at the start of the year which the Government could use for other purposes, and that public funds are used in the most efficient way. Despite that, however, a body could still acquire surplus funds, if, for example, a large project was delayed or more receipts than expected were collected. In such circumstances, the most efficient use of funds is to return them to the centre to be used for other programmes. Amendment No. 2 would require surplus funds to be paid to the region's local authorities, which is simply not appropriate. RDAs will receive funding from central Government, and it is right and proper that it be repaid to the Government if it is not used. Clause 10 enables the Secretary of State, with the approval of the Treasury, to pay RDAs grant in aid, which will be their main source of income. Amendment No. 3 would provide that the Secretary of State could not pay grant in aid to an RDA if the standard spending assessment of a local authority in the region had been or was proposed to be reduced. The hon. Member for Taunton perhaps seeks an assurance that we shall not reduce central Government funding for local authorities to increase the budgets of RDAs. We are happy to give such an assurance. Local authority funding is a separate issue: RDA funding comes from the single regeneration budget, from the budget for English Partnerships, and from the budget for the Rural Development Commission. The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) should not confuse them. Unlike the previous Government, we are only too pleased to give assurances to local government. The budgets of RDAs will, like the programmes, be inherited from Government offices for the regions; they will not come from funding for local government. A standard spending assessment is the Government's view of net revenue expenditure which it is appropriate for a local authority to incur to provide service consistent with that across all local authorities. It is calculated by formulae which use objective measures. The amendment would mean that no funding would be paid if SSAs went down because of population change, which would cause anarchy. I am surprised that the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield is suggesting anarchy—but times are strange. New clause 3 and amendment No. 17 cover the openness with which RDAs should operate. The Government want greater openness, better accountability and improved effectiveness in the conduct of the business of non-departmental public bodies, as we made clear in our consultation paper "Opening up Quangos"—we want RDAs to lead the way. We have also published our proposals for ending secrecy surrounding government in our White Paper, "Your Right to Know". We are sympathetic to the intention behind new clause 3, but it is not appropriate for it to be in the Bill. The matter will be dealt with in the usual way by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, and our proposed freedom of information Bill will apply to all legislation. We shall also issue guidance saying that RDAs should be as open as possible—we hope and expect that they will be—but we shall not put that in the Bill."in accordance with the plan, unless material considerations indicate otherwise".
This has been an interesting debate. At the risk of incurring the wrath of the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry), it could even be described as an iterative process.
Liberal Democrat Members welcome the support of the official Opposition, who have said that they shall vote in the same Lobby as us on new clause 3. I shall be careful to make my points without upsetting them so much that they do not join us, but the road to Damascus has been incredibly busy recently. In government, the Conservatives set up many non-departmental public bodies, or quangos, which were not accountable to local people and did not have to meet in public. My local training and enterprise council has placed the minutes of its meetings in public libraries and sent them to local people such as the Member of Parliament only since the change of Government, although it still does not meet in public. Although we are delighted to accept the support of Conservative Members on new clause 3, we are most disappointed that the Conservative party and the Labour party have swapped sides on this issue. We had hoped for better from a Government who say that they are committed to openness and democracy. We should have anticipated the Under-Secretary saying, "The Government are sympathetic to new clause 3, but." The hon. Member for Dudley, South (Mr. Pearson) mentioned reasons for not including certain matters in the Bill, which boiled down to something being blindingly obvious or too restrictive. In an idle moment, I studied the Bill. Clause 14 states:"A regional development agency shall—
I would have thought that that was blindingly obvious. I must wrap up, so I shall be brief. New clause 3 would put RDAs in the same category as other public bodies with respect to admission to meetings, and in the same category as local authorities with respect to openness of proceedings, which would have to take place in public unless commercial or confidential matters were being discussed. I am disappointed that the Government are unable to accept a simple new clause on openness and democracy, and I hope that some Labour Members will change their minds at the last minute and join us in the Lobby.keep proper accounts".
It being fifteen minutes past Seven o'clock, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER, pursuant to the Order [27 March] and the Resolution [this day], put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time:—
The House divided: Ayes 163, Noes 283.
Division No. 241]
| [7.15 pm
|
AYES
| |
| Ainsworth, Peter (E Surrey) | Brady, Graham |
| Allan, Richard | Brake, Tom |
| Ancram, Rt Hon Michael | Brazier, Julian |
| Arbuthnot, James | Breed, Colin |
| Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy | Brooke, Rt Hon Peter |
| Atkinson, David (Bour'mth E) | Browning, Mrs Angela |
| Atkinson, Peter (Hexham) | Bruce, Ian (S Dorset) |
| Baker, Norman | Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon) |
| Ballard, Mrs Jackie | Burnett, John |
| Beith, Rt Hon A J | Burns, Simon |
| Bercow, John | Burstow, Paul |
| Beresford, Sir Paul | Butterfill, John |
| Blunt, Crispin | Cable, Dr Vincent |
| Body, Sir Richard | Cash, William |
| Boswell, Tim | Chapman, Sir Sydney (Chipping Barnet) |
| Bottomley, Peter (Worthing W) | |
| Chidgey, David | Luff, Peter |
| Chope, Christopher | MacGregor, Rt Hon John |
| Clappison, James | McIntosh, Miss Anne |
| Clark, Rt Hon Alan (Kensington) | MacKay, Andrew |
| Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth (Rushcliffe) | Maclean, Rt Hon David |
| Maclennan, Rt Hon Robert | |
| Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey | McLoughlin, Patrick |
| Collins, Tim | Maples, John |
| Colvin, Michael | Mates, Michael |
| Cormack, Sir Patrick | Maude, Rt Hon Francis |
| Cotter, Brian | Mawhinney, Rt Hon Sir Brian |
| Cran, James | May, Mrs Theresa |
| Curry, Rt Hon David | Michie, Mrs Ray (Argyll & Bute) |
| Davey, Edward (Kingston) | Moore, Michael |
| Davies, Quentin (Grantham) | Moss, Malcolm |
| Davis, Rt Hon David (Haltemprice) | Nicholls, Patrick |
| Day, Stephen | Norman, Archie |
| Dorrell, Rt Hon Stephen | Oaten, Mark |
| Duncan, Alan | Öpik, Lembit |
| Duncan Smith, Iain | Ottaway, Richard |
| Evans, Nigel | Page, Richard |
| Faber, David | Paice, James |
| Fabricant, Michael | Pickles, Eric |
| Fallon, Michael | Randall, John |
| Fearn, Ronnie | Redwood, Rt Hon John |
| Flight, Howard | Rendel, David |
| Forth, Rt Hon Eric | Robathan, Andrew |
| Foster, Don (Bath) | Roe, Mrs Marion (Broxbourne) |
| Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman | Ross, William (E Lond'y) |
| Fox, Dr Liam | Rowe, Andrew (Faversham) |
| Gale, Roger | Ruffley, David |
| George, Andrew (St Ives) | Russell, Bob (Colchester) |
| Gibb, Nick | St Aubyn, Nick |
| Gill, Christopher | Sanders, Adrian |
| Gillan, Mrs Cheryl | Shephard, Rt Hon Mrs Gillian |
| Gorman, Mrs Teresa | Shepherd, Richard |
| Gray, James | Simpson, Keith (Mid-Norfolk) |
| Greenway, John | Smith, Sir Robert (W Ab'd'ns) |
| Grieve, Dominic | Soames, Nicholas |
| Hague, Rt Hon William | Spelman, Mrs Caroline |
| Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archie | Spicer, Sir Michael |
| Hammond, Philip | Spring, Richard |
| Harris, Dr Evan | Steen, Anthony |
| Harvey, Nick | Swayne, Desmond |
| Hawkins, Nick | Syms, Robert |
| Hayes, John | Tapsell, Sir Peter |
| Taylor, Ian (Esher & Walton) | |
| Heald, Oliver | Taylor, John M (Solihull) |
| Heathcoat-Amory, Rt Hon David | Taylor, Matthew (Truro) |
| Horam, John | Townend, John |
| Howarth, Gerald (Aldershot) | Tredinnick, David |
| Hughes, Simon (Southwark N) | Trend, Michael |
| Hunter, Andrew | Tyler, Paul |
| Jackson, Robert (Wantage) | Tyrie, Andrew |
| Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham) | Wallace, James |
| Kennedy, Charles (Ross Skye) | Walter, Robert |
| Key, Robert | Wardle, Charles |
| King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater) | Webb, Steve |
| Kirkbride, Miss Julie | Widdecombe, Rt Hon Miss Ann |
| Kirkwood, Archy | Willetts, David |
| Laing, Mrs Eleanor | Willis, Phil |
| Lait, Mrs Jacqui | Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton) |
| Lansley, Andrew | Winterton, Nicholas (Macclesfield) |
| Letwin, Oliver | Woodward, Shaun |
| Lewis, Dr Julian (New Forest E) | Yeo, Tim |
| Lidington, David | |
| Lilley, Rt Hon Peter | Tellers for the Ayes:
|
| Livsey, Richard | Mr. Andrew Stunell and
|
| Loughton, Tim | Mr. Donald Gorrie.
|
NOES
| |
| Adams, Mrs Irene (Paisley N) | Armstrong, Ms Hilary |
| Anger, Nick | Ashton, Joe |
| Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE) | Atherton, Ms Candy |
| Alexander, Douglas | Atkins, Charlotte |
| Allen, Graham | Austin, John |
| Anderson, Janet (Rossendale) | Banks, Tony |
| Barnes, Harry | Fisher, Mark |
| Battle, John | Fitzpatrick, Jim |
| Bayley, Hugh | Fitzsimons, Lorna |
| Beard, Nigel | Flint, Caroline |
| Begg, Miss Anne | Flynn, Paul |
| Benn, Rt Hon Tony | Follett, Barbara |
| Bennett, Andrew F | Foster, Rt Hon Derek |
| Bermingham, Gerald | Foster, Michael Jabez (Hastings) |
| Blackman, Liz | Fyfe, Maria |
| Blears, Ms Hazel | Galloway, George |
| Blunkett, Rt Hon David | Gardiner, Barry |
| Boateng, Paul | Gerrard, Neil |
| Bradley, Keith (Withington) | Gibson, Dr Ian |
| Bradshaw, Ben | Gilroy, Mrs Linda |
| Brinton, Mrs Helen | Godman, Dr Norman A |
| Brown, Rt Hon Nick (Newcastle E) | Godsiff, Roger |
| Brown, Russell (Dumfries) | Goggins, Paul |
| Browne, Desmond | Golding, Mrs Llin |
| Buck, Ms Karen | Gordon, Mrs Eileen |
| Byers, Stephen | Grant, Bernie |
| Caborn, Richard | Griffiths, Jane (Reading E) |
| Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge) | Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S) |
| Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V) | Griffiths, Win (Bridgend) |
| Campbell-Savours, Dale | Grocott, Bruce |
| Canavan, Dennis | Grogan, John |
| Cann, Jamie | Hain, Peter |
| Caplin, Ivor | Hall, Mike (Weaver Vale) |
| Casale, Roger | Hall, Patrick (Bedford) |
| Caton, Martin | Hamilton, Fabian (Leeds NE) |
| Chapman, Ben (Wirral S) | Hanson, David |
| Chisholm, Malcolm | Healey, John |
| Church, Ms Judith | Henderson, Ivan (Harwich) |
| Clapham, Michael | Hepburn, Stephen |
| Clark, Rt Hon Dr David (S Shields) | Heppell, John |
| Clark, Dr Lynda (Edinburgh Pentlands) | Hesford, Stephen |
| Hinchliffe, David | |
| Clark, Paul (Gillingham) | Hodge, Ms Margaret |
| Clarke, Tony (Northampton S) | Hoey, Kate |
| Clelland, David | Home Robertson, John |
| Clwyd, Ann | Hoon, Geoffrey |
| Coaker, Vernon | Hope, Phil |
| Coffey, Ms Ann | Howarth, Alan (Newport E) |
| Cohen, Harry | Howarth, George (Knowsley N) |
| Coleman, Iain | Howells, Dr Kim |
| Connarty, Michael | Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N) |
| Cooper, Yvette | Humble, Mrs Joan |
| Corbyn, Jeremy | Hurst, Alan |
| Corston, Ms Jean | Hutton, John |
| Cranston, Ross | Iddon, Dr Brian |
| Crausby, David | Jackson, Ms Glenda (Hampstead) |
| Cryer, Mrs Ann (Keighley) | Jamieson, David |
| Cryer, John (Hornchurch) | Jenkins, Brian |
| Cummings, John | Johnson, Miss Melanie (Welwyn Hatfield) |
| Cunliffe, Lawrence | |
| Cunningham, Jim (Cov'try S) | Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside) |
| Darling, Rt Hon Alistair | Jones, Mrs Fiona (Newark) |
| Davidson, Ian | Jones, Helen (Warrington N) |
| Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli) | Jones, Ms Jenny |
| Davies, Geraint (Croydon C) | (Wolverh'ton SW)
|
| Davies, Rt Hon Ron (Caerphilly) | Jones, Jon Owen (Cardiff C) |
| Davis, Terry (B'ham Hodge H) | Jones, Dr Lynne (Selly Oak) |
| Dawson, Hilton | Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S) |
| Dean, Mrs Janet | Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald |
| Denham, John | Keen, Alan (Feltham & Heston) |
| Donohoe, Brian H | Kelly, Ms Ruth |
| Doran, Frank | Kennedy, Jane (Wavertree) |
| Dowd, Jim | Khabra, Piara S |
| Drew, David | Kidney, David |
| Drown, Ms Julia | Kilfoyle, Peter |
| Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth | King, Ms Oona (Bethnal Green) |
| Eagle, Angela (Wallasey) | Kingham, Ms Tess |
| Eagle, Maria (L'pool Garston) | Kumar, Dr Ashok |
| Edwards, Huw | Ladyman, Dr Stephen |
| Efford, Clive | Lawrence, Ms Jackie |
| Ellman, Mrs Louise | Laxton, Bob |
| Field, Rt Hon Frank | Lepper, David |
| Leslie, Christopher | Ruane, Chris |
| Levitt, Tom | Russell, Ms Christine (Chester) |
| Lewis, Terry (Worsley) | Salter, Martin |
| Liddell, Mrs Helen | Savidge, Malcolm |
| Linton, Martin | Sawford, Phil |
| Livingstone, Ken | Sedgemore, Brian |
| Lloyd, Tony (Manchester C) | Shaw, Jonathan |
| Love, Andrew | Sheerman, Barry |
| McAllion, John | Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert |
| McAvoy, Thomas | Simpson, Alan (Nottingham S) |
| McCabe, Steve | Skinner, Dennis |
| McCafferty, Ms Chris | Smith, Rt Hon Andrew (Oxford E) |
| McCartney, Ian (Makerfield) | Smith, Angela (Basildon) |
| McDonagh, Siobhain | Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent) |
| McIsaac, Shona | Soley, Clive |
| McNulty, Tony | Southworth, Ms Helen |
| McWalter, Tony | Starkey, Dr Phyllis |
| McWilliam, John | Steinberg, Gerry |
| Mallaber, Judy | Stevenson, George |
| Marshall, David (Shettleston) | Stewart, David (Inverness E) |
| Marshall, Jim (Leicester S) | Stinchcombe, Paul |
| Marshall-Andrews, Robert | Stoate, Dr Howard |
| Martlew, Eric | Stott, Roger |
| Maxton, John | Strang, Rt Hon Dr Gavin |
| Meale, Alan | Stringer, Graham |
| Merron, Gillian | Stuart, Ms Gisela |
| Michie, Bill (Shef'ld Heeley) | Taylor, Rt Hon Mrs Ann (Dewsbury) |
| Miller, Andrew | |
| Mitchell, Austin | Taylor, David (NW Leics) |
| Moffatt, Laura | Thomas, Gareth (Clwyd W) |
| Moonie, Dr Lewis | Timms, Stephen |
| Moran, Ms Margaret | Tipping, Paddy |
| Morgan, Ms Julie (Cardiff N) | Todd, Mark |
| Morgan, Rhodri (Cardiff W) | Touhig, Don |
| Morley, Elliot | Trickett, Jon |
| Mudie, George | Truswell, Paul |
| Murphy, Denis (Wansbeck) | Turner, Dennis (Wolverh'ton SE) |
| Murphy, Jim (Eastwood) | Turner, Dr Desmond (Kemptown) |
| Naysmith, Dr Doug | Twigg, Derek (Halton) |
| Norris, Dan | Twigg, Stephen (Enfield) |
| O'Brien, Bill (Normanton) | Vaz, Keith |
| O'Neill, Martin | Vis, Dr Rudi |
| Osborne, Ms Sandra | Walley, Ms Joan |
| Palmer, Dr Nick | Ward, Ms Claire |
| Pearson, Ian | Watts, David |
| Pendry, Tom | White, Brian |
| Perham, Ms Linda | Whitehead, Dr Alan |
| Pickthall, Colin | Williams, Rt Hon Alan (Swansea W) |
| Pike, Peter L | |
| Pond, Chris | Williams, Alan W (E Carmarthen) |
| Pope, Greg | Williams, Mrs Betty (Conwy) |
| Pound, Stephen | Wills, Michael |
| Powell, Sir Raymond | Wilson, Brian |
| Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lewisham E) | Winnick, David |
| Prosser, Gwyn | Winterton, Ms Rosie (Doncaster C) |
| Purchase, Ken | Wise, Audrey |
| Quin, Ms Joyce | Woolas, Phil |
| Radice, Giles | Wray, James |
| Rapson, Syd | Wright, Dr Tony (Cannock) |
| Raynsford, Nick | Wyatt, Derek |
| Reed, Andrew (Loughborough) | |
| Robinson, Geoffrey (Covt'ry NW) | Tellers for the Noes:
|
| Ross, Ernie (Dundee W) | Mr. Clive Betts and
|
| Roy, Frank | Mr. John McFall.
|
Question accordingly negatived.
New Clause 5
Responsibility For Training And Enterprise Councils
'(1) The Secretary of State may by directions require the transfer of responsibility for any Training and Enterprise Council in England ("a Council") from the Department for Education and Employment to the Regional Development Agency for the area in which the Council is based.
(2) Any Agency to which the responsibilities for a Council have been transferred shall—
(3) If a Secretary of State makes a direction in respect of any Council under subsection (1) he shall either—
Brought up, and read the First time.
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
When I first came to the House I was not enthusiastic about regional government. I have realised over the past few years that the more we move to a global economy, the more important it is to have a regional presence rather than to rely on the cities that dominated in the early part of this century. Regional structures should be democratic, and we should have regionally elected government. I accept that the measure is merely a faltering first step, but it is important to make it clear that I want us to achieve regionally elected government as quickly as possible. I fear that we will stop at this stage in the process and will never have regionally elected government. I am also worried that, if we stop at this stage, there will be a confusion of regional responsibilities. There will be regional chambers, regional development agencies and regional planning conferences. The TECs will have a regional structure to ensure that they have a co-ordinated policy for their region. There are higher education and further education regional bodies, and regional sports and arts bodies. We cannot continue that proliferation of different regional bodies and we need to try to slim them down and make them all accountable to an elected body as quickly as possible. Both the Select Committee on Education and Employment and the Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs looked at the role of TECs and it was clear to them that there was no excuse for TECs to be kept separate from the RDAs. The logic was that there should be a funding mechanism, working in an integrated way. When trying to attract new industries and develop existing ones, part of that regional development consists of making sure that the skills are there. Companies are attracted to areas not only by sites and the availability of funds, but by the presence of a skilled labour force. It would be absolutely crazy for TECs to have a different regional strategy from that of RDAs. Both Select Committee reports made it clear that the Government had got it wrong in leaving TECs out of the new structure. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us how we are going to progress to a point where responsibility for TECs moves to the RDAs. 7.30 pm There are a few excellent TECs in this country, but there are many that have failed the nation. The skills shortage in many regions is an indication of those failures. Some TECs are too small and some are far too parochial in their attitude. Some are dominated by unsuccessful local business people and in some there is nothing like the accountability for their funds that there should be. All those issues have to be sorted out and one of the most effective means of doing so would be to ensure that TECs had to get their funding via RDAs. Many of my hon. Friends want to speak in the debate, so, before sitting down, I simply ask the Minister that we should make some progress in moving TECs into the new regional structure.Like the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett), I am conscious of the fact that several Labour Members want to speak on this subject but, before they do so, I should like to make a few comments.
I was the policy director for the Association of British Chambers of Commerce in 1988, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler)— then the Secretary of State for Employment—initiated the proposals for TECs. At that time, the British Chambers of Commerce put it to my right hon. Friend that, rather than engage in an endless bout of initiativitis and try to create a new body at regional or local level, the experience of local employer networks and the way in which they worked demonstrated that, in some parts of the country, chambers of commerce and those businesses that worked within them were perfectly capable of taking on the responsibility for TECs and making them work. At that time, rightly or wrongly, it was decided that chambers of commerce were not the appropriate bodies to have responsibility for TECs and the words that the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish has just used to describe today's TECs were used in respect of chambers of commerce. It was said that their quality was variable across the country; and that, in some areas, they were too small and covered too limited an area; that were too parochial in their outlook. Not all those criticisms would now apply to chambers of commerce, but it is an irony not lost on me that a Labour Member is now making the same criticisms of TECs as were made against chambers of commerce 10 years ago. There is in this country a structure of business-led organisations that has been sustained by entirely voluntary activity for more than 150 years, yet Governments of all persuasions seem unwilling to use that as a suitable foundation on which to structure support for business. The answer to the question how best to support businesses in enterprise and creating wealth is normally to work through those organisations to which businesses voluntarily subscribe. RDAs may, in due course, become bodies to which businesses are willing to subscribe, but we cannot be certain of that. RDAs are to operate at policy-making level and with a substantial local authority component—I do not complain about that; I support local authority participation in RDAs and the view taken on RDA accountability to local authorities—but many businesses will regard RDAs, if not as parochial, as having a regional focus beyond the scope of the local labour market with which they want the local TEC to forge a relationship. That is why, in each region, TECs come together in a regional council. The intent of what is proposed under new clause 5 is wrong in that sense. The objective of RDAs, if it is a proper objective to pursue, is that of setting strategy and enabling organisations that focus on the components of competitiveness to come together in support of that strategy and make it happen more effectively. It is quite wrong for the RDA to take into its own responsibilities the bureaucratic task of administering the relationship through contract with TECs. If it does so, it will become directly enmeshed in decisions as to the responsibilities of chambers of commerce, TECs and business links— chambers of commerce and TECs are increasingly voluntarily combining to form a single organisation and business links are often related to TECs. Even in the terms of the Government's proposals, which I do not necessarily support, there is an inherent danger in the RDAs' strategic function. The new clause would ensure that, instead of being strategic bodies separate from the economic development functions of local authorities, chambers of commerce and TECs—and, in the case of the Eastern region, the East of England Inward Investment Agency—RDAs would be directly responsible for those functions, even if only through contract. At this point, I should say that the current contracts between TECs and the Government offices or the Department for Education and Employment are, at the Treasury's behest, so detailed and exert so much control over the activities of the TECs that there is too little discretion for TECs to respond to business priorities in their own area. If the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish wants TECs to enter into wider partnerships, I agree—they should combine with the local chamber of commerce so that there is increasingly a single local business-led organisation that acts as a counterpart to the local authority in its economic development role. If the hon. Gentleman is saying that TECs are often too parochial and should operate at a higher level of aggregation, that is true in some cases.Does my hon. Friend agree that training is a function that is essentially sub-regional or local? I recall asking the Humberside TEC to explain the commonality between somebody requiring training in Whitby and someone requiring training in the Yorkshire dales. There is no such commonality. Training should be local.
My hon. Friend makes a good point, which is entirely congruent with what I was saying. It is not automatically true that TECs are currently constituted on the right basis. If one looks at the way in which chambers of commerce have changed in recent years, one can see that there has been a general merging and aggregation of chambers so as to provide services and relate to policy across a wider area.
It is perfectly true that the natural structure of training and enterprise councils should relate to a high degree of self-containment within the local labour market. The self-containment level should be above 80 per cent. or 90 per cent. for that labour market area. That points to large groupings in some areas. In other places, such as Cambridgeshire, the area would not be quite so large. There is considerable self-containment—probably at that level—within Cambridge and the south Cambridgeshire district. In truth, it does not make much sense for a training and enterprise council to be smaller than the local labour market area within which about 80 per cent. or 90 per cent. of people live and work. To go above that level, and to think that it necessarily makes sense to set the parameters for an individual training and enterprise council on a regional level, is to miss the point. Training and enterprise councils should have a regional focus. The reason is that, if the regional development agency—or an inward investment agency acting on its behalf—pursues inward investment projects, it will be necessary to look at a specific area and within the confines of a specific training and enterprise council in order to provide the skills that will bring a company to that area. Precisely that approach was taken in Sheffield— I regret that I cannot recall the specific case; the Minister may recall it better than I do—and it was a significant attraction to businesses to come to that area. In Atlanta in the mid to late 1980s, it was generally presumed that, in order to attract inward investment, one had to engage substantially in site assembly and provide infrastructure. However, when it came to internationally mobile investments of a higher technological character, site assembly and infrastructure did not determine where the business went. It was all about access to markets and skills in the labour force. It is important that there be scope for the regional development agency strategy—if it is going to be provided—to inform the role of the Government office in exercising its contract with a training and enterprise council. If the Government office and the regional development agencies are to head in any direction in the future, they should move to take their hands off the training and enterprise councils' policy-making functions—not necessarily their propriety and accountability for public funds—which determine the response to local labour markets. Too much is driven at present by desire on the part of Government—Governments of both colours—to see their employment Department initiatives pursued. Employers in the local labour market are doing too little in anticipating their skills requirements and ensuring that the training and enterprise councils respond to them.Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I have already given way to the hon. Lady, but I am happy to do so again.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the training needs of an area include the need to retrain and diversify in some regions? Diversification of some sectors of industry in the north-west—for example, the aerospace industry, which is very militarily based—may require a retraining policy that is sectoral and not limited to localised areas. Does the hon. Gentleman not think that it makes sense for a regional skills strategy to relate to a regional economic strategy, which would be determined by the RDA? That does not mean that it would all have to be carried out—
Order. That is a very long intervention. I remind hon. Members that this is a very brief debate.
Indeed, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was concluding, but I shall respond to the comments of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman). My point about inward investment—which applies also to something as grand as a regional economic strategy— is that there are circumstances in which the respective resources of training and enterprise councils should be adjusted in relation to a broader perspective. For example, no one would dispute the fact that a training and enterprise council should respond to requirements for retraining and different skills when there have been large-scale redundancies in a particular area.
However, I believe that the general training and enterprise council budget should be driven essentially by the business community's priorities. There is one important reason for that: the amount spent by Government on training, as the hon. Member for Riverside and other hon. Members know, is probably less, by an order of magnitude, than the amount that businesses spend on training on their own behalf. If training and enterprise councils are to work effectively, it is right that they should interact with businesses directly in order not only to provide training but to act as a lever on those businesses and provide relevant training and meet the wider skills needs of the area. The TECs should understand that, essentially, they act at the margins of the training philosophy of an area. If the regional development agencies assume that responsibility, it will detract from the business focus, which should be the proper direction for TECs in the future.I am glad to follow the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), whose contributions to our debates are always thoughtful and well informed. I am even more pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett), whose brief contribution was so powerful that I cannot pretend to try to better it. As a consequence, I shall be brief.
I have been a great enthusiast for regional development agencies for 25 years. I was chairman of the North of England Development Council in the mid-1970s, when it was clear that the northern region was at a competitive disadvantage compared with the Scots and the Welsh because they already had development agencies. It is quite remarkable that the Education and Employment Committee and the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee should examine that issue and reach similar and unanimous conclusions. 7.45 pm The Committees were very impressed by what I call the "Scottish model". It has been working for some time, and the Welsh model has been working for even longer. The latter model has some attractions, which I may have the chance to explore a little later. We were struck by the fact that the rather patchy record of training and enterprise councils throughout the English regions was not replicated in Scotland. That is because the money for training and enterprise councils went to Scottish Enterprise and then to the local enterprise councils, as they are called in Scotland. Scottish Enterprise has considerable power to monitor the performance of LECs and, for that reason alone, those bodies have performed far more evenly. The two Select Committees cannot possibly conceive that an economic and development strategy should not include a skills strategy. That fact is absolutely clear, and it will become increasingly important as we approach the information age. The real wealth of regions and of enterprises will be found in the skills and the creativity of their people. Therefore, a coherent economic and development strategy must include a skills strategy. If we are to concede to the regional development agencies the need to develop a strategy that includes a skills strategy—which may include lifelong learning as well as the TECs—it is inconceivable that the RDAs should not be able to ensure that that strategy is implemented. There is no point having a strategy if there are no powers to ensure its implementation. If the money flows through the RDAs, they will have the power to ensure that the strategy is implemented. We reached that conclusion after very careful consideration. We were concerned that we might institute a body that was just another regional agency—there are already too many—which did not have the power to pull the various strands together. In other words, we feared that we might confuse and complicate rather than simplify the arrangements. We concluded that the Select Committee proposals would give greater power to the development agency not to act bureaucratically, but to empower other organisations beneath its strategic level. We are not looking for bureaucracy; we are looking for empowerment of other bodies within the agency, and of the people themselves. That was our proposal, reached unanimously. There was all-party agreement on both Select Committees. If the Government are unable to agree to our proposals—we hope that they are—I remind them that, in our report, we suggested that they might consider pilot areas. We suggested that the North East and the North West would be good regions for such pilot areas to be put in hand. We did so because co-operation and collaboration are well developed in those two regions. Others might consider that the Yorkshire and the Humber region would equally merit such consideration, and I am sure that other colleagues may add their penn'orth for their own region, but that was our proposal. If the Government cannot agree to new clause 5, perhaps they could make sympathetic noises to the idea of having a pilot area—I would say in the north.It will come as no surprise to the Minister that we support new clause 5, as it is very similar to one that we tabled in Committee. It seemed to us that the RDAs were there to sweep up an awful lot of the existing agencies that were operating in various ways in support of the economic progress and development of their areas, and that it was genuinely expected that the TECs would be subsumed into the new RDAs. There is an obvious case for that to happen, and I concur with all that the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) and the right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Foster) said.
Some TECs have been more successful than others; some have become more accountable recently. However, there is an overwhelming case for them to be included in the RDAs. They could then be involved in the strategic operation of a regional development agency, enabling them to be part of a package for new investors into regions. They could provide an enhanced business links operation for existing businesses, and also provide the business advice and support that RDAs will need. For those reasons, I entirely support the sentiments behind new clause 5.New clause 5 would make provision in the Bill for the Secretary of State, by direction, to transfer to the regional development agency responsibility for any training and enterprise council in England. It would provide that, where any such transfer took place, the RDA should monitor and seek to improve the performance of that TEC, and should ensure that the TEC is contributing to the RDA's objective. The new clause specifies that, if such a direction did not apply to all TECs, the Secretary of State would be required to explain the reason to both Houses.
The new clause has impressive support. My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) is Chairman of the Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs. I believe that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Foster) is Chairman of the Select Committee on Education and Employment. As an ex-Chairman of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, I know what powerful positions they are. Both those Committees held inquiries into the work of the RDAs. Unusually—perhaps uniquely—both reached the same conclusion on the subject of the RDAs' role in relation to the TECs. They have both made recommendations to the Government that they should transfer to RDAs the current role of Government offices for the regions in contracting with TECs for training provision in their region. The Government are grateful for the work that those two Committees have done in considering our proposals for RDAs. We welcome the interest that they have taken in an important initiative and in the Government's regional agenda in general. We share many of the Committees' key objectives. For example, we agree that the RDAs must play a central role in formulating the regional skills strategy. We agree that RDAs should have a meaningful role in relation to the work of the TECs. The essential difference between us is that, whereas the Committees have taken the view that influence derives essentially from the control of budgets, the Government believe that the necessary influence and direction can be achieved by RDAs with the role and functions that we have given them from the outset. For the time being at least, we do not consider it appropriate to transfer to RDAs the role of the Department for Education and Employment in TECs' contracts. We believe that the package of functions that we have already given RDAs is the right one, and that it provides the right critical mass to start from. However, I can assure the House that the Bill provides for us to take a different view some time. It is—Will the Minister give way?
I am sorry; I cannot gave way because I have five minutes and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish wants to say a few words.
The Bill also enables us to require RDAs to monitor and seek to improve the performance of TECs—which is important—and to ensure that TECs are contributing to the RDAs' objectives, as provided for in the new clause. As I shall explain later, we do intend that the RDAs should have that responsibility. As I said in my response to the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee, published on 30 March, the Government believe that it is important to be realistic about what we ask RDAs to do. They will be new bodies, and will have much to do to establish themselves and to develop their work programme. As I have explained, there will be scope to extend the role in time, as their experience develops: further functions will be delegated to them if that is desirable. The package of functions that we have proposed for the RDAs will afford them considerable influence throughout their region. The wide-ranging nature of the role means that that influence will not be limited to areas and organisations for which the RDAs hold budgets. RDAs will certainly be influential in the provision of training in their regions. Regional skills needs will be a key component of the RDAs' strategy, and that strategy will inform decision taking in the regions, including the decisions taken by Government offices in the allocation of TECs' budgets. I recognise that my hon. Friends feel strongly that training budgets should be controlled by RDAs. I have explained why, in the Government's view, it is not the right time for such a step. Nevertheless, there is no reason why the role of the RDAs should not develop over time, as that of the Scottish and the Welsh Development Agencies did. The Bill will allow that to be done without the need for further legislation. Although we do not accept new clause 5, we accept that the RDAs should play a big part in monitoring and improving TECs' performance. The Government want to drive up the performance of all TECs to the standard of the best. The details of the RDAs' role are still being worked up, but we expect them to take a hard look at the performance of TECs in their regions and recommend how they might make a greater contribution to regional objectives. In managing TEC contracts, Government offices will take account of the strategic framework developed by RDAs. The provisions of the new clause are clearly designed to encourage the Secretary of State, should he choose to make a direction, to transfer responsibilities for TECs to RDAs in all regions simultaneously. Although I do not accept the new clause, I see that that would appear to be, in principle, a sensible way of proceeding. Although the English regions are all different, with different needs, I believe that there should be a limit to the level of regional variation in the system. As I said in Committee, I do not believe that one region should be given different functions and responsibilities from another. In the case of TECs, the need for the DFEE to oversee different arrangements in different parts of the country would be very likely to add to bureaucracy, and therefore costs. With that explanation, I ask my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish to withdraw the new clause.The Minister's response is singularly disappointing. At least he could have shown a little enthusiasm for some experiments. However, I do not see that there is a great deal of point in having Divisions unless one can win them, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 19
Vesting Of Land By Order
Amendment made: No. 7, in page 8, line 39, at end insert 'by statutory instrument.'— [Mr. Caborn.]
Clause 20
Acquisition Of Land
I beg to move amendment No. 32, in page 9, line 35, leave out from 'agreement' to end of line 39.
With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 33, in page 9, line 40, leave out 'or (2)'.
No. 34, in page 9, line 42, leave out from 'acquire' to 'land' in line 43. No. 35, in page 9, leave out from beginning of line 45 to end of line 6 on page 10. No. 36, in page 10, leave out lines 11 to 15. No. 37, in schedule 5, page 29, line 37, leave out from beginning to end of line 24 on page 32.Like many other amendments moved today, this group has been tabled because of the Government's determination in Committee not to allow any change to their Bill until they were forced to do so by the combination of Opposition pressure and argument, and the weight of opinion outside the House.
Clause 20, which we seek to amend, deals with the powers being given to a regional development agency to acquire land. As the clause gives RDAs powers of compulsory purchase, the Opposition sought in Standing Committee to limit the type of land over which those powers could be exercised. We moved, and subsequently withdrew, an amendment that would have prevented those compulsory powers from being used to acquire land in areas of outstanding natural beauty and in national parks. The House might consider that such an amendment was entirely inoffensive. It is difficult to see why RDAs should want compulsorily to acquire land in such designated areas. I hope that the RDAs will not go around buying up great chunks of such land in any circumstances, whether compulsorily or by agreement. Nevertheless, the Government argued in Committee against that amendment. They apparently believe that compulsory purchase powers must be available for RDAs to use in respect of any part of England. Referring to our aim, on 12 February the Minister said:The amendment simply sought to prevent RDAs from acquiring land by compulsory purchase in areas of outstanding natural beauty and national parks. The Minister's comment provides an alarming insight into the Government's views of the future activities that RDAs might undertake. It has been suggested that excluding areas of outstanding natural beauty and national parks from the areas where RDAs can exercise compulsory purchase powers would prevent RDAs from doing a reasonable job for rural communities. If the Minister visited a few rural communities, especially ones with areas of outstanding natural beauty in or near them, he might begin to understand that it is possible to do helpful things in those communities without compulsorily purchasing land there. Because of the Government's refusal to listen to reason in Committee, we now seek to return to the issue of compulsion in a slightly different form. The amendments would remove the compulsory purchase powers from the Bill, leaving RDAs free to acquire land by agreement in any part of England. Provided that they could negotiate a price with the vendor and had the vendor's consent in that respect, RDAs could acquire land even in national parks. The amendments would remove the possibility that compulsion could be used. My fears about the use to which compulsory purchase powers may be put have been greatly increased by recent planning decisions. With the connivance of the Secretary of State, and sometimes after the direct intervention of the Secretary of State, decisions made have put the green belt under threat as never before. The Minister spoke the truth on Radio 4 last autumn when he warned us all that the green belt was up for grabs, although I doubt whether many of his listeners understood at that time quite how serious the threat to the green belt was. In Hertfordshire, the threat is up to 10,000 houses on the green belt at Stevenage. In the west midlands, the threat is industrial development of farmland on the green belt. In Newcastle, the threat is 2,500 houses on the green belt, despite the availability of more than 4,000 empty houses in the city."the real aim of the amendment … is to shackle the RDAs and prevent them from doing a reasonable job for rural communities."— [Official Report, Standing Committee E, 12 February 1998; c. 336.]
8 p.m
Those us who have been intimately involved in planning over the years know that, under the market philosophy of the Thatcher years, local authorities were told, "Do not resist planning permission. You will lose on appeal because the Government believe that market forces must rule." The previous Government destroyed the green belt, and that is what we have inherited.
Unlike his hon. Friend the Minister, I am always happy to take an intervention from the hon. Gentleman. However, his understanding of what happened does not quite reconcile with the facts. The previous Government were rigorous in upholding the protection of the green belt. They refused time and again to sanction the kind of development that the present Government seem to welcome with open arms. In the past few months, we have seen the contempt that the Secretary of State and his ministerial colleagues have for the green belt.
My hon. Friend will be aware that my consistency of Cheadle is located in the borough of Stockport. Green belt policy is extremely important to my constituents, because the green belt largely forms the western boundary of my constituency. Protection was afforded to that green belt through the local development plan established under the previous Conservative Government and approved by the previous Secretary of State. The proposal for compulsory purchase powers for the regional development agencies directly challenges all that was achieved under the Conservative Government in protecting my local green belt.
My hon. Friend, as so often, has put his finger on the essential point. He has powerfully and eloquently put the case for the environment in his constituency. Genuine and deeply held anxieties of the sort expressed by my hon. Friend and, I am sure, by his constituents form the background to the amendment. Our fears are that the compulsory purchase powers in the Bill could be abused. Because of the Government's history of appalling planning decisions and of throwing away the protection of half a century for the green belt that we have seen in the past few weeks, those fears become all the greater.
Let us take an example of an area of outstanding natural beauty on the edge of my constituency, the Dedham vale close to my home in East Bergholt. Much of the Dedham vale has been preserved so well that it differs little from the landscape that existed 200 years ago when Constable walked across the meadows there and immortalised its scenes in his paintings, some of which belong to the nation. I am sure that my hon. Friends have similarly valuable sites in their constituencies, but they will forgive me if I speak of the Dedham vale because I know it and love it so well. Under the Bill, the Dedham vale is under a greater threat than at any time for the past two centuries. If the Eastern regional development agency is established, it will be given powers to acquire land compulsorily in the Dedham vale in an area of outstanding natural beauty. It will be possible to exercise those powers regardless of the wishes of the vendor and regardless of the views of the local community. The Eastern regional development agency will be able to justify its decision by saying that the land was being acquired "for its purposes"—for the purposes of the Eastern regional development agency, as specified in clause 20(1). The purposes of RDAs are defined in clause 4. They include in clause 4(1)(c) the promotion of employment, so the Eastern RDA might find a private sector partner keen to invest, perhaps in a hotel venture in the Dedham vale. In the name of promoting employment, as the Bill requires, it could then seek to advance such a project. Planning permission would have to be obtained, although the House should remember that, as drafted, the Bill gives the Secretary of State power to designate the RDA as the planning authority, too. Only the vigilance of Conservative Members, as we shall see in the debate on the next groups of amendments, prevented that power from remaining in the Bill. The Government's intentions, alas, are all too clear. They want to let RDAs acquire land wherever they want, by agreement or with compulsion. A residual threat to remove planning powers from local authorities would be retained. The RDAs would be able to develop land in pursuit of their statutory aims, regardless of the damage that that might do to the countryside. Never mind the value of the land condemned for ever to the bulldozer. If amendment No. 4 in the next group is approved, that threat will at least be slightly more remote, but it will remain to some extent. The RDA, having bought the land—if planning permission has been applied for and turned down by the local authority—can appeal to the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State has already shown his willingness to overrule the recommendations of independent planning inspectors. Recently, in the west midlands, 150 acres of farmland were located in the green belt. That land happened to be owned by Birmingham city council. The House will note that that council is controlled by the Labour party. The Secretary of State overturned the inspector's recommendation to allow development on the green belt. That is an alarming precedent in the context of the powers given to RDAs. Imagine what the Secretary of State's attitude might be to planning appeals that came before him if the land were owned by an RDA. As the Bill stands, clause 20 constitutes a grave threat to our countryside, the green belt, the national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty. It poses a real, serious and immediate threat, which can at least be partly averted if the compulsory powers set out in the Bill are removed. I warmly commend the amendment.There is no real point to clause 20 and the associated clauses. We propose sensible, tidying-up amendments. The Minister has explained that planning powers will be removed. That being so, no one needs the compulsory purchase powers set out in the Bill. A regional development agency will be able to blight, but not to plan. The RDA, through its land acquisition and a determination to implement development in the green belt or in other parts of constituencies, could tie up that land and adjoining properties for years. It is not necessary to do that.
Rightly, the power of compulsory purchase has seldom been used. We know that it is possible for authorities to engage in compulsory purchase in the absence of planning powers. The Civil Aviation Authority, the Housing Corporation and various statutory undertakers, such as gas, electricity and water, along with certain national health trusts, have the power of compulsory purchase. However, that is not what RDAs are about. A commonality runs through the various organisations to which I referred: they are engaged hands on in providing services and facilities in their localities. We are opposed to RDAs, but we do not want them to fail. They will have an uphill task. We want them to succeed, but that will happen only if they can work in close partnerships with local authorities or with sub-regional providers of economic development. The RDAs could act as brokers to provide portfolios of development. If the Government are entirely serious—I suspect that they are—about the sequential approach of looking towards brown-field sites, certain hurdles have to be faced. It is much more difficult to develop brown-field sites than green-field sites. That may relate to the condition of the land, but more probably it relates to ownership. In some difficult inner cities, there is a considerable problem in getting together the owners of land to persuade them to enter into a development. That is often the most difficult thing to achieve. Often, no one knows who owns the land. If RDAs are to go about trying to acquire such land by the process of compulsory purchase, anything that we may be doing in terms of economic development is over. We know that compulsory purchase procedures are slow, cumbersome and rarely used. They are rarely used because they are slow and cumbersome. 8.15 pm I was once part of an authority that tried to put together various packages for development. We, the members of the authority, were determined not to use compulsory purchase procedures. Local authorities and the new RDAs should seek to involve the public in what they want to do. We have had a debate about decisions made behind closed doors. There is too much secrecy in the way in which local authorities and sub-regional authorities put packages together. I accept the need for commercial confidentiality, but the people must understand the benefits of what needs to be done. My hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) talked about the importance of the green belt. My constituency lies in the metropolitan green belt, the first green belt created in the country. My constituents and I need to feel sure that our bit of the green belt is protected by the local authorities—in this instance, Brentwood borough council and Epping Forest district council. We feel that they have in mind the interests of our locality, along with Essex county council. We feel that the interests of the locality will be safeguarded by them. As I said in an earlier contribution, the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Select Committee is undertaking a housing inquiry. The Royal Town Planning Institute produced some interesting arguments. I was concerned, however, when it argued, "We have had the green belt for 50 years. It was never intended that it should remain green for ever. Towns must be able to grow. They must be able to designate land and to move green-field sites into the green belt while moving certain aspects of the green belt into green-field sites and thereon into development. Do we want a serious proposition that in 50 years' or 500 years' time the green belt will remain intact?" My answer is, "Yes, we do." That is exactly what my electors want to say. They want to be able to say that Brentwood will always be separated from Romford. The constituency wants to be separated from London. In many ways, the green belt between the communities holds them together. In those terms, they have something in common. If we are to stop urban sprawl, we must ensure that the powers to protect the green belt remain firmly with the districts and county councils. If we introduce organisations whose purpose is to bring about economic regeneration—the Minister referred to the various objectives—the possibility that land could be purchased compulsorily by powerful RDAs will be held over my electors. I do not see why an RDA should not work closely with local councils and use their powers of compulsory purchase, should that be necessary as a last resort. In the process, the RDA would at least work closely with a local planning authority. Suppose the local planning authority says no to the acquisition of land and the particular development, who will solve the conflict? The Bill does not deal with that in any way. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk rightly pointed out, such an issue will come to the Minister. We have heard many times that we should trust the Minister and that he will not make a mistake, but we know that this Secretary of State, who has responsibility for planning, has been prepared to overturn a public inquiry and to grant permission against the advice of a planning inspector. If the RDAs are to have any chance of success, it must be on the basis of co-operation with local authorities and sub-regional providers of economic activity and training. The most sensible thing to do would be to say, "Okay, the planning powers have now gone from the Bill. The logical next step is to say goodbye to compulsory purchase." That would have a certain neatness about it. I do not believe that there would be any loss of face if the Minister accepted the amendments.I am pleased to be able to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles). His point about RDAs' ability to blight gives me great cause for concern. It reminds us one of the key elements at the heart of the Bill: the centralising powers that lie within it. That ability to blight is, effectively, the means by which the Secretary of State can cast a shadow over a constituency such as mine, which consists largely of green-belt land at the narrowest point between Coventry and Birmingham, the so-called Meriden gap.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) mentioned the Secretary of State's ruling that green-belt land in the west midlands could be used for an industrial purpose. That caused local people concern at many levels. Industrial development on green-belt farm land was opposed by the local council and by the local Member of Parliament. When the public inquiry decided that it should not be used for that purpose, that decision was overturned. That area is close to my constituency. Hon. Members can understand why that case has caused great concern in relation to the sort of power that might be given to RDAs. In fact, it has resulted in a loss of confidence in the planning process. I shall illustrate that. Currently, there are two planning applications for the building of motorway service areas alongside the M42 in my constituency. Having seen what happened in the Peddimore case, my constituents are concerned that, although the application has gone to and been rejected by the council, the Minister might simply overturn the decision, which was supported by the local community. That has resulted in perhaps a premature presentation of petitions on the part of my constituents to the Minister. The Government have only themselves to blame for that loss of confidence in the planning process.Order. I remind the hon. Lady that this is about not the planning process in general, but the compulsory acquisition of land. She should direct her remarks specifically to that.
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was illustrating merely that that decision has given rise only to concern in relation to RDAs' power of compulsory purchase of green-belt sites.
There is a risk that blight will result from a conflict between the planning authority—the local authority—and the right of compulsory purchase of a future RDA. I should like to illustrate where I believe the tension may arise. There are several installations and developments of regional significance to the west midlands. There is the airport, Birmingham International railway station and the national exhibition centre. Indeed, they are of national significance. All have gently expanded over time as a result of agreements between the various planning authorities. My concern arises from the fact that a regional development agency may rule that one of those strategically important sites should be expanded and find itself at loggerheads with the local community and local planning authority. The RDA may indeed make use of a compulsory purchase order and fail to get planning permission from the local authority. If the compulsory purchase order remains at the disposal of the RDA, we shall see only an increasing number of conflicts between the RDA and the authority that has the power to grant permission, which may result in land compulsorily acquired resting idle. There are already many examples of that in my constituency, where it is difficult to obtain planning approval in a green-belt area. If the clause is not amended, I envisage only increasing conflicts. It would seem logical for the reference to compulsory purchase orders to be deleted.Does my hon. Friend agree that blight under these circumstances can also apply the other way round? If a body does not have planning powers, it might none the less seek planning permission in relation to a specific site or collection of sites. That might in effect blight that area because of the knowledge that, at some subsequent point, in pursuance of that planning application on land that it does not own, the body may seek a compulsory purchase order from the Secretary of State, so devaluing the prospects for that particular ownership of land.
I thank my hon. Friend for that illuminating point. It serves me well as it relates to my next point. Blight is currently tightly defined. In a constituency such as mine, much of which is blighted by the transport network that runs through it—the many motorways and the installations to which I referred earlier—when constituents seek redress for the way in which their property is affected and find themselves just the wrong side of the blight line, they are in an unenviable position. My concern is that that will be only aggravated by the potential conflict between an RDA that has the power to acquire land or that may threaten to acquire land, and its inability to get the matching planning powers from the local authority. It seems more logical to remove the provision than to leave the tension inherent in the Bill.
In this group of amendments there is a double deception, which was substantially given away in the interesting speech of the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles). The first deception is that the amendments have nothing to do with the protection of the green belt.
I hope that Conservative Members will accept my credentials as a defender of the green belt, as I have spent many years in my political life opposing the proposals of my Labour-controlled city council to remove part of the green-belt status of land in my city of Newcastle. There could be no question of the use of compulsory purchase powers succeeding where there was no planning base that enabled the compulsory purchase order to have credibility and to survive the legal processes that it would go through. Therefore, there is absolutely no question of this group of amendments being required to protect the green belt. No attack on the green belt could succeed in the absence of a planning base, simply by using powers to make compulsory purchase orders. To say that such an attack could succeed is simply a delusion and a contrivance.I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is aware that the Bill—until we deal with the next group of amendments—would allow the Secretary of State easily to remove a planning problem by designating as the planning authority a regional development agency that wanted to use compulsory purchase powers over the green belt.
That is the type of contrivance that has been used to justify this group of amendments. It is worthy of "Spycatcher", but not a practical debate on planning problems.
8:30 pm The second deception—the crucial purpose of this group of amendments—was given away by the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar, who correctly said that the most likely uses of compulsory purchase powers would be precisely to secure and unlock development of brown-field sites, or to enable derelict and underused buildings—which are held by property owners who have made no practical use of them or who are involved in local negotiation—to be returned to sensible use. Those are precisely the situations in which compulsory purchase powers are most likely to be used. Urban development corporations were created by the previous Administration precisely to deal with such situations. Two former Ministers from that Government are in the Chamber, and they are very familiar with the work of those corporations. They know full well that it was necessary for UDCs to have the back-up of compulsory purchase powers, precisely to secure development of underused and derelict sites and of buildings in urban development areas. I fear that, if this group of amendments were passed, the ability to protect the green belt, by returning to full use underused brown-field sites and derelict land and buildings, would be weakened.The hon. Gentleman is not being precise. Local authorities have the power of compulsory purchase. If necessary, they may compulsorily purchase brown-field sites. There was a logic to the urban development corporations, which had planning powers. RDAs will not have planning powers, and so do not need compulsory purchase powers. They can use local authorities' powers to make such purchases.
I shall come directly to that point. If we examine the actual use—or, perhaps even more significantly, the threat of use—of compulsory purchase powers by UDCs, we find that those powers were very often not exercised with planning powers—they did not have to be, as planning approvals for use of the sites and buildings already existed—but were used to secure property ownership change, to make development possible. The powers are in the Bill, and should remain there, for precisely that reason.
Another simple point is demonstrated by the experience of UDCs—which were, after all, a creature of the Conservative party. I certainly did not advocate or support establishing UDCs. Yesterday, the UDC in my own city ceased to exist. Although I do not agree with everything that it did—I profoundly disagreed with its actions in some critical matters—its achievement over the period of its existence was impressive. One should not forgo UDCs without replacing them with an equivalent format. Why is it not sufficient to allow compulsory purchase powers to lie solely in the hands of local authorities and not to be available to RDAs? Two quite specific types of situation make it necessary for RDAs to have those reserve powers. The first is when the power and wealth of property owners whose land or buildings are not being developed and properly used may be such as to deter or inhibit a local authority from engaging in a complex process, which the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar— absolutely correctly, from his own experience as a council leader—mentioned. There are genuine problems for local authorities when they attempt to use those planning powers. It is therefore sensible and right for a larger-scale authority to have access to those powers in its own right, to reinforce the work of local authorities. Secondly, there are situations in which a complex of underdeveloped sites and buildings is on the borders of two local authorities. I can think of an extremely vivid example in my own city. The area of Newburn Haugh— because of a peculiarity in boundaries formed by the old course and the new course of the River Tyne—straddles two local authorities: the city of Newcastle, and the metropolitan borough of Gateshead. In such situations, it may well be sensible to have a wider authority that covers both local authority areas, harnessing a comprehensive package of powers, to secure comprehensive development that is agreed with those local authorities. Moreover, it could secure such development itself, rather than entrusting the matter to each local authority separately. For those entirely practical and sensible reasons, it is logical to leave those powers in the Bill, so that they can be deployed—in, admittedly, rare, unusual, difficult and complex circumstances—by the RDA with the local authority.It has been helpful to hear the speech made by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Mr. Cousins), who instanced his objections to what has been said in support of the amendments. In doing so, he highlighted what lies at the heart of the reasoning behind the amendments.
The hon. Gentleman said, first, that there was no threat to the green belt, because compulsory purchase order powers, in the absence of accompanying planning powers, could not be a threat to the green belt, as—by extension— the planning system will protect it. Yes, the planning system offers some protection—not least, thank goodness, because of some of the changes made to planning policy guidance by the previous Conservative Government. None the less, the exercise of compulsory purchase of green-belt land by a regional development agency before planning permission is granted in respect of that green belt poses a specific threat. It is a matter not simply of the protection offered by planning policy guidance and by the local authority, but of how local people can respond to planning proposals and raise objections to them. The exercise of compulsory purchase powers might limit people's opportunity to object. Furthermore, a regional development agency is likely to apply for planning permission in respect of green-belt land having adduced its own decisions about the strategy for the region as precisely the exceptional circumstances that should give rise to the granting of planning permission. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central must understand that we are not dealing with a body with localised, specific statutory responsibility, such as local authorities and utilities have when they exercise compulsory purchase powers, and English Partnerships used to have. We are dealing with a body that has broad-ranging, strategic policy-making powers, which may be able to influence regional planning guidance and the granting of planning permission by exercising its own strategy as a basis for exceptional circumstances, and then go on to use compulsory purchase powers. I have presented a hypothetical situation, but given that we are dealing with a new body, we need to exercise the hypothesis to see whether that new body could represent a threat to the green belt. I represent green-belt land around a substantial part of Cambridge city, but we are dealing not just with green belt. In essence, we are dealing with a body, the geographic remit of which is less confined than that of English Partnerships. Ministers will freely admit that they structured the planning and compulsory purchase powers in the Bill on the basis of the previous powers of English Partnerships. That was precisely the basis on which the Minister structured his argument on Second Reading. The Minister has accepted that granting planning powers to a body with such a wide remit over its region is different from the exercise of that power by English Partnerships. I accept that the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central was referring to the specific instances in which an urban development corporation would have exercised compulsory purchase powers in pursuit of physical regeneration, in confined geographical circumstances. However, we are now moving on to debate the question in relation to a body that will exercise a regional strategy—a strategic rather than a precise body. Under what criteria will such a body exercise compulsory purchase powers? I presume that it will do so in pursuance of strategic investments, which are likely to be large inward investments. I am concerned about the powers that will be granted, because they will not necessarily be applied in respect of brown-field sites. A regional development agency's desire to win the battle for major inward investment might lead it to pursue green-field sites. We all know how attractive green-field sites are. The other day, I was talking to a high-technology company that has a site on green-belt land which it wishes to expand, and it was extolling the virtues of being on green-belt land. High technology requires quiet and a relative lack of pollution, so it is precisely where the company needs to be. On exactly the same grounds, internationally mobile, footloose companies may come to the regional development agency in Cambridge and say that they are willing to invest in the region, but will not locate in the former sewerage site in north Cambridge. They will want to locate in the green-belt site just south of Cambridge, and the RDA will be presented with the option of pursuing planning permission on green-belt land south of Cambridge and possibly exercising compulsory purchase powers in pursuit of that. I present that hypothesis because, on the basis of English Partnerships' and urban development corporations' past experience, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central seemed to think that there was no problem. I hope that the House accepts that, given these different bodies' strategic remit and the wider circumstances, those powers will not be used as English Partnerships, the urban development corporations and local authorities used them in the past, but will be used in a much wider and potentially more damaging sense.8.45 pm
Thank goodness we have had the traditional rant from the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo). I shall miss them when the Bill has completed its parliamentary stages. Perhaps I could get a video of it so that I can refresh my memory when I feel that I am lacking a good rant. He came out with the same fears and scaremongering that we heard in Committee about how the modest compulsory purchase order powers might be used. I am surprised that he can ever sleep at night, being pursued by the furies, doubts and worries about what might happen with the modest powers, which will be exercised within the law on compulsory purchase, with all the usual protections. His lurid scare stories and fears began to upset me.
I do not recognise any aspects of the Bill in what the hon. Gentleman said. There is nothing new about the compulsory purchase powers that the amendments would remove. There is nothing new about how they would be used or the legislation under which they would be used. A Conservative Government gave those powers to English Partnerships and to the urban development corporations. They seemed to have no worries about how they might be used. I shall deal in more detail later with the hon. Gentleman's worries about areas of outstanding natural beauty and national parks. The powers will allow RDAs to acquire land by agreement. However, there is a last resort power of compulsory purchase when authorised by the Secretary of State. The amendments would remove those powers, allowing RDAs to acquire land or rights over land solely by agreement. Concerns were expressed in Committee about the provisions. I had hoped that I had been able to reassure hon. Members about the fact that the clause will be used as a last resort. However, the same arguments have been made today, so I shall have to rehearse my reassurances. It is disingenuous of Conservative Members to link the powers of compulsory purchase with reserve planning powers in clauses 24 and 27, which we shall deal with later. The Government have decided to drop those clauses. Planning and land ownership are different matters. Any acquisition by an RDA must be to further its purposes. Nothing can be done with the land unless all plans for it are approved by the usual planning process, with all the considerable protections that that entails. I agree to some extent with the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) that the partnership approach has the best chance of working. That is clearly sensible. Everybody wants the partnership approach to be used. I do not think that English Partnerships has had to use its compulsory purchase powers. However, that does not mean that those powers should not exist as a last resort. Thank goodness for my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Mr. Cousins), who brought some welcome sanity and experience to the debate, which had been veering off into fantasy land before he brought it back on course. One of the purposes of RDAs is regeneration, which can often include site assembly and development for future investment. RDAs may wish to assemble a site consisting of land that is in diverse ownership—an issue that the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar is familiar with. We expect most of that to be done through agreement with the owners, but RDAs could be hamstrung by a failure to reach agreement with one owner, or there may be sites of unknown ownership—another problem that the hon. Gentleman identified. It is not sensible for an entire development to be jeopardised because one owner refuses to sell, or because the ownership of a site cannot be established.The hon. Lady is most persuasive and reasonable. Why cannot the powers of the local authority be used in the circumstances that she has described?
Simply for the reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central gave in his thoughtful speech. It may not be practical in some instances for local authorities to use those powers. A site may straddle local authority areas.
The idea is that the power will be used as a last resort, but can be applied in circumstances that we as a legislature cannot at this minute imagine. We must provide flexibility to enable RDAs to assemble a site for regeneration purposes. The exercise of the power would require authorisation by the Secretary of State.What is the point of a regional chamber of local authorities if those local authorities are not able to agree on a strategy, which is central to an RDA's work?
I think that, 99.99 per cent. of the time, they will agree; that is certainly what we hope. The power is one of last resort. As I said, it has not been used by English Partnerships, even though it was given it by the hon. Member for South Suffolk when he was in government, in precisely the way that the Bill provides. We hope that the power will not be needed. Although, as the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar rightly pointed out, compulsory purchase powers are a last resort, we believe that they must be provided in order to deal with awkward situations that occasionally crop up.
I know that people are generally critical of the compulsory purchase system. We all want a fair and efficient system. We have already conducted research into and reviews of the system. It is certainly cumbersome and slow, and the legislation is very old, but it is unlikely that all those matters will be resolved in time to be reflected in the Bill. The Bill can deal only with compulsory purchase by RDAs, not the exercise of such powers more generally. Conservative Members, especially the hon. Member for South Suffolk, have been concerned about the use of compulsory purchase powers in rural areas, especially national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty, about which the hon. Gentleman rightly became quite lyrical. We have already debated at length why RDAs need to exercise their functions throughout their regions, and why rural areas should not be treated as if they existed in isolation. Physical regeneration can be just as important in a rural area as in urban areas. The coalfields initiative is one example where regeneration in a rural area is desperately needed. We cannot rule out the possibility that there may be areas in national parks that need regenerating. Even so, clause 20 would not give RDAs additional powers to develop such areas. RDAs will have to apply for planning permission in the normal way, and it will have to be granted in the normal way. As Conservative Members know, planning and countryside legislation contains special provisions which give added protection for national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty, and which are unaffected by the Bill. When they were in government, Conservative Members gave English Partnerships a power of compulsory purchase, although it has not had to be used. I hope that RDAs would not need to use it, but would instead reach agreements with landowners. We debated national parks in Committee and used an example, I seem to recall, of old, disused quarries that may need to be put right before they can be used. The hon. Member for South Suffolk doubted that there was any such area in a national park, so since then, of course, I have done a little research. He is quite right to say that all recent planning permissions for mineral extraction have planning conditions that provide for the restoration of the site, but reviews of old planning permissions are being undertaken to ensure that they come up to modern standards. There is provision for further reviews of conditions. Research has come up with examples of quarries and mines in national parks that ceased operation and were either not restored or not treated to modern standards. The most recent survey identified 143 hectares of such land in national parks in England that had been affected by past mineral working and fell within the definition of derelict land. In the interests of protecting the countryside, the hon. Member for South Suffolk would take powers from regional development agencies to restore land in national parks. He is arguing to reduce RDAs' ability to regenerate and bring back into sensible use land that happens to be in such areas.I am perfectly happy to defend our position, because no one in the Opposition has argued for any removal of RDAs' powers to do such restoration work. After all those weeks of research, during which the Minister has discovered 143 hectares, how many examples has she found of quarries for which it was necessary to exercise compulsory purchase powers to achieve the restoration? I should think that the answer is none.
The powers must exist for cases in which ownership has disappeared, or companies have gone into liquidation and there is no owner in existence— for cases in which companies take no responsibility and have in a sense evaded their responsibility for cleaning up after themselves.
The hon. Gentleman's amendments would make it harder in some circumstances for proper and appropriate regeneration work and site assembly to be done in such areas. In view of his lyrical description of the area of outstanding natural beauty close to his house, I do not think that that was his intention. None the less, that is what the amendments would do. Given those explanations, I hope that the House will see that, although RDAs will not need to use the power all the time, and in the vast majority of cases agreement will be reached with owners of land, we cannot run the risk of omitting the compulsory purchase order powers from the Bill and then finding that particular projects or desperately needed regeneration measures are stopped in their tracks because of one especially difficult landowner, or because the authorities cannot discover who the owner is. In view of the safeguards that I have outlined, which are already in the law, and the Government's commitment to protection of the countryside as well as to appropriate regeneration, we shall oppose the amendments.The House has had a valuable short debate on the amendments. My hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) rightly stressed the importance of the need for regional development agencies to work in partnership with local authorities—something that we all strongly support. He shrewdly suggested that, where necessary, a regional development agency working in partnership with a local authority could use the compulsory purchase powers already possessed by the local authority. He also spoke with great feeling about the green belt in his constituency, which I recently had the pleasure of visiting.
My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) rightly described the dangers of all the centralising powers that the Bill contains. Among those many powers is the power effectively to blight areas of the countryside. She is especially familiar with the situation in the west midlands—an example that I cited when I opened the debate. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Mr. Cousins) attempted to play down the threat constituted by the compulsory purchase powers, and suggested that they would not be used, in the green belt or anywhere else, unless planning permission were available. Obviously the hon. Gentleman was not listening to the debate, because the point was that, since the Government came to power, we have had a Secretary of State who is willing to overrule independent planning inspectors and, against the wishes of local communities, councils and residents, to grant planning permission even for industrial development in the middle of the green belt. That is what happened in the example I cited from the west midlands, close to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden. It provides a recent example in which the special protection allegedly attached to the green belt has been tossed aside by the Secretary of State.Does the shadow Minister perhaps know rather too much about the ways of property companies and not enough about the ways of local government? A property company might well go in for a speculative acquisition in green belt, but a public authority of any kind could not.
I am not talking about going in for speculative acquisitions. As the hon. Gentleman knows, an application for planning consent can be made before the land is purchased. We have a pliant Secretary of State who is willing to overrule local opinion and grant permission for industrial development in the middle of the green belt, so goodness knows how easy it would be for a regional development agency that planned to acquire land for which its compulsory powers might be necessary, to clear the matter—on appeal to the Secretary of State, if necessary—and obtain all the consents that would be required.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) drew attention to the unique nature of regional development agencies, and the differences between them and the other bodies that currently exercise compulsory purchase powers. The Minister seemed to be joining the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central in advancing rather similar arguments about the need for planning consent. We have already dealt with that point. She then referred to the importance of partnerships with local authorities. I give her 10 out of 10 for sheer cheek. She and her ministerial colleague spent 13 sittings in Committee rejecting amendment after amendment tabled by the Opposition to promote such partnerships and to ensure that RDAs consulted and were more accountable to local authorities. The Minister revived the question of quarries in national parks. I am touched that, after six weeks' research, she has uncovered 143 hectares of such quarries, but she has failed to identify an example in which the process of restoration would have to involve compulsory purchase powers. Against that background, the Opposition must press the amendment to a Division.Question put, That the amendment be made:—
The House divided: Ayes 114, Noes 289.
Division No. 242]
| [9 pm
|
AYES
| |
| Ainsworth, Peter (E Surrey) | Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey |
| Ancram, Rt Hon Michael | Collins, Tim |
| Arbuthnot, James | Colvin, Michael |
| Atkinson, David (Bour'mth E) | Cormack, Sir Patrick |
| Atkinson, Peter (Hexham) | Cran, James |
| Bercow, John | Curry, Rt Hon David |
| Beresford, Sir Paul | Davies, Quentin (Grantham) |
| Blunt, Crispin | Davis, Rt Hon David (Haltemprice) |
| Body, Sir Richard | Dorrell, Rt Hon Stephen |
| Boswell, Tim | Duncan, Alan |
| Bottomley, Peter (Worthing W) | Duncan Smith, Iain |
| Brady, Graham | Evans, Nigel |
| Brazier, Julian | Fallon, Michael |
| Browning, Mrs Angela | Flight, Howard |
| Bruce, Ian (S Dorset) | Forth, Rt Hon Eric |
| Burns, Simon | Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman |
| Butterfill, John | Gale, Roger |
| Chapman, Sir Sydney | Gibb, Nick |
(Chipping Barnet)
| Gill, Christopher |
| Chope, Christopher | Gillan, Mrs Cheryl |
| Clappison, James | Gorman, Mrs Teresa |
| Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth | Gray, James |
(Rushcliffe)
| Greenway, John |
| Grieve, Dominic | Paice, James |
| Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archie | Pickles, Eric |
| Hammond, Philip | Randall, John |
| Hawkins, Nick | Redwood, Rt Hon John |
| Hayes, John | Robathan, Andrew |
| Heathcoat-Amory, Rt Hon David | Roe, Mrs Marion (Broxbourne) |
| Hogg, Rt Hon Douglas | Rowe, Andrew (Faversham) |
| Horam, John | Ruffley, David |
| Howarth, Gerald (Aldershot) | St Aubyn, Nick |
| Hunter, Andrew | Shephard, Rt Hon Mrs Gillian |
| Jackson, Robert (Wantage) | Simpson, Keith (Mid-Norfolk) |
| Key, Robert | Spelman, Mrs Caroline |
| King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater) | Spicer, Sir Michael |
| Kirkbride, Miss Julie | Spring, Richard |
| Laing, Mrs Eleanor | Steen, Anthony |
| Lait, Mrs Jacqui | Swayne, Desmond |
| Lansley, Andrew | Syms, Robert |
| Leigh, Edward | Taylor, Ian (Esher & Walton) |
| Letwin, Oliver | Taylor, John M (Solihull) |
| Lewis, Dr Julian (New Forest E) | Townend, John |
| Lidington, David | Tredinnick, David |
| Lilley, Rt Hon Peter | Trend, Michael |
| Loughton, Tim | Tyrie, Andrew |
| Luff, Peter | Walter, Robert |
| MacGregor, Rt Hon John | Wardle, Charles |
| McIntosh, Miss Anne | Waterson, Nigel |
| MacKay, Andrew | Wells, Bowen |
| Maclean, Rt Hon David | Widdecombe, Rt Hon Miss Ann |
| McLoughlin, Patrick | Willetts, David |
| Maples, John | Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton) |
| Maude, Rt Hon Francis | Winterton, Nicholas (Macclesfield) |
| Mawhinney, Rt Hon Sir Brian | Woodward, Shaun |
| May, Mrs Theresa | Yeo, Tim |
| Moss, Malcolm | |
| Norman, Archie | Tellers for the Ayes:
|
| Ottaway, Richard | Mr. Stephen Day and
|
| Page, Richard | Mr. Oliver Heald.
|
NOES
| |
| Adams, Mrs Irene (Paisley N) | Campbell-Savours, Dale |
| Ainger, Nick | Canavan, Dennis |
| Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE) | Cann, Jamie |
| Alexander, Douglas | Caplin, Ivor |
| Anderson, Janet (Rossendale) | Casale, Roger |
| Armstrong, Ms Hilary | Caton, Martin |
| Ashton, Joe | Chapman, Ben (Wirral S) |
| Atherton, Ms Candy | Chisholm, Malcolm |
| Atkins, Charlotte | Church, Ms Judith |
| Austin, John | Clapham, Michael |
| Ballard, Mrs Jackie | Clark, Rt Hon Dr David (S Shields) |
| Banks, Tony | Clark, Dr Lynda |
| Barnes, Harry | (Edinburgh Pentlands)
|
| Battle, John | Clark, Paul (Gillingham) |
| Bayley, Hugh | Clarke, Eric (Midlothian) |
| Beard, Nigel | Clarke, Tony (Northampton S) |
| Begg, Miss Anne | Clwyd, Ann |
| Benn, Rt Hon Tony | Coaker, Vernon |
| Bennett, Andrew F | Coffey, Ms Ann |
| Bermingham, Gerald | Cohen, Harry |
| Betts, Clive | Coleman, Iain |
| Blackman, Liz | Colman, Tony |
| Blears, Ms Hazel | Connarty, Michael |
| Boateng, Paul | Corbyn, Jeremy |
| Bradley, Keith (Withington) | Corston, Ms Jean |
| Bradshaw, Ben | Cousins, Jim |
| Breed, Colin | Cranston, Ross |
| Brinton, Mrs Helen | Crausby, David |
| Brown, Rt Hon Nick (Newcastle E) | Cryer, Mrs Ann (Keighley) |
| Brown, Russell (Dumfries) | Cryer, John (Hornchurch) |
| Browne, Desmond | Cummings, John |
| Buck, Ms Karen | Cunliffe, Lawrence |
| Burnett, John | Cunningham, Jim (Cov'try S) |
| Byers, Stephen | Davey, Edward (Kingston) |
| Caborn, Richard | Davidson, Ian |
| Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge) | Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli) |
| Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V) | Davies, Geraint (Croydon C) |
| Davies, Rt Hon Ron (Caerphilly) | Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S) |
| Davis, Terry (B'ham Hodge H) | Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham) |
| Dawson, Hilton | Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald |
| Dean, Mrs Janet | Keen, Alan (Feltham & Heston) |
| Denham, John | Kelly, Ms Ruth |
| Donohoe, Brian H | Kennedy, Jane (Wavertree) |
| Doran, Frank | Khabra, Piara S |
| Dowd, Jim | Kidney, David |
| Drown, Ms Julia | Kilfoyle, Peter |
| Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth | King, Ms Oona (Bethnal Green) |
| Eagle, Angela (Wallasey) | Kingham, Ms Tess |
| Eagle, Maria (L'pool Garston) | Kumar, Dr Ashok |
| Edwards, Huw | Ladyman, Dr Stephen |
| Efford, Clive | Laxton, Bob |
| Ellman, Mrs Louise | Lepper, David |
| Fatchett, Derek | Leslie, Christopher |
| Fearn, Ronnie | Levitt, Tom |
| Fisher, Mark | Lewis, Terry (Worsley) |
| Fitzpatrick, Jim | Liddell, Mrs Helen |
| Fitzsimons, Lorna | Linton, Martin |
| Flint, Caroline | Livsey, Richard |
| Flynn, Paul | Lloyd, Tony (Manchester C) |
| Foster, Rt Hon Derek | Love, Andrew |
| Foster, Michael Jabez (Hastings) | McAllion, John |
| Fyfe, Maria | McAvoy, Thomas |
| Gardiner, Barry | McCabe, Steve |
| George, Andrew (St Ives) | McDonagh, Siobhain |
| Gerrard, Neil | McIsaac, Shona |
| Gibson, Dr Ian | McNulty, Tony |
| Gilroy, Mrs Linda | McWalter, Tony |
| Godman, Dr Norman A | McWilliam, John |
| Goggins, Paul | Mallaber, Judy |
| Golding, Mrs Llin | Marsden, Gordon (Blackpool S) |
| Gordon, Mrs Eileen | Marshall, David (Shettleston) |
| Gorrie, Donald | Marshall, Jim (Leicester S) |
| Griffiths, Jane (Reading E) | Marshall-Andrews, Robert |
| Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S) | Martlew, Eric |
| Griffiths, Win (Bridgend) | Maxton, John |
| Grocott, Bruce | Meale, Alan |
| Grogan, John | Merron, Gillian |
| Hain, Peter | Michael, Alun |
| Hall, Patrick (Bedford) | Michie, Bill (Shef'ld Heeley) |
| Hamilton, Fabian (Leeds NE) | Milburn, Alan |
| Hanson, David | Miller, Andrew |
| Harvey, Nick | Moffatt, Laura |
| Henderson, Ivan (Harwich) | Moonie, Dr Lewis |
| Hepburn, Stephen | Moore, Michael |
| Heppell, John | Moran, Ms Margaret |
| Hesford, Stephen | Morgan, Ms Julie (Cardiff N) |
| Hinchliffe, David | Morgan, Rhodri (Cardiff W) |
| Hodge, Ms Margaret | Morley, Elliot |
| Home Robertson, John | Morris, Ms Estelle (B'ham Yardley) |
| Hoon, Geoffrey | Mudie, George |
| Hope, Phil | Murphy, Denis (Wansbeck) |
| Howarth, Alan (Newport E) | Murphy, Jim (Eastwood) |
| Howarth, George (Knowsley N) | Naysmith, Dr Doug |
| Howells, Dr Kim | Norris, Dan |
| Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N) | O'Brien, Bill (Normanton) |
| Humble, Mrs Joan | O'Neill, Martin |
| Hurst, Alan | Öpik, Lembit |
| Hutton, John | Osborne, Ms Sandra |
| Iddon, Dr Brian | Palmer, Dr Nick |
| Ingram, Adam | Pearson, Ian |
| Jackson, Ms Glenda (Hampstead) | Pendry, Tom |
| Jackson, Helen (Hillsborough) | Perham, Ms Linda |
| Jamieson, David | pickthall, Colin |
| Jenkins, Brian | Pike, Peter L |
| Johnson, Miss Melanie | Pond, Chris |
(Welwyn Hatfield)
| Pope, Greg |
| Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside) | Pound, Stephen |
| Jones, Mrs Fiona (Newark) | Powell, Sir Raymond |
| Jones, Helen (Warrington N) | Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lewisham E) |
| Jones, Ms Jenny (Wolverh'ton SW) | Primarolo, Dawn |
| Prosser, Gwyn | |
| Jones, Jon Owen (Cardiff C) | Purchase, Ken |
| Jones, Dr Lynne (Selly Oak) | Rapson, Syd |
| Raynsford, Nick | Stunell, Andrew |
| Reed, Andrew (Loughborough) | Taylor, Ms Dari (Stockton S) |
| Rendel, David | Taylor, David (NW Leics) |
| Ross, Ernie (Dundee W) | Thomas, Gareth (Clwyd W) |
| Roy, Frank | Tipping, Paddy |
| Ruane, Chris | Todd, Mark |
| Ruddock, Ms Joan | Touhig, Don |
| Russell, Bob (Colchester) | Trickett, Jon |
| Russell, Ms Christine (Chester) | Truswell, Paul |
| Salter, Martin | Turner, Dennis (Wolverh'ton SE) |
| Sanders, Adrian | Turner, Dr Desmond (Kemptown) |
| Savidge, Malcolm | Twigg, Derek (Halton) |
| Sawford, Phil | Tyler, Paul |
| Sedgemore, Brian | Vaz, Keith |
| Shaw, Jonathan | Vis, Dr Rudi |
| Sheerman, Barry | Wallace, James |
| Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert | Walley, Ms Joan |
| Simpson, Alan (Nottingham S) | Ward, Ms Claire |
| Skinner, Dennis | Watts, David |
| Smith, Rt Hon Andrew (Oxford E) | Webb, Steve |
| White Brian | |
| Smith, Angela (Basildon) | Whitehead, Dr Alan |
| Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent) | Williams, Alan W (E Carmathen) |
| Smith, Sir Robert (W Ab'd'ns) | Williams, Mrs Betty (Conwy) |
| Soley, Clive | Wills, Michael |
| Southworth, Ms Helen | Winnick David |
| Starkey, Dr Phyllis | Winterton, Ms Rosie (Doncaster C) |
| Steinberg, Gerry | Wise, Audrey |
| Stevenson, George | Woolas, Phil |
| Stewart, David (Inverness E) | Wray, James |
| Stinchcombe, Paul | Wright, Dr Tony (Cannock) |
| Stoate, Dr Howard | Wyatt, Derek |
| Stott, Roger | |
| Strang, Rt Hon Dr Gavin | Tellers for the Noes:
|
| Stringer, Graham | Mr. David Clelland and
|
| Stuart, Ms Gisela | Mr. Graham Allen.
|
Question accordingly negatived.
Clause 24
Power To Make Designation Orders
I beg to move amendment No. 4, in page 11, leave out from beginning of line 32 to end of line 19 on page 14.
:With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 5, in page 12, line 4, leave out 'consult' and insert 'obtain the consent of.
No. 6, in page 12, line 6, at end insert—Government amendments Nos. 9 to 11.'(4A) The consent of a local authority under subsection (4) shall not be deemed to have been obtained unless such consent was expressed at a meeting of the full council for the local authority concerned.'.
In Committee, I made a commitment to review the need for the provisions in clauses 24 to 27. These provisions were intended to give the RDAs reserve planning powers similar to those bestowed by the Conservative Government on English Partnerships, whose regional regeneration functions the RDAs will be taking over. Having taken the opportunity to review these provisions following the debates in Committee, we have decided not to proceed with them.
Amendment No. 4 removes clauses 24 to 27 from the Bill. Amendments Nos. 5 and 6, which would have required the consent of local authorities to the use of the designation order procedure, become irrelevant, since we are proposing to delete clause 24. Amendments Nos. 9, 10 and 11 are minor consequential changes to clauses 28 and 37. The reserve powers in clauses 24 to 27 would have given the Secretary of State discretion to designate an RDA as the local planning authority for all, or part of, its area. We put these reserve powers in the Bill because we felt that RDAs, like English Partnerships, would benefit from having access to them—even if, in practice, they were never used. Our intention was that the use of the powers would be exceptional. Indeed, English Partnerships has never sought to use them, preferring instead to act in concert with local government. We feel that the success and effectiveness of the RDAs will depend in large measure on their ability to build consensus in their regions and to pull regional stakeholders together around a commonly agreed regional strategy. The RDAs will want to work with local planning authorities to seek a common approach to development and regeneration. Given the emphasis RDAs will place on partnership working, I would not have expected RDAs to need to use the reserve planning powers in practice. It was clear from representations made to me by a number of stakeholders, and in particular by the Local Government Association, that it was felt inappropriate to give the RDAs reserve planning powers. We listened to the arguments and we agree that the best course is not to proceed with those powers in the Bill. If one of the key regional partners, local government, feels so strongly that the provisions are undesirable, it would clearly be unwise to retain them. In common with the approach that I expect RDAs to adopt in their work, the Government have managed the Bill in a spirit of co-operation and openness. We have listened to the arguments of both sides, both in Committee and outside. We have accepted that a change to the Bill is the best way forward. That is a listening Government who are willing to make changes to policy.Come on Richard, say it again.
Put it this way, few changes went on to the statute book under the previous Government, although we spent many, many hours discussing them. At least we can say that we are prepared to listen to the arguments. Even though some of the powers were given under the old regime to urban development corporations and English Partnerships, we are prepared to review them and adapt the Bill in the light of common sense.
9.15 pm While not having specific planning powers themselves, RDAs will have a key planning role in their areas. As the economic development bodies in their regions, they will adopt a partnership approach with local authorities and other stakeholders. They will have specific input to regional planning by contributing to the development of regional planning guidance, which in turn will inform RDAs' regional strategies. It will be a two-way process. Given that regional planning guidance is the crucial strategic input to the plan-led system to which planning applications must have regard, it is unlikely that the RDAs would ever need to rely on reserve planning powers. Beyond their role in planning issues, RDAs will have a lot to do. As well as pulling together regional economic development work around a commonly agreed strategy in each region, they will inherit the regional regeneration role of English Partnerships and the rural regeneration work of the Rural Development Commission. In addition, they will take the lead on inward investment in their regions. We do not, therefore, wish to proceed with the provisions that give them reserve planning powers.I welcome the Minister's achievement in becoming, at least in this respect, a listening Minister in a listening Government. I welcome his commitment to making the RDAs work in partnership with local authorities.
Although it is listed as a Government amendment, we can unreservedly welcome amendment No. 4 because it is our amendment. We tabled it on 11 March. I am glad that the Secretary of State tabled an identically worded one on 23 March. I have been advised by the Clerk that it should not have been accepted because it was identically worded. [Interruption.] I am just outlining the facts, embarrassing though they may be to the Government. The consequence was that the Secretary of State's name was added to the Opposition amendment. As the Minister said, if amendment No. 4 is passed, our amendments Nos. 5 and 6 will be rendered irrelevant. The Government's conversion to sense, however slow it has been in coming, is good but it is important to explore how tortuous the conversion process has been. The Minister would not expect me to gloss over the sequence of events.Yes we would.
As the Minister said, such an achievement was seldom recorded by the Government when they were in opposition.
Originally, clauses 24 to 27 in effect gave the Secretary of State power to remove the planning responsibilities of elected local authorities and transfer them to regional development agencies. The Secretary of State could have taken away planning, one of the most crucial functions of an elected council, and transferred it to an unelected quango appointed by him, operating from an office perhaps miles outside the district concerned and accountable only to him. Those clauses were an attack on the powers of elected local authorities. They made a mockery of the claim in paragraph 9.2 on page 43 of the White Paper, which states:The clauses that amendment No. 4 would delete took powers away from local authorities, and were among the most damaging clauses in the Bill. Planning control over any part of England could have been removed from local authorities and given to regional development agencies at the stroke of the Secretary of State's pen. The profound fears that this proposal rightly provoked were made much worse by the Minister's initial refusal to admit what these clauses enabled the Secretary of State to do. In Standing Committee on 3 February, it seemed that the Minister had not read his own Bill. He asked me:"The intention is not to take powers or resources away from local authorities".
He then asked me again:"Will the hon. Gentleman tell me which of the Bill's proposals will remove powers from local authorities?"
As the Standing Committee was at that stage debating clause 2, it is understandable that the Minister had not read as far ahead as clause 24. We should be flattered that the Minister had to ask us what the Bill would enable him to do. The House should be appalled and the country should be alarmed that the Government have put a Bill through Standing Committee without appreciating the effect of its provisions. A week later, on 10 February, the Minister seemed to think that he had discovered the answers to his own questions. He realised that the Bill gave the possibility of planning powers to regional development agencies. He claimed that these powers were precisely the same as those that previous legislation had bestowed on English Partnerships. On 12 February, in response to my point of order exposing the Minister's previous errors, he admitted that the powers in clauses 24 to 27, which the Secretary of State intended to give to regional development agencies, were wider than the powers given to English Partnerships under previous legislation. It is clear that English Partnerships' powers were specifically limited. In contrast, under clause 24 the regional development agencies could be given planning control over any part of England that is"Which powers will be taken from local authorities?"—[Official Report, Standing Committee E, 3 February 1998; c. 104–5.]
The words "or development" include land that is not at present developed. That provision scarcely imposes any constraint. On 17 February, when the Standing Committee debated those clauses, it soon became clear that their potential effects were devastating, that they struck at the very heart of the principles of local government, and that they undermined the democratic basis of our planning system. Initially the Minister resisted our attempts to rid the Bill of these damaging provisions but, after two hours of debate, light eventually dawned and he confirmed that the Government would have a rethink. What a relief that is to everyone concerned in the parts of England that were threatened. That process of discovery and the way in which the light dawned has been instructive. The Government have made their familiar journey from denial of a problem, through panic at the realisation that there is a problem, to confusion about how to solve it. It is a journey that the Minister and others responsible for planning seem to take regularly. Each time they do so, they prove that the protection of the countryside and of the green belt is not safe in the Government's hands. Even as the Bill was in Standing Committee, the Government announced a climbdown over the proportion of new homes that should be built on previously developed sites. That climbdown was intended as a reassurance to those who fear the consequences of the loss of the English countryside. The green words, perhaps dictated by a spin doctor, were spouted at the Dispatch Box by the Secretary of State. He trumpeted his conversion to the Conservative party's policy of setting a higher target for the proportion of new homes to be built on previously developed sites by raising it from 50 per cent. to 60 per cent. In doing so, he overruled the Minister for London and Construction, who had previously gone on record as describing any target over 50 per cent. as a "recipe for disaster". As is so often the case with this Government, that greener rhetoric is only words and is not backed by any deeds. For example, the sequential and phased approach to planning in respect of planning guidance for new homes, which was mentioned by the Secretary of State when he made his statement to the House, which is certainly needed and which, if introduced, would have our support, has not unfortunately been followed up. It has not been mentioned again."suitable for regeneration or development."
Order. I must tell the hon. Gentleman that he is going wide of the amendment. He must restrict his remarks to the amendment before the House.
I am most grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is my concern about the potentially devastating effects of the planning powers that clauses 24 to 27 bestow on RDAs that leads me to give one or two examples of the possible consequences of those planning powers. We have seen many such examples, one in West Sussex.
My hon. Friend may have heard the Minister, from a sedentary position, commenting that the amendments would remove the particular planning powers to which my hon. Friend refers. If so, perhaps my hon. Friend might like to invite the Minister to tell the House why the Government put those powers there in the first place.
My hon. Friend is quite right. The Minister might have mentioned that and offered some explanation when he opened the debate. The amendment deletes four of the most important clauses in the Bill—clauses that he defended throughout Second Reading and in Standing Committee—but the Minister gave no explanation as to who made the original blunder of including the clauses. Whose head is going to roll? Which Minister is now considering his position in the light of the withdrawal of powers that were central to the functions that the Bill bestows on RDAs?
Perhaps my hon. Friend also recalls that, in the Committee, the Minister took the line that the powers should still exist right up until he reached the last page of his brief, which he obviously had not noticed previously.
I remember the occasion very well and it was not even the Minister's first intervention in that stage of the Standing Committee. We had one long intervention in response to the debate—
Order. Interesting though the hon. Gentlemen's recollections may be, Committee stage has passed and the proceedings are on record in Hansard for anyone to read. I do not need to hear the hon. Gentlemen's recollections—they must speak to the amendment before us.
I am grateful for your guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and for the generosity of your indulgence, which has allowed my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mr. Day) and I to recall one of the most enjoyable sessions of the Standing Committee on the Bill.
The fact is that amendment No. 4, which we support, does at least ensure that the Government's rather shameful attempt to undermine the democratic basis of the planning system has now been thwarted. It ensures that the Government's attack on the powers of democratically elected local authorities has, on this occasion, been successfully fought off by Conservative determination— [Laughter.] These are serious matters and I do not know why they are causing so much mirth on the Government Benches. The amendment ensures that the people who take initial planning decisions will at least be those who have some responsibility for and some relationship with the areas which those decisions will affect. The amendment was tabled by Conservative Members and Ministers initially argued against its effects, but their conversion to our way of thinking is welcome and the amendment has my total support.I wish to respond to a couple of points. As we said many times in the Standing Committee, we believe that the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) is wasting his talents as a politician: he should be a fantasy writer. We think that his books would sell better than those by Lord Archer.
For the record, powers from English Partnerships and from urban development corporations were put on the statute book by the previous Government. They took those powers from local authorities and gave them to quangos. We have now returned those powers to their rightful position: with local authorities in the democratic process. We are proud to have done that.Amendment agreed to.
Clause 28
Connection Of Private Streets To Highway
Amendment made: No. 9, in page 15, line 13, leave out from 'section' to end of line 14 and insert—
' "highway" and "local highway authority" have the same meanings as in the Highways Act 1980;
"private street" has the same meaning as in Part XI of that Act.'—[Mr. Caborn.]
Clause 37
Interpretation Of Part I
Amendments made: No. 10, in page 18, leave out line 17.
No. 11, in page 18, leave out line 21.— [Mr. Caborn.]
Clause 39
Powers In Relation To The Commission
9.30 pm
I beg to move amendment No. 25, in page 19, line 7, leave out 'including' and insert—
'(3A) the provision which may be made under subsection (3) includes—The Opposition wish the new merged organisation every success, but I seek several assurances from the Minister—if she is unable to provide them now, I hope that she will write to me as soon as possible. The press release issued last Friday by her Department— part of which she repeated in her speech—contains a paragraph which states:
Can the Minister provide an assurance that the combined budget of the Countryside Commission and the Rural Development Commission will continue to be spent in rural areas? I appreciate that part of it will be spent by the regional development agencies because some of the functions have been transferred. However, can the Minister assure us that the balance of the budget will continue to be spent in rural areas for the benefit of the objectives that have been listed?"The new organisation will take on the Countryside and Rural Development Commissions' existing programmes and commitments, other than those that it has already been announced are to be transferred to the Regional Development Agencies."
The idea of the merger is not to reduce the amount of money that is available to rural areas, but to increase the effectiveness with which that money is spent. However, I should be happy to set that out more formally by writing to the hon. Gentleman.
Amendment agreed to.
Amendment made: No. 13, in page 19, line 7, after 'transfer', insert 'to another public body'.— [Mr. Robert Ainsworth.]
Clause 40
Transfers Of Property, Rights And Liabilities To Agencies
I beg to move amendment No. 28, in page 19, line 33, at end insert—
The purpose of the amendment is to encourage the Minister to be bolder than he wants to be. As you will know from the Bill, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the functions of English Partnerships, the urban regeneration agency, will be merged into the regional development agencies, with two exceptions. One function is the management of the coalfield community and the other is the management of the Greenwich peninsula. Those are two very different functions. The coalfield community is widely scattered over many counties, and between the areas of several proposed regional development agencies. Some 56 sites are involved, so I doubt whether anyone would quibble with the idea that, if an existing organisation is capable of dealing with such a disparate piece of real estate, it should continue to do the job. The Greenwich peninsula is wholly different. It is a small site, which falls exclusively within the territory of the proposed London regional development agency. I cannot for the life of me understand why, if the Government are investing such hopes in the regional development agencies—if they are so confident that they represent a new solution—they do not have enough confidence and hope to entrust the Greenwich peninsula to the London regional development agency. I know that, after the dome has been completed, the site might revert to English Partnerships. I know that the Government would like to find an on-going purpose for the development of the Greenwich peninsula, but this debate is not about the dome. I do not understand why, in the case of London, the Government do not have the courage of their convictions and beliefs. We understand that London is about to have a mayor and its own council. The Government should say why the regional development agency is not deemed to be competent enough, or why they do not have enough confidence in it, to manage a site as relatively small as the Greenwich peninsula. Suppose the argument is that it is a national site. Will not the regional development agencies be sufficiently robust to manage something that will, we hope, attract visitors internationally as well as from throughout the country? I should like the Minister to explain why his vision appears to falter when it comes to one of those key sites, in which a great deal of money has been invested, but which seems to me coherent enough to lend itself precisely to the tasks that he proposes. When will the London regional development agency come into existence? The world and his wife—except anyone in the House of whom I am aware—appears to know that there will be a shadow regional development agency; that it will not commence at the same time as the other RDAs because it will await the eventual election, if it takes place, of a London mayor and the associated council. I hope that the Minister will fill us in on that, but I am especially interested to know why, as someone who has a great deal of commitment to the concept of RDAs, his commitment stops short at that piece of east London.'(1A) The Secretary of State shall once in every financial year lay before both Houses of Parliament a statement listing the property, rights and liabilities of the Urban Regeneration Agency which have not been subject of any directions under subsection (1).'.
First, I shall answer the question about London. It is absolutely correct that we have decided that the development agency for London will be a voluntary body until the elected authority comes into existence. Had we not done so, a non-departmental public body would have been set up for one year only, and powers would then have been transferred to the London authority, which would then have come under the control of the elected authority and the mayor.
On the subject of the Greenwich peninsula, the hon. Gentleman answered his own question. The millennium experience is being prepared for the year 2000. We want to make sure that that project, which will be highly successful, will be delivered on time. The London authority will not be up and running until 2000, assuming that the population of London says yes in the referendum. In answer to a written question relating to the future of the peninsula, the Minister without Portfolio stated:The Government are clear that the dome will remain in the ownership of the company that owns it at present, with the full support of English Partnerships at national level. We hope that the venture will be successful, and we will determine its future after 2000. By that time we hope that a London authority with a mayor will be in place, and that is when a decision will be made."Commercial interest in acquiring the Dome is, however, likely to be maximised in 2000, when it can be seen successfully in operation, and when commercial and popular awareness of the site is at its height. The Government will therefore decide on the Dome's long-term future at that time."—[Official Report. 1 December 1997; Vol. 302, c. 3]
We all hope that the dome is a successful venture, as it is in our national interest that that should be the case. I find the Minister's remarks disappointing. They demonstrate a lack of commitment to the concept of development agencies, but at this hour of the night I do not intend to press the matter. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 41
Powers In Relation To The Agency
Amendment made: No. 14, in page 20, line 10, after 'transfer', insert 'to another public body'.— [Mr. Caborn.]
Clause 45
Commencement
I beg to move amendment No. 27, in page 21, line 10, at end insert—
I return to an issue that I raised when the Deputy Prime Minister presented his White Paper on the subject; on Second Reading; and in Committee. What measures will be put in place to ensure that there is not competitive use of public funds by different regional development agencies? That is a crucial issue, as the Government keep telling me. They told me that it was crucial after the presentation of the Government's proposals. They told me that it was a crucial issue on Second Reading. They told me that it was a crucial issue in Committee. What they have not told me is what they intend to do about it. We know that there is to be a concordat on the matter. I thought that concordat was a happy name arrived at to cover this particular circumstance, but I strayed by accident into the debate on the Scottish Parliament yesterday and discovered that a veritable undergrowth of concordats has sprouted. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond), speaking about a concordat between the Government and the eventual Scottish Executive on inward investment—precisely the subject that we are discussing—invited me, if I had the technological skill, to surf the Scot Nat website in order to find the document that had been leaked and that he had had put on the website. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. My secretary, who has the technological skills—pending my acquisition, reluctantly, of the same—was eventually successful in identifying the document, which I have. There are a great deal of hieroglyphs on it, but the bits that are not hieroglyphic are pretty comprehensible. They refer to mutual consultation in adequate detail and to a reasonable time scale on any proposals for new legislative provision, and mutual consultation before making offers of financial assistance. It is a fairly detailed document. The Under-Secretary told me that the concordat was between the development agencies. In Committee she said that the concordat would "involve" the Scottish and Welsh development agencies. I am not clear whether that was a word that just came out of the word processor, or whether "involved" was carefully chosen so as to be somewhat ambiguous. My suspicions are provoked. Is there one concordat or two? Is the Under-Secretary referring to the same concordat that the Minister for Home Affairs and Devolution, Scottish Office and the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan were talking about yesterday? I hope that the hon. Lady will respond to that question. Is it a concordat between the Government and the eventual Scottish Executive? Is that the concordat that the hon. Lady is talking about? 9.45 pm If that is the position, there is a glaring contradiction between the words that the hon. Lady spoke and the words of the Minister for Home Affairs and Devolution, Scottish Office. In Committee, the hon. Lady talked about the importance of the matter and said that all hon. Members agreed that the'(2) No statutory instrument may be made under subsection (1) until the Secretary of State has laid before Parliament a copy of any concordat reached between Her Majesty's Government, the regional development agencies in England, the Scottish Executive and the National Assembly for Wales (or any of them) in relation to regional assistance.'.
being bidded up had to stop. She continued:"cost to regions of inward investment"
that marvellous word again—"The problem is being considered by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, and by other Departments. Indeed, the Prime Minister has taken a close interest in the matter. Appropriate"—
I pressed the Under-Secretary on the issue, asking her when we would have the marvellous document to which she referred. She replied:"co-ordination will ensure that there is a cohesive and effective national approach to the issue. It will be strengthened with a concordat between different parts of the United Kingdom, the terms of which are still being considered by the Government. Those terms will be announced when they have been finalised."
As I have said, I strayed into yesterday's debate in Committee of the whole House. The Minister for Home Affairs and Devolution, Scottish Office, in response to the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan, said:"The right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon should bear in mind that the vesting day for the RDAs is in April 1999, and although the concordat might not be in a finished written form before we conclude considering the Bill, it will certainly be available before vesting day."—[Official Report, Standing Committee E, 12 February 1998; c. 319–20.]
The Minister emphasised that point later when he said:"Work on draft concordats will proceed before devolution, but they cannot be agreed until the Scottish Executive is established. The coverage of each agreement would be a matter for the Scottish Executive and the UK Government to agree."
Where are we? Which of the two timetables is correct? Are there two concordats or is there one? If there is one concordat, how do we reconcile the timetables spelt out by the two Ministers, who operate in the same Government? If there are two concordats, are we to have two concordats on inward investment operating to a different time scale? Are we between different bodies or the same body? If there is a concordat between the development agencies and their Scottish and Welsh equivalents, will it be binding on the Scottish Executive or the Welsh Executive? Will it be binding on the respective Parliament or assembly?"The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) made the point, and I want to reinforce the response again, that agreements cannot be made until the Scottish Executive is up and running, and it should be clear that draft agreements cannot in any way be considered to be binding on it."—[Official Report, 31 March 1998; Vol. 309, c. 1159.]
I do not want to add to the right hon. Gentleman's suspicions. My history, although rusty, tells me that a concordat is a much more temporary agreement than a treaty. I am not suggesting that a treaty would be appropriate, but I share the right hon. Gentleman's suspicions about the semantics of the sudden appearance of concordats in the British constitution. I wonder whether he has examined what the permanence of the arrangement might be.
The hon. Gentleman is right. When the word "concordat" was first evoked by the Under-Secretary, I assumed that it constituted a pragmatic solution to deal with a particular problem, a problem on which we all agree. I suddenly discovered that a concordat has acquired perhaps a more constitutional function as representing a quasi-treaty between different parts of the United Kingdom.
I think that that takes us back to some extent to the time of Charles I and the Scottish covenanters. Here we are covenanting some agreement, but is it binding? Will the Scottish Executive live with it? Will the Scottish Parliament eventually be able to provide additional finance and override any agreement? These are crucial matters. The English regions have felt that there is a process of gazumping from the Welsh and Scottish development agencies. That is a serious problem. It is important that these matters should be transparent from the point of view not only of people who live in the regions and have natural aspirations for employment and opportunity, but of the use of public money. We should not throw money at inward investment unnecessarily; it should be part of a strategy. Throwing money at inward investment is not only unfair in terms of public expenditure: it would be deeply confusing to the investor if he thought that the UK did not know what it was doing and that different people were trying to do the same thing simultaneously from the same pot of money. I wish to be reassured. I have asked for such reassurance umpteen times on a matter that I believe is central in terms of the probity of public expenditure and the operations of RDAs. When the Minister responds, will he spell out who the concordat is between—who will sign it? Is there one concordat or are there two? If there are two, who are they between and what do they cover? Can either or both bind a Scottish or Welsh Executive and assembly? When do they or it come into force and will it or they be public documents? Those are crucial questions on which I hope to receive a response tonight. If I do not, I shall persist because this is a crucial issue.I assure the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) that there is more than one concordat in all, but that, on this subject, there is one concordat. There are a number of concordats well beyond inward investment; they are on a wide range of mutual interests. I have no doubt that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to keep a watching brief, if not a watching interest, on the development of devolution within the United Kingdom.
The amendment is prompted by the right hon. Gentleman's desire to ensure a co-ordinated approach to inward investment throughout the UK on the basis of a financial concordat between different parts of the UK. The amendment specifies that no statutory instrument bringing into force provisions of the Bill should be made until such a concordat has been laid before Parliament. As hon. Members know, the Government are committed to publishing a concordat on financial assistance. We reiterated that commitment earlier this week when we published our response to the report of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry on the co-ordination of inward investment. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, we have been working on that for a while. We hope shortly to publish a concordat on inward investment that ensures that offers to inward investors provide value for money for taxpayers and are fair to all parts of the UK, while allowing effective negotiations to attract large inward investment projects. However, this is a complex subject. I am sure that he will understand that we will need to be satisfied that the new arrangements represent an acceptable way forward for all the countries of the United Kingdom before the Government publish their proposals. I understand entirely that the right hon. Gentleman is keen to see the final concordat. I am too. I assure him that the English regions are being represented forcefully in those discussions. I am sure that he also understands that the previous Administration had similar difficulties, but did not try to resolve them in terms of the Union. We are trying to do that. We need a little time, but we will come back to the House when those agreements have been reached. I have no doubt that he will continue to press us until they are brought back to the House. It is his duty to do that as a member of the Loyal Opposition.That merely gets us into greater confusion. We have now established that there is one concordat, so the Under-Secretary is talking about the same concordat as the Minister for Home Affairs and Devolution, Scottish Office last night. That is a matter of agreement; it has been accepted. However, it is going to come into force at different times.
The Under-Secretary said clearly thatThat is April next year, if I recall rightly, but the Scottish Executive will not be in existence by April next year and the Minister for Home Affairs and Devolution, Scottish Office said:"although the concordat might not be in a finished written form before we conclude considering the Bill, it will certainly be available before vesting day."—[Official Report, Standing Committee E, 12 February 1998; c. 320.]
There is a glaring contradiction between those two statements. The concordat cannot be brought into force on different days. Which statement is true? Will it be brought into force when the Scottish Executive is up and running? I think that the Minister said that he will finish the concordat "soon". A third date has therefore been floated. The matter is, first, very confusing. Secondly, it is not very straightforward. Had the Under-Secretary clarified the matter in Standing Committee by saying, "A document is being prepared between constituent parts of the United Kingdom, and this is when it will come into force," we would know where we stood. However, she clearly said that it will come into force by vesting day. A Scottish Minister has said the complete opposite. We have established that there is only one document, which cannot divide itself—like one of those funny lamps that goes up and down, with a blob in the middle. We need to know where we stand. I am trying to make light of the matter, but it is a serious matter of clarity and of providing accurate information to the House. The House has been given two entirely different versions of the timetable for the same document. We have also been given two versions of whether it will be binding on the Scottish Executive and, presumably, the Welsh Executive. Will it or will it not be binding on them? We have been left in a state of deep confusion. Many people in the regions are already suspicious enough about how the RDAs' procedures and competing subsidies will be used. If we do not receive some clarification on the matter, RDAs will get off on an extremely bad footing, with much suspicion about the meaning of devolution in the United Kingdom. I hope that the Minister will give the House a more accurate reply, and specifically tell us—this is point one— when the concordat will come into force. Secondly, will it be binding on the Scottish Executive? I ask him to remember that two Ministers already have track records on trying to answer those questions."I want to reinforce the response again, that agreements cannot be made until the Scottish Executive is up and running, and it should be clear that draft agreements cannot in any way be considered to be binding on it."—[Official Report, 31 March 1998; Vol. 309, c. 1159.]
One thing is absolutely certain: when the concordat is completed, it will be something that the previous Administration, of whom the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) was a member, could not achieve in 18 years—a sensible inward investment arrangement that does not cost UK taxpayers millions of pounds, which they never should have paid. We are currently in the process of bringing together the parties to the agreement—Wales, Scotland and the English regions. Once we are finished with the process, we shall present the case to the House in a concordat.
I am not quite sure which concordat the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon has been dealing with, or whether the inward investment concordat was mentioned in yesterday's debate. I am therefore not able to pronounce on that matter. Once we issue the concordats, something that has been a very expensive exercise for the UK taxpayer will be resolved. The concordat's implementation date will also be stated in the concordat. The right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon should not get so excited about implementation dates. The previous Government had 18 years in which to issue a concordat, whereas we have had fewer than 11 months— only a few months—to do so. We shall resolve the matter, and save the UK taxpayer one helluva lot of money.That is a load of blarney, and the hon. Gentleman knows it. None of us disputes the need for sensible arrangements to regulate use of public subsidy. It does not matter whether the Conservative Government produced a concordat. We did not propose devolution, and circumstances were different. The Minister has not responded to the issue of why two Ministers are singing a different tune to the same words. The House is dealing with that problem.
I understand that it is very much in the tradition of the House for an hon. Member to reserve the right to return to a matter that has not been satisfactorily dealt with, rather than to press it to a conclusion—when it might be deemed to have been settled properly. I wish to revisit the matter, and hope that the Minister will reflect on the fact that he has not dealt with the substance of my concerns. I put him on notice that I plan to return persistently to the matter, because of the deeply unsatisfactory nature of the responses that we have received so far in debates on the Bill. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Schedule 2
Constitution Of Agencies
I beg to move amendment No. 26, in page 25, line 5, at end insert—
'.—(1) The persons to whom section 1 of the Superannuation Act 1972 applies (persons to or in respect of whom benefits may be provided by schemes under that section) shall include employees of a regional development agency.
Amendment No. 26 will enable regional development agencies, if they wish, to offer the principal civil service pension scheme as their occupational pension scheme. Many non-departmental public bodies use that scheme for their staff. It is enabling and does not fetter the discretion of RDAs to choose a different occupational pension scheme, should that be agreed with Ministers. When RDAs are set up on 1 April 1999, their staff will be inherited, along with functions from three public sector bodies—the civil service, whose staff are already members of the pension scheme, the Rural Development Commission, which operates a pension scheme that is analogous to the civil service pension scheme, and English Partnerships, which operates a funded scheme, akin to the local government pension scheme. The amendment merely enables those, and any other RDA staff, to be members of the civil service pension scheme or, in the case of civil servants, to remain members.(2) Accordingly, in Schedule 1 to that Act, at the appropriate point in the list of "Other Bodies", there is inserted "A development agency established under section 1 of the Regional Development Agencies Act 1998".'.
Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 6
Vesting And Acquisition Of Land: Supplementaryprovisions
10 pm
I beg to move amendment No. 12, in page 36, line 15, at end insert
', if he is satisfied—In Committee, my hon. Friend the Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning made a commitment to consider further the need for the Bill to give the Secretary of State a power to divert, as well as extinguish, a right of way over RDA land, as the Bill provides powers only for the extinguishment of a right of way. The amendment contains a new provision that is analogous to an existing power of the Secretary of State in section 251 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Under that provision, the Secretary of State may extinguish a footpath or bridleway over land held for planning purposes by a local authority if he or she is satisfied that an alternative right of way has been or will be provided, or that an alternative is not required. With the introduction of our amendment, no extinguishment of a right of way on RDA land could legally be effected unless and until the Secretary of State had fully considered the alternatives. The hon. Member for Taunton (Mrs. Ballard) proposed an amendment in Committee that would have allowed the Secretary of State to divert a right of way rather than extinguish it altogether. That amendment was not of itself sufficient to achieve the desired objective. Although our amendment does not give the Secretary of State power to make a diversion over RDA land, we consider it unnecessary to introduce such a power into the Bill, as RDAs will have powers, as owners of the land, to dedicate a new right of way over their own land. In addition, the Secretary of State has powers under section 120 of the Highways Act 1980 to divert footpaths and bridleways in the interests of the owner, occupier or lessees of land, or the public. I believe that the Secretary of State will use that power where he or she considers it necessary to do so. I emphasise that the power of extinguishment in the Bill will rest with the Secretary of State and not with the RDA. Provision is made in paragraph 6(2) of schedule 6 for publication of the relevant orders and for giving notice to the proper authorities of any such proposals. Paragraph 7 provides for representations or objections to be made, or for them to be heard before an independent person appointed by the Secretary of State for that purpose. Very often, that will lead to a public inquiry which anyone who is interested may attend.
- () that an alternative right of way has been or will be provided, or
- () that the provision of an alternative right of way is not required.'
We were told earlier this evening that we had a listening Government and that we should trust the Minister. I welcome the fact that the Government listened to the persuasive arguments made in Committee by me and my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed) when we tabled a similar amendment. I am glad that we trusted the Minister when he said that he would table an amendment that would have the same effect.
The Liberal Democrats welcome the amendment, and I am sure that it will be welcomed by the effective and vocal lobby of people who enjoy walking the rights of way around this country.Amendment agreed to.
Order for Third Reading read.
10.3 pm
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
The English regions have long felt themselves to be the poor relations of the United Kingdom, believing that Scotland and Wales, with their development agencies, have been much better placed to improve their competitiveness. Our task, reflecting our manifesto commitment to set up regional development agencies, is to give the English regions the tools to improve their performance. The regional economies are the building blocks of a prosperous national economy, affecting the overall UK performance. We must put all our regions in a position to compete with their European counterparts in the global marketplace. The figures for 1995 released by Eurostat and the Department of Trade and Industry in the past few days show that we have inherited a deteriorating situation from the previous Administration. There has been a marked deterioration since 1993, with every English region performing worse than it did then. Before the figures were released, the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) assured us in Committee that they would be considerably better and would show that many English regions were performing at or above the European average. The Conservatives have left us with every English region under-performing against the European average. The regions are doing considerably worse than they were, based on comparable figures from two years before. The figures show that we have not progressed since 1984, when the United Kingdom stood at 96, compared with a European average of 100. The 1995 figures show that position to be unchanged. The previous Administration have left this Government with a pathetic performance from the English regions. Even the capital, which has performed quite well— standing at 147 in 1993—is down to 139. Even the jewel in the crown is a little tarnished. However, make no mistake, we shall ensure that a twinkle is put back on that diamond when we establish the new mayor of London, the elected authority and the new development agency. The Bill provides us with a means to tackle that economic deficit, which has plagued the English regions for too long. It provides for RDAs to be established in all the regions of England. The agencies will provide for effective and properly co-ordinated regional economic development and will underpin wider regeneration. They will play a major part in the future economic success of the entire United Kingdom. The Opposition have argued in Committee and on Report that the Bill damages the interests of our rural areas. I hope that they now understand that, far from being damaging, the advent of RDAs will ensure that rural areas will be more equitably treated within the remit of the new regional bodies, which are charged with taking into account the interests of the whole region. The Government are committed to promoting the interests of rural areas. We believe that that can best be done by addressing their particular needs within an overall framework for development of the regions. Putting urban and rural matters on the same footing will ensure that rural interests are given their full weight. One of the core functions of the RDAs will be to develop and implement a regional strategy, as provided for in clause 7. They will act in partnership with the stakeholders in the region, such as local authorities, business, industry, further and higher education, training and enterprise councils and voluntary groups. The RDAs will build on the work of existing competitiveness partnerships and other regional development initiatives. Their regional strategies will set a framework for decisions that affect all regional interests, providing for the first time a properly co-ordinated approach. That will ensure more efficient and effective delivery of economic development and regeneration. The package of functions that we propose will give RDAs considerable influence throughout their regions. We have been asked in Committee and this evening to consider widening their remit further, giving them additional tasks and budgets to control. However, we believe that their package of functions strikes the right balance. It is challenging, but realistic. We do not want to overburden the new bodies in their initial stages.Will my hon. Friend assure me, to pick up his theme on Second Reading, that there is room for organic growth? I have mentioned it many times, hinting at the possibility of powers to grow over time. Is my hon. Friend convinced that the Bill will provide such capability?
My hon. Friend must have been looking over my shoulder at the next paragraph of my speech.
At the outset, RDAs will need to focus on establishing themselves, building up relationships in regions, formulating their regional strategies and developing their work programmes—getting themselves a track record and gaining the confidence of the people on whose behalf they will work. There is no reason why the role of RDAs should not develop over time, as the roles of the Scottish and Welsh development agencies did. The Bill will allow that, which I think answers the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman). In 1975, the Labour Government were far-sighted in creating development agencies in Scotland and Wales. I think that Baroness Thatcher used the model for Northern Ireland because it was so good. The Scottish and Welsh development agencies have stood the test of time, and, indeed, all Administrations. They have an extremely proud record and ensure wealth creation in those countries. The establishment of RDAs will give English regions and regional interests a new and unprecedented opportunity to influence and improve regional fortunes. That is what people in the regions want. Our consultation exercise, although ridiculed by Conservative Members, was very extensive; we had more than 1,500 responses. People in the regions clearly understand that RDAs will bring real added value to the UK's economic performance. Even some former fellow Cabinet members of the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) have been to see me in my office to extol the virtues of RDAs.Name them.
I will name them. Lord Young, for example, came to my office but a few weeks ago. The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield may well blink. Lord Young said that he was asked to go to a meeting with representatives of the Government office for the south east, about which he was very sceptical. He came out of the meeting thinking that RDAs were a good idea. He had the guts to come to my office in the Ministry to say that the idea was good and one to which he would subscribe.
Furthermore, I responded only this week to an invitation from Lord Young to a meeting with south-east business men to discuss the issue. In fact, he has moved the meeting to Gatwick airport so that I can attend it. I suggest that Conservative Members wake up to the real world, as some of their colleagues have. We have such support the length and breadth of England for regional development agencies. Legislation for them ought to have been on the statute book many years ago. The Bill sets the legislative framework for setting up the agencies as non-departmental public bodies. They will be accountable to Ministers and Parliament for their actions. The Bill also makes provision for RDAs to be properly accountable to their regions through voluntary regional chambers. It provides a mechanism for building on the informal structures that local authorities and their regional partners have set up. I am delighted to tell the House that the provisions appear to have captured the imagination of local authorities and other regional interests that wish to be involved in the new regional approach. Regions such as the north-east, the north-west and my own, Yorkshire and Humberside, where my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister launched only last week the new Yorkshire and Humberside regional chamber, are building on work that has been developing regional partnerships over a number of years. Even in regions where identities are less well established, the enthusiasm has been astonishing. Last week, my noble Friend Baroness Hayman attended the inaugural meeting of all local authorities—yes, all local authorities—in the eastern region. I am sure that the hon. Member for South Suffolk knows that region very well. In the south-west region, local authorities are coming together, for the first time, with other regional partners to take forward the regional agenda. I am delighted to tell the House that we have had an overwhelming response from people who want to nominate individuals to serve on RDAs. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for South Suffolk should not be so cynical; Conservative Members are very cynical. They might even be able to do what Lord Walker did when he was on one of the quangos: he gave something back. We never know; some of them might even give something back. [HON. MEMBERS: "The Tories?"] Yes, one or two Tories have come on board. They are on the road to Damascus. Despite all the cynicism of those on the Opposition Benches, some very senior people in business, commerce and finance have seen, as Lord Young has, that our ideas and the organisations that we shall put in place not only will be beneficial in terms of wealth creation but will attack the weaknesses in our competitive base. I am delighted that those high-calibre candidates have come forward to serve on the boards. As I said earlier, we announced in our White Paper on London our proposals for the new London development agency. The LDA will have broadly the same powers and functions as the other RDAs. Subject to the outcome of the London referendum in May, the LDA will be directly accountable to the mayor, and will implement the mayor's economic development and regeneration strategy for London. For reasons that I gave earlier, as an arm of the Greater London authority, the LDA will not be established until the mayor and assembly are in place. Its board will be business led, as will the other RDAs, but it will be appointed by the mayor. In addition, Government funds for regeneration, for the promotion of inward investment, for English Partnerships and for tourism will be channelled through the mayor. The Bill is an important first step in the regional agenda for England that we outlined on 1 May last year, when we had such an overwhelming victory at the general election—an agenda that will bring a new dimension to policy making. There will be development agencies in all the English regions, to match those that have worked so successfully over many years in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. That will enable the English regions to make a full contribution to economic growth all over the United Kingdom, so that the economic performance of the UK as a whole can reach its full potential, and we can hold our head up in Europe again as we reach the average of GDP per capita there. That will be the object of the regional development agencies in England.10.16 pm
In view of the number of hon. Members who want to speak, I shall be brief. I remind the Minister that the debate is not about the importance of the English regions; there is no question about that. I am a west midlands Member, and my right hon. and hon. Friends who have spoken most often in the debates come from regions from Yorkshire to East Anglia.
We want our regions and their industries to develop, and jobs to be created. That is not the question. The question is whether the regional development agencies will achieve that goal. I see no evidence in the debate to suggest that those Government-appointed agencies will bring about the development that we all want to see continue. I use the word "continue" because, in spite of what the Minister said, what was achieved under the previous Government was formidable. There were record levels of inward investment, creating new jobs and new industries and leading to major exports. I shall describe that record not in the words of the previous Government but in those of the present Government's White Paper. A passage not quoted by the Minister, on page 30, says:"The cumulative value of foreign direct investment (FDI) into the UK has risen from %28 billion in 1975 to over %344 billion in 1996. The UK receives the largest share of FDI in the European Union, including about 40 per cent. of US and Japanese overseas investment.
I underline the fact that those are not my words but those of the present Government's White Paper on regional development agencies. Let me put it another way: it is estimated that, since 1979, 172,000 jobs have been created or safeguarded in the west midlands, 92,000 in the north-west, 84,000 in the north-east and 40,000 in the south-west. We have heard much about Ministers' aspirations, but little about the performance indicators by which those aspirations will be judged. Those indicators must include the number of jobs created, the amount of inward investment and the level of training for the work force. The performance of the Government-appointed agencies will be measured against the record of the previous Government, who did not lag in Europe, but set up the United Kingdom as the European leader in inward investment. There is nothing to suggest that the position of England will be improved by the new RDAs, or that England will be better served by nine competing RDAs that are all not only selling their regions, but comparing unfavourably the position of competing regions. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) said, that does not even take account of Scotland and Wales. Moreover, all nine RDAs will have their own bureaucracies—chairmen, deputy chairmen, board members and chief executives—and there is nothing to suggest that that will help England to attract investment and create jobs.In manufacturing, FDI accounts for 18 per cent. of employment, 32 per cent. of capital expenditure and 40 per cent. of UK exports. Over the last decade, FDI has not only created over 600,000 jobs but has helped to develop and modernise the industrial base".
Why does the right hon. Gentleman dwell on inward investment, given that the Conservative Government's problem was that they failed to invest in innovation and change in home-grown industry, which is exactly what the RDAs will be able to spotlight and encourage?
The hon. Gentleman is being idiotic if he seriously believes that RDAs will invest directly—he is out of date, living in the 1960s. He made the same point on Second Reading—I am glad that he is at least consistent. British industry did badly in the 1970s because of the legacy of Labour Governments and their inability to tackle trade union power and all the other problems that brought British manufacturing industry to its knees. Everyone, except a few Labour bigots, knows that the Conservative Government secured recovery.
The board members of the new RDAs will be appointed not in the regions, but by Ministers. They will be the creatures of Whitehall and, above all, they will be unaccountable to the people whom they are intended to represent. None of the board members will be directly elected, and only a third of them will be councillors. Moreover, councillors who are voted out of office will still be able to remain on the board. I do not believe that, even on its own terms, the Bill deserves support. It will not lead to an increase in inward investment; indeed, there is a real danger that it will lead to a reduction. The Bill does not represent a realistic exercise in devolution; it sets up ministerially appointed quangos, which, only a few months ago, the Labour party said were entirely unacceptable. As we have heard this evening, even supporters of regional governance may think twice before supporting the creation of bodies that are unaccountable and show every prospect of being unsuccessful. Even less do I believe that the Bill deserves support as a step-by-step process to regional government in England. [Interruption.] I am glad that the Minister seems to agree, as he did not mention it. The Government appear to want regional government, but they know, and No. 10 knows, that if they had a referendum, they would lose it. They know that the public would reject that proposition, so they have come up with a half-baked proposal: that, at an undefined stage in the future—not in this Parliament—they would, if re-elected, introduce legislation to set up regional government not for the whole country but for some parts of it. These are not policies for the development of the English regions. They are flawed constitutionally and they do not add up economically or industrially. I believe that the House should reject them.10.25 pm
The Bill has great benefits for my area. As the representative of a northern constituency, I have a special interest in the Bill's success. [Interruption.] I warmly support the Bill, but I want to discuss certain conditions, some of which have been mentioned already, that are necessary for the success of regional development agencies. [Interruption.]
Order. There is far too much conversation in the Chamber. The hon. Gentleman is addressing the House.
Many people believe that the breadth of functions to be exercised by the RDAs should be wider. They point in particular to some existing departmental functions of the Departments of Trade and Industry and for Education and Employment; to the training and enterprise councils; to the networks of business links; and to the universities and colleges.
Together, those bodies wield enormous power, have budgets of many millions of pounds and profoundly shape future prosperity and competitiveness, as well as the technology, business support and skills base of the regions in which they are sited. They are run in the main by unelected people and are too often dominated by the great and the good or, some may say, the usual suspects, appointed by the previous Government. I recognise that the settlement created in the Bill decrees that those bodies will not be directly integrated into the RDA network, but I and many other Members of Parliament still feel that special attention should be given to formulating ways in which we can guarantee that their work reflects the broad thrust of RDA policy. There is much active and willing partnership, and greater transparency and accountability can be achieved. I was deeply disappointed by the Minister's response on new clause 5, about the relationship between TECs and RDAs. I am still concerned that a region's TECs should have a structural relationship with the RDA, which should have some input into and oversight of a TECs business strategy and planning. The same is true of business links networks in the regions. The question of relationships with local universities is more delicate, as they are governed in a collegiate fashion. There need, at the very least, to be instructions to RDAs and universities to use their best endeavours to work together. Their special teaching skills and areas of scientific, technological and business expertise should whenever possible be designed to reflect the needs and specialisms of the wider regional economy. That leads to reflection on the need to ensure that the vital delivery agencies for the RDAs are in place and able to operate coherently from the first day onwards. It is important not to be prescriptive about the forms of delivery of RDA services, but they should be structured so as to achieve the maximum subsidiarity. In the main, that will mean that those functions will be delivered on the basis of individual towns, cities and conurbations and, outwith highly urbanised parts of the country, on the basis of travel-to-work areas. However, there may well be occasions when some of the functions impinge on discrete areas. At that level, future board members of the RDAs will have to accept that some functions will be delivered at a neighbourhood, village or estate level. In my area of Teesside, we have effective sub-regional structures covering the former Cleveland county area and the new unitary authority of Darlington. We have a local authority joint strategy unit, which oversees the strategic planning and transportation work for the entire area. We have a training and enterprise council and a business link covering Teesside, a structure that will soon cover Darlington. We have the Tees Valley Development Company, a tripartite body that replicates and complements the work of the Northern Development Company at the sub-regional level and acts as the delivery mechanism for all inward investment in Tees valley—a mechanism that has brought many jobs to our area and has ensured prosperity in the short years since it was set up. That network of agencies works harmoniously together and will provide Teesside with an effective sub-regional structure to amplify and complement the work of the northern RDA. However, we have a duty to see that the work of the RDA and the mix of the board members reflect the aspirations of our region. Fundamental to the debate is the need to ensure that the RDAs do not merely become quangos, but become the people's development agencies. There is strong support for democratic regional government. That support is widespread and, in the north, is not confined to a handful of academics and local councillors. It is vital that the RDAs become ultimately answerable to the people of the region, as well as to the House. The Bill recognises that. There is cynicism in the wider community towards unelected bodies, and that is unsurprising considering the excesses of the many quangos that prospered under the previous Tory Government. I strongly suggest that the forward plans for the new wave of RDAs should include the proviso that those plans must be acceptable in future to our nominated regional chambers and, if there is the popular will, to directly elected regional assemblies. In any case, it is imperative that the initial plans are scrutinised by the wider regional community and all regional stakeholders. Thought will have to be given to the best way of ensuring that. We could think of setting up a regional grand committee, made up of all regional interests. Such an arrangement would be similar to long-standing arrangements in some US states, where state assemblies made up of representatives of the cities, counties, towns and small villages meet to discuss and approve the economic development and planning strategies of the state legislature. They may meet only for a couple of days a year, but they serve a valuable purpose, in that they involve all the stakeholders of the region. They give the seal of legitimacy and acceptance to the work of state senators and their staff. The RDA must therefore be the first stepping stone to democratic regional government—a concept that is strongly supported in the north. Strong support has come from the North of England Assembly of Local Authorities, the all-party Campaign for a Northern Assembly, trade unions, businesses, the media, the voluntary sector and the professions. That support was demonstrated last year by the sheer numbers of those who signed the "Declaration of the North", sponsored by the Campaign for a Northern Assembly, and which I and many colleagues from the region signed. This is an historic Bill. For the first time, we see the machinery for modernisation and the renewal of English regions—as my hon. Friend the Minister said earlier— being placed in the hands of the people of those regions. This is an historic step towards a fuller, more participatory democracy, and I am proud to be voting for the Bill.10.33 pm
What is wrong with this Bill is not what is in it, but what is not in it. It lacks measures to make RDAs truly accountable, as opposed to relying on the good intentions of board members or ministerial guidance. It is the first step towards regional government, although the Government sometimes like to pretend that it is not, as when in Committee they refused to accept some of our sensible amendments, which would have strengthened the RDAs' relationships with regional chambers.
Liberal Democrat Members believe that power should be devolved to the regions of England. We welcome the fact that the Bill gives regional bodies the ability to promote economic development, but it does not ensure that they are locally accountable. The Government rejected all our amendments designed to promote increased openness and accountability, including new clause 3. The Bill's measures on accountability, to regional chambers, offer some hope, but it is vague on those points. Again, we are to rely on the guidance given by the Secretary of State to RDAs. I would prefer to rely on statutory measures to which everyone could look as a benchmark, but we know that the Minister is allergic to having more things written into the Bill. Ministers have said that regional chambers will act as Select Committees, monitoring the work of RDAs. Select Committees in the House have not necessarily led to increased Government accountability, despite occasional and notable embarrassments. We are also to trust the Secretary of State on the appointment of members of RDA boards. He alone has the power to appoint and deselect members of boards. The history of quangos is the history of the abuse of powers of appointment. As the Minister said in Committee, Ministers have in the past appointed—and, I suspect, will continue to appoint—to quangos a majority of members who can be relied upon to support central Government policy and politics. The first 11 months of the Labour Government have shown that they, too, are determined to ensure that quangos do their bidding, by packing the boards with their supporters. Only today, I had a reply from the Department of Health that confirmed that in the south-west region, 23 Labour, 11 Liberal Democrat and two Conservative appointments have been made to health trust boards.Labour is the third party in the south-west.
My hon. Friend is right. I hope that the political balance on the south-west RDA board will be more in proportion with elected political representation in the south-west. I look forward to receiving the Minister's assurance on that.
We are also worried that RDAs will not pay sufficient attention to sustainable development. Of the four purposes of RDAs as stated in the Bill, only the objective of sustainable development is qualified with the wordsWe, and many outside this Chamber, believe that that could lead to sustainable development becoming, at best, a separate add-on to the RDAs' purpose."where it is relevant to its area to do so."
Rubbish.
I am delighted to hear the Minister say, "Rubbish."
We are concerned that sustainable development may be an add-on rather than an integral purpose informing all the actions of RDAs. RDAs could support inappropriate developments on, for example, green-field sites that are damaging to the local environment and contrary to local development plans and regional planning guidance. Our amendments sought to put sustainable development in the mainstream, but Ministers turned them down on the ground that they were too restrictive. Ministers' support for less strictly worded clauses on the RDAs' responsibilities to regional chambers or sustainable development is in contrast to their attitude to our amendments on the boundaries of RDAs. We sought to add some flexibility to the Bill on the point. The Secretary of State can alter the boundaries of RDAs once established after local consultations, but we believe that a boundary review should be conducted, to ensure that boundaries adequately reflect regional community characteristics and identities. Later, my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. George) will talk more about regional identity. The lack of such a review threatens the long-term success of the entire regional project if the country is clumsily divided into artificial regions. The Government intend that RDAs should have a leading role on European Union structural funds. When I met local government regional office staff in Brussels, they expressed concern about the lack of concurrence of RDAs with Euro-constituencies. They believe that there is a need for a strong regional political steer for the work of RDAs and are concerned that economic development should not be separated from community development, tourism or training. That view was shared by the Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs. We were worried that the Bill could result in powers being given to RDAs from local government. Our main concern was about planning powers, and we welcome the Government's amendments to delete the original clauses giving RDAs those powers. We remain concerned that the Bill does not offer enough guidance on relations between local government and the RDAs. We shall wait for the Government to give RDAs further guidance, and we look forward to contributing to the consultation process. We are also concerned about the impact of RDAs on rural areas. We are worried that they will reflect mainly urban rather than rural interests. However, we welcome the Conservatives' new awareness of the problems of rural areas. As my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed) said, many people believe that Conservative politics were largely to blame for the crisis in the countryside. I hope that the Secretary of State has listened to the voices raised, and will ensure that RDA board members will represent all areas of their region, rural and urban. I am pleased that in Committee the Minister confirmed his intention to ring-fence Rural Development Commission funding for economic development, to be spent on rural areas. Despite those caveats, we welcome the Bill's broad aims, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Mr. Harvey) said on Second Reading. Many parts of the country suffer from economic under-performance, which should be helped by having a strong regional voice to press their case and to promote economic growth. Regions have suffered from too many players with conflicting functions trying to promote growth. We support the bringing together of those functions, and hope that the functions of the TECs will speedily be brought under the RDAs. RDAs can act as economic catalysts for development. Britain has suffered from unequal economic development, and our regions have not been adequately represented in the past. We have lost out in the European Union because of a deficiency of regional bodies through which EU development funds can be routed, and which are capable of raising matching funds. I hope that RDAs will evolve, that ministerial guidance will be as good as has been promised, that the boards will open their meetings to the public, and that our fears will be misplaced. We shall be voting with the Government tonight.10.41 pm
I welcome the Bill. I represent both an urban and a rural area, and it is crucial that we benefit from the establishment of regional development agencies. This measure will make a tremendous difference in north Staffordshire. It will help with the case that we shall make for European structural funds.
I look forward to the economic development that will begin to transform our region, especially after all the ravages of the past 18 years. My constituency no longer has a coal industry, and is heavily dependent on the ceramics industry. We desperately need diversification, and we shall look to the regional development agency to give us that. We want a strong representation of local people from north Staffordshire on the RDA. One aspect of the legislation that the Minister did not mention in his speech but which was extensively covered in Committee is sustainability. I regret that I was not on the Standing Committee to debate this important issue in detail. I pay tribute to the Minister, because, unlike the legislation on Scotland and Wales, this Bill offers great potential for sustainability. The Bill for a Greater London authority also enables us to promote sustainability. I have some slight concerns about clause 4. It is crucial that sustainability, instead of being one aspect of clause 4, should underpin all that the RDAs do. I hope that, in the short time between this evening's debate and the Bill reaching the statute book, there will be an opportunity to consider that in some detail. The Bill is a powerful piece of legislation that will give us huge opportunities to provide the organic development mentioned earlier. We must not look only at the large-scale economic development that has characterised so much of our past efforts at the expense of other factors including the environment. In considering how sustainability can be built into the legislation, I urge the Minister to review the consultation period, and look at the way in which guidance can be used to ensure that sustainability can be made fundamental. I should be grateful if my hon. Friend could give some indication of how the great issue of sustainability will underpin all that is done.10.45 pm
I have been watching the progress of the Bill through the House with growing incredulity. I have considerable regard for the Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning, and no doubt he is regarded by his constituents as a good Member of Parliament; but the trouble is that he actually believes in the Bill, whereas what worries me is its monumental irrelevance.
The Bill is fundamentally flawed, and I have a fundamental objection to this sort of economic manipulation by any Government. Those of us who are on the wise side of 50 have seen it all before and we thought that the Labour Government might have learnt from their experiences of the Department of Economic Affairs and all that went with that. It is an amazing figment of Ministers' imagination that they believe that they can create a single job through the construction of some bureaucracy out in the country. The Minister and I share a great deal—we share ancient constituencies in proud cities—but the proud city of Salisbury had eight Members of Parliament when it was first created, and it sent its first Members to Westminster in 1260; at that time, the Minister's city of Sheffield did not have any Members of Parliament. We take the long view, which is quite clear: this sort of irrelevance will not help. Our country, our counties, our cities and our towns will thrive in spite of the Bill, not because of it. The Minister will win the vote tonight—of course he will—but he will not win the arguments, or our hearts and minds. The other fundamental flaw, and my fundamental objection to the Bill, is the concept, in which the Minister believes, of a region or area. Clause 4 of this wretched Bill contains six mentions of "its area", meaning the development areas. What areas? What nonsense it is to suppose that we in my constituency of Salisbury have anything to do with what is going on in Gloucestershire, or, for that matter, in St. Ives and the Isles of Scilly. Regional identity is thrown to the winds by this ridiculous piece of legislation—it is utterly meaningless. All the Bill will do is suck democracy and accountability out of our districts and put them in the hands, in my case, of an overblown city in the west midlands called Bristol. This ridiculous Bill is flawed, politically and economically, and will do little good. However, it does great harm to my constituents. The discourtesy of the Department last week in not informing me of the future of the Rural Development Commission is something that I would forgive, were it not for the fact that, after nearly a year of procrastination, those of my constituents who have given their all for the RDC still do not know whether they have jobs, or, if they do, whether those jobs will be with a new rural development agency or the Countryside Commission. They do not know what the RDC-Countryside Commission combination will be called, and they have no notion of what it will do, or of what their jobs will be. The Bill is a complete mess—if only the Minister would come down out of the clouds, put his feet firmly on the ground and think for once about the economic prosperity of this country, rather than the creation of irrelevant bureaucracies and nonsensical pseudo-Parliaments. I understand the European agenda to which the Minister must work. I understand that we are all supposed to be reformed in this country, and that we are meant to think that we do not need democratic accountability if we have new Labour. I understand the Minister's agenda: it is wrong, and it will not last. Meanwhile, will the Minister please address the issue of my constituents who have worked for the Rural Development Commission for years promoting the rural areas of this country?10.50 pm
I, too, shall be brief, as I know that several hon. Members wish to speak.
Regional development agencies will bring my region and every other region in England something that they have lacked for a considerable time: a coherent, co-ordinated, strategic approach to economic development and regeneration. Hon. Members will confirm that, under the previous Government, there was no shortage of economic development initiatives. However, they were piecemeal, and were often dumped on local government, with no consultation with councillors and local business people. Experience was never acknowledged, and local people were never listened to. That led to a very divisive approach, duplication of effort and to a waste of resources. Regional development agencies will bring a coherence to the regions that will ensure that the needs of all local people are met and that the regions can compete effectively in Europe. Regional development agencies will also pose major challenges. As I have said, I recently attended a major conference in the midlands attended by hundreds of business men and people from the voluntary sector, local government, colleges and universities. They were extremely enthusiastic about the proposed West Midlands RDA, but they raised many questions. There is no doubt that the boards of RDAs have a major responsibility to ensure that they are constituted properly, and that they meet the needs of all the people in the regions. There will also be challenges for the Government offices for the regions. They will have to learn how to work more effectively in order to meet local needs. What is known as the "district commissioner" approach to listening to and working with local people must change. Finally, I believe that the agencies are the first step on the road to regional government. I am a strong supporter of regional government, and I should like to see it happen sooner rather than later. I hope that the Minister will provide an assurance that regionalism will be brought to the English regions as soon as possible.10.52 pm
Regional development agencies will be a breakthrough for the English regions, because they will combine commitment to an area with the ability to act in relation to investment in companies, the development of property and premises, business support, training and retraining.
I shall illustrate the way in which a development agency can affect an area by referring to Lancashire Enterprises, set up by the county council—of which I was vice-chairman between 1982 and 1997—and its work when Leyland-DAF collapsed in 1993, threatening devastation and the loss of thousands of jobs in Lancashire, and signalling the virtual end of truck making in the United Kingdom. Lancashire Enterprises worked in partnership with the private sector, and, using its investment, training and development powers, helped to develop the current thriving Leyland Trucks. At the newly developed Lancashire Enterprises business park, nearly 1,900 people are employed by 45 different companies that did not exist in 1993. The area has been transformed, and it is now a centre of manufacturing activity. Truck making has continued, and has been strengthened. Wealth and employment continue to develop in the area. A regional development agency will bring great support and benefit to the whole north-west. In my area, I look forward to a regional development agency ensuring that the benefits of Ford's major investment in the new Jaguar flow to small and medium enterprises throughout the area. I look forward to the development of the creative industries. I look forward to the use of the knowledge base in our universities for commercial and community benefit. I look forward to seeing the benefits of the information society extended to all companies in the area. I look forward to the linking of that progress with community-based economic regeneration. I look forward to a much closer link between Manchester and Liverpool airports, for the benefit of Merseyside and the whole of the north-west. A regional development agency cannot exist in isolation. The present Government's policies of supporting business, especially small and medium enterprises, will be of benefit. It is essential that Government Departments such as the Department of Trade and Industry, as well as the Department for Education and Employment, work closely with the regional development agency. That is one reason why I regard the development and strengthening of regional chambers as an essential part of the strategy. Regional development agencies have been a long time coming. They started in 1981, with the alternative regional strategy of the present Deputy Prime Minister. In 1996 they moved further, with Bruce Millan's "Renewing the Regions". In 1998, we now have the Regional Development Agencies Bill. It is now time for action and the transformation of the English regions.10.55 pm
Considering the Bill from a northern regional perspective, two questions need to be answered: what are the problems with existing regional policy, and do the RDAs, as presented in the Bill, address those problems?
It is plain to see that the present regional policy, which has been in place for many years, has been an abject failure. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the north-east, where I am fortunate enough to represent a constituency, where we have higher unemployment than many regions, lower wages, and a desperate need to improve skills. It is a disgrace, and an indictment of the previous Government, that the average age of the skilled worker on the Tyne is 47; if that is economic decline, we should acknowledge it. The Government solutions of the past have been parachuted-in, Whitehall-designed schemes, coming down—top-down urban initiatives. We have heard them all before: task forces, urban development corporations, city action teams. The result is that things stay the same. Economic decline continues, local democracy is sidelined, and power is increasingly centralised in national Government. Government neglect has meant that the regional stakeholders in the area have had to play their part to make up for the deficit of Government action. We have had private-public partnerships and trade union involvement. Eleven years ago, the Northern Development Company was set up by those people—and a successful partnership it has proved, creating 520 investment projects, 75,000 jobs and £9 billion of capital investment in the region. However, they are running hard—although successfully—to stand still. I support the Bill, because it addresses the real problems of the area. It acknowledges the need for long-term economic planning, the need to involve local stakeholders, and the need to devolve real power to the regions. Finally, it provides a firm foundation on which to establish regional government—a regional government which I and my colleagues in the northern group of MPs will work with the stakeholders of the region to establish, for the better prosperity of the northern region.
10.57 pm
We cannot reach the end of the debate without again expressing our great disappointment at the way in which the Government have consistently rebuffed all our efforts to seek amendments that would protect rural interests. The Opposition have repeatedly drawn attention to those concerns, but all our efforts to have them considered have been ignored.
I make a final request to the Government. I ask them to hear our argument that, as rural Britain faces a fast-growing crisis, they will live to regret the contempt in which they have held the strength of feeling behind our amendments. The regional development agencies, which will be urban dominated, show very little consideration for the minority position in which the rural representatives will find themselves. The Government's proposal that only one of 12 members of each board should reflect rural interests is nothing more than tokenism, and a poor response to the ever-increasing crisis that confronts British agriculture in the wider rural economy. That has been consistently ignored by the Government through all the stages of the Bill. The new clauses moved this evening, which offered one last chance for proper consideration to be given to those rural interests, have once again been rejected.Is it not a further disappointment that, at this late stage of the Bill, the Government took no opportunity to introduce amendments that would have safeguarded some of the functions of the Rural Development Commission, in particular some of its research and analytical functions? Ministers have been happy to draw on those in recent weeks, but do not seem to be prepared to protect the sources from which such valuable information comes.
I thank my hon. Friend. Indeed, the debate has revealed that some of the functions of the Rural Development Commission will be lost into the ether. With the passage of the Bill, rural interests will be less well represented. I fear that the Government will find themselves in an impossible position. The Secretary of State will have to direct and guide the boards to resolve the tensions between urban and rural areas.
The position is worse than that. Those in rural areas will not be able to know what is going on, as members of the public will have no right to attend meetings of the board.
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It reveals the lack of openness in the newly generated RDAs, which will compound the gathering crisis in agriculture.
The Government climbdown on planning powers was significant. It would have been too easy for the new RDAs to take advantage of failing farms, and of land becoming available as agriculture slides further into crisis. Opposition pressure in Committee forced the Government to withdraw a clause that would have given RDAs the power to grant themselves change of land use. We hope that the debate will bring some concessions for rural areas. The other amendments that we tabled would have protected the interests of local government, by recognising that it was unacceptable to transfer powers away in a thoroughly undemocratic fashion. We register the strongest protest to the Government about the way in which the crisis in rural areas is being ignored.11.2 pm
I was proud to serve on the Standing Committee that considered the Bill, especially under the distinguished leadership of my hon. Friends the Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning and the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions.
I know that the Bill will bring great benefit to my area. I was proud to witness the historic occasion in Hull on Friday last week when my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister launched the country's first regional chamber, that for Yorkshire and Humberside. The launch was attended by representatives of all political parties, including the Conservative party. I was astonished by the contribution of the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key), which showed how out of touch Conservative Members are with their rank and file. The establishment of a regional development agency will bring considerable benefit to the people I represent in Doncaster, Central. The decline of the traditional industries of coal, engineering and rail means that Doncaster badly needs regeneration assistance. Although it has suffered from industrial decline, the town has tremendous potential. There are strong arguments for locating the RDA's headquarters in Doncaster. Doncaster is a transport hub, with excellent road and rail links to the north, the south, the east and the west. It is a gateway to the region. Through the Humber ports, it has easy access to Europe, and there is now a direct rail link to Europe through the railport. In addition, there are proposals to reopen the Royal Air Force base at Finningley as an airport, which would be a great attraction for inward investment. That is an issue which has already been identified in the annex to the regional development agencies White Paper. English Partnerships' northern office is already situated in Doncaster. Its staff will be transferred to the RDA, and I believe that that is why we should see the RDAs' headquarters located in Doncaster. The Bill will make a difference. It is long awaited, and it will do a great deal to alleviate the economic and social problems faced by my constituents.11.4 pm
We have had a valuable Third Reading debate, which was opened with characteristic bluster by the Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning, whose case was rapidly and entirely demolished by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler).
The hon. Member for Middlesbrough, South and Cleveland, East (Dr. Kumar) criticised the undemocratic nature of regional development agencies, and then said that he would support the Bill. The hon. Member for Taunton (Mrs. Ballard) criticised the qualified nature of the Bill's commitment to sustainable development, and then said that her party would support the Bill. Of those who spoke on Third Reading, only my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key), who criticised the Bill, appeared to have the courage of his convictions in saying that he would vote against it. I was glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) had the chance to expose the failure of the Bill to address the real concerns that exist in rural areas. There are two abiding themes to the Bill. The first is that it is a centralising measure. It pulls power after power back to the office of the Secretary of State. It is the Secretary of State who appoints the boards, who determines the pay of their members, and determines their pay-offs. It is the Secretary of State who decides the budget, dictates the strategy, chooses the regional chamber, controls the borrowing, and tells the agencies how to keep their accounts. The Secretary of State will decide when they will publish their annual reports, and he will even dictate the form in which the notice of the annual meeting should be drawn up. He will direct how that meeting should be conducted. The list goes on and on. Every decision of any importance to do with RDAs will be taken by the Secretary of State. The second theme is that the passage of the Bill was notable for the ignominious defeat of the Government's attempt to take planning powers away from elected local authorities. Only the vigilance of the Conservative Opposition prevented that spurious and fundamental threat to the role of local authorities from remaining in the Bill. The Bill sets out nine new quangos, which many regions neither need nor want, and whose boundaries bear no relation to the communities that they are supposed to serve. Their accountability to the public is non-existent. The Secretary of State is given huge new powers, which will not help rural areas but will cause duplication of effort and lead to the waste of taxpayers' resources. The Bill should be rejected.11.5 pm
With the leave of the House—
No.
Order. I hear dissenting voices. As the leave of the House is not being granted, I must put the Question.
Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time:—
The House divided: Ayes 270, Noes 127.
Division No. 243]
| [11.7 pm
|
AYES
| |
| Adams, Mrs Irene (Paisley N) | Austin, John |
| Ainger, Nick | Ballard, Mrs Jackie |
| Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE) | Banks, Tony |
| Alexander, Douglas | Barnes, Harry |
| Allan, Richard | Bayley, Hugh |
| Allen, Graham | Beard, Nigel |
| Anderson, Janet (Rossendale) | Begg, Miss Anne |
| Armstrong, Ms Hilary | Benn, Rt Hon Tony |
| Ashton, Joe | Bennett, Andrew F |
| Atherton, Ms Candy | Betts, Clive |
| Atkins, Charlotte | Blackman, Liz |
| Blears, Ms Hazel | Godman, Dr Norman A |
| Boateng, Paul | Goggins, Paul |
| Bradshaw, Ben | Golding, Mrs Llin |
| Breed, Colin | Gordon, Mrs Eileen |
| Brown, Rt Hon Nick (Newcastle E) | Grant, Bernie |
| Brown, Russell (Dumfries) | Griffiths, Jane (Reading E) |
| Browne, Desmond | Griffiths, Win (Bridgend) |
| Buck, Ms Karen | Grocott, Bruce |
| Burnett, John | Grogan, John |
| Burstow, Paul | Hain, Peter |
| Byers, Stephen | Hall, Mike (Weaver Vale) |
| Caborn, Richard | Hall, Patrick (Bedford) |
| Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge) | Hamilton, Fabian (Leeds NE) |
| Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V) | Hanson, David |
| Campbell-Savours, Dale | Harvey, Nick |
| Canavan, Dennis | Henderson, Ivan (Harwich) |
| Cann, Jamie | Hepburn, Stephen |
| Casale, Roger | Heppell, John |
| Caton, Martin | Hesford, Stephen |
| Chapman, Ben (Wirral S) | Hinchliffe, David |
| Chisholm, Malcolm | Hodge, Ms Margaret |
| Church, Ms Judith | Home Robertson, John |
| Clapham, Michael | Hoon, Geoffrey |
| Clark, Dr Lynda | Hope, Phil |
(Edinburgh Pentlands)
| Howarth, George (Knowsley N) |
| Clark, Paul (Gillingham) | Howells, Dr Kim |
| Clarke, Eric (Midlothian) | Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N) |
| Clarke, Rt Hon Tom (Coatbridge) | Hughes, Simon (Southwark N) |
| Clarke, Tony (Northampton S) | Humble, Mrs Joan |
| Clwyd, Ann | Hurst, Alan |
| Coaker, Vernon | Hutton, John |
| Coffey, Ms Ann | Iddon, Dr Brian |
| Cohen, Harry | Jenkins, Brian |
| Colman, Tony | Johnson, Miss Melanie |
| Connarty, Michael | (Welwyn Hatfield)
|
| Cotter, Brian | Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside) |
| Cousins, Jim | Jones, Mrs Fiona (Newark) |
| Cranston, Ross | Jones, Helen (Warrington N) |
| Crausby, David | Jones, Ms Jenny |
| Cryer, Mrs Ann (Keighley) | (Wolverh'ton SW)
|
| Cummings, John | Jones, Jon Owen (Cardiff C) |
| Cunliffe, Lawrence | Jones, Dr Lynne (Selly Oak) |
| Cunningham, Jim (Cov'try S) | Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S) |
| Davey, Edward (Kingston) | Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald |
| Davidson, Ian | Keen, Alan (Feltham & Heston) |
| Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli) | Kennedy, Jane (Wavertree) |
| Davies, Geraint (Croydon C) | Kidney, David |
| Davies, Rt Hon Ron (Caerphilly) | King, Ms Oona (Bethnal Green) |
| Davis, Terry (B'ham Hodge H) | Kingham, Ms Tess |
| Dawson, Hilton | Kumar, Dr Ashok |
| Dean, Mrs Janet | Ladyman, Dr Stephen |
| Denham, John | Laxton, Bob |
| Dewar, Rt Hon Donald | Lepper, David |
| Donohoe, Brian H | Leslie, Christopher |
| Doran, Frank | Levitt, Tom |
| Dowd, Jim | Lewis, Terry (Worsley) |
| Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth | Linton, Martin |
| Eagle, Angela (Wallasey) | Livsey, Richard |
| Eagle, Maria (L'pool Garston) | Lloyd, Tony (Manchester C) |
| Edwards, Huw | Love, Andrew |
| Efford, Clive | McAllion, John |
| Ellman, Mrs Louise | McAvoy, Thomas |
| Fatchett, Derek | McCabe, Steve |
| Fisher, Mark | McDonagh, Siobhain |
| Fitzpatrick, Jim | McFall, John |
| Fitzsimons, Lorna | McIsaac, Shona |
| Flint, Caroline | McNulty, Tony |
| Flynn, Paul | McWalter, Tony |
| Follett, Barbara | McWilliam, John |
| Foster, Rt Hon Derek | Mallaber, Judy |
| Fyfe, Maria | Marsden, Gordon (Blackpool S) |
| Galloway, George | Marshall, David (Shettleston) |
| Gardiner, Barry | Marshall, Jim (Leicester S) |
| Gerrard, Neil | Marshall-Andrews, Robert |
| Gibson, Dr Ian | Martlew, Eric |
| Gilroy, Mrs Linda | Meale, Alan |
| Merron, Gillian | Skinner, Dennis |
| Michael, Alun | Smith, Rt Hon Andrew (Oxford E) |
| Michie, Bill (Shef'ld Heeley) | Smith, Angela (Basildon) |
| Milburn, Alan | Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent) |
| Miller, Andrew | Soley, Clive |
| Mitchell, Austin | Southworth, Ms Helen |
| Moffatt, Laura | Starkey, Dr Phyllis |
| Moonie, Dr Lewis | Steinberg, Gerry |
| Moore, Michael | Stewart, David (Inverness E) |
| Moran, Ms Margaret | Stinchcombe, Paul |
| Morgan, Ms Julie (Cardiff N) | Stoate, Dr Howard |
| Morgan, Rhodri (Cardiff W) | Stott, Roger |
| Morris, Ms Estelle (B'ham Yardley) | Strang, Rt Hon Dr Gavin |
| Mudie, George | Stringer, Graham |
| Murphy, Denis (Wansbeck) | Stuart, Ms Gisela |
| Murphy, Jim (Eastwood) | Stunell, Andrew |
| Norris, Dan | Taylor, Rt Hon Mrs Ann (Dewsbury) |
| O'Neill, Martin | |
| Öpik, Lembit | Taylor, Ms Dari (Stockton S) |
| Osborne, Ms Sandra | Taylor, David (NW Leics) |
| Pearson, Ian | Thomas, Gareth (Clwyd W) |
| Pendry, Tom | Tipping, Paddy |
| Perham, Ms Linda | Todd, Mark |
| pickthall, Colin | Touhig, Don |
| Pike, Peter L | Trickett, Jon |
| Pond, Chris | Truswell, Paul |
| Pope, Greg | Turner, Dennis (Wolverh'ton SE) |
| Pound, Stephen | Turner, Dr Desmond (Kemptown) |
| Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lewisham E) | Twigg, Derek (Halton) |
| Primarolo, Dawn | Twigg, Stephen (Enfield) |
| Prosser, Gwyn | Vaz, Keith |
| Purchase, Ken | Vis, Dr Rudi |
| Quin, Ms Joyce | Wallace, James |
| Radice, Giles | Walley, Ms Joan |
| Rapson, Syd | Ward, Ms Claire |
| Raynsford, Nick | Watts, David |
| Reed, Andrew (Loughborough) | Webb, Steve |
| Rendel, David | White, Brian |
| Ross, Ernie (Dundee W) | Whitehead, Dr Alan |
| Roy, Frank | Williams, Alan W (E Carmarthen) |
| Ruane, Chris | Williams, Mrs Betty (Conwy) |
| Ruddock, Ms Joan | Wills, Michael |
| Russell, Bob (Colchester) | Winnick, David |
| Salter, Martin | Winterton, Ms Rosie (Doncaster C) |
| Sanders, Adrian | Wise, Audrey |
| Savidge, Malcolm | Woolas, Phil |
| Sawford, Phil | Wray, James |
| Sedgemore, Brian | Wright, Dr Tony (Cannock) |
| Shaw, Jonathan | |
| Sheerman, Barry | Tellers for the Ayes:
|
| Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert | Mr. David Clelland and
|
| Simpson, Alan (Nottingham S) | Mr. David Jamieson.
|
NOES
| |
| Ainsworth, Peter (E Surrey) | Clappison, James |
| Ancram, Rt Hon Michael | Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth (Rushcliffe) |
| Arbuthnot, James | |
| Atkinson, David (Bour'mth E) | Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey |
| Atkinson, Peter (Hexham) | Collins, Tim |
| Baldry, Tony | Colvin, Michael |
| Bercow, John | Cran, James |
| Beresford, Sir Paul | Curry, Rt Hon David |
| Blunt, Crispin | Davies, Quentin (Grantham) |
| Body, Sir Richard | Davis, Rt Hon David (Haltemprice) |
| Boswell, Tim | Donaldson, Jeffrey |
| Bottomley, Peter (Worthing W) | Dorrell, Rt Hon Stephen |
| Brady, Graham | Duncan, Alan |
| Brazier, Julian | Duncan Smith, Iain |
| Brooke, Rt Hon Peter | Evans, Nigel |
| Browning, Mrs Angela | Faber, David |
| Bruce, Ian (S Dorset) | Fabricant, Michael |
| Burns, Simon | Fallon, Michael |
| Butterfill, John | Flight, Howard |
| Chapman, Sir Sydney (Chipping Barnet) | Forth, Rt Hon Eric |
| Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman | |
| Chope, Christopher | Fox, Dr Liam |
| Gale, Roger | Nicholls, Patrick |
| Garnier, Edward | Norman, Archie |
| Gibb, Nick | Ottaway, Richard |
| Gill, Christopher | Page, Richard |
| Gillan, Mrs Cheryl | Paice, James |
| Gorman, Mrs Teresa | pickles, Eric |
| Gray, James | Prior, David |
| Greenway, John | Randall, John |
| Grieve, Dominic | Redwood, Rt Hon John |
| Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archie | Robathan, Andrew |
| Hammond, Philip | Roe, Mrs Marion (Broxbourne) |
| Hawkins, Nick | Rowe, Andrew (Faversham) |
| Hayes, John | Ruffley, David |
| Heathcoat-Amory, Rt Hon David | St Aubyn, Nick |
| Hogg, Rt Hon Douglas | Shephard, Rt Hon Mrs Gillian |
| Horam, John | Shepherd, Richard |
| Howarth, Gerald (Aldershot) | Simpson, Keith (Mid-Norfolk) |
| Hunter, Andrew | Soames, Nicholas |
| Jackson, Robert (Wantage) | Spelman, Mrs Caroline |
| Jenkin, Bernard | Spicer, Sir Michael |
| Johnson Smith, | Spring, Richard |
| Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey | Steen, Anthony |
| Key, Robert | Swayne, Desmond |
| King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater) | Syms, Robert |
| Kirkbride, Miss Julie | Taylor, Ian (Esher & Walton) |
| Laing, Mrs Eleanor | Taylor, John M (Solihull) |
| Lait, Mrs Jacqui | Townend, John |
| Lansley, Andrew | Tredinnick, David |
| Leigh, Edward | Trend, Michael |
| Letwin, Oliver | Tyrie, Andrew |
| Lewis, Dr Julian (New Forest E) | Walter, Robert |
| Lidington, David | Wardle, Charles |
| Lilley, Rt Hon Peter | Waterson, Nigel |
| Lloyd, Rt Hon Sir Peter (Fareham) | Wells, Bowen |
| Loughton, Tim | Whitney, Sir Raymond |
| Luff, Peter | Widdecombe, Rt Hon Miss Ann |
| Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas | Willetts, David |
| MacGregor, Rt Hon John | Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton) |
| McIntosh, Miss Anne | Winterton, Nicholas (Macclesfield) |
| MacKay, Andrew | Woodward, Shaun |
| Maclean, Rt Hon David | Yeo, Tim |
| McLoughlin, Patrick | |
| Maples, John | Tellers for the Noes:
|
| Mawhinney, Rt Hon Sir Brian | Mr. Stephen Day and
|
| May, Mrs Theresa | Mr. Oliver Heald.
|
Question accordingly agreed to.
Bill read the Third time, and passed.
Criminal Procedure (Intermediatediets) (Scotland) Bill
Ordered,
That, in respect of the Criminal Procedure (Intermediate Diets) (Scotland) Bill, notices of Amendments, new Clauses and new Schedules to be moved in Committee may be accepted by the Clerks at the Table before the Bill has been read a second time.— [Jane Kennedy.]
Regions
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Jane Kennedy.]
11.19 pm
Those who may have been drawn to this debate through love of minutiae of etymological discourse will be sadly disappointed.
I asked for this Adjournment debate because I am concerned about the general failure to distinguish between devolution and administrative regionalisation; between responding to popular consensus to devolve power to Scotland and Wales and the top-down division of the remainder into Government administrative zones, without first establishing the same community of interests or popular support. Today's final stages of the Regional Development Agencies Bill has confirmed once again that the debate is concentrating on specific functions—access to board members, concordats, planning matters and what should happen to the Rural Development Commission's resources—so much so that we run the risk of abandoning our critical faculties. Pinned on to the emperor's robes—in this case, the robes of the regions—will be the badges of economic development agencies, chambers and probably regional assemblies. When it is pointed out that those regions do not exist, the badges will begin to look ridiculous, quite apart from being painful to the wearer. The Government must recognise that, with a few honourable exceptions outside Wales and Scotland, there is little or no demand for devolution in the remainder of mainland UK. Where any interest is expressed, it is largely for reasons motivated by fear—fear of being left out or left behind as opposed to a demonstration of enthusiasm for devolution and the setting up of new regions. Many towns and cities are demonstrating that point right now. Outside Scotland and Wales, the setting up of regions would create essentially artificial and bureaucratic constructs. England has not been divided into separate political regions since the Norman conquest. Given the option today, there appears little strong evidence that the English people would prefer a more decentralised model of government than the present unitary state. Indeed, as many of my hon. Friends regularly point out, as a Cornish man and not an English man, I can take a dispassionate and objective view on this matter. Although power is being decentralised to London, it is not decentralisation in the proper sense, but rather a tidying up and clarification of strategic decision making and planning for the London area. Other than that, it is probably only in parts of the north of England where there appears to be some concerted public demand for the decentralisation of power, which is welcome. Yet where there is clear popular support for devolution, the Government appear to ignore it. For example, whether one calls the territory a province, a department, a region or, as many would prefer, a small nation, Cornwall is an interesting case in point. In his 1995 report to the Labour party for the Institute for Public Policy Research, Stephen Tindale draws attention to the special status of Cornwall. He says:and points out that, with a population of half a million, the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly region is larger than many other European regions. Like many others who have commented on this, he argued that cross-border issues are resolvable with the continuation of joint boards and ad hoc groupings. Tindale went on to argue that Cornwall should be given the option of becoming a county with regional status. He drew attention to the strong cultural and linguistic case for Cornwall, which he felt set it apart from other cases for small regions within the British state. Whether or not Cornwall is an exceptional case, an important point of principle is established. Strong cultural traditions and identities can and should provide the platform for, rather than the obstacle to, devolution, just as they did in Scotland and Wales. In the headlong rush to set up regions, we need to be certain that we do not simply replace the bland uniformity of a centralised unaccountable state with the bland uniformity of synthetic regions based on bureaucratic convenience, thus adding to the problems rather than to the opportunities of places like Cornwall. I urge anyone who has never noticed the Cornish pride and strong attachment to the area and wants to know what I mean to come to Twickenham on Saturday 18 April, when more than 50,000 Cornish rugby fans will take over that corner of London. I may be wrong, but I imagine that many of them know little about the rules of the game. They will be there for the county championship final not just to watch Cornwall crush whatever the opposition will be that afternoon, but as a focus for and demonstration of their pride and identity. If, instead of being ignored, that passion was recognised as a strength and even a little of it could be bottled and used as the basis for a devolved region or province of government, a great deal could be achieved. Instead, under the current drift of policy, Cornwall and places like it face oblivion. Why? For whose convenience are the regions being set up? With the historic opportunity of a period of significant constitutional change, why is the drawing of the regional maps so conservative? If the purpose is to ensure a substructure of government comparable to that of our European partners, why not examine the variety of regional structures on offer?"The Cornish conundrum poses a particular problem for regionalists"
Does my hon. Friend agree that vast regions with disparate and variable per capita gross domestic products will dilute the regional assistance available for areas such as my constituency, the county of Cornwall and the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Mr. Harvey)?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I shall deal with that point later.
Germany, Italy and Spain contain regions of a variety of sizes, including some smaller than Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. If regions are a response to public demand, where is the demonstration of popular legitimacy? The Government have argued that adopting a largely administrative division of government zones is a convenient, ready-to-hand, off-the-shelf solution. Does the Minister recognise that that could do a great deal of harm and overlooks the great strength of building on strong regions or provinces that already exist? In some so-called regions there is more internal disagreement than community of interest. Many predict that the regions contain the seeds of their own destruction.Does my hon. Friend agree that the concern that he has described has already made itself felt in Wales since the referendum on the assembly? We are seeing the danger of internecine disputes in administratively defined regions that bear no geographical similarity to what those living in those enforced regional areas feel.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that support. Many parallels can be established.
The Minister may believe that places such as Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly are too small. Is that not another case of repeating accepted wisdom without challenging it? What economies of scale are being sought? Could they be achieved through partnership and collaboration? Part of my constituency is the Isles of Scilly, with a population of 2,000. As well as being a county and district authority, the council is also the public water authority. Most of the extra costs of running the authority are due to the distance from the mainland, not problems of scale. Larger units also bring costs. For Cornwall, any economies of scale would be far outweighed by the associated diseconomies of scale, such as the leakage of higher-paid jobs to the east and the statistical invisibility of poorer areas. Even if the case for larger areas can be proven—I do not believe that it can—issues of accountability, sense of ownership, belonging and popular legitimacy are more important than a narrow Thatcherite focus. Some may also argue that to allow regions to define themselves would inevitably lead to disputes and some claims for absurdly small regions or provinces. On any mild inspection, those problems could be easily overcome. Clearly, no one could justify the setting up of a strategic tier of government on a scale smaller than that of the largest tier of local government for the area. Therefore, waggish claims of unilateral declaration of independence for towns and villages would not survive cursory inspection. On disputes over size, just as it is not for the people of the west of England to hold a referendum on whether Wales should have an assembly, the decision of one area to call for its own regional assembly should—or rather could—not be overturned by its neighbour deciding that it could not allow it. I reassure the House that in this debate it is not my intention to plummet new depths of parochialism and insularity—quite the opposite. As anyone who has experienced it knows—as I do from finding out what it means to be Cornish after I left school, I am sorry to say—by understanding oneself, one is able to make clearer parallels with other groups and minorities in other parts of the world. I understood that the Government wanted to join the celebration of diversity in a nation rich in cultures, languages, races, identities and traditions, but their proposals for regions will kill off passion and replace it with bureaucratic blandness; suffocate identity and replace it with soulless and synthetic placelessness; submerge popular legitimacy with justification of bureaucratic convenience.I was very much hoping that the hon. Gentleman would raise what for many people in Cornwall is the No. l issue: objective l status. That is in my view the answer to the many problems that the county faces. Discussion about boundaries and assemblies is way down the line in comparison with the importance of dealing with objective l status, securing Government support and securing support in the European Union. Does he agree?
Absolutely; I am coming to that point. The underlying problem is that, in the Government's impatience to set up the paraphernalia of RDAs, they must ignore proper consideration of how regions are determined. Before the process goes too far, I urge the Government to rethink. I urge them to build on the strength of identity rather than allow identities to be submerged; to initiate a profound rethink and revisit the principles represented by the Scottish and Welsh models; and to allow those parts of the country that are viewed as examples by others to bring forward their cases for regional assemblies, which includes the case for objective 1 status. If the Government recognise Cornwall's regional status in that sense, it will unquestionably enhance Cornwall's case for objective 1 status in Europe.
My final question for the Minister relates to the example of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, as much for their sake as for other parts of the UK that wish to establish and build on their identities. I am not hellbent on attacking the Labour Government, but I am very much hellbent on succeeding in securing objective 1 status and not losing the identities and sense of passion on which we can build local provinces. What advice, encouragement and support can the Minister offer those who want to bring forward the case for distinct regional assemblies for smaller areas and, in so doing, bolster the case for Cornwall's objective 1 status?11.33 pm
I congratulate the hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. George) on successfully securing the opportunity to debate the Government's policy on the definition of regions. I understand that he did not vote for the Third Reading of the Regional Development Agencies Bill, although many of his colleagues did, but I hope that time will prove that his caricature of the mechanisms on which we have just voted successfully as passionless and bureaucratic is wrong. Such mechanisms offer many of the chances for diversity and regionalism that he has suggested for the future of Cornwall.
The previous Government neglected and ignored England's regions. They believed that everything could be dictated by Whitehall and that local government should dance to Whitehall's tune. By contrast, this Government have embraced local government, championed devolution and cultivated the regional agenda. We have been elected with a firm mandate to address the neglect of the previous Government. We produced a White Paper on the regional agenda. We are setting up regional development agencies in England, which will be complemented by the steps that every region in England is now taking to establish a voluntary regional chamber. We are also giving Londoners the opportunity to have their own elected assembly and a mayor with real power and influence. Many of England's regions are rooted in history. Some are based on geographical features, while others are based on industrial or cultural legacies. The hon. Gentleman described a particular cultural legacy in Cornwall, which has always had its own special sense of place. Even a cursory look at our history would make anyone realise what a special place Cornwall is. I recognise that regional identity is not as marked in some areas as it is in others. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, in the south-west, regional identity is less well established than in many other areas. Common cause has tended to be made at what, in our administrative terms, is a sub-regional level. Cornwall, sometimes with Devon, operates as an entity distinct from the five counties in the east of the region. However, people are increasingly recognising—as I will demonstrate, this applies to the relatively disparate south-west region too—that in order for a region to make its mark and put itself in a position to improve its regional performance, there has to be the right critical mass to achieve economies of scale. What we have recognised, and what our consultations show, is that distinct economic and social regions demand new forms of governance to serve their needs. The hon. Gentleman spoke at length about the problems of Cornwall, and I know that the county has had more than its fair share of difficulties—a decline in its traditional industries, a GDP at only 69 per cent. of the European Union average, a heavy reliance on seasonal trade, low salaries and peripherality, to name but a few. None the less, it is important for Cornwall to look forward. It is all too easy to dwell on problems. The county cannot change its geography or its peripherality— indeed, I suspect that it revels in that—and the national minimum wage will help with the problem of low pay. I am aware of the excellent work being done by, for example, the Cornwall "In Pursuit of Excellence" initiative, to promote the county as a place where business can compete and win in world markets. Cornwall has successfully attracted inward investment by companies such as the American-owned Harman International, Contico Europe and Pall Corporation, which are all based in the Redruth and Camborne area. We need to broadcast the good news without dwelling on, or ignoring, the bad. How many people are aware, for example, that a printer in Falmouth has secured a £6 million a year contract to produce all the national lottery pay slips and receipts—a contract that I suspect may go on for ever—or that Allen and Heath of Penryn exports 90 per cent. of its state-of-the-art audio-mixing consoles, or that Radiocode Clocks in Helston has secured major contracts to supply the United States navy with precision time frequency and synchronisation equipment, or that Pendennis shipyard, Falmouth, exports up to 80 per cent. of its luxury yachts, some to the middle east, the United States and Australia? Cornwall can build on such successes. I am confident that there is a determination in the county to overcome the current economic problems, and the Government will play their part in helping that to happen. Special measures are in place to help Cornwall to overcome its economic problems. Most of the county has Department of Trade and Industry assisted area status, which can attract regional selective assistance—RSA— and west Cornwall has the highest, development area, status. On 13 February we announced an RSA grant towards a £21 million capital investment that will create 300 new jobs in Cornwall. Including that project, we have, since April 1997, made 18 offers of RSA to companies in Cornwall. That will go towards capital investment of £35.5 million, which is forecast to create 777 new jobs and safeguard a further 86. Twelve of those projects are in west Cornwall, and will create more than 300 new jobs. Regional selective assistance is helping Cornwall attract inward investment, and indigenous companies are being helped to invest and grow. Devon and Cornwall Development International is working hard to market Cornwall overseas. Regional partners have a key role to play in identifying and bringing forward strategic serviced sites and supporting infrastructure that will be attractive to inward investors. The regional supply office is working to develop local supply chains so that business is not lost to the region. English Partnerships is providing sites and premises needed by inward investors under its special "Factories First" programme in Cornwall and Devon. The single regeneration budget challenge fund is supporting economic regeneration in Cornwall with £11.5 million in grant, which is expected to create many new jobs and businesses. We announced this week that we would give the West Cornwall employment programme £780,000 funding in SRB round 4—towards a £6.5 million total cost—which we hope will create some 1,000 additional employment opportunities for those most affected by the decline of traditional industries, particularly tin mining. The whole of Cornwall is eligible for support from the European objective 5b south-west rural development programme, which, at £170 million, is the largest in the UK. The programme contributes to a south-west small business fund, co-financing English Partnerships' "Factories First" initiative and supporting rural training and information opportunities. Major projects include the private sector-led £8 million Bodmin business park, which will create 60 new business units and 477 jobs.Will the hon. Lady deal with the definition of regions and objective 1 status? I appreciate her description of the successes, of which I am well aware, but how does she respond to the specific questions that I raised?
The hon. Gentleman should be patient, as I shall come to that. It is important that we remember the success stories as well as the difficulties, which can help inward investors to put matters into perspective.
A new European initiative starts this spring. More than £2 million will be available in the south-west objective 5b area to provide financial support to small and medium businesses. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Ms Atherton) and other hon. Members from the area for their campaigning work to achieve objective 1 status for Cornwall. We recognise the very strong arguments that Cornwall is advancing for objective 1 status—with only 69 per cent. of European Union gross domestic product per head, Cornwall's needs are clear. Cornwall will remain an objective 5b area until the current programmes expire at the end of 1999. The European Commission's detailed legislative proposals for the reform of the structural funds were published on 18 March, and will still need to be negotiated. Until there is agreement on final proposals— by the end of this year, I hope—it will not be possible to establish how individual areas may be affected. Hon. Members can be certain that the Government will seek to secure the best outcome for Cornwall and other parts of the UK. We also await Eurostat's decision on whether to accept the Government statistical service's proposal that Cornwall should be a separate nomenclature of units of territorial statistics level 2 region—that is a funny way in which to say that Cornwall should qualify for objective 1 support. The hon. Gentleman asked about regional boundaries. The boundaries of the Government offices are based on local authority boundaries, which reflect historical identities. We intend to build on the success of the Government offices—the boundaries of the new regional development agencies will be based on the Government office boundaries. There are sound policy reasons for that—the boundaries are well established for economic purposes, and we think that it makes sense to base RDAs on them. We believe that that is the most workable option, given the wide range of functions and responsibilities that RDAs will have. In response to the hon. Gentleman's question, the average size of regions across Europe is a population of about 5 million. That seems to be about the right critical mass to achieve a proper strategic overview, successfully to attract investment and to promote healthy competitiveness. A region needs to be big enough to be effective and to allow the right economies of scale. That will ensure that the benefits that we expect from RDAs will be forthcoming. We believe that each of England's regions should be in a position to reap the benefits of having an RDA. In the south-west, preliminary moves to establish a regional chamber are well advanced. Leaders of all 51 local authorities of the region agreed at a meeting on 27 February to the establishment of a chamber with representatives of about 20 of the social partners. At the same meeting, it was also agreed in principle to set up a regional local government association, possibly in the early summer. Sub-groups have been set up to examine voting arrangements and the relative level and division of social partner representation, and I understand that, if all goes well, there will be a formal launch in June. Of course, I give all the partners in the south-west my whole-hearted support for their efforts and hope for a successful outcome to their deliberations. We would not want to accede to a review of RDA boundaries at this stage. That would only fuel any disagreement and rivalries within regions, when preparing for RDAs should be the priority. The Bill itself has created a momentum, even in those regions without a strong traditional regional identity. My hon. Friend the Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning and I have visited all the regions on more than one occasion to hear at first hand the views of stakeholders on our proposals. There is overwhelming support for them, and every region in England is taking steps to form a regional chamber. Some, of course, already have one. Some commentators have suggested that our proposals for RDA boundaries are too strict to allow co-operation to take place across or, indeed, within them. The hon. Member for St. Ives spoke about the importance of sub-regional arrangements and hinted that there would be oblivion for Cornwall in the RDA. I disagree with that. Sub-regional arrangements are not only possible but should be encouraged in the new structure. I could not agree more that such arrangements are important, and I assure the hon. Gentleman that there will be flexibility for the RDAs to respond to pressures from within, as well as, in some instances, across, RDA boundaries. We are not devolving power to the regions only to dictate policy from the centre, but we expect attention to be paid to the internal sub-regional realities. Cornwall will be best served by a single powerful RDA for the south-west, providing the strong voice and clout that it needs, but with robust sub-regional arrangements. The new regional development agency for the south-west will have an important role to play in helping to strengthen the local economy in the longer term. The introduction of RDAs is central to our work on improving competitiveness. The legislation is evolutionary, and we expect RDAs to make their own way and decide how best to deal with the regional and sub-regional realities. To be successful, the RDA must have the confidence and co-operation of the whole region, but it must also represent and respond to local needs and interests. Its economic strategy will need to address regional economic disparities through regeneration as well as wealth creation, and it must reflect a proper balance between rural, urban and coastal needs. An RDA provides the south-west, alongside other regions, with a major opportunity to bring direction and coherence to the task of improving regional competitiveness while recognising and respecting diversity. The region must grasp the opportunity, and that requires focusing whole-heartedly on developing partnership, integration and co-ordination of effort. The responses to the RDA consultation from partners in the south-west show that they recognise the need to work together and improve the competitiveness of the less well-developed economies in the region. Now is the time for the region to put that into practice, through the RDA. I look forward to watching its progress.Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at thirteen minutes to Twelve midnight.