House of Commons
Thursday 26 October 2006
The House met at half-past Ten o’clock
Prayers
[Mr. Speaker in the Chair]
Oral Answers to Questions
Treasury
The Chancellor of the Exchequer was asked—
City of London
In 1997, financial services earned £45 billion for the United Kingdom, and last year the figure was £94 billion—twice as much. Net exports have risen from £11 billion to £19 billion and financial services, once 6 per cent. of the economy, are now 8.5 per cent. of our economy. With the new City task force we will continue to found our policy for competitiveness on thinking globally, investing in skills, a competitive business and light-touch regulatory environment, and, most of all, doing nothing to put economic stability at risk.
The City is set for another bumper year of growth, due in no small measure to the stability and low-inflation environment of the wider economy. Will my right hon. Friend reject any unfunded tax cuts as putting that stability at risk, and what more can he do to enhance the role of the City in the world economy?
In 1997, 280 billion shares were traded in the City of London: last year, the figure was 900 billion. That shows that the City is responding to the global challenges in a way that we can be proud of. What we will not do is put stability at risk by irresponsible, unfunded and reckless tax cuts, as proposed by the Opposition. The policy we will not follow, as suggested in the new competitiveness economic policy group document published last night—it is interesting what one can read on the Conservatives’ website—is to abolish consumer protection for mortgages, pensions, insurance and credit cards. We will not return to the pension mis-selling that we have spent years getting away from.
Does the Chancellor agree that it will help to maintain the competitiveness of the City of London if the London stock exchange is not taken over by a foreign stock exchange company?
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree with the Government—we propose new legislation on the issue—that nothing should interfere with the right of the City to be regulated by the Financial Services Authority. Rather than Governments deciding who should own what, we must put in place the proper regulatory mechanisms that insist that whoever owns industries, services and, in this case, the stock exchange in London, it is regulated in London by the FSA. I hope that we will have all-party support for the Bill that my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary will introduce.
In terms of competitiveness, will my right hon. Friend indicate how the City of London compares with other financial centres in the European Union?
In the nine years since we took office, of the companies that have located either their national, regional or international headquarters, it is true to say that 398 have located in London and the United Kingdom, 63 in Paris, fewer in Germany and the Netherlands and 30 in Ireland. Opposition Members who wish to suggest that the success of Ireland is somehow comparable with the success of London should think again. London has doubled the amount of trading and financial services work. It will continue to thrive because we will think globally, but we will not put it at risk by an irresponsible funding of tax cuts that we cannot afford, and which would put at risk the very public services, infrastructure and skills on which the City and the rest of the British economy depend.
Is the Chancellor aware that the City’s big fear now is that big bang is being followed by big bureaucracy? On the very day that he had City leaders in last week for a bit of spin and one of his fake smiles, he forced through this House new legislation compelling companies to reveal their most sensitive commercial information. Is not the City right to judge him by his actions, rather than by his words?
The hon. Gentleman, who should know something about this, should look at the facts about the performance of the City and the British economy. Perhaps he might read the comments from the chairman of the New York stock exchange, who said that London is getting business for two reasons: one, it does not have the heavy touch regulatory environment of the United States of America; and, two, it has proved itself to be competitive in so many areas. I contend—and the hon. Gentleman should think about this—that the stability of our economy and the future of the City of London would be put at risk by getting the balance wrong between tax, spending and borrowing. That is why we will not accept the unfunded, irresponsible and reckless commitments being made by the Conservative party.
I declare an interest, as I chair the all-party group on private equity and venture capital. The City of London is the centre of the world when it comes to private equity, with 52 per cent. of the European market. That is principally due to the unprecedentedly supportive environment that this Chancellor and this Labour Government have created and put in place over the past 10 years. In the context of the Financial Services Authority’s—[Interruption.]
Order. I cannot hear the hon. Gentleman because of all the shouting from Conservative Members. Also, he knows that a supplementary should be brief, and should be a question. Perhaps the Chancellor would like to respond.
It is clear that the Opposition do not like hearing the good news about the achievements of the British economy. Six previous shadow Chancellors have dined out on the idea that the City of London and our whole economy were about to move into recession, so I shall give the House the benefit of the latest foreign direct investment figures. In 2005, inward investment into the UK amounted to £164 billion—twice the level in France, five times the level in Germany, eight times the level in Italy, and 50 per cent. more than in the US. The Opposition should congratulate the Government on their success, not try to claim failure.
What the Chancellor did not mention is that we are celebrating this week the 20th anniversary of the big bang, which he opposed at the time but now presumably welcomes. The City is not celebrating the damage that he has done to the pensions industry with his tax and regulatory regime. Labour’s first pensions Minister was the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), who has said:
“when Labour came to office we had one of the strongest pension provisions in Europe and now we…have some of the weakest”.
I know that the Chancellor does not do humility, but does he accept any blame for what has gone wrong?
I notice that the hon. Gentleman is not defending his £4.7 billion tax cut proposal. After all the publicity that he sought last week, I should have thought that he would at least explain how that would be funded. As for pensions, let me read out the policy that we will not follow:
“In financial services we should allow people to buy and sell products that are not regulated if they have signed to do so”.
That is the new Conservative economic policy—[Interruption.]
Order. In the past I have allowed the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, and their Opposition shadows, some leeway, but the right hon. Gentleman cannot dwell on Conservative party policy. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Wallasey (Angela Eagle) is looking at me, so I shall tell her why. The reason is that Ministers are responsible for the Government, not for the Opposition. She has been in the House long enough to know that.
Our policy is to ensure economic stability, and not to abolish consumer protection for pensions, mortgages, insurance and credit cards. Why do the Opposition propose that today?
No one believes what the Chancellor says about his own policies, let alone ours. [Interruption.] Excellent! The Chancellor has thrown his copy of our document at me. I thank him very much, as I am glad that he is reading such things. Nor, by the way, should anyone pay any attention to the ludicrous claims from the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, but I make one request to the Chancellor—please put him on television more often.
I return now to the matter of the City and pensions. The Chancellor may ignore Labour’s first pensions Minister, but he cannot ignore the facts. His pensions tax has reduced the value of people’s pensions by £100 billion, and his pensions regulations have forced 60,000 pensions schemes to close. Does he accept what his own party says—that he has made serious mistakes in the handling of pensions? If he cannot accept that, surely the current Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is right: the Chancellor will make an “effing awful” Prime Minister?
Order. Will the hon. Gentleman withdraw that remark? We must have temperate language in this House. I do not care what is said outside.
I of course unreservedly withdraw the quote from the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
It is very interesting that the shadow Chancellor has made the question of whether pensions are properly regulated in this country the central issue. The difference between us is that we want proper regulation to protect individual pensioners, whereas the Opposition have proposed a plan that would deregulate and abolish consumer protection for pensioners. Until Conservative Members look at the plans that their own group is pursuing and find out what damage would be done to the regulation of pensions, they will be living in a dream world about what their policy proposals are going to be. We will insist on the proper regulation of pensions. We have introduced compensation for people who were deprived of their pensions. We have introduced a new Pension Protection Fund board to ensure that there is proper protection for pensions. We have a new pensions Green Paper to ensure that protection. Most importantly, we will not as unfortunately happened under the Conservative Government, or put the stability of the economy at risk, and that will be foremost in resisting irresponsible and unaffordable tax cuts.
Work Force Skills
We have created the new deal for skills, which we will expand. We have the new train to gain programme, which we will also expand after the Leitch report is published. We have increased education spending from 4.7 per cent. to 5.5 per cent. of GDP—investment which we will not cut in future years, but will increase.
With 20 million students graduating in China every year and 2 million in India, can my right hon. Friend reassure me that the Government will seek to resource fully the recommendations from the Leitch review so that the United Kingdom can continue to compete in the global knowledge economy? Will he reject any tax proposals that come before him that would undermine our education service and take us back to where we were 20 years ago?
I can assure my hon. Friend that when the Leitch report is published the national debate on skills for the future will be led by this Government. We want to see more people who are in work at the moment acquiring the skills for the future so that British workers can get jobs that are available because they have the skills to do so. We wish to see more students able to study at university and college and more students staying on at school to get the necessary qualifications. We have already increased education spending from 4.7 per cent. to 5.5 per cent. of national income. We will continue to increase that figure in future years. What we will not do, in the interests of both stability and public investment, is go for irresponsible tax cuts in preference to investment in education. What we will not do—as I now find is another policy of the Conservative party from their economic policy review—is to introduce vouchers to pay for our public services. I hope that Conservative Members are aware that that is now their new policy.
Is my right hon. Friend aware that all the evidence that comes to my Committee—the Education and Skills Committee—suggests that the massive investment in education and skills over the years of the Labour Government has resulted in a direct improvement not only in millions of people’s lives but in the dynamism of our economy? [Interruption.] Yes, in our report that was published yesterday we called for more expenditure, greater investment and a speedy material increase in the amount of money going to individual pupils.
Will my right hon. Friend respond to my question—[Interruption.]
Order. I call the Chancellor.
When we took office, expenditure per pupil was £2,500 in our state schools. Today, the expenditure is £4,500. It is rising—
Virtually meaningless!
The shadow Chancellor says from a sedentary position that to increase expenditure from £2,500 to £4,500 is meaningless. That is an illustration of just how the Conservatives treat the very big issue of how we fund education in our state schools. We have increased spending from £2,500 to £4,500; we will increase it to £5,500 by 2007-08. As for capital investment per pupil, I have to tell the House that it was £100 when we came into power and it is now £650 on average per year. That is expenditure on IT, computers, buildings and equipment. That will rise to £1,100 in the next spending round. It will be above the level that is spent in private schools, as we move to our aspiration that state school pupils get the same teacher-pupil ratios and advantages in education as are available in private schools. I thought at one point that there was all-party support for that, but unfortunately the Conservatives have gone for irresponsible tax cuts.
Does the Chancellor accept the economic analysis published earlier this week that a liberal and flexible approach to the work force, reflected in substantial skilled and unskilled immigration, has boosted growth, reduced inflation and boosted the Government’s revenue? If he agrees, what estimate has he made of the possible cost to the British economy of the Home Secretary’s U-turn on that policy this week?
We have always said, we continue to say, and I hope the hon. Gentleman agrees, that migration to this country must be managed. We must get the balance right between the number of people we need to fill the skilled jobs that are available and a policy for managed migration to this country. I hope that that is still the policy of the Liberal party. We have benefited enormously from immigration in this country and we continue to do so, but there will always be—as there should be—managed migration to this country.
Why are the Government cutting adult education grant funding to Essex county council, which is resulting in the closure of Grey Friars adult community college in Colchester? Does not that make the Government’s commitment to skills in the work force rather hollow?
I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman supported what we are doing; in other words, what we are doing is—[Hon. Members: “Cuts!”] Well, we are putting the money through the employer, through the train to gain scheme. The employer and the individual will buy their courses from colleges where that is appropriate. If the college is providing the right service to the employer and the employee, it will get the business; if the college is not providing the right service, it will have to do so in future. I would have thought that was the policy of the Conservative party, but if that, too, has changed between tonight and today, perhaps the hon. Gentleman will tell me.
Funding for higher national certificate work-based learning programmes for engineers is very important. Will my right hon. Friend clarify what the Government are doing to improve the skills of our engineers?
In recent weeks I have met many people who raised with me the question of how China and India are funding vast expansions of engineering training. Here in Britain we need more engineers and we have to persuade more people to study engineering: partly through the reputation of science and engineering, which we must enhance; partly through encouragement to young people through vocational training in their schools, which we are expanding at present; and partly through the train to gain scheme, which is now in companies, where nearly 100,000 people are benefiting and gaining qualifications that they can add to. Some of those people will go on to become engineers. In those three ways, we will pursue a strategy to get more engineers in the economy and to value more the work that our great engineers do for this country.
Does the Chancellor agree that there is something seriously cock-eyed in the relationship between skills in the work force and economic growth and performance, when people such as those at my local university in Chelmsford, who have trained for between two and three years to become highly skilled nurses, could not find a job when they completed their training because the local NHS trust had to make 250 nurses redundant last week?
The fact of the matter is that nearly 80,000 new nurses are being employed by the national health service. The fact of the matter is also that the NHS budget is rising by between—[Interruption.]
Order. I have to say to the hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) that he asked the Chancellor a question, so he should let him reply, and not shout at him—[Interruption.] I am not responsible for the Chancellor’s answer—that is one thing I am not responsible for.
There are 80,000 new nurses in the national health service and more than 20,000 new doctors. The health service budget will expand next year. I believe that nurses now in training will get jobs in the future, but the one policy that would prevent them from doing so, and prevent us from expanding the NHS, is to go for irresponsible tax cuts in preference to investment in public services.
Local black country business leaders assure me that skills and training are essential for the future economic well-being of my locality. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that in the spending review they will be given high priority in future spending plans?
I accept what my hon. Friend says. As he knows, the Leitch report is considering all aspects of skills for the future of our economy, and is looking into how we can persuade both those in the workplace, and those who will join the workplace later, to get the skills necessary for the future. I agree with him that that must be a priority for the nation as it faces the global challenges ahead, but let us be honest: that will require us to spend a higher share of national income on education and training, and it will require employers, as well as Governments, to spend more on education and training. We cannot do that if we have irresponsible policies, promising reckless tax cuts that would put our country’s public services, and the stability of the economy, at risk.
Biofuels
We strongly support greater use of biofuels in Britain. The Chancellor’s announcements in the Budget of a new road transport fuels obligation and the extension of the duty discount on biofuels were welcomed by the industry and by this House. Those measures are helping to create the climate for new investment and expansion, and the latest figures show that sales of biofuels in Britain are about double last year’s levels.
I welcome that answer, but could the Minister give the House an indication of how long allowances other than those to which he referred—how long the Treasury’s whole regime for supporting biofuels—will last? My understanding is that the allowances are time-barred for three years, and that they will not run for a fourth year until that first three-year period is finished. However, to defray costs, people investing in bioethanol plants, particularly sugar beet, which is a key crop in north Yorkshire, are looking to write off the costs over 10 years, so we need to boost confidence in such investment over a longer period.
The guarantee on the duty discounts lasts for three years, and we deal with that on a rolling basis. The obligation is set at 5 per cent. until 2010-11, but we have made it clear that we want to extend it beyond that date. Another important element is the research and development tax credit, which is available to biofuels firms, just as it is to firms in other sectors. Some £1.8 billion has been claimed in R and D tax credits since we introduced them. That support is absolutely vital, as Britain’s capacity to compete internationally will in future depend ever more on our R and D, and on commercialising science and innovation. I can tell the hon. Lady that the prospects for the economy, the certainty that people want about biofuels, and the prospects for manufacturing, including in her constituency, would only be harmed by her party’s commitment to abolish the R and D tax credit.
In East Anglia a new bioethanol plant will shortly come on-stream, and of course we have many acres of sugar beet that can be processed into bioethanol. However, not many vehicles can use bioethanol. What discussions is my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary having with motor manufacturers to make sure that full-flex vehicles, such as those in Brazil that can run off both traditional petrol and bioethanol, are available in this country?
My hon. Friend, who follows the subject closely, will know that the obligation relates to blended fuel, which can be used in conventional engines and delivered through pumps on the forecourt. On the future generation of biofuels, he will have noticed that part of the Budget announcement on supporting biofuels concerned reducing vehicle excise duty for those with car engines that run on E85. Our ability to move further on the issue will depend partly on the European Union changing its fuel quality standards, and partly on the discussions that my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Department for Transport are leading with motor manufacturers, to ensure that there are improvements in engine technology that will allow greener future fuels to be used more widely in Britain, as elsewhere.
Environmental Taxation
Revenues from taxes introduced for a specifically environmental purpose amounted to 0.12 per cent. of overall tax revenues in 1997, and that rose to 0.4 per cent. in 2005. The climate change levy has proved particularly effective, delivering more than 28 million tonnes of emissions savings so far.
The Minister’s answer was carefully worded, but I remind him that the proportion of green taxes has fallen from 9.4 per cent. in 1997 to 6.2 per cent. this year. Is that what the Chancellor meant when he said, in this morning’s Financial Times, that he had got the balance about right in the economy? Is the Minister aware that CO2 emissions have gone up in six of the past eight years, and does he not agree that the only solution—
Order. The hon. Gentleman has asked about three supplementary questions.
The problem with the hon. Gentleman’s metric is that it measures the wrong thing. That could increase with an increase in pollution, which is a bad thing, not a good thing. We need a balanced package of fiscal measures and trading, and that is what we have delivered. The hon. Gentleman should support the climate change levy, which is a big switch from taxation on employment to taxation on pollution, and delivers 6 million tonnes of carbon savings a year. I hope that he welcomes that.
My right hon. Friend will be aware that green taxation on company cars has resulted in a hugely positive change in behaviour, but will he assure me that he will resist the temptation to make revenue from green taxes central to Government funding, as that would lead to a huge black hole in Government finances if and when behaviour changed?
My hon. Friend is right. The company car tax changes are very important, as they save about a quarter of a million tonnes of carbon a year, which will probably increase to half a million tonnes by the end of the decade and more beyond that date. It is important not to create huge holes in the public finances. For example, abolishing inheritance tax would require an 18p increase in petrol duty. If that is the Opposition’s policy, we should know about it.
According to a poll published this week, only 4 per cent. of the population believe that Labour has made effective progress on climate change; presumably the Chancellor is one of them. Does not the fact that he suddenly mentioned the issue 15 times in his Budget speech, compared with a previous average of one speech reference—
Order. The hon. Gentleman must ask a question. This is a supplementary question; he must not make a long speech.
The question is—because the Chancellor mentioned climate change 15 times this year, but only once the year before—is it not true that he is much more interested in political change than climate change?
The hon. Gentleman had the opportunity to support the climate change levy, which delivers 6 million tonnes of carbon savings a year. Almost uniquely in the world, we will deliver on our Kyoto objectives, and that is the result of the Government’s policies.
Employment
Employment levels are the highest on record, and have grown year on year every month since 1997, contributing both to the strengthening of economic growth and an 800,000 reduction in child poverty under this Government since 1997.
Part of our success in areas such as Denton and Reddish stems from a combination of the new deal, the national minimum wage and tax credits, all of which help to make work pay. Does my hon. Friend agree that in future we need to do even more to invest in skills and training so as further to enhance employment opportunities in areas such as mine, and that that should be our economic priority, not unfunded tax cuts?
I do agree, and I wish only that the shadow Chancellor agreed, too. We have increased employment since 1997 by 2.5 million jobs. In my hon. Friend’s own constituency, unemployment has gone down by 42 per cent., youth unemployment by 62 per cent., and long-term unemployment by 84 per cent. since 1997. [Interruption.] That is not good enough, however, as we still have too many people out of work on incapacity benefit, and we still have too many lone parents who want to work but cannot. The way to address that is to expand the new deal, not to abolish it.
What assessment have the Government made of the impact on employment of the tax credit system? As the Chancellor of the Exchequer has failed to answer a question on the issue in Treasury questions for 896 days, will the Economic Secretary tell us whether the Chancellor has read the recent report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that indicates that work incentives have become worse under this Government?
I am proud of the fact that we have more than 1 million more single parents in work because of the way in which tax credits, with the new deal, have boosted thier employment prospects. The employment outlook from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development states:
“There is a group of countries”
including the UK
“where the policy-driven improvements in employment and unemployment over the period considered have been the most significant”.
The OECD is referring to what we have done on tax credits. Tax credits and the new deal have improved the employment prospects of single parents in our country.
The economy in Aberdeen is booming. We have very low unemployment. It is well below 2 per cent., which is effectively full employment. However, there is a labour shortage; employers are finding it difficult to find people to go into work. What else can the Government do to encourage more people who are on inactive benefits to get into work?
My hon. Friend is right; we need to do more to help single parents get back into work with our support through the new deal and child care. We are also expanding the pathways to work initiative, which will help more people to move from incapacity benefit into employment. I hope that people in her constituency will be able to benefit from those measures as well.
Is the Minister aware that unemployment in Shropshire has risen by 36 per cent. over the past 12 months and that nationally unemployment is at a six-year high? I invite him, rather than reading tired and outdated ministerial briefs, to join the dole queues that are growing in Shropshire every single day of the week, and to come into the real world for a change.
We have the lowest level of unemployment for 30 years. We have 255,000 more people in work this year than last year. People have long memories; they remember 3 million unemployed and the 1.5 million families in negative equity. They also remember that it was unfunded tax cuts that led not only to public spending cuts but to double-digit interest rates. Nobody wants to go back to those days and, under this Government, that will not happen.
Is my hon. Friend aware that, during the summer recess, Honda in my constituency announced another 700 jobs to manufacture the new Civic? That is due in part to the success of the work force and management in doubling production of the new Civic in six months. Does my hon. Friend agree that Honda’s investment in manufacturing in Swindon demonstrates a world-class company’s confidence in the Labour Government’s world-class economy?
I do agree, and there are similar examples all around the country. The most important thing driving that job creation and new investment has been the stability in our economy since 1997—stability through Bank of England independence and through our fiscal rules. That stability would be put at risk if we were to return to the old days of unfunded and uncosted tax cuts for a few, which would be paid for by higher interest rates and instability, hitting families all around our country.
In 1995, the Chancellor said:
“Our plan is nothing less than to abolish youth unemployment. I will not make promises I cannot keep”.
Will the Minister confirm that the numbers of young people who are neither working nor studying are higher now than they were when the Government came into office? Is not that promise simply an early example of the Chancellor’s tendency to call for aspirations without a commitment to a specific timetable for delivery?
If the hon. Gentleman looks at the figures, he will find that his claim is untrue. Since 1997, we have seen not only falling youth unemployment—down by two thirds—but falling inactivity among 16 to 17-year-olds. The fact is that we have more people going into apprenticeships and going to college—[Interruption.]
Order. Mr. Osborne, the shadow Chancellor should not conduct himself like that.
I am sure that you are right, Mr. Speaker, although I do not think that the House will be surprised that he is.
We have more people going to college and going into apprenticeships and all those people are included in the figures referred to by the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban). There has been falling inactivity among that population group and, at the same time, there has been falling unemployment among young people. We should be proud of the achievements that we have seen since 1997, rather than trying to run them down with inaccurate figures.
Debt Relief
In addition to debt relief of $38 billion to 20 countries, 20 additional countries may qualify for relief of up to $50 billion. As a unilateral act, the UK is offering the equivalent of our share of 100 per cent. debt relief to a total of 80 countries and we call on other countries to follow.
I thank the Chancellor for that answer. Last Friday, I met Dudley borough churches forum to mark the start of One World week. While welcoming the work that the Government have done to tackle the problem and the international leadership of my right hon. Friend, my constituents rightly want further progress in more countries. What is he planning to do to accelerate the debt relief process and move us more quickly towards the millennium goals and justice at last for the world’s poor?
I thank my hon. Friend for the work that she, like many others, has done with churches in her constituency. We should be clear that, as a result of debt relief, Uganda has increased the number of children in education from 2 million to 6 million. In addition, Zambia has just announced the abolition of health charges, which means that health is available to all members of the population, however poor they are. As a result of aid and debt relief taken together, in one week 1 million children turned up for school and were given education free of charge in Kenya. Countries all round the world are able to spend on education, infrastructure and health as a result of what has been achieved by the write-off of debt. However, my hon. Friend is absolutely right that many poor countries are not heavily indebted poor countries. That is why we have made the unilateral gesture of saying to 30 or 40 more countries that we will be prepared to pay our share of 100 per cent. debt relief. We urge other countries to follow so that a higher share of debt relief can be paid as a result of international effort. I hope that we can persuade other countries to do exactly that as part of the international campaign that is being mounted.
May I ask the Chancellor about debt relief and personal indebtedness at home? Is he worried that both secured and unsecured borrowing stand at record levels? At the end of August, a total of £1.247 trillion was owed.
I am happy to answer a question about domestic debt relief, if that is the reading of the question. The biggest guarantee that people will not find it impossible to pay their debts will be maintaining the economic stability on which the British economy has grown over recent years. It is only when interest rates get out of hand—they rose to 15 per cent. under the previous Government—that people are unable to pay their bills. The debt advisory services for people who have personal problems are greater than ever before. When people are up against loan sharks and those who exploit their indebtedness, they need the protection of Government measures to regulate the pensions, mortgage, insurance and loans industries, so the hon. Gentleman had better look at his party’s proposals to abolish that protection.
Debt relief is of course extremely important to developing countries, but it must be accompanied by growth. What does the Chancellor expect must happen to get the Doha round of trade talks back on track?
My hon. Friend takes a big interest in this matter. As she knows, Africa has grown faster in recent years than it did previously, but there are still many people in poverty. One reason for that is that developing countries are unable to trade their products with the richest countries, which is why it is really important that the Doha trade round is resumed. I believe that it will be possible in the next few months to bring together the parties that have been unable to agree so that we can reach an agreement. Europe and America could make concessions on agricultural protectionism—I believe that it is the will of the House that that should happen—and the other major countries, which are Brazil and India, and the developing country bloc could also make the concessions necessary for agreement. We will do whatever we can in the next few weeks to get the trade round going again.
Critical elections are taking place this month in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr. Brown) and I saw on a recent visit, it is the poorest country in the world and its civic society has all but collapsed. Will the Chancellor outline his plans—I am sure that he will have the support of the whole House—for helping the Democratic Republic of the Congo with debt relief and generally increasing aid and help?
Debt relief is possible when a country has a working Government who are capable of managing its affairs. One reason we have had problems with debt relief has been that even when the will has been there on the part of the richest countries in the world, some countries had such a broken-down system of government and history of conflict that they were unable to manage the transition, so we need to give them extra special help to do so. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that we are prepared to give extra help. We are prepared to put in place measures that will make it possible for the republic to benefit from debt relief. Of course, our other measures to enhance educational and health expenditure in Africa will also be put in place, but that depends on the country having a stable Government who are able to manage their affairs.
As the Chancellor has said, debt relief is not an end in itself, but merely a way of improving the position of the poorest people in the poorest countries. Will he therefore join me in congratulating the children of Burtonwood primary school in my constituency, who recently did a project on the exploitation of child labour and discussed it with me, showing a great deal of knowledge and fluency? Will he explain to those young people what is being done to ensure that we improve the incomes of the poorest families, so that their children are able to take advantage of the education that we hope to offer them?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Once again, links are being developed between schools in Britain and schools in Africa, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and many other of the poorest countries. I know that the Department for International Development is very willing to help expedite those links, whether they are teacher exchanges or schools just maintaining contact with schools in Africa and the rest of the world.
With reference to child labour, next year is the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. One of the ways in which we could commemorate that is by making people aware of the extent of child labour around the world and the use of children as slaves. Over the next few months we should attempt to educate the public about the problem and do more to ensure that, instead of being in work during their early years, every child is given the proper chance of education. I want to see the 110 million children who are not in school given that chance of education over the next few years.
Money Laundering
The Government are consulting on how best to safeguard the money services business sector from criminal and terrorist finance, and will publish the results of their consultation on implementing the third money laundering directive when they publish draft regulations for consultation at the turn of the year.
Last year the Chancellor lectured fellow EU Finance Ministers on terrorist financing after the 7/7 bombing. He said that
“it’s important to realise that you’re only as strong as your weakest link. Where there are countries that are not taking action to cut off the sources of terrorist finance, we will clearly have continuing problems”.
Will the Minister ask the Chancellor to apologise to those EU Finance Ministers for failing to freeze the assets of former Hammersmith and Fulham resident Abu Hamza, and will he join the new Conservative council in Hammersmith and Fulham in seeking to evict the Hamza family from their council house?
The hon. Gentleman is quite wrong in his assertions. We have applied our terrorist order in exactly the right way over the past few years in this—[Interruption.]
Order. Once again, let the Minister answer. That is the best thing to do. [Interruption.] Order. I tell the hon. Gentleman that he should not interrupt the Minister, and he should not interrupt me, which is worse.
As I said, we have applied the order in exactly the right way. The assets of that individual have been frozen from the beginning. There has been no transfer of resources to him. The transfer of property, which was discussed between ourselves and the police, was not an illegal act. That transfer has now been frozen in order that we can recover legal costs. We strengthened our position in the case a few weeks ago. I ask the hon. Gentleman to look at the facts in more detail before he makes such accusations. I can tell him that he is quite wrong in all the things that he said.
The whole House appreciates that the Chancellor has much on his mind at present, not least his relationship with his at times tiresome neighbour. However, he said in October 2001 that finance was
“the lifeblood of modern terrorism”.
That being the case, can the Minister tell the House why we are still waiting for the report that the Chancellor promised us as long ago as December last year?
We have made repeated reports over the past year. I made a ministerial statement to the House just a few weeks ago. We have acted regularly in recent months to strengthen our terrorism order, to use closed source evidence and to strengthen our benefits regime. As I just said, we are also acting on money laundering and money services business. Across the piece we have been acting, and at the same time we have been freezing assets of individuals regularly and substantially. I say to the hon. Gentleman and to his colleagues on the Front Bench that I accept that we will not have a consensus on the new deal, public spending cuts, tax cuts or the priority that we attach to tackling child poverty, but I would have thought that we could have a consensus on the importance of our acting together on these issues. Frankly, we do not have that consensus because of the absurd claims that have been made by Opposition Members, which only undermine our efforts to take the terrorists to task.
Systems to disrupt money laundering and terrorist financing are most effective when necessary information for the authorities and private sector institutions is shared and acted on. What is being done to encourage the supervisory authorities and the financial intelligence units to develop international information-sharing systems?
On those very issues, we are acting all the time. I have met the US Treasury Under Secretary, Stuart Levey, three times in the past four months to discuss them. Across the piece, we are working very closely with our police and our security services to ensure that we use all the available information. I will publish a report at the end of the year that will set out all the measures that we are taking in order to make sure that we have the best and most comprehensive approach to those issues.
Let me give some more facts. Since 2001, a total of 85 individuals and 58 entities have had their assets frozen in the UK. Of those 85 individuals, 68 were designated by the Treasury and only 17 by the European Union. Of the 58 entities, 51 were designated by the Treasury and seven by the EU. We have been on the front foot on these issues. We have been acting decisively with our international partners. I believe that we are putting in place the best regime that we could have. Instead of undermining Britain’s efforts to tackle the terrorist threat around the world, I wish that the Opposition parties would start to support our efforts.
In 2001, the Chancellor promised that there would be
“no safe haven for terrorists”
and
“no safe hiding place for their funds.”
Despite all the Economic Secretary’s bluster, can he explain in what possible universe that statement by the Chancellor can be consistent with letting Abu Hamza sit in his prison cell in Belmarsh and splash out £220,000 on a four-bedroom semi in Greenford, two years after the Chancellor proudly claimed to have frozen the man’s assets?
I am happy to have a meeting with the hon. Lady to explain the facts to her, because the accusations that she makes are both completely wrong—completely factually incorrect—and undermine our efforts as a country to deal with these issues. I have to say to Opposition Members that if they want to get involved in a grown-up debate about how we can tackle the terrorist threat in our country, I am happy to have that debate, but if they want to make party political shots that are based on incorrect facts, all they will do is undermine their own standing and—
Millennium Development Goals
At the request of the United Kingdom Government, 19 African countries have submitted plans so that by 2015 every one of their children would be in primary education. The United Kingdom has committed, over 10 years, £8.5 billion to that effort. It is prepared to enter into 10-year agreements with the countries that have produced plans, and we have called a donor conference in early 2007 for all other countries, to invite them to contribute to the goal of achieving primary education for every child.
All of that is excellent news, but there are 100 million children in conflict-affected fragile states in the world, 43 million of whom have no opportunity at all to go to school. Those are the countries that receive the least financial support—or support of any kind—from the developed world. Is there nothing that we can do to make sure that those children—the most vulnerable children in the world—get the opportunities that we would expect for any child whom we know in our own country?
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Of the 110 million children who are not in education, a very substantial number are in countries where the education system has completely broken down because of conflict. I believe that, as a world, we will have to consider—just as we have done for health care—how we might provide international support in the future in situations where there is conflict and there are difficulties in running a civil education service from within a country. We obviously need to provide more funds for education in the poorest countries: £8.5 billion has been put into that by the British Government over 10 years. That would be enough to get 15 million children educated—and, therefore, a very substantial number of those who are not in school into school—but we need other countries to support us. We need Canada, which has already indicated that it will support, and other countries—Germany, France, Italy, Japan and America, which are all part of the G7—to support the effort. That is why we have called the donor conference, which will be held in Brussels at the beginning of next year, and that is why I hope that all the efforts of the international aid organisations will be directed at persuading other countries to contribute to what is the only way in which we can achieve the millennium development goals.
Given that achieving the millennium development goal of universal access to primary education is vital for individual fulfilment and for a country’s growth, will the right hon. Gentleman, in pursuing his laudable initiative to achieve improvement in this regard, pay particular attention to the problem that I have found in Malawi, Sierra Leone and Sudan—to name but three countries—whereby there is a very powerful cultural and institutional bias against disabled children? They cannot be left till last, because it is just not right.
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. Sometimes, girls are forgotten in education programmes, and sometimes disabled children are forgotten when we are developing education programmes in the poorest countries. Of the countries that have used debt relief to abolish user fees, Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya have made huge progress in getting all children into education, and I hope that that can be a model for the future. As the hon. Gentleman knows, there are difficulties within Sudan that prevent the development of education, but we are ready to give it debt relief and to provide funds for education when it can sort out its internal affairs. However, I agree with him that we should never forget that the people who have the least chance of advocating their own case are those whom we should support most.
Since 1997, the UK has given crucial international leadership on tackling international poverty, and it would be wonderful if we could build cross-party consensus in the UK on this crucial work. Has my right hon. Friend considered pursuing policies based on an ideology of a small state and big spending cuts, leaving the most vulnerable with less support and relying on charities to step in, as some have advocated?
We could not afford to put £8.5 billion into education if we cut the international development budget. Let us be clear: if the Opposition are serious about supporting the doubling of international development aid and continuing to increase it, they will have to abandon at least some of the policies that they put forward last week.
Does the Chancellor welcome the support of the United Nations co-ordinator of the millennium development goals for reports to Parliament such as the one that we have embraced in legislation, not just because it is helpful on matters such as education, but because it represents the transparency that is essential as we challenge global poverty?
There was all-party support for my right hon. Friend’s International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Bill, which requires the Government to prepare a report annually on the amount of spending and how it is being used. I want to see that happen at an international level, and, as he knows, there is a new Commission for Africa to be chaired by Kofi Annan, which will report back every year on how we are doing in meeting the Gleneagles agreement. That will put pressure on individual countries and international organisations, and again, I hope that there will be all-party support for it.
Flood Defence
The Government recognise the importance of funding flood defences, as I have made clear to the hon. Gentleman in letters and at a meeting with him in July. We have ensured and put in place big increases in flood defence and flood management funding since 1997, and future funding will be considered in the context of next year’s comprehensive spending review.
I thank the Minister for that meeting and for receiving the thousands of petition signatures from Lewes Flood Action and the National Flood Forum, which expressed concern about funding for flood defence works, but does he not realise that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is being squeezed and that, because of the farm payment fiasco, the money for flood defence work is actually being reduced? How can the Government be consistent with their policy to tackle climate change when money for one of the major adaptation measures is being cut, and what has he got to say to my Lewes constituents, who were promised a comprehensive scheme in 2000 and are still waiting for it?
The reality is that this year, compared with 1997, spending on flood defences and coastal erosion is more than a third higher than inflation. Let me be clear: there are no cuts in DEFRA’s spending limits or in the Environment Agency’s capital investment programme for flood risk management. DEFRA Ministers are managing the year-to-year pressures resulting from problems in the Rural Payments Agency and the costs associated with bird flu. It is right that we expect them to do so, although I recognise that that is not the traditional Liberal way, which is to throw money at, and make fresh spending commitments in respect of, any problem and any pressure.
US Economy
As it is our largest export market, trends in the US economy are important for the UK. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor will set out a full account of the UK economy in the pre-Budget report, but I can tell the House that gross domestic product rose by 2.75 per cent. in the year to the third quarter of 2006.
Is the Minister aware that The New York Times describes the US economy as a “financial mess” and that interest payments are the fastest growing component, squeezing out public spending and inducing recession? Bush’s conservative economic policy has been to spend unwisely and borrow heavily; his Administration have not had the sound financial management policies of our Chancellor. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that we have built-in protections in the UK economy against the growing US financial crisis?
I noticed that the Federal Reserve said yesterday that the economy seems
“likely to expand at a moderate pace”.
Whether it or my hon. Friend is right about the future remains to be seen. The key is maintaining our macro-economic stability in the UK—our record as a paradigm of stability, as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development expressed it. For example, during the slow-down at the start of this decade, we were alone in the G7 in avoiding recession. Under the Conservatives’ policies, we were always first into recessions and last out. That is why the vast tax cuts that they are arguing for are such a threat to our continued economic well-being.
Local Government White Paper
With permission, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the future of local government.
Local authorities and the services they provide in partnership with others are hugely important to the health and strength of our communities and country. They help to determine the quality of our everyday lives: the schools that our children attend, the cleanliness and safety of our neighbourhoods, the health of families, the ease with which we can travel, and the leisure activities that we enjoy. Many of the biggest social advances in recent generations were led by local government and its leaders. They have served their communities well. But in 1997, this Government inherited public services and institutions that were run down, demoralised and starved of cash and resources. We responded with significant investment to expand capacity and by setting a strong direction nationally. Combined with the hard work and commitment of local councillors, the local government work force and other partners, this has led to real improvements in local public service delivery.
For the next phase of reform, we need to respond to new challenges. The increasing complexity and diversity of these—from climate change to tackling deep-rooted social exclusion—demand more flexibility at local level. Moreover, expectations of citizens are rising fast. They rightly want more choice over the services that they receive, more influence over those who provide them and higher service standards.
The White Paper that I publish today proposes that local authorities and other public service providers have the freedom and powers that they need to meet the needs of their communities and to be more clearly accountable for doing so. Communities must have a bigger say in the issues that matter to them most. We therefore propose a new settlement with local government, communities and citizens. We will give local authorities a stronger role in leading their communities and bringing services together to address local needs and problems. Central Government will play their part in guaranteeing minimum standards and setting overall national goals, but we will step back and allow more freedom and flexibility at local level. In exchange, we expect to see more accountability to local citizens, stronger local leadership, better and more efficient services and a readiness to support tougher intervention when things go wrong. The White Paper sets out how we intend to achieve this re-balancing between central government, local government and local people.
At present, there are as many as 1,200 national targets and indicators for a local area. In future—[Interruption.]
Order. Let the Secretary of State make the statement.
We will cut that figure to 200 indicators with around 35 targets, plus statutory education and child care targets. The targets will be tailored to local needs, agreed between Government and local partners and set out in the local area agreement.
In that way, we will focus on the things that matter to people everywhere, guaranteeing national minimum standards, but encouraging local innovation and local priorities. We will introduce a more proportionate, risk-based inspection regime to cut bureaucracy and more targeted support or intervention when things go wrong.
Our best local authority leaders have made a huge difference to the citizens and communities that they serve. The White Paper sets out measures to ensure that all communities benefit from strong, accountable and visible leadership.
In future, there will be three choices for councils: a directly elected mayor, a directly elected executive of councillors or a leader elected by fellow councillors with a clear four-year mandate. All the executive powers of local authorities will be vested in the leader of the council, with a strong role for the council to scrutinise the leader’s actions and approve the budget and major plans.
The way in which councils choose to govern themselves will be different in different parts of the country. We will make it easier for local authorities to move to a directly elected mayor or executive by resolution of the council, in consultation with local people. When they want to do so, they will also be able to introduce whole-council elections and single-member wards, improving accountability to voters.
We recognise the gains that unitary status can offer in accountable, strategic leadership and improved efficiency. There will be a short window of opportunity for councils in shire areas to seek unitary status. We expect a small number of proposals to meet the value-for-money and other criteria set out in the invitation that we have issued today. In remaining two-tier areas, we will work with local authorities to deliver better value for money and greater efficiency.
Stronger leadership works best if it is balanced by citizens and communities having a bigger say in the quality of the services that they receive and the places where they live. To ensure that services are more accountable, responsive and efficient, local authorities will involve and consult service users more fully and provide better information about standards in their local area. In addition, we will review barriers and incentives to increased community ownership and management of local facilities and other assets.
We will increase and strengthen the powers of local people to demand answers and action through a new community call for action. Councillors should be champions for their local community, able to speak out on all issues affecting their area, including planning and licensing. They should be able to sort out issues on the ground or demand a formal response through scrutiny procedures. Effective scrutiny by councillors is an essential part of robust local democracy. We will strengthen it.
Communities need strategic leadership to help bring local partners, the business sector and the voluntary and community sectors together. Issues such as community safety, public health or community cohesion require all local partners to share the same agenda. Our best local authorities already recognise this—and their citizens and communities benefit as a result. Our proposals will ensure that that happens throughout the country.
Sir Michael Lyons described the “place-shaping” role of local authorities in his report in May. I pay tribute to his work so far. The proposals before the House today provide a clear basis for Sir Michael’s future conclusions on local government funding.
Cities play an increasingly important role as engines of economic growth. In recent years, there has been a renaissance in our towns and cities, thanks to the vision and leadership of local authorities and their partners. However, we need to go further. We must look beyond city and town boundaries to consider the success and prosperity of the surrounding area. Over recent months, we have consulted our towns and cities on the tools and powers that they need for economic development. There is no “one size fits all”. The White Paper provides a response to issues raised by towns and cities on transport, skills, economic development and co-operation between neighbouring local authorities. We will continue to work with them in the coming months. Our clear, overriding principle is that the greater the powers devolved, the greater the premium on clear, visible leadership.
None of our reforms can be carried out without a strong and committed work force. Local government contains many high quality councillors and public servants. It has transformed our towns and cities and, in many areas, it leads public services in partnership working, innovation and efficiency.
Our reforms will give citizens and communities a clearer voice, create stronger and more visible leadership and establish a new settlement with local government and its partners, communities and citizens.
The White Paper is about creating better services and better places. It sets out the tools that will help all local areas tackle the challenges of the 21st century, capture the strength and talents of their citizens and communities and achieve their full potential. I commend it to the House.
I thank the right hon. Lady for letting me have a copy of the White Paper in advance. I have had just enough time to check the number of pages and the price tag, which is £32.50—at least it is two for the price of one.
I shall begin on a note of consensus. I agreed with the right hon. Lady when she said that local government is in much better shape since 1997. The reason for that is that the Conservative party is now the largest party in local government and Labour councillors are an endangered species.
The White Paper prompts many questions, and the logical place to start is on the timing, which is extraordinary. The White Paper comes barely a month before the Lyons review into local government and ahead of the Barker review into planning. How can a local government White Paper mean anything, if it does not deal with finance? Does the Secretary of State agree that the function and finance of local government are two sides of the same coin? If she agrees, will she accept that without the financial dimension, the White Paper is incapable of addressing the real concerns of people outside Westminster? The true test of this White Paper is not whether it delivers enough localist soundbites; the test is whether it will deliver tangible changes for the majority of people, who are not interested in the machinery of local government or its incomprehensible jargon.
I want to ask the Secretary of State about the things that really matter to people who receive services from their councils. What will the White Paper do for those people who are worried about how they will pay for care in old age? What will it do for people who are struggling to pay council tax, which has soared for most people by 84 per cent. under Labour? And what will it do for people who desperately want to have a say about where new housing goes and the character of their neighbourhood? The answer, I fear, is precisely nothing.
The White Paper is toothless, because it is a series of compromises and halfway houses. Does the Secretary of State appreciate that the rhetoric on localism will be treated with scepticism, because of the poisoned chalice that she received from her predecessor’s obsession with regions? Month by month, more power and money is going to regional quangos, bypassing local councils. Until unelected regional assemblies are abolished and powers are returned to elected local councils, those localist pledges are not worth the paper on which they are written.
There are, of course, things in the White Paper with which we agree, because they are harmless. We warmly welcome the decision to cut the number of directives from Whitehall to councils from 1,200 to 200, but we will carefully monitor what that means in practice. It will be good to see power devolved to parish councils to pass byelaws, but where will the resources come from to enforce those byelaws?
What worries me about the White Paper is the level of compromise, which is the symptom of a party that is unsure of its direction. Does the Secretary of State agree that empowering council leaders is a fudge between the Prime Minister’s stated preference for directly elected mayors and the Chancellor’s opposition to them? And will the White Paper delay legislation on new powers for the Mayor of London?
Is not the reduction in the number of performance targets an admission of Government failure? The inspection regimes imposed by the Local Government Acts 1999, 2000 and 2003 were a mistake. Are not city regions just a muddled and ill-defined hybrid between a failing regional agenda and real local autonomy? And how does that fit with the powers enjoyed by the regional development agencies? Is not talk of the business case for unitaries just a strained bridge between the original big idea of the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which is characterised by the headline “Restructure or else”, and the more realistic description by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government of restructuring as “a distraction”?
Does the Secretary of State feel embarrassed because the Prime Minister charged her in an open letter with the need for a radical and devolutionary White Paper, which her own Department now describes as
“more evolutionary than shock and awe”?
Restructuring was in, and now it is out. Elected mayors were in, and now they are out. Targets were in, and now they are out. That is not progress or radicalism; it is the politics of the hokey-cokey.
While the Government chop and change, the real opportunity to improve people’s quality of life is being missed. That is the tragedy of the White Paper. It provides not a crumb of comfort to people worrying about how to pay for their mum’s care home costs. Is not it the case that people who are already scrimping and saving to meet their council tax bills will find nothing in the White Paper to help them? Will not those who want to have a say on the scale and shape of new development in their community still find their views ignored?
The White Paper is a wasted opportunity by a Government who have squandered their third term. A few pious platitudes and a bonfire of past Labour mistakes are no substitute for policy. The right hon. Lady must do better. Councils are straining to be set free. She should not be so timid. She should give freedoms back to local government and local people.
For a moment, I thought that the hon. Lady might have welcomed the Government’s proposals to recast the relationship between central and local government. I am disappointed that she did not choose to agree with the Tory chair of the Local Government Association, who, this morning, with his colleagues, described the forthcoming White Paper as
“heralding a historic deal on devolution in England for local people and those who serve them.”
I shall deal with each of the hon. Lady’s comments. It is welcome that she has not chosen to dispute the fact that the Government have significantly increased investment in local public services by almost 40 per cent. in real terms over the past nine years. Nor did she choose to dispute the fact that the quality and delivery of public services has increased over that period, that local government performance has improved, or that two thirds of local councils are now judged by the Audit Commission to be good or excellent. At least she recognises the role that local government can play in the future. In fact, her party’s recognition of the importance of local government is long overdue. Only recently, one of her colleagues confessed that
“it is true to say that the last Conservative government was not always kind to local democracy.”
It is a pleasant change to hear some words of substance from her right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. I could not agree more with his comments.
The hon. Lady made a point about the timing of the local government White Paper. She argued that we cannot consider giving more powers to local government, giving it more flexibility over the use of its resources, or slashing targets for local areas from 1,200 to 200, without at the same time reopening the debate and considering proposals on local government finance. It is a bit rich for her and her party to lecture us about the council tax. Most people would agree that it is right to think about what local government does before we think about how we raise finance. As the hon. Lady also knows, Sir Michael Lyons will consider local government finance in his independent report and make recommendations later in the year.
To argue that the White Paper is a damp squib that does nothing for local people, however, is completely and utterly wrong. The White Paper slashes targets, and moves to a new inspection regime, away from a rolling programme everywhere to proportionate, targeted, risk-based inspection. It is devolutionary on byelaws, on which the hon. Lady has changed her mind just this morning. It is devolutionary on single- member wards, all-out elections, parish councils and, yes, the standards regime for local councillors. It gives new flexibility over funding—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) will listen for a moment, he will learn that, currently, £520 million flows through the local area agreement. In future, the figure could be up to £4.7 billion.
The hon. Lady asked about city regions and the regional agenda. What matters to us is not trying to scrape together £21 billion of unfunded tax cuts, but securing the right powers at the right levels. That is why we consider these issues seriously. The hon. Lady argues for more devolution in housing. We know what Tory devolution means: it means not building the homes that people need.
The White Paper sets out a Labour view of devolution. It means central and local government working together to set minimum standards, but also to deliver local services, better places, more involved citizens and more prosperous local communities. Our proposals stand in stark contrast to the legacy of neglect and cuts that we inherited from the Conservative party. We now know what Tory devolution means: not fairness for all, but a free-for-all.
The Liberal Democrats welcome the White Paper, and I am pleased that the Secretary of State came to the House to make her statement. Nevertheless, the White Paper represents a significant missed opportunity.
Does the Secretary of State share our view that local communities are too often cut out of decision making—that they are too often forced to accept the standards and prescriptions of central Government, and that their voice is not being heard? Does she agree that public alienation, anger and apathy are all fuelled by a sense of disconnection from local government and from decision making? Despite all her head-scratching, the White Paper does not convince me that she agrees with that analysis.
The White Paper does not propose the fair votes that are essential for democratic renewal. It does not propose abolition of the council tax and the introduction of a fair tax based on ability to pay. It will not return the business rate to the control of local government, which is essential to freedom of decision making. Perhaps above all, it will not return the powers and the billions of pounds that central Government and quangos hold on behalf of local government, which prevents local government from making decisions. Sadly, much of what it does propose has more to do with administrative convenience than with democratic accountability. It has more to do with the fleeting fashions in No. 10 than with community engagement.
Whatever persuaded the Secretary of State to cut out community choice from the executive mayoral system? After 34 referendums and 22 rejections, with only 12 mayors accepted by the public and with four of the 12 who have been voted into office facing recall action by outraged local communities, could it just be that the Prime Minister went to the Secretary of State and said “We do not want local choice on mayoral executives: just get on with it”? Does that not make a complete mockery of the Secretary of State’s mantra about community choice? The only choice that the public did have and the only choice that they were exercising—to say “We do not want mayors”—is to be taken away from them.
In the media this morning, I heard the Secretary of State make much of the new powers for councils, parish and district, to make byelaws. That is good, but I wonder whether she has noted that they already have those powers under the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005.
There are some genuinely good things in the White Paper. The proposal to reform the Standards Board and its code is long overdue. The only point that I would make is that the Secretary of State could have done it without a White Paper, months and months ago. We also welcome the restoration of local councillors’ right to defend their local communities when planning and licensing decisions are made. We agree with the Secretary of State that the current rules are absurd and grossly anti-democratic. Will she undertake to bolt that provision on to some piece of legislation—any piece of legislation—very soon, and to bring back common sense before the new year?
Councils are to be invited to volunteer to convert to unitary status. How will the Secretary of State judge who volunteered and who was bounced? Will the public have a voice in the changes? Does she expect them to cost more money? If she feels the need to cap expenditure and the number of people involved—which I understand is proposed in the White Paper—and if, as I suspect, the local community will not be asked to endorse the changes, what exactly will be her criteria for approving them?
One of the most talked-up parts of the White Paper was the part relating to city regions. My question to the Secretary of State is simple: what happened to it? If the mayors are in because of No 10, city regions seem to be out because of No. 11. What exactly has the city regions project to do with the Treasury, and how has the Secretary of State let the Treasury get its hands on it?
The Liberal Democrats look forward to helping the Government to improve the White Paper drastically and dramatically, and to restore and rebuild local democracy. We await the Secretary of State’s answers with interest.
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman welcomes many of the proposals in the White Paper, even if he too believes that it should really have been a local government White Paper on council tax and property finance reform. We know what his party says about those issues, and I do not think that it has much popular support, but no doubt we shall debate them in the House in due course.
In fact, I largely agree with the hon. Gentleman’s analysis. While local public service standards and their delivery have improved significantly over the past nine years, expectations have also risen, and the former have not kept pace with the latter. Citizens now want a voice when it comes to the delivery of local public services, and expect their views to be taken into account. We need to reconnect them with public service delivery, and many of the proposals in the White Paper are designed to do just that.
For example, the best-value duty on local authorities will be reformed. Information will have to be given to local people. They will have to be consulted about local public service delivery, and will have to be involved in the making of choices. We are reviewing community ownership and the management of assets so that local communities will have the opportunity to take a direct interest in the provision of local public services. For instance, when a town hall is not being used adequately, their views about what should happen to it should be taken properly into consideration.
The White Paper will give communities a right to be heard, which I think is an important step. If the local ward councillor cannot get something sorted out on the ground, overview and scrutiny committees will be reformed to become mini-Select Committees. They will be able to take up local issues and call for evidence, not just from local authorities but from other local service partners. Primary care trusts, Jobcentre Plus and all the other agencies that work to provide services in an area will have to give evidence, respond formally in due course, and take recommendations into account.
Perhaps Labour Members should not be too surprised that the party of the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell) has some difficulty in accepting the notion of strong leadership. Of course, in this instance I am talking about strong leadership at local level. The hon. Gentleman argues that local people will no longer have a say. That is not the case at all. When the hon. Gentleman reads the details of the proposals carefully, he will see that local people will have to be consulted if a council decides to adopt a mayoral model. However, we will ensure that council leaders, where they are adopted, also have visible strong leadership.
The hon. Gentleman asked about unitary authorities. I think that we have got the balance right, avoiding any huge distraction of local councils so that they can get on with the job of delivering better public services for their people. But when there is real willingness and local support, and when councils meet the strict criteria set out alongside the White Paper in the invitation to bid for unitary status, we will consider bids properly, and a small number of councils will be given the opportunity to move to unitary status. We will, of course, make our judgment on the basis of value for money. We must decide whether the councils are providing strong leadership and responding to citizen and community concerns. I think all Members would agree that such criteria are important.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about the city region agenda. The White Paper sets out a clear direction for city regions. We want to support strong, voluntary boards of leaders and we want city regions to lead economic development in their areas. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport has already set out his plans to devolve greater control over buses. We are consulting on the development of city development companies; we are backing skills and employment boards; we are taking forward discussions on multi-area agreements; and, in the run-up to the comprehensive spending review, we are looking seriously into devolving even more powers to city regions.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will, on reflection, accept that the White Paper represents a serious step forward, with deregulation, devolution and a reconstitution of the relationship between central and local government.
I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, particularly her evident commitment to further empowerment and renewal of local democracy, improved accountability, improved leadership in local communities and the strengthening of the councillor’s role. As we look forward to the Bill to follow, will the Secretary of State look closely into the needs of urban areas—particularly cities—where the boundaries are drawn far too tightly to enable them to address the problems of conurbations and their communities? I suggest that the prospect of voluntary agreements might not be adequate to deal with the real problems in those areas.
I thank my hon. Friend—having previously led Leicester city council, he has considerable experience to draw on—for his comments. He is right that we need to examine how urban areas function economically and provide them with the necessary tools and powers. Sometimes, that might mean cross-boundary working, and multi-area agreements should be supported where appropriate. There might also have to be a boundary review—another option that is always available. Furthermore, looking into economic incentives for development is part of Kate Barker’s current work on reform of the land use planning system.
Frankly, that was rather like watching the spectacle of an elephant giving birth to a mouse. Local government will be very disappointed by the Secretary of State’s statement. My concern relates to funding and whether she can provide any hope to the people of Northamptonshire. The Government recognise that the county is underfunded as a result of the current formula. The former Minister with responsibility for local government acknowledged that, but said that it would take 20 years to put right. Will the Minister comment on that and include a proposal in the Bill to relieve the people of Northamptonshire of their great burden of underfunding?
The hon. Gentleman has clearly not read the comments of his local government colleagues and has failed to recognise the cross-party support within local government for the proposals I have set out today. He mentions Northamptonshire, but he well knows that the county has received above-inflation, real-terms increases in funding over the past nine years. In addition, my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government has been discussing the position with the council and I am sure that those discussions will continue.
In welcoming today’s statement, may I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the progress made—in the year and a day that has elapsed since she presented the education White Paper—down the devolutionary route for local government? She will appreciate that the detail of the White Paper and the extent to which there is buy-in across the whole of Government are crucial to implementation. I hope that she can assure us that all Government Departments will support greater devolution of powers and exhibit more trust in local government.
I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments. I know how personally committed he is to this agenda and I am well aware of the good work he did as Minister with responsibility for local government. He is right to say that the White Paper will succeed if it has the support of all Whitehall Departments. It does. There is a cross-Government commitment to this agenda. The fact that about 35 targets for local areas must be agreed through local area agreements will impose huge self-discipline on central Government to set down only what they really care about. If local government agrees with the agenda and the targets, it should be allowed to set its own ambitions to lead the area. I think that that is the right way forward. We now have a powerful opportunity to allow local leaders to do precisely what they were elected to do—to lead their towns, cities and local areas into the future.
Having heard what the Secretary of State said on the “Today” programme and her statement to the House, may I ask her why, if she truly believes in local government and local choice, she is seeking to impose a certain formula for leadership? Is she not aware that many local people have no time at all for the mayoral concept and that many local councils believe that recent changes have emasculated the participation of ordinary councillors in their councils’ deliberations?
I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. There are local choices about which model to adopt and councils will be able to choose a directly elected mayor only after full consultation with local people. I would like to see strong, visible leadership that can take an overview of the local area, plan for the future with confidence and take the necessary tough decisions. It will be properly accountable to citizens only if there is real citizen and community involvement. As part of the package of proposals that we are setting out today, we aim to ensure that citizens’ and community views are taken into account at every stage of development.
I call Ken Purchase.
Hear, hear.
Your power to surprise, Mr. Speaker, never ceases to amaze!
I also welcome the White Paper, which I believe represents the first seeds of a welcome U-turn, particularly in so far as the Secretary of State has made it clear that she wishes to re-empower councillors. Re-empowerment should become the watchword of whatever emerges from this exercise. All too often, our councillors have become no more than ciphers in the exercise of local government. A fuller U-turn would include the re-empowerment of housing committees, education committees and planning committees and I urge the Secretary of State to go the whole hog. Let us have local government that is truly meaningful.
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments and hope that, after he has read the White Paper in full, he will be even more pleasantly surprised than he is now. He is absolutely right to talk about local councils and it is right that non-executive members should have a powerful role in their communities. In future, we want to encourage local authorities to provide small budgets for local councillors so that they can knock different public service providers’ heads together, get issues dealt with on the spot, refer an issue to the overview and scrutiny committee and secure a proper formal response. We want people who deliver public services to appear in person or deliver evidence in writing to committees and we want their recommendations to be taken into account. I believe that all this will revitalise local democracy and re-legitimise the role of the local political party. After publication of the White Paper, we need seriously to look into how to build capacity in local political parties so that the councillors of the future are of the very best calibre.
Having spent 36 years in local government, I welcome any attempt by any Government to give back to local government the role it deserves. The Secretary of State made some interesting points, but will she explain what powers she has to ensure that minimum standards are met, and who will set the criteria? Will she ensure that responsibility is backed up with resources, and will she give a commitment that objectors as well as the promoters of applications will have a right to appeal?
The hon. Gentleman asks a series of questions and I shall try to deal with them. He is right to say that there will be minimum standards. There are key priorities that local authorities want to see achieved everywhere—for example, children in care and care home standards. The important point is that we negotiate with each local area what its targets for improvement should be. If it is failing to achieve minimum standards, that should be one of its targets. If it is meeting minimum standards but has capacity to do more, we can agree with that local area and its local partners what the targets should be—
I am talking about central Government agreeing with local government and its partners what the targets should be—[Interruption.]
Order. It is not the place of the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait) to shout across the Chamber at the Secretary of State. The hon. Lady should be quiet, or she will have to leave the Chamber.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We should leave local government the space and flexibility it needs to deal with complex issues of concern to local citizens and communities. The hon. Gentleman is right: we should fund any new burdens and we have a principle in place under which we will give funding to local authorities for any new burden imposed by the Government. He is also right that the inspection regime will change. It will become risk based and proportionate, but on the 35 targets that we expect to be delivered at local level, we will have a tougher under-performance regime, because as part of this package of proposals and the deal with local government, we expect those minimum standards to be delivered.
Will the White Paper extend and strengthen the duties of local authorities and primary care trusts to promote public health in communities? In particular, I am interested in schemes such as the “Eat Well, Do Well” scheme in Hull, which is to be scrapped by the Liberal Democrat council but is doing an enormous amount to promote the health of our children.
I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. All local partners will be asked to work to the same local objectives. That means in practice that where PCTs, social services and schools all have different agendas, they will in future be working to the same output objective. That will mean that an integrated personalised response can be delivered on the ground. We will expect partnerships for health and well-being to be in place up and down the country as a result of the proposals in the White Paper.
It is good to have a White Paper with the subtitle “repentance” that includes, not least, the dismantling to some extent of the new gendarmerie of control and inspection put together by this Government. But the White Paper is still a series of unresolved conflicts, as it is bound to be before we get the Lyons report and in the Blair-Brown interregnum. The White Paper is like a visit to a tapas bar, with a lot of little snacks, all of which are reasonably agreeable, but no decent meal in sight.
If city regions are central to the Government’s thinking—as they should be—are the Government willing to restructure some of the existing regional and sub-regional bodies, such as the learning and skills councils, the regional development agencies and the planning structures so that real levers of influence can be given to the city regions to influence their own fates and improve the lot of their citizens, especially in transport and skills, which are the crucial issues?
Of course what we need is a balanced diet, not indigestion. The White Paper sets out sensible proposals and is not subtitled “repentance”. The story so far is of improved local public service standards and an increased capacity in local government. The reason we have achieved that increase in standards is the central drive from Government, for instance with the literacy and numeracy hours from the Department for Education and Skills and the decent homes programme, which is putting right £19 billion of under-investment and backlog that we inherited in 1997. That is why we are in a position to devolve more and, as I have argued in the past, we have now reached a tipping point at which local government can take on more responsibilities.
The right hon. Gentleman asks specifically about city regions. The White Paper proposes employment and skills boards and city development companies in cities that want them. It will set out the clear principle that the more powers to be devolved, the greater the premium on transparent, visible leadership. The Leitch review is looking at skills and the Eddington review is looking across the board at transport, and we will come back with specific proposals for each city.
I welcome the White Paper’s commitment to extending devolution, but may I draw my right hon. Friend’s attention to two issues? First, I endorse what she said about the need for different governance formulae for different areas. What is right for a city region area such as that including Birmingham will be different from elsewhere. Secondly, we need to keep focused on the need to empower communities, not simply local authorities or agencies. Birmingham is a huge city and it needs the governance arrangements that go with that strategically, but the real test of success will be its willingness unambiguously to devolve further power to local communities such as mine, so that local people can have much more of a real say.
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. He is right to say that we must go with the grain of partnership working in different local city areas. As he knows, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when he was in my job, set up a process of city summits, which I was happy to take forward. It is clear to me that there is a huge appetite out there for more powers to be granted at the city region level. The city regions are already working together on a partnership basis, but the extent of their ambition and their capacity differs. The identification of citizens with their local areas also differs from place to place and we must build on what is happening locally. My hon. Friend is right also to suggest that we have to empower communities. A real test of our proposals will be the extent to which citizens and communities feel that they have a greater say in the provision of local public services.
What consequences will the White Paper have for how and when legislation will be introduced to transfer powers to the Mayor of London?
What discussions has my right hon. Friend had with the Local Government Association in anticipation of drawing up the White Paper? Now that it has been launched, does she anticipate the LGA having any major problems with its content?
I have had months of discussion with local government partners through the LGA and the different political groups on it, as well as with different towns, cities and rural areas across the country. The LGA has welcomed the full extent of the proposals, arguing that the White Paper is an essential first step on the road to a new relationship between Government and local government.
In her statement, the Secretary of State said that communities must have a bigger say in the issues that matter to them most—a sentiment with which we would all agree. Will she put some flesh on the bones? For example, one issue on which local communities may feel very strongly is road safety. Will the local highway authority be able to introduce speed limits and install pedestrian crossings without any interference from the Department for Transport?
When the right hon. Gentleman has the chance to read the White Paper, he will see that the Highways Agency is one of the named partners that will have to co-operate with local objectives. That means when a citizen or a community has an objection to a particular proposal, they will have the right, through their ward councillor, to have it considered by the overview and scrutiny committee, so that proposals can be made. The Highways Agency would have to take those into account when considering future measures.
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s recognition of the role of councillors as community champions and the need for ever better strategic leadership in local authority areas. The first of those will mean working more closely with community and voluntary sector representatives in the streets and estates of local authorities in ways that are informative, meaningful and flexible. At a more strategic level, will she look again at the way in which local strategic partnerships operate, in particular those with the good practice of really involving representatives of the community and voluntary sector to ensure that their voices are heard in LSPs?
My hon. Friend is right. The LSP, which brings together local partners, business representatives and the voluntary and community sector, will have a real role to play in deciding the future of a local area. However, the LSP should be chaired, or the chair should be agreed, by the local authority leader. Local authorities will be the bodies that are accountable, that take the decisions and that have the powers and tools they need to work with the voluntary sector to deliver real improvements for local people.
Does the Secretary of State agree that one of the greatest restrictions on local accountability, prioritisation and efficiency is the ring-fencing of funds by central Government, who specify in increasing detail how and on what money is spent? She has set a target to reduce targets, so will she ring-fence the amount of ring-fencing? What does she propose to do to reduce the amount of ring-fencing?
I am glad that I have been able to give the right hon. Gentleman a degree of confidence that we are going down that route. Just over £500 million flows from central Government through the local area agreement, which is the delivery agreement with a local area. Measures in the White Paper will cause that to rise to up to £4.7 billion, with the presumption that, unless there is an exceptional reason to the contrary, all area-based funding will go un-ring-fenced through the LAA. There will also be a single capital pot, so local authorities will have real flexibility as to how they meet their targets.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her statement. Continued improvement in performance must be the best way to strengthen local authorities’ leadership and autonomy. That is good news for 95 per cent. of local authorities, but a minority will always be unable to cope well, through either incompetence or extremism. What powers will the Government retain to deal with councils such as the new Tory administration in Hammersmith and Fulham? In the past few weeks it has announced that it will close one of the borough’s three secondary schools to sell the land that it is on. It has also cut the delivery of meals on wheels from once a day to once a week—
Order. I think that the Secretary of State has got the drift of the argument.
My hon. Friend is right that the Government should be able to agree key requirements with a local area, and to expect them to be delivered. Where those requirements are not delivered, the Government should be able to provide support or to intervene. In addition, local people should be able to have their views taken into consideration.
The Secretary of State talked about providing freedoms to local authorities, but what real opportunities will local authorities and communities outside cities have to draw down powers and funds from the plethora of unelected quangos that control so much local spending? For example, are there any plans to change the fact that the only democratically elected person with responsibility for health is the Secretary of State for Health? Is not it true that the White Paper will not give local government the powers it wants?
I am afraid that the hon. Lady is labouring under a misapprehension about the proposals in the White Paper, which mean that locally elected representatives will have a key role in the health and well-being partnerships, and can lead them if they wish to do so. As a result, PCTs and social services will work intimately together, with a local democratic input.
I, too, welcome the White Paper, which amounts to a step change in the relationship between central Government and local government, and between local government and their communities. In particular, I welcome the important leadership role that democratic and accountable local councils will have. How will she ensure that the budget held by agencies that deliver non-local government services will change to reflect the leadership role, and the local partnerships, outlined in the White Paper?
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. He has huge experience as a local councillor, and as chair of the Special Interest Group of Municipal Authorities. He is right to emphasise the importance of strong local leadership. Local authorities need to have real input into setting and agreeing objectives with their local partners. That means agreeing the objectives that all the local agencies—and that includes the PCTs, in the case of health—should work towards. The White Paper contains a long list of all the partners that must co-operate with the local authority in fulfilling those objectives. As a result, there will be joint commissioning in the future, and different agencies will be working to the same ends. Another consequence is that they will not have conflicting targets, with one agency trying to do one thing and a different agency something else. In future, all agencies will be able to work on an integrated basis.
In her statement, the Secretary of State said that councillors should be able to sort out planning issues. My district council—quite rightly and of its own volition—is building 9,000 houses to meet housing need. However, an outcry has erupted at a proposed development of 6,000 houses on the edge of Leighton Buzzard, as it is in the green belt and on a flood plain. On this issue, will my councillors be able to respond to the needs and wishes of the people whom they represent?
Local authorities already have huge planning powers. For instance, some have managed, through their local development framework, to prevent building in back gardens—a matter about which, I know, the hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) has very strong feelings. By using the powers to their full extent, local authorities can respond to local citizens’ wishes. Many Opposition Members do not want the homes to be built, which is why we have a national framework for agreeing how many homes are needed. I want greater local flexibility in the framework, and the hon. Gentleman should await the forthcoming PPS3 on development.
I too welcome the statement from my right hon. Friend. I hope that she will agree that the investment and support given to local authorities by this Government stand in stark contrast to the cuts and devastation inflicted over years by the Opposition. However, I seek clarification on two points—
Order. At this late stage, one point would be fine.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The one point about which I seek clarification has to do with those county councils that, like Durham, are seeking unitary status. What is expected from a bid in addition to value for money? What time scale will apply, and will councils still have to achieve consensus?
I thank my hon. Friend for her questions, and she will be able to examine the invitation to councils that we are publishing alongside the White Paper. There will be a narrow window of opportunity, and the timetable is set out in the document. Any proposed change to a future unitary government structure must be affordable within a council’s existing resource envelope and must enjoy a broad cross section of support. We also expect strong leadership and local accountability to be part of any such proposal.
The Secretary of State spoke about listening to local people, but I remind her of the result of the north-east referendum. It emphatically rejected regionalism by a staggering seven to one majority on a nearly 50 per cent. turnout. Does she believe that unelected regional assemblies will be more popular than elected ones? Will she include in her proposals provisions for referendums in all the regions of England, so that local people can decide whether they want to keep unelected regional assemblies, or whether they want the powers to be returned to local authorities, where they belong?
I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman focuses on having referendums up and down the country, as regional assemblies are voluntary partnerships composed mainly of local authority representatives. Of course, they will have a key role in determining local housing numbers—so perhaps he too has an ulterior motive.
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests. Given that so much of local service delivery is provided by arm’s length companies and trusts, it is right that scrutiny panels have even more control over them. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, other than in commercially sensitive matters, all the information and background documents from those trusts and arm’s length companies will be made available to councillors? That is not what happens at present.
My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. There must be accountability in the provision of local public services. A set of named partners will have the duty to respond formally to the overview and scrutiny committees when they request information. If that mechanism does not apply in his local circumstances, which I should be happy to investigate, I remind him that the freedom of information provisions still apply.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley), I suspect that those of us who have been councillors or are recently retired councillors will find today’s statement not only a disappointment but a failure to recognise much of the reality that we face. The Secretary of State talked about councillors being champions for their wards. Most of us have been doing that for years. What in the statement is new and will give extra powers at ward level to councillors? What exactly is the community call for action?
I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman does not agree with fellow councillors up and down the country who are this morning welcoming the proposals set out in the White Paper. Indeed, Lord Bruce-Lockhart, the Tory chairman of the Local Government Association, called the cutting of targets “great news”. The hon. Gentleman asked what specific powers there would be. I would have thought that the opportunity to set byelaws at local level to deal with street nuisance, which people really care about, was a huge devolution of power from the centre. Councils will not have to drag those cautioned for an offence through the magistrates court, but will have the opportunity to issue a fixed penalty notice. He asked what the community call for action was. It is the opportunity, as I have just outlined to my hon. Friends, for a community or individual, through their ward councillor, to have their complaint or issue properly examined, responded to and taken into account at whole-council level.
I welcome the White Paper and its focus on strengthening the role of local councillors and on strong local leadership. I note the proposals for four-year elected terms for leaders, executives and mayors. Has my right hon. Friend given consideration to the thorny issue of the failure of such individuals as a result of abuse or corruption? How do we ensure that public confidence is maintained in the leadership and how will political groups work with a leader who is there for four years if they have lost confidence in him or her?
My hon. Friend raises an important point. The presumption will be that leaders are elected with a four-year mandate so that they are able to draw up a local strategy for the area and see it through, taking decisions as required, but if the leader of the council loses the confidence of the council, he or she will have to go.
Business of the House
I shall be pleased to make a business statement, if I may—[Interruption.] The right hon. Lady says from a sedentary position that she has not asked for the business, but she will be aware that where we have a business statement rather than business questions, I am expected to stand up without being asked. That is how it works.
Monday 30 October—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Violent Crime Reduction Bill, followed by a debate on security of energy supply on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
Tuesday 31 October—Opposition day [un-allotted half-day]. There will be a debate entitled “Conduct of Government Policy in Relation to the War in Iraq and its Aftermath” on a motion in the name of Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National parties, followed by motions relating to the Crossrail Bill.
Wednesday 1 November—Business of the House motion relating to proceedings on House of Commons business, followed by motions relating to House of Commons business including September sittings, the legislative process, matters sub judice, Select Committee evidence, shorter speeches and European Standing Committees.
Thursday 2 November—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Education and Inspections Bill.
Friday 3 November—The House will not be sitting.
The provisional business for the beginning of the following week will be as follows:
Monday 6 November—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Animal Welfare Bill, followed by proceedings on the National Health Service Bill [Lords], followed by proceedings on the National Health Service (Consequential Provisions) Bill [Lords], followed by proceedings on the National Health Service (Wales) Bill [Lords], followed by consideration of Lords amendments, followed by a debate on a motion for the Adjournment of the House, on a subject yet to be decided.
May I also inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall will be:
Thursday 2 November—A debate on the Fifth report of Session 2005-06 for the Home Affairs Committee on Immigration Control (HC 775) and the Government response.
I thank the Leader of the House for his business statement. He read out a list of those subjects that will be included in the business of the House motion on 1 November. Does he expect anything to be added to that list and, if so, what?
Last week, when pressed for a debate on Iraq, the right hon. Gentleman said in so many words that it was up to the Opposition. For example, in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. Baron), he said:
“there will be a five-day debate on the Queen’s Speech. It is a matter for the Opposition, and not for us, but I hope very much that one of those days will be used for foreign policy.”—[Official Report, 19 October 2006; Vol. 450, c. 1022.]
I can confirm to the House that we will indeed be setting aside one whole day of the Queen’s Speech debate for foreign policy and defence matters. So we are playing our part. Can the Leader of the House confirm that the Foreign Secretary will be available for that debate?
I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government was willing to come and make a statement today on her local government White Paper, but inserting that statement into today’s business means that today’s international development debate will be squeezed, possibly to only an hour and a half. I ask the Leader of the House to consider redressing that balance in the future, with a longer debate on international development.
On Tuesday, the Home Secretary issued a written statement about access controls for those coming from Romania and Bulgaria. He did not make an oral statement, which meant that he could not be questioned about the Government’s policy. But then it does seem that the Home Secretary is a little reluctant to answer questions in the House. On Monday, Home Office questions covered prisons, asylum applications, detection of rape, reoffending and police pay. Did the Home Secretary answer any of those questions? No. But he did answer two questions on mini-motorbikes and gopeds. So will the Home Secretary come to the House and make a statement on the operation of the Home Office so that Members of the House can question him on his policies and his running of the Home Office?
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation will soon make a decision on the use of the new cervical cancer vaccine. When that decision is clear, will the Health Secretary make a statement to the House on the Government’s policy on the use of that vaccine?
May we have a debate on nursery provision? Government guidance means that nurseries cannot charge top-up fees, which means that many private nurseries will probably close, cutting the availability of child care. We need a debate so that the Government can explain how they can claim to be interested in increasing child care when their policies will cut provision?
The Prime Minister has frequently spoken about the need to address climate change. Indeed, recently he told his European Union counterparts:
“We have a window of only 10-15 years to take the steps we need to avoid crossing catastrophic tipping points.”
On 17 October, the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford university published “Predict and Decide: Aviation, Climate Change and Policy”. The leader of the project, Dr. Brenda Boardman said:
“Unless the rate of growth in flights is curbed, the UK cannot fulfil its commitments on climate change.”
Yet the very next day the Department for Transport issued a document on railway closures, in which it said:
“Where long distance travel might be affected by a closure proposal, domestic air services may also be a relevant alternative.”
May we therefore have a debate in which the Secretaries of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and for Transport are brought to the House to explain the contradiction that is occurring in Government policy? Or maybe we should simply leave it to the Foreign Secretary, who of course was talking about climate change earlier this week at the very same time as the Deputy Prime Minister was travelling around the far east doing the Foreign Secretary’s job. Today, the Chancellor is doing the Culture Secretary’s job by talking about competitive sport, although, given the drubbing that the Chancellor was given by my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) in Treasury questions this morning, I suspect that the Chancellor will not be quite so interested in competitive sport in the future. So may we have a statement on ministerial responsibilities?
Let me answer the right hon. Lady’s questions in order. She asked whether anything else was to be added to the list that I read out. Yes, very possibly, although I cannot be certain at the moment. It would be in relation to communications allowances. I shall certainly refer to the proposal of which she is aware from her membership of the House of Commons Commission. We may have a resolution on that, but I cannot be certain at the moment and I will of course keep the Opposition and the Liberal Democrats informed.
On Iraq, the right hon. Lady is being slightly disingenuous in pretending that the Queen’s Speech debates are Opposition days. They are quintessentially Government days. It is just that by convention the allocation of subjects between those days is a matter for the Opposition—a convention that I strongly support. It has always been so. Certainly when we were in opposition—and I attended every day of those debates during the 18 years of Labour opposition—we always allocated one day to foreign policy and defence, and I am glad that the practice is being followed under the right hon. Lady’s shadow leadership of the House.
The right hon. Lady asked whether my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary would be available. I know that she will want to be available, and now that we know that there is to be a debate on foreign policy, if we can be told the precise date I shall communicate it to my right hon. Friend.
The right hon. Lady noted that we would have an hour and a half for the international development debate today, but we have had other debates on international development—
But not with a reply from a Foreign Office Minister.
I take the right hon. Lady’s point and the comment of the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow). The right hon. Lady will be aware of my concern about the slightly eccentric allocation of scheduled Adjournment debates on the Floor of the House; some subjects often come up, while others— for example, foreign policy and international development—do not have a regular slot. That will be discussed in the Modernisation Committee and I hope that, within the available time, we shall be able to come to a more rational, sensible and agreed balance on those subject debates.
On access controls in respect of Bulgaria and Romania, I think that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has been forthcoming in making oral statements. The written ministerial statement was listed on the Order Paper, as it had to be, when my right hon. Friend made the announcement about Bulgaria and Romania earlier this week. We introduced the WMS procedure so that Members have far better notice than the old planted parliamentary questions. That is the whole point of written ministerial statements. If Members spot a WMS that they think should be turned into an urgent question, it is open to them to seek the permission of Mr. Speaker.
I shall pass the concerns of the shadow Leader of the House about the vaccination recommendations to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will want to make a statement—probably written, unless she has some other opportunity to do so.
The shadow Leader of the House made some points about child care. If I was a Conservative, I should keep extremely quiet about child care because of the Conservatives’ utterly lamentable record on it when they were in office and their current plans to cut £21 billion from public spending, which would hit child care as much as anything else. I remind the right hon. Lady of something that I am surprised she did not celebrate: over the last nine years, we have introduced 1.2 million new child care places and more than 1,100 new neighbourhood nurseries, with free part-time nursery places for every three and four-year-old. My constituency is typical; there has been a revolution in child care based on that increased investment, Sure Start and, above all, the family tax credits that help mothers to go back to work.
The right hon. Lady made a very eccentric point about railway closures, because we have been opening new railway systems. There has been a 44 per cent. increase in the number of individuals travelling by train and a similar increase in the amount of freight. Only this week, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport announced that more than £400 million would be invested in the next stage of the tram system in Nottingham, with extensions to Chilwell, Beeston and Clifton.
Last week, I asked the Leader of the House whether we could have a debate on the fiasco of the Rural Payments Agency, so this week I shall ask him whether we can have a debate on the consequences of that fiasco in terms of the £200 million-worth of budget cuts in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which will affect flood management, environmental protection, veterinary laboratories, Natural England, British Waterways—a long list of exactly the issues that the Prime Minister says are a priority for the Government. May we have a debate on how that was allowed to happen?
While we are on environmental issues, I echo the view of the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) that there should be a debate on transport. During the lifetime of the Government, traffic levels have risen by 11 per cent. Since 1990, carbon dioxide emissions from traffic have gone up by 10 per cent. to 32 million tonnes. When the Deputy Prime Minister was in charge of those things, he had a five-year plan, although of course it did not work. Now, he no longer has a five-year plan about anything, but we should have a strategy for dealing with road transport. It is not very obvious what that strategy is at present, so may we have a debate on it?
I return again to the issue of Iraq. As the Leader of the House knows, I have asked regularly—almost every other week during this Parliament—for Government time to debate what is happening in Iraq. It is not good enough to rely on Opposition days for such debates or, indeed, on the day in the Queen’s Speech debates that is normally reserved for foreign affairs and defence matters across the whole world—that offers a panoramic view of our responsibilities rather than a focused debate about what is happening in Iraq. Given that the world view of events in Iraq is changing rapidly, it is simply not acceptable for British policy and strategy to be based on the short-term requirements of the United States mid-term elections rather than a British assessment of our interests and the interests of our armed forces. May we have that debate in Government time and, if necessary, can we delay Prorogation or have an extra day of debate on the Queen’s Speech so that we have an opportunity to do justice to the matter?
Lastly, may we have a debate on the Department of Health’s useful advice to health service chief executives, displayed on its intranet, that they should
“go in and out of different doors of the building every day for a month”
and
“say hello to three people each time”?
Can we know whether they should do that before or after issuing the press release about the latest hospital closure?
On the Rural Payments Agency, DEFRA questions will be next Thursday. Furthermore, my noble Friend Lord Rooker, who has direct responsibility for sorting out the difficulties in the agency and has been in very close touch with farming representatives, understands the difficulties that are being faced.
Transport rates are indeed up 11 per cent. It is inevitable that some transport levels will rise given the rapid, and record, rate of economic growth that we have experienced in the last nine years. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) should be paying tribute to the transport strategy we have adopted, which has ensured that although the rate of overall growth in our economy is about 30 per cent., the increase in transport—according to his figures—has been only about 11 per cent.
I understand the case that the hon. Gentleman makes for a debate on Iraq and, indeed, on wider foreign policy matters. I have already made clear my personal frustration, which I experienced as Foreign Secretary, that quite a lot of days are allocated for subjects that do not command much interest in the House, but there are undertakings to use them, while there has to be a big argument about other days. However, I must push back the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion that the Queen’s Speech is not an appropriate time to debate those matters. First, as we have heard, a full day will be allocated to foreign affairs, as is normal, and it is ludicrous to suggest that Iraq and Afghanistan would not be the major topics. They are the major foreign policy issues, along with peace in the middle east, which is a related matter.
Secondly, it is the nature of the Queen’s Speech debate that Members on both sides of the House can make a speech on any subject relevant to the Queen’s Speech—Iraq and Afghanistan are two such subjects—at any stage during those debates, whether or not the Opposition have identified it as a subject for debate that day. Far from there being only one day for debate, there will be opportunities, if Members can catch Mr. Speaker’s eye, for points to be raised and good speeches made over the whole five days of the Queen’s Speech debates. I hope that Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and my hon. Friends take those opportunities.
Lastly, I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing attention to the advice on the website that chief executives should use different doors and say hello to three people each time. When I was running the Home Office and then the Foreign Office, it was my common practice to use different doors and to walk down corridors uninvited and pop in to find out how people were getting on. Once they had recovered from the shock, I learned a great deal—even if they did not.
This morning, the all-party group on town centre management met to discuss the “State of the English Cities” report with its lead author, Professor Michael Parkinson. The consensus that emerged was that the case of cities and towns would be much advanced by a system of strategic unitary councils. Will my right hon. Friend give positive consideration to allowing a debate in the House on the local government White Paper, so that we can properly scrutinise those important matters?
I welcome what my hon. Friend says. I greatly support the Association of Town Centre Management, and the report on the state of cities was significant. This is probably not yet fully Government policy—well, it almost is—but I strongly support unitary authorities. There is no question but that they have made a big difference where they have been introduced. One place where the change has been dramatic happens to be my constituency, which is run by Blackburn with Darwen borough council. First, there will be opportunities to discuss the subject in the five days of the Queen’s Speech debate. Secondly, there will, of course, be opportunity for discussion when a Bill is introduced to implement the White Paper. If we can find time—I am making no promises—for a debate in the meantime, I will make sure that it takes place.
Was the Leader of the House here earlier for the exchange in Treasury questions between the Chancellor and the shadow Chancellor? If he was, he would support our request for an urgent debate on private pension schemes. Is he aware that thousands of occupational pension fund holders have had their pension schemes wiped out? Can he confirm to the House that the total cost of the Chancellor’s 1998 tax changes to pension funds is now a staggering £100 billion?
I was not present, but I understand that the shadow Chancellor was pulled up by Mr. Speaker for using inappropriate language, and as he was properly educated, that is very bad. I think that his performance will be remembered mostly for that rebuke. I had hoped that he would talk about the new plan, so helpfully set out on the Conservative party’s website, of the economic competitiveness policy group, which includes wholesale deregulation of things such as pensions, so that there will, in future, be opportunities under Conservative policy for people to sign away their rights—including, I assume, their pension rights—when they take out loans or insurance. Under the Conservatives’ new plan, there will be a completely deregulated pensions arrangement.
As for the hon. Gentleman’s particular point, the matter has been the subject of significant discussion in the House by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. We understand the great concerns of the individuals involved and we are doing our best for them, but for reasons that we have spelled out, we did not think it appropriate to accept the report of the pensions ombudsman.
May we have a debate on the manner and the content of the Department for Transport’s announcement this week that the toll on the Thurrock-Dartford crossing will increase by 50 per cent.? My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate) and I learned about the announcement from the press, not from the Minister. That is not only discourteous and bad politics, but unfair, because my hon. Friend’s constituents and mine will pay disproportionately for the roads of others. I hope not only that the Leader of the House will allow us a debate on the subject, but that he will have a word with his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport about whether that decision could be reviewed, bearing in mind that this House passed an Act of Parliament saying that tolling would cease once the bridge was paid for—and it was paid for four years ago.
I know my hon. Friend’s constituency well, and of course I understand his concern. My right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary will be concerned to hear that my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate) and my hon. Friend only heard about the matter from the press. I will take that up with the Secretary of State, as well my hon. Friend’s substantive point.
May we have a full-day debate on business attitudes towards the European Union? An ICM poll of 1,000 UK companies reported by Jeff Randall showed that 52 per cent. of chief executives think that the European Union is failing, while 60 per cent. think that the UK should have a free-trade area agreement with the European Union and nothing else, and 54 per cent. think that over-regulation of the EU outweighs any benefits resulting from the single market. Given that huge shift in businesses’ attitudes towards the European Union, and given the view that it is clearly failing British business, may we have a full-day debate so that we can explore how we would be better off out of the European Union?
I think that things became perfectly clear yesterday, when not a single Conservative MEP voted in favour of an amendment in the European Parliament to protect women in the European Union from violence and slavery. Instead, they joined forces with Jean-Marie Le Pen and the UK Independence party. The hon. Gentleman is sitting on the wrong Benches and is taking the wrong Whip. Unless it is now Conservative party policy to withdraw altogether from the European Union—and I see that the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), who is a bit wiser than the hon. Gentleman, shakes his head—the hon. Gentleman ought to stick to the Opposition line.
On Saturday afternoon, I am holding a public meeting in my constituency for people affected by the liquidation of Farepak, which went into receivership a few weeks ago. It ran a Christmas saving scheme, so its liquidation effectively means that, for tens of thousands of hard-working families, Christmas is cancelled. I have invited the chief executive to attend—he certainly deserves this year’s “unacceptable face of capitalism” award. At that public meeting, is there any message of hope that I can give my constituents from the Government?
May I begin by expressing the whole House’s appreciation of my hon. Friend’s work in standing up for the interests of the employees of the company’s call centre in his constituency, as well as, much more widely, the interests of the thousands of people disadvantaged by the liquidation? As my hon. Friend says, they must be greatly worried about what gifts they can give their families at Christmas. The key message that my hon. Friend should give those who attend is how hard the Minister with responsibility for consumer issues and trade, my right hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney), is working with the British Retail Consortium on a rescue package—it is not a compensation package—to ensure that at least some measure of the damage done to those customers is put right.
The point that I wish to raise will, I hope, be of concern to Mr. Speaker as well as every other Member of the House, and particularly the Leader of the House. The East Kent health authority has received a request from the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 for disclosure of all correspondence between Members of Parliament and the health authority. That is a fishing expedition, but we have now discovered that that correspondence is not covered by parliamentary privilege. It relates, of course, to specific and personal concerns expressed by individual constituents. Every Member of Parliament representing east Kent is most concerned. The reply has to be given by Monday, and the only way to delay it is for the Leader of the House immediately to instigate a review. That would give us time to look into the matter again.
The hon. Gentleman is right to raise the subject, and of course I will give him every assistance, because the matter touches on parliamentary privilege. I should just say that I was the Minister who had the unenviable task of taking the Freedom of Information Bill through its stages in the House, and we were asked by hon. Members on all sides to go further, rather than to provide what I thought were sensible protections, on requests for information, including requests from Parliament. However, the only people who supported those sensible restrictions were my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Olner), and myself, on the Treasury Bench. I think that many hon. Members on both sides of the House now rue the day when the House decided—in the end, we had to accept its wish—that extensive privilege should be given to inquiries, without properly balancing the rights of those who held the information. Of course I will follow the matter up, and I will do so in consultation with Mr. Speaker and the Clerk of the House.
If I had had the opportunity I would have given a warm welcome to the local government White Paper. However, given the interest both inside and outside the House in the future of local government, may I echo the request from my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Patrick Hall) for an early debate on the issue? We could contrast the Government’s policy of trusting local government with the policy of the Conservative Government of trying to take over local government. Will my right hon. Friend arrange for the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to make a statement confirming that she will introduce a properly joined-up policy on city regions with the Secretaries of State for Transport, and for Education and Skills, to provide city regions with a package of measures and powers? Hopefully, the White Paper will not be the last word on the subject.
I note what my hon. Friend said, and I understand the case that he made for city regions. However, it is a subject of intense debate among all parties represented in the House.
Haringey happily provides statutory support for a high number of asylum seekers, as do other local authorities. However, funding support—for example, for the placement of unaccompanied children—does not remotely meet the actual costs, so may we have a debate on the available Government grant for the provision of statutory services to asylum seekers?
I will pass on the hon. Lady’s remarks to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. She talks about her constituents in Haringey and concerns about asylum seekers, but it would have been extremely helpful if the Liberal Democrat party had supported our controls on asylum seekers on at least one occasion, rather than giving asylum seekers consistent encouragement.
Will my right hon. Friend find time to provide a debate on the treatment of my constituents, Mr. and Mrs. Webster, who have severe learning and physical difficulties, by G. E. Money, the US company which, in the last quarter, reported a profit of $5 million? The company is trying to evict my constituents from the home in which they have lived for more than 20 years, because they have fallen behind on a loan that they arranged in 1997—of only £10,000—with an astonishing interest rate of 21.9 per cent. G. E. Money has taken advantage of them, and it should act in accordance with its stated intention on its website of
“working with integrity and values”.
May we have a debate about social responsibility, and what integrity means to big business?
I will certainly do everything I can to facilitate an Adjournment or Westminster Hall debate on that important issue, and I will pass on my hon. Friend’s concerns, which are widely shared across the House, to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. My hon. Friend may wish to invite the company’s chief executive to the House to explain its policies, because G. E. Money claims to be a company of high status and high standing.
May we have an urgent debate on why seven beds have been cut from ward 4—the acute medicines ward—at the Princess Royal hospital in my constituency? Before the Leader of the House says something about human resources at the hospital, may I give him an up-to-date briefing? Some 200 nurses and doctors are due to be cut as well.
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will find an opportunity to raise that matter on the Adjournment. However, as he has talked about changes in the budgets for the health trusts in his Shropshire constituency, he will wish to draw to public attention the huge increase in those budgets since 1997.
In the light of successive leaks over the past two weeks of the Opposition’s policies on taxation and now public sector vouchers, I am surprised that the Conservatives have not called for a debate on internet security. However, may I raise the question of the Leicestershire charity, Inter Care, which collects surplus medicines, screens them professionally to check that they are not out of date or damaged, and distributes them on request to rural villages, particularly in central Africa? The Environment Agency alleges that there is a technical breach of EU waste disposal regulations, and its threat to sue has resulted in Inter Care closing down. May we have a statement from a Minister from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to explain why that ludicrous and over-zealous interpretation of EU waste regulations has denied vital medical supplies to 94 villages in seven African countries that are among the poorest on the planet? Is it not more important to address the health care needs of thousands of African villages than to feed the self-importance of the bloated ranks of EU bureaucrats?
I think that we would all agree with that, and I am sure that the whole House shares my hon. Friend’s concern. Oral questions to our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will take place next Thursday. In addition, I will certainly draw my right hon. Friend’s full attention to what my hon. Friend has said about the need for action.
Since last November, the Prime Minister has claimed that no one waits more than six months for an NHS operation. In fact, more than 6,000 people are waiting more than six months for an NHS operation, and that does not include Scotland or Wales. The Prime Minister appears to think that he is above the regulations that apply to other Ministers and Members. Will the Leader of the House investigate the matter, and find a mechanism so that those statements can be corrected in next week’s business?
I am astonished that the hon. Gentleman who, I assume, supported the Conservative party when it was in government, should dare to raise the issue of waiting lists, which have dropped by more than 382,600. Virtually no one waits more than six months, and the number of six-month waits has gone down by 284,000 since 1997. Our record is so good that we have no interest whatsoever in putting inaccurate figures before the House. Of course, I will ensure that we provide the most accurate figures available.
Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on child pornography? I recently received a letter from the PICT union, which is based in Japan. My staff and I were horrified by the hard-core child pornography cartoons and the list of websites that allow access to child porn that it enclosed. I wrote to the Home Office about the matter, and I received a reply from the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Mr. Coaker), who provided me with advice and support. The material has been passed to the police, but may we have debate about child pornography so that we can combat the distribution of such material and its accessibility on the internet?
My hon. Friend is right to raise that matter, which is of profound concern to everyone in the country. The availability of that filth is much greater these days, precisely because of the internet. She was told by our hon. Friend the Under-Secretary about the action that has been taken by the Home Office and the Serious Organised Crime Agency. Of course, I will do what I can to help her secure a debate, probably on the Adjournment or in Westminster Hall, on the matter.
May we have a statement or a debate soon on the decision by the Northern Ireland Office to withdraw planning notices from the three main Northern Ireland newspapers—the Belfast Telegraph, the Belfast News and The Irish News? Ordinary people in Northern Ireland will be deprived of information about forthcoming planning applications, including major applications, that will have an impact on them. That is a scandalous lack of transparency and openness, so the papers have taken legal action. The Government’s approach of preventing the public from finding out about major planning applications is not right, as there should be as much openness and transparency as possible. Will the right hon. Gentleman ensure that we have a debate on that important subject?
I am unsighted on the issue, but I suspect that the explanation is slightly more complicated than the hon. Gentleman suggested, and that such information is now available on the internet. In any event, I will pass on his concerns to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and ensure that he writes to the hon. Gentleman.
The Deputy Leader of the House recently visited a dynamic information and communications technology company in my constituency. That company is at the cutting edge of technology and works in close collaboration with Lancaster university, which has received substantial sums of money from the Government to encourage it to work with local businesses. That is good and we need to do much more of that. May we have a debate to look at how we can further encourage universities to work with local businesses?
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, who is also a near constituency neighbour. The huge increase in developments and in co-operation between universities and business over the past few years, including in Lancashire and by the university of Lancaster, has been impressive. I hope that there is an opportunity for her to raise the matter on the Adjournment or in Westminster Hall.
Will the Leader of the House shed some light on what is going to happen next Wednesday? Exactly how many separate motions relating to the House of Commons will there be on the Order Paper? Does he agree that most of the subjects are totally discrete—September sittings, length of speeches, European scrutiny and the sub judice rule? Does he envisage one mega-debate that will try to embrace all that, or will we have a series of structured debates with votes at the end of each one?
We will have a single opportunity for colleagues to raise issues relating to House of Commons business, on a single debate, with votes at the end. There is no right way of doing this, but that is a better way than having a series of debates, which could mean running out of time for whatever subject is regarded as the most important on the day. I am sure that there will be every opportunity for the right hon. Gentleman to catch Mr. Speaker’s eye and say whatever he wants to on matters relating to the administration of the House.
May we have an urgent debate on freedom of religion in Pakistan and especially the plight of Christians? My friend will be aware of the Karims, who are Catholics and live in my constituency, not far from Blackburn. They face deportation to Pakistan and they fear persecution there.
I am certainly aware of the considerable concern in Pakistan and elsewhere about the treatment of Christians and non-Muslim people, and indeed of some Shi’a Muslims, as well, in certain areas of Pakistan. I will pass on my hon. Friend’s concerns to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. I am not equipped to answer my hon. Friend’s particular constituency issue, but I understand the concerns that he has raised.
May I apologise for my lack of voice, Madam Deputy Speaker? May we have a debate next week on a motion to set up a Special Standing or Select Committee to inquire into the handling of the war in Afghanistan? Many of us feel that British forces were deployed without a proper assessment of risk, adequate equipment or proper provision for reinforcements. We need to know who is responsible for those failures and how best to avoid, or reduce, the risk of operational failure in Afghanistan, which Lord Inge recently spoke of.
A large part of that happened when I was Foreign Secretary. There was proper and extensive analysis of the potential risks over many months before we made a decision, in concert with our NATO partners, to increase our strength and to extend our operations to the south of the country. There used to be a need for special Select Committees to be established on matters such as this because there was no system of standing Select Committees, but since 1979 there has been. This matter seems to be a quintessential, obvious issue for inquiry by the Defence Committee or the Foreign Affairs Committee, or both.
May I welcome the opportunity for a debate on Crossrail on Tuesday and seek some guidance from my right hon. Friend on the scope of that debate? He will know that the Select Committee that is considering the Crossrail Bill has expressed serious concerns about the unprecedented decision of the promoter not to act on the Committee’s recommendations in relation to a station at Woolwich. He will also be aware that the Committee has indicated that it may wish to make a special report to the House. May I ask for his guidance on whether it would be in order for such a report to be considered and debated if it were prepared in advance of Tuesday’s debate? Will the House have an opportunity to express a view on whether the Select Committee was acting entirely within the remit given to it by the House, as I believe that it was, in recommending that there should be provision in the Bill for a station at Woolwich?
My right hon. Friend will excuse me if I say that guidance on what is in order in the House is a matter not for me, but for Mr. Speaker and any Deputy Speakers who are chairing the debate at the time. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will wish to seek the advice of the Clerk on that. We have been involved in discussions outside the Chamber about this important matter and we all understand the strong case that he and others make for Crossrail. He will know of the support in principle of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport for this development, but as part of the Government he has to take account of the overall cost of the schemes and balance them against other competing demands for public spending.
May we have a debate on standards of journalism and particularly photo-journalism? Madam Deputy Speaker, you must have been as dismayed as I was to open The Western Mail yesterday and see a picture of the Prime Minister being apprehended by two burly policemen. On closer examination, the photo turns out to be a mock-up. The Prime Minister is portrayed as a fake and a phoney, in this picture at least. Does the Leader of the House agree that it is outrageous for the Prime Minister to be portrayed in the press as something that he is not, and also for the hopes of the Opposition and perhaps some of his hon. Friends to be so improperly raised? May we have a debate so that the Prime Minister can clear his name and assure the House that he has no intention of allowing himself to be arrested?
We have great debates on crime, and law and order, to celebrate the Government’s excellent record. We have 14,000 extra police officers—many of them in Wales—and there have been significant cuts in crime.
Last night, the Deputy Leader of the House heard an impassioned plea from the RSPB, on behalf of its 1 million members, for a marine Bill in the Queen’s Speech. I also hear such pleas from my local Porthcawl environment trust and from the WWF. May I seek the support of the Leader of the House in ensuring that a marine Bill is included in the Queen’s Speech so that we can begin to tackle the issue of our marine biodiversity and the years of neglect of our marine environment?
I congratulate my hon. Friend on her strong advocacy of such a Bill. She will know, and will excuse me if I say, that I cannot anticipate what will be in the Queen’s Speech, but we are well aware of the priority that she and many others, on both sides of the House, attach to the measure.
May we please have a debate in Government time on brain tumours? Given that they are the biggest single disease that is killing children and that survival rates have not risen in line with those for childhood leukaemia or other adult cancers, does the Leader of the House agree that it is important to debate the subject next week and, in particular, to debate the need to intensify the search for a cure, the absence of which has caused far too much suffering to far too many people for far too long?
I accept what the hon. Gentleman says. He will be aware that it is hard for me to promise a debate in Government time on that matter, but he is a skilled Member of the House and I hope that he will find opportunities to raise it.
May we have a debate on the future of the UK and the consequential strengths of the House? My right hon. Friend may be aware that the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) has made a virtue, and a good living, out of arguing that we should break up the UK. That good living will be increased if he is successfully elected to the Scottish Parliament. Has my right hon. Friend heard of the hon. Gentleman’s latest idea? After we break up the UK, we will regroup and call it a partnership of the isles. Does my right hon. Friend share my view that that is utter hypocrisy and a waste of the House’s resources and time, and that it is playing hokey cokey with our constitution?
I certainly accept my hon. Friend’s dire warning about the consequences of breaking up the United Kingdom. The Scottish nationalists in the United Kingdom Parliament now say that they hope to break up the United Kingdom. I simply say to them that they will rue the day if ever that is achieved and the Scottish people, as well as those in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, will all equally suffer, because in the whole we bring to the Union much more than we do in the parts. A weakened Scotland—a very small nation inside the European Union—would have none of the clout that we are able to wield on behalf of the Scottish people through their membership of the United Kingdom.
May we have a statement from a Defence Minister about the BBC’s decision, at a time when our servicemen are fighting in Afghanistan the most intensive campaign since the Korean war, to broadcast unalloyed Taliban propaganda, and about the likely effect that that will have on the morale of the families of the servicemen and women who are deployed in Afghanistan when they consider that the people being interviewed and given a platform have views that are well known, yet observe no normal, recognised laws or customs of war?
The whole House shares the hon. Gentleman’s support and admiration for our troops in Afghanistan and other theatres. However, I happened, by chance, to see the report on the BBC to which he referred. I thought that the report was good and informative, and it was important to see the nature of those people. The difference is that in Taliban-controlled territory, anyone who steps out of line is killed, but we are a democracy, and we are fighting for democracy in Afghanistan. Although I am happy to pass on the hon. Gentleman’s concerns to the director-general of the BBC, I do so in the context that the strengths of the BBC include its independence of journalism and the fact that it is not influenced directly, especially by Ministers and hon. Members.
Will my right hon. Friend find an opportunity for the House to have a early debate on taxation, because we should have the opportunity to debate the choice between investment in public services and the savage cuts in services that are clearly favoured by some hon. Members?
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I am surprised that although the Conservatives have well over 15 Supply days each year, they have not so far chosen to use any to debate taxation and all the alternatives—cutting taxation and thus cutting £21 billion in spending, including by slashing investment in the health service—to which they give a wider audience on the internet for just a couple of hours before they suddenly realise their error.
The Leader of the House will be aware that the first private Member’s Bill that is supposed to be debated tomorrow is the St. George’s Day Bill, which I introduced. However, according to the Order Paper, the House is not sitting tomorrow. Will he make time for the Bill to be debated? If he does not, there will be widespread disappointment throughout England, where people want the English national day to be celebrated, and many people may consider that to be a device that is being used by the Labour Government to stop England celebrating its day?
Like the hon. Gentleman, I am an Essex man. I spent many happy days in his constituency when I was a younger man. I, too, would like a proper celebration—although we have a celebration—on St. George’s day. The hon. Gentleman knows very well that the House is not sitting tomorrow, but it was a nice try—[Interruption.] I know that the Bill is on the Order Paper. The Order Paper says:
“The House will not be sitting”,
so the situation is absolutely clear. The hon. Gentleman knows that he will have plenty of opportunities to bring forward such a Bill through the ballot for private Members’ Bills or as a ten-minute Bill. I wish him luck.
Further to my right hon. Friend’s answer to the question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford), although the Leader of the House is not in control of the interpretation of the powers of the Select Committee, he is in control of what will be on Tuesday’s Order Paper. May I draw his attention to early-day motion 2835, which 50 hon. Members have signed to support the case for a station at Woolwich?
[That this House notes the interim decision of the Crossrail Select Committee that there is an overwhelmingly strong case on both transport and regeneration grounds for a station at Woolwich, noting that the Woolwich station has a much better benefit/cost ratio than the Crossrail scheme as a whole, and noting the comments of the Select Committee Chairman that it is unprecedented for a Secretary of State to dismiss the view of a Hybrid Bill Select Committee and that in consequence the Select Committee has now suspended its sittings for a week to reflect on the implications; and calls on the Secretary of State for Transport to enter urgently into discussions with the Crossrail promoters, the London Borough of Greenwich and other interested parties to explore the options for delivering a Woolwich station in the most cost-effective manner, so enabling the Crossrail Bill to make further progress through its Committee Stage without further delay. ]
The signatories are reasonable hon. Members because they are asking for more time to look into the merits of the arguments in favour of a station at Woolwich. Will the motions on the Order Paper next Tuesday allow for that?
I have discussed this matter with my hon. Friend outside the Chamber. My right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary is well aware of the concerns raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich. The question of what is in order will be a matter for the Chair, not for me, but it is true that what goes on the Order Paper is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary and me. We will consider the matter further.
My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham wishes to make progress—so do I—but it must take place in the context of overall Government spending, which is a matter for Governments, rather than Select Committees. The transport allocations throughout the country must be fair. Many hon. Members on both sides of the House who represent constituencies outside London, such as those in Merseyside, constantly ask for additional funds for transport projects, but they are denied because of investment in London. Balance is needed and I know that my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary is considering the matter carefully.
Yesterday, the Law Commission produced a report recommending a two-track approach to post-legislative scrutiny. The report arose because of concerns about the quality and quantity of recent legislation. The first stage proposed is a review by the Department that promoted the legislation and the second is the formation of a Joint Committee with powers to take evidence and produce a report. There has seldom been a poorer piece of legislation than the Hunting Act 2004 because of its dire consequences for animal welfare—
Order. Is the hon. Gentleman relating his point to the business of the House?
Does the Leader of the House think that that Act would be a good pilot for such scrutiny, and when will the Government put in place structures to allow hon. Members to take part in the process?
I do not wish to be tempted down the road of nominating pilots because there is quite a lot of competition for poorly drafted Acts—[Interruption.] Such Acts have been produced under all Governments. I have met the chairman of the Law Commission and I am grateful to him and his colleagues, who include a retired first parliamentary counsel, for their work on the important report, which we are considering carefully. As parliamentary counsel recognise, the quality of legislation can be improved not only by going for more pre-legislative scrutiny, as we have done, but by learning lessons from both elegantly drafted and well thought through legislation, and measures that are not quite in that category.
Will the Leader of the House ask the Secretary of State for Health to make a statement to the House on the continuing delays to the Better Healthcare Closer to Home programme in south-west London? The provision of local care and services at the Nelson in my constituency has been delayed owing to the Secretary of State’s erroneous decision of last December, which was retracted in July. She has now asked the chief executive of NHS London to undertake another review, despite a two-year consultation and the presentation of a business case. Will the Leader of the House also ask the Secretary of State to reply to me on behalf of the chief executive for NHS London, who seems incapable of writing me a reply to a letter written more than two months ago? Will he ask the Secretary of State to confirm to me by letter that the Nelson hospital local care provision will be in the first round of funding this December?
I will certainly pass on the points that the hon. Gentleman raises. However, I should say—this is a point for the whole House and ought to be an all-party matter—that there is no doubt that the number of health procedures undertaken by the health service has greatly increased for all sorts of reasons. However, there is also much more day care than there was before and more clinics have been established to carry out specific tasks. When we are improving health care and health delivery, changes need to be made to the configuration. I think that the hon. Gentleman understands that and I will pass on his concerns to my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary.
My right hon. Friend will no doubt be aware of early-day motion 2786, which refers to the recent deal between Pfizer and Unichem.
[That this House expresses deep concern over the decision by Pfizer to award the contract for sole supplying of its pharmaceutical products to one wholesaler Unichem; is alarmed that this has created a de facto monopoly for Unichem in that pharmacies have no choice about who they deal with if they want to purchase Pfizer products; is concerned that whereas choice and competition have kept prices down this action will lead to a worse deal for local pharmacists, the NHS and ultimately the general public; is deeply alarmed that if Unichem had a crisis in its distribution then other wholesalers would be unable to fill the gap left and thus people might not get the pharmaceutical products they absolutely rely on; and calls on the Office of Fair Trading and the Department of Health to investigate this issue with a focus on, respectively, the effect of this decision on unfair business practices and public health.]
The deal effectively excludes all pharmaceutical wholesalers except Unichem from distributing Pfizer’s goods. While the deal is obviously a commercial decision taken by private companies, may we have a debate on how the monopoly might affect the pharmacists who dispense the drugs and, more importantly, the patients who depend on them?
Yes, I understand the concern that my hon. Friend raises. I hope he is able to get a slot for an Adjournment debate or a debate in Westminster Hall. I will pass on his concerns not only to our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health, but to our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, with his responsibility for competition policy.
Given the number of recent high profile court cases in Northern Ireland where relatives of victims have justifiably demanded that the scrapping of 50 per cent. remission in sentences where those who are convicted of extremely serious and vicious crime should be reviewed, and given that a Northern Ireland Office Minister is already conducting a review of that, may we have a debate at an early opportunity to discuss the matter, which is causing widespread concern right across Northern Ireland?
I understand the concern. It is probably best if we wait until the outcome of the review before there is necessarily a debate on the matter, but I will pass on his concerns to our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
Earlier, the Leader of the House said how proud he was of the way the NHS has been handled by the Government. That means that he is happy with the decision that will result in West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust board closing the Hemel Hempstead hospital. All acute services will close and 750 jobs will go, including those of doctors and nurses. May we have a debate in the House entitled “The worst year ever in the NHS”, rather than the laughable comment from the Secretary of State for Health, “the best year ever”?
I do not know the full details of the matter that the hon. Gentleman raises, but it is a verity across the country that directly as a result of improvements in health care, changes in procedures and vast investment made by the Government in the health service—dramatic investment—there must be consequential changes which at any one time may cause difficulties, such as those that the hon. Gentleman describes. In his constituency, as in every other constituency in England and Wales, the number of people being treated in hospital or by clinics or GPs has increased and their health has improved dramatically over the past 10 years.
My constituent, Henry Stableford, is in prison in Italy and two other constituents are prevented from travelling overseas as a result of an international arrest warrant issued by Morocco, on which another constituent, John Packwood, was arrested in Spain and spent almost 12 months in a Spanish jail. It relates to incidents that took place in 1997. Mr. Packwood was graciously pardoned by His Majesty the King of Morocco once he got to Morocco. May we have a debate on worn-out arrest warrants and what help the Foreign Office can give to those who face those warrants preventing them from going about their lawful business internationally?
The hon. Gentleman has opportunities on the Adjournment in the House and in Westminster Hall, and I hope he is able to obtain a debate. From my experience as Foreign Secretary, may I say that the Foreign Office at ministerial and at official level takes very seriously the plight of British citizens who are incarcerated in foreign jails or who are prevented from travelling, especially if they are unconvicted? Of course, I will pass on his concerns.
In a recent poll of 800 of its readers, the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph discovered that 88 per cent. were in favour of a ban on the retail sale of fireworks, given the injuries caused, especially to children, the alarm caused to animals and the use of fireworks in antisocial behaviour. May we have an urgent debate in Government time on the possibility of banning the retail sale of fireworks?
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the matter, which is a cause of concern across the House. There is the Fireworks Act 2003. I will take up the matter with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and see what further can be done. I will ensure that I or my right hon. Friend writes to the hon. Gentleman.
Fraud Bill [Lords] (Programme) (No. 2)
I beg to move,
That the Order of 12th June 2006 (Fraud Bill [Lords] (Programme)) be varied as follows:
1. Paragraphs 4 and 5 of the Order shall be omitted.
2. Remaining proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion—
(a) two hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion for this Order, or
(b) at the moment of interruption, whichever is the earlier.
3. “Remaining proceedings” means any proceedings on consideration and proceedings on Third Reading.
We had a full debate in Standing Committee. I hope hon. Members will support the motion.
Question put and agreed to.
Orders of the Day
Fraud Bill [Lords]
Not amended in the Standing Committee, considered.
New Clause 1
Abolition of offence of conspiracy to defraud
‘(1) The common law offence of conspiracy to defraud is abolished for all purposes not relating to offences wholly or partly committed before the commencement of this Act.
(2) An offence is partly committed before the commencement of this Act if—
(a) a relevant event occurs before its commencement, and
(b) another relevant event occurs on or after its commencement.
(3) “Relevant event”, in relation to an offence, means any act, omission or other event (including any result of one or more acts or omissions) proof of which is required for conviction of the offence.’.—[Mr. Heath.]
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. 4, in clause 15, page 6, line 11, at end insert—
‘( ) The Secretary of State may not appoint a day by order for section (Abolition of conspiracy to defraud) until he has received a report on the operation of this Act, and in any case not earlier than three years after the commencement of the Act.’.
It is a pleasure to return to the discussions on the Bill, which seem to have taken place some time ago in Committee. I hope everyone’s recollections of the Committee stage are as clear as mine. I shall not delay the House long on either group of amendments, as we had a constructive debate in Committee. We went about our business then with considerable expedition and I see no reason to prolong our debate today.
However, I wanted to give the Solicitor-General the opportunity to consider again the abolition of the common law offence of conspiracy to defraud. There is a great deal of commonality in the views of all parties on the subject. We all agree that the common law offence of conspiracy to defraud is probably not one that should be maintained. We hope that the provisions of the Bill will meet the needs of successful prosecutions in a wide context. Irrespective of our starting point on the need to abolish the conspiracy offence, we acknowledge that proper reservations have been expressed, not least by Lord Justice Rose’s Committee, so we should take account of the proper operation of the Bill when it becomes law before proceeding with abolition.
That much is common ground. We heard from the Solicitor-General in Committee the approach that prosecutors will take in deciding whether to use the new offences or the old conspiracy offence. The Solicitor-General told us that the draft guidance will state:
“In selecting charges in fraud cases, the prosecutor should first consider whether the behaviour could be prosecuted under statute—whether under the Fraud Act 2006 or another Act or as a statutory conspiracy;”
and further,
“whether the available statutory charges adequately reflect the gravity of the offence.”—[Official Report, Standing Committee B, 20 June 2006; c. 73.]
So the guidance to prosecutors is that they should use statute law wherever possible, and only when that possibility is exhausted proceed to conspiracy to defraud, with its slightly nebulous nature.
Some of us have concerns not only because of the nature of the common law offence, but because of its knock-on effects. I raised those concerns in Committee, and they have become even more pertinent, although I shall not dwell on issues of controversy in recent days. It is a matter of concern when, for example, the common law offence could form part of the criteria for dual criminality in more than one jurisdiction and therefore be a proper ground for extradition. We should at least be aware of that in deciding whether to allow the common law offence to continue.
However, I propose today not to disagree with the Government position, and to accept that there will be a review that will be concluded in three years and that the Government will then decide whether it is appropriate to abolish the common law offence. I simply say—I made this point in Committee, but I repeat it now—that it would be better to have the provision on the statute book in advance, by means of my new clause and the commencement amendment that accompanies it. They make it clear that the provision will not take effect until the review has been concluded, and even then not within a three-year period, so the period that the Government have in mind will be protected. That would provide the legislative support for the position that the Government wish to take.
The alternative is that the Government will have to come back with new law—with a new Bill—after the review. That might or might not find parliamentary time, and it might or might not be tacked on to some other measure that could be considerably less popular, and in any case that will take parliamentary time—unnecessarily.
My proposal offers a better way of doing our business, given that we have a clear joint intention. The control would lie with the Minister. He would not have to continue with commencement if the advice from the review was that he should not do so. The only argument against is what the Minister said in Committee, which is that this somehow puts the sword of Damocles over the offence, and that therefore there is a discouragement to prosecutors to use it, even when it is the most appropriate offence to use.
I cannot accept that: I cannot accept that there is a difference in kind between my new clause and its commencement amendment and the Government’s clear intention, stated in terms, that
“it remains our long-term aim to repeal this common law crime and we will review the position”.
There is no difference between the two positions, other than that one of them saves parliamentary time and means that we have done the work already, while the other leaves it still to be done.
Therefore, it seems to me that what I am proposing is in the interests of the Government and in line with the views of all the parties represented in this House. It is certainly in line with the Law Commission’s proposals. It said on conspiracy to defraud:
“On any view, the present system is anomalous and has no place in a coherent criminal law.”
Therefore, we are doing the right thing in terms of improving the law.
The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) clearly set out his objections to the retention of the common law offence of conspiracy to defraud. His new clause addresses that in detail. As he said, there is no difference between us in respect of having this particular offence in common law for any longer than is strictly necessary; the difference between us is simply to do with approach, and how we get around to dealing with this matter.
The general thrust of the Second Reading debate in the other place on 22 June 2005 was that the common law offence of conspiracy to defraud needs to go. Such great legal minds as those of Lord Lloyd of Berwick and my noble Friend Lord Kingsland, the shadow Lord Chancellor, carefully explained why it needed to go, not least because it led to a lack of clarity in the criminal law. If there is one thing that the criminal law should provide, it is clarity, so that those who might come within its reach know precisely what it is that they are liable to be held responsible for before they decide whether or not to do something.
I do not think that, in the end, there is much difference in approach. Either one abolishes the offence now, or one adds a sunset clause to the Bill saying that it will be abolished after a certain period of time, or one accepts the Government’s word that they will genuinely and actively review the law over the next three years and report back to us. I suspect that once it has been considered how the new law has bedded in, a decision will be made that reflects the spirit of the debates in this House and the other place.
I am prepared to accept the Government’s word, for present purposes, and I urge the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome to do so as well. He does not have to accept their word on all things, but on this matter perhaps he might. On that basis, I trust that we can put this issue, if not to bed, at least on the sidelines for three years, while the Government keep a close eye on what is going on.
As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) rightly recognised, we had a very constructive and full discussion in Committee on 20 June. I have not changed my mind since then, but I hear the points that he makes. We hope in due course to be in a position where we can take the view that conspiracy to defraud can be removed from the statute book. Until then, there is guidance, which has been passed to Front Bench of other parties to look at. I would welcome hearing their views on that. We intend that the conspiracy to defraud offence should be used sparingly, while, in the meantime, we would examine the impact that repeal would have.
However, let me just say that there is a difference in law, albeit not so much politically or in policy terms, between what the hon. Gentleman wants and what we want. The difference in law is about the prosecutor being able to use conspiracy to defraud if that is appropriate. If there is a guillotine—a sunset provision—in respect of that law, it risks to some extent discrediting it, and therefore I am opposed to the hon. Gentleman’s proposal.
Let me give seven good reasons for taking the view that we have, in the hope that the hon. Gentleman will feel able to withdraw his new clause. First, the Government plan to review conspiracy to defraud in the course of the next three years. Secondly, as Lord Rose’s Committee representing the views of judges stated, some issues are not covered by the Fraud Bill as it stands, and we need to look at how they would be covered—in particular, where it is intended that someone outside a conspiracy would commit the final offence, and also cases where the accused cannot be proved to have had the necessary degree of knowledge of the substantive offence to be perpetrated. We want to look at how we will deal with such issues, if we repeal the offence of conspiracy to defraud.
Thirdly, we want to look at the impact of the new laws under the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004, which we hope to implement soon, in respect of making changes on conspiracy to defraud. Fourthly, the Law Commission is studying the law covering forms of participation in crimes that do not amount to a statutory conspiracy. We want to see what its recommendations are, and the results of its inquiries. Fifthly, the Law Commission published in July a report on inchoate liability in crime, and we want more time to examine the impact that that might have. Sixthly, we also believe that it is useful to look further at the consultation paper on organised and financial crime, which was published in July. We want to examine the responses to that and see how these issues affect the whole ambit of conspiracy to defraud.
Finally, the fraud review itself only finishes its consultation period tomorrow, and we want to examine how that review will affect the overall way in which this country deals with fraud. Hopefully, that will also enable us to take a broader view of conspiracy to defraud.
So for all those reasons, I hope that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome feels able to withdraw his new clause.
I am grateful to the Solicitor-General and I entirely accept all the reasons that he offered, which are all grounds for having the review period before proceeding. I am sorry, but I do not think that there is a difference between us on this issue. We accept that if this is the only offence that can be prosecuted successfully, it should be used, but that does not alter the fact that in our view, there should be better instruments in the hands of the prosecutors. That is the issue that needs to be examined.
I urge the Solicitor-General to arrange for the commencement of the multiple count provisions in the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004 at the earliest opportunity. He said that that will happen soon, but it is already two years since Royal Assent. Those provisions will be a critical element of the prosecution palette. The power to repeal offences, or otherwise, should never be put in the hands of prosecutors, who will always relish having the widest possible range of offences available to prosecute. Such a power must be in the hands of those who look dispassionately at the utility of the offences in question.
I look forward to the fraud review, and if there are elements of our approach to white-collar crime that we need to improve and make more robust, the Solicitor-General will have my and my party’s full support. There are instances where such crime is not being successfully dealt with, and it should be, because it is a crime against us all. It is not a secondary order of criminality that should somehow be ignored.
I entirely understand the Solicitor-General’s argument; however, there is one missing component. In terms of legislative mechanics, it would still make sense to proceed with my suggestion because it would achieve all that he wants to achieve, but in better order. However, I see that I have not persuaded him and on that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 4
Fraud by abuse of position
I beg to move amendment No. 1, page 2, line 22, leave out
‘occupies a position in which he’
and insert ‘by reason of position,’.
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 2, line 22, leave out ‘expected’ and insert ‘under a fiduciary duty’.
We can probably dispose of these amendments, which continue a useful discussion that we had in Committee, in an equally brief period.
Amendment No. 1 is new and picks up on a point made in Committee by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve). We were considering the following phrase from clause 4:
“A person is in breach of this section if he…(a) occupies a position in which he is expected to safeguard, or not to act against, the financial interests of another person”.
The hon. Gentleman made the interesting point that it is possible for the person who might be accused of such an offence no longer to occupy the position in question, but to retain a fiduciary duty on the basis of the position that he had occupied. The clause uses the phrase “occupies a position”, rather than “occupies or has occupied”, which would be a very cumbersome way of putting it. My amendment would replace that phrase with “by reason of position”, which would enable the clause to apply not only to the holder of a position, but to a past holder, and thereby encompasses both without any ambiguity. I simply table it for the Solicitor-General’s consideration.
Amendment No. 2 relates to a point that was debated in Committee and is not dissimilar to one tabled there by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield. I remain concerned about the interpretation of the phrase “is expected to”, which, in the light of the Solicitor-General’s explanation in Committee, extends beyond a fiduciary duty to some other expectation. However, we have not yet satisfactorily concluded in whose mind the expectation lies. Is it in that of the person who commits the putative offence, or in that of the person against whom the offence is committed? Is that expectation what a reasonable person might expect, or what a court might expect?
Although the Solicitor-General helpfully explained fiduciary duty in some detail in Committee, he did not convince me that he could offer examples that would not fall into the expanded definition of fiduciary duty as interpreted by the courts, but which would nevertheless constitute criminality that ought to be caught by this provision. In fact, a fiduciary duty is capable of a much wider interpretation than a strict contractual liability, for example. Indeed, it is already being interpreted by the courts in that way, so it would be a more precise term to use in this clause.
I tabled these amendments in an attempt to improve the Bill, rather than to in any way change its meaning. I think that my terms are more precise, but I look forward to the Solicitor-General’s response.
The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) is entirely right—there was a full discussion in Committee on this clause and these concepts, and I commend to him and to the Solicitor-General the remarks of not only my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) but of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr. Cox), who has extensive experience of dealing with fraud cases in the criminal courts.
It is neither necessary nor appropriate for me to offer a third explanation of the points that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon made Upstairs. I fully understand the concerns of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome about this clause, but I do not want to stand in the way of the Solicitor-General’s giving us the Government’s explanation.
One of the criteria recommended by the Law Commission for the application of clause 4 was whether a person
“occupies a position in which he is expected to safeguard, or not to act against, the financial interests of another person.”
Amendment No. 1 would alter the wording of clause 4 to refer to a person who “by reason of position” is expected to safeguard, or not to act against, the financial interests of another person. In our view, such a change would introduce an undesirable lack of clarity into the clause. The phrase “by reason of position” is not only inelegant but is less clear than the criterion of whether a person “occupies a position”. I am not sure that there is a great deal of elegance in that phrase, either, but it is clearer.
I understand that the amendment’s intention is to catch cases where the defendant no longer occupies the position in question, but it does not clearly express that intention. There is no policy problem here. A defendant will not escape prosecution for fraud by abuse of position, committed while he occupied the position in question, just because he no longer occupies the position at the time of his arrest or trial. It is true that he will not be prosecutable under clause 4 if he manages to abuse the position after he ceases to occupy it, but in any event, there are limits to how he could do that.
I accept that information obtained during the course of employment could be valuable, but, as I made clear in Committee, we expect breaches of confidentiality to be a matter of civil law. That will certainly be the case once the employee ceases to occupy his position, which must be right.
Clause 4 is designed to tackle financial crime. If a person no longer occupies a position where he is expected to safeguard another person’s financial interests, how can he commit such fraud under the clause? He would probably need to commit another type of fraud—perhaps under clause 2—to access or exert influence over the person's financial interests. If he still has de facto access or influence, he surely “occupies” a position. That is one advantage of the way in which the clause is drafted in not being limited to those who have fiduciary duties.
Amendment No. 2 brings us back to our interesting discussions in Committee. Again, the Law Commission expressed a view. It said that although a fiduciary relationship was important,
“We see no reason, however, why the existence of such duties should be essential. This does not of course mean that it would be entirely a matter for the fact-finders whether the necessary relationship exists. The question whether the particular facts alleged can properly be described as giving rise to that relationship will be an issue capable of being ruled upon by the judge and, if the case goes to the jury, of being the subject of directions.”
Amendment No. 2 would provide that clause 4 applies only if one person has a fiduciary duty to safeguard the interests of another. We are concerned that in some cases it might be difficult for prosecutors to prove the existence of that duty. While in most cases the clause will apply to circumstances where a duty clearly exists, there will be some cases where a formal fiduciary duty does not exist. These will arise particularly in personal and family relationships.
The great majority of those who responded to our consultations in 2004 supported clause 4, and some made comments that are pertinent to this debate. The Institute of Legacy Management, in welcoming clause 4, referred to the need to tackle the increasing financial abuse of the elderly. It told us that
“charities have noticed an alarming rise in estates where the testator’s funds had been misappropriated prior to death”.
It cited as a typical example the case of a tradesman—perhaps a milkman—who, having helped an old lady with odd jobs, gains increasing influence with her and misappropriates funds from her account.
The north of England trading standards group said that in most cases where vulnerable elderly people were deprived of property unlawfully, the perpetrators were relatives or workers who were supposed to be supporting the victim’s independent lifestyle. Many elderly people are looked after by helpers who do not have formal powers of attorney but take various degrees of responsibility for their finances. Sometimes it is not entirely clear where the fiduciary relationship begins and ends. Very few people abuse their position, but it would not be right to create a technical defence whereby those who had done so did not fall within the full ambit of a definition of a fiduciary relationship and used technical means to evade the appropriate response of the courts and the criminal justice system. One of the aims of the Bill is to remove some of the technical get-outs and defences that have been used under the Theft Acts and other previous legislation.
I can see no problem in fact-finders determining when one person occupies a position in which he is expected to safeguard the interests of another. Furthermore, in most cases the crucial issue will not be the relationship between the defendant and the victim but whether the defendant’s actions were dishonest. It seems sensible and desirable to leave the wording of clause 4 as it is, and I hope the hon. Gentleman will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
I am grateful to the Solicitor-General. I have listened with great care, in Committee and today, to what he has said about fiduciary duty. I entirely understand his wish not to have a provision that is capable of exploitation by an unscrupulous defence. However, I do not understand, because he still has not explained it to my satisfaction, which cases he fears would not be caught by fiduciary duty. He mentioned relatives, who would clearly be construed by any court to have a fiduciary duty to the person from whom they were extracting money.
The Solicitor-General gave the example of a milkman who takes money from an elderly person. That is called theft, and it is dealt with by the Theft Acts—it does not need to be covered by the Bill. If the milkman is expected to safeguard the interests of his customers—I am not sure that he is—there is a fiduciary duty. If such a customer has charged him with looking after their investment portfolio in his capacity as milkman—unlikely, but not impossible—they would feel that he has a fiduciary duty. I do not understand the distinction.
However, I am not prepared to argue about it any longer, because it is not getting us anywhere. The provision is not inadequate, merely loosely worded.
On the other matter, the Solicitor-General has taken us further forward by saying in terms that the provision does not apply to someone who had left the position in which they were expected to provide a safeguard. In other words, it deals with somebody who is in position at the time of the offence and does not apply to someone who is no longer holding that position. That is clear enough, although I do not necessarily support it, because I can envisage examples involving a person who has held a position of trust and then abuses it having left that position. Such a person is as guilty of a fraud as they would have been had they retained it. Having said that, I beg to ask to leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Order for Third Reading read.
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
The Fraud Bill is a small Bill but it is intended to do a big job. It aims to deliver an effective legal structure for tackling the growing threat posed by fraud. Fraud affects us all. It causes long-term damage to UK businesses, wrecks ordinary lives by destroying jobs, savings and pensions, and hits the pockets of every citizen of this country. An effective framework for tackling fraud is therefore crucial to citizens as well as to the economy. The Government's strategy is threefold: first, to modernise the law; secondly, to improve the investigation of fraud; and thirdly, to ensure that the prosecution and court procedures are efficient and effective. The passage of the Bill will complete the first element of that strategy by ensuring that the criminal law on fraud is fit to meet the challenge posed by the sophisticated techniques deployed by today’s fraudsters.
Before concluding our debates on the Bill, as I hope that we can today, it is appropriate to remind ourselves of how we reached this stage. In 1998, the Government asked the Law Commission to review this area of law. It conducted a careful review which led to a final report in July 2002. It identified two key problems. First, deception offences in the Theft Acts were too specific, which made them vulnerable to technical assaults by defence lawyers, who would argue that a particular behaviour fell just outside the definition of the offence charged, or that the defendant had been charged with the wrong kind of deception—in other words, “It’s all very technical so we should find them not guilty.” Secondly, deception was an essential ingredient of the offence, which required a victim to be deceived, but the increasing use of technology in commercial activity renders this approach artificial and potentially troublesome in legal terms.
The Law Commission recommended a new general offence of fraud, with two significant changes: first, to focus on dishonesty rather than deception; and secondly that proof of gain is no longer essential to prove the crime. It will be enough that the offender intends to make a gain for himself or to cause a loss to another, or to expose another to a risk of loss.
The Bill sweeps away the complex array of deception offences and establishes a general offence of fraud with three limbs. Underlying each limb are two basic requirements that the defendants’ behaviour is dishonest and that they intend to make a gain or loss for another.
The first limb is fraud by false representation. The extra element is that the offender must make a false representation knowing that it is or might be false or misleading. The second limb, fraud by failing to disclose information, requires the extra element that the offender fails to disclose information that he has a legal duty to disclose. The third limb, fraud by abuse of position, requires the extra element of abusing a position of responsibility to commit fraud.
In addition to the general offence of fraud, the Bill introduces several other offences, as proposed by the Law Commission. It contains a new offence of obtaining services dishonestly. That replaces the current offence under the Theft Act 1968 of obtaining services by deception, which poses problems as it requires deception.
Clause 6 introduces an offence of possessing articles for use in or in connection with the commission or facilitation of a fraud. It draws upon the existing offence in section 25 of the Theft Act. Clause 7 introduces a higher level offence of making and supplying articles for use in fraud. Clause 9 implements a Law Commission recommendation that the existing offence of fraudulent trading in the Companies Act 1985, which currently applies only to companies, should be “extended to noncorporate traders”, such as partnerships or sole traders.
Those offences will replace provisions in our law that are in daily use. It is therefore important that we get the changes right.
The Bill is the result of an extensive review process, started by the Law Commission and continued by the Government, following full public consultation on the proposals. The consultation showed that the Law Commission report was generally widely welcomed, and we were grateful for the thoughtful contributions that were made. The Government listened carefully to the views expressed and, when appropriate, made changes.
We have already discussed the one proposal that caused some controversy—conspiracy to defraud—but I shall not go over that again, except to reiterate that we will reconsider it in three years.
Another controversy led to the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General giving an assurance that there would be no resiling from the undertaking not to remove jury trials from fraud cases except through a separate, stand-alone measure, and telling us that a review and consultation was taking place about that. Will the Solicitor-General briefly give the House an up-to-date account of the Government’s thinking on that?
The Government appreciate that we need to consider introducing a stand-alone Bill to tackle the way in which some fraud trials have been conducted. We believe that it is important to have the ability to deal with the few non-jury trials in serious fraud cases. We intend to revert to that at some stage and introduce an appropriate measure. We have made it clear that we want to have full discussion here and in the other place about that.
There is a range of steps that we can take to combat fraud. We have provided considerable extra resources for the Serious Fraud Office and the City of London police to tackle fraud; we have set up a wide-ranging review of fraud to examine the UK’s long-term response to it, and we plan to introduce a Bill at an appropriate stage to deal with the way in which the courts tackle the most serious cases of fraud.
However, the Bill will deliver one vital component to combating fraud—an effective criminal law. It will remove the fundamental deficiencies in the existing law and ensure that it can capture the true breadth of fraud. The Bill is complete and comprehensive. It will provide us with a criminal law fit for meeting the challenges posed by fraudsters today. It is a measure that is eagerly awaited by stakeholders. It should improve the prosecution process by reducing the chance of offences being wrongly charged. It should provide greater flexibility to keep pace with the use of technology in crimes of fraud.
I commend the Bill to the House.
On Second Reading in the other place, Lord Lloyd of Berwick said:
“My Lords, it seems to me that this is one of the best Bills to have come out of the Home Office for many a long year.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 22 June 2005; Vol. 672, c. 1664.]
I would not go that far but we broadly welcome the measure, which deals with a complicated subject. At Second Reading I said this was the 53rd criminal justice Bill since 1999. This is the best of a bad bunch and stands comparison with them all. It is, but for two matters, a largely uncontroversial Bill. We are dealing with criminal intent and dishonesty, not bad manners or sharp practice, and the way in which the cases are tackled by the Serious Fraud Office and the Crown Prosecution Service
Order. I must inform the House that there has been a failure in the sound system. In the meantime, I wonder whether the hon. and learned Gentleman would raise his voice.
He is not paid to shout.
For a moment, I allowed myself to be fooled into thinking that people were coming into the Chamber to hear my speech. I have a horrible suspicion that it has more to do with what the Minister for Europe and my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) will be saying in a moment rather than what the Solicitor-General and I have been discussing. None the less, I will shout as best I can—although, as hon. Members have said, I do not get paid for shouting.
I was in the middle of a particularly purple passage of my remarks, but you have successfully completely thrown me off my train of thought, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will rush back to my handwritten notes and, with my new glasses on, endeavour to get back to the matter in hand.
The common law conspiracy to defraud aspect is perhaps one area of controversy, but happily that has been settled between the parties and we look to the Government to come back to the House in a few years’ time with a report on the conduct of the general common law conspiracy to fraud aspect of the Bill.
I was also pleased to hear that the Government are holding to their undertaking that they will not resile from their promise not to introduce section 43 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which will in some circumstances dispense with the jury in fraud trials, and to return to the House with a discrete Bill dealing with that. Whether that is in the Queen’s Speech in November or in some other Queen’s Speech we will await with interest.
This is an empty House but despite its brevity the Bill has important aspects that resonate positively. [Interruption.] When I used the expression, “resonate positively”, I woke up not only the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) but myself. One of the Dukes of Devonshire who sat in the other place in the late 19th century had a dream that he was making a speech in the House of Lords, and he woke up to find that he was.
This is a serious subject on which I must not become too flippant by digressing. I congratulate the Law Commission and, as I have said, those officials who worked with the Law Commission and the Government, whether it was in the Home Office or whether it was in the Law Officers’ Department, on producing a Bill of this calibre. I commend the Bill, as it now stands, to the House.
I shall start where the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) finished by supporting his commendation of the Law Commission and all those who have worked on the Bill. I include in that not only the Solicitor-General and his team, but those in another place who did the hard work before we started the Bill. That did a great deal to ensure that the Bill was in good order, so we had little to do in Committee and on Report. This is a good Bill, and I support it wholeheartedly.
Fraud is an extraordinarily important matter. I have long felt that we have not had adequate safeguards in place in this country to deal with white-collar crime or even minor fraud. As the Solicitor-General has said, there are three elements to making sure that the system is robust. The first is to get the legislation right; the second is to get the investigation right; and the third is to get the prosecutions and legal procedure right. The Bill is significant, although some areas of the law are still weak. The review will provide us with further food for thought in ensuring that we have an adequate battery of legislation in statute law.
I am less sanguine that we have got the investigation side of things right. I have listened to the Solicitor-General on the additional resources for the Serious Fraud Office and the City of London police. As he knows, however, there have been huge deficiencies in the successful investigation and prosecution of fraud in recent years. Our provincial police forces, which are very good at many things, are very poor in that particular area. They do not understand fraud, which they find difficult to investigate effectively. Too often, I have seen minor fraud in particular not being investigated properly, because the resources are not there. We must address that point nationally and locally to ensure that the resources are put in and that the expertise is available to do the job effectively. This is not a derogatory comment about the police, but it is sometimes beyond the normal competence of a police officer to deal with specific financial and accountancy issues, which are beyond the training of most police officers, most members of the public and most Members of Parliament. That is why we need dedicated resources.
On the prosecution of fraud, I do not accept that we need to move away from a jury-based system for the prosecution of serious fraud, and if the Solicitor-General intends to introduce a Bill in the next Session of Parliament that does that, we will resist it. Looking across the Atlantic, some of the largest fraud cases ever prosecuted—the Enron prosecutions—were put before a judge and jury in a Texas court. Why should it be thought that a British jury is incapable of assessing the facts in a case of fraud, when a Texas jury can deal perfectly adequately with such matters? It seems to me that there is no difference and that the Government are therefore barking up the wrong tree in trying the remove the jury element. There are ways in which we can facilitate the jury consideration of fraud trials and manage cases better, but those areas have not been addressed properly.
As far as this Bill is concerned, I am satisfied that it is good legislation, and I commend it to the House.
With the leave of the House, Madam Deputy Speaker.
On Texas juries, the system is different in Texas for all sorts of reasons. One of those reasons is the element of plea bargaining in fraud cases, which is not carried out in the same way in our jurisdiction.
I close by thanking all those who have worked hard to make the Bill possible. I thank Opposition and Government Members for the constructive nature of the debate throughout. I thank the Chairmen of the Committee, the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) and my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, South (Mr. Jones), and the members of the Committee for their exemplary work. I thank my Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South (Mr. Cunningham), for his unstinting assistance. I also thank the officials, lawyers and staff of the House, who have worked extremely hard to bring the Bill to this stage. The Attorney-General and I led on this Bill, but the Home Office took responsibility for policy and most of the background work was done by Home Office officials, whom I thank. I also thank Mr. Justice Wilkie, who was then a law commissioner and who produced the Law Commission report to which we are indebted.
The Bill has a big job to do, and we have worked hard to send it into law in good shape. I hope that it works to deter those who are tempted by fraud, and if it fails to do so, I hope that it assists in convicting, imprisoning and punishing those who commit fraud. I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed without amendment.
A Citizens’ Agenda
[Relevant documents:
Twenty-second Report of the European Scrutiny Committee, Session 2005-06, HC34-xxii, paragraph 1.
Thirty-first Report of the European Scrutiny Committee, Session 2005-06, HC34- xxxi, paragraphs 1 and 30.
Thirty-second Report of the European Scrutiny Committee, Session 2005-06, HC34-xxxii, paragraphs 4 and 5.
Thirty-third Report of the European Scrutiny Committee, Session 2005-06, HC34-xxxiii, paragraph 16.
Thirty-sixth Report of the European Scrutiny Committee, Session 2005-06, HC34-xxxvi, paragraphs 11, 18 and 19.
Thirty-seventh Report of the European Scrutiny Committee, Session 2005-06, HC34-xxxvii, paragraph 49.]
I beg to move,
That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 9390/06, Commission Communication: A Citizens’ Agenda—Delivering Results for Europe: and supports the Government’s view that it welcomes the principles behind ‘A Citizens’ Agenda’ and the Commission’s commitment to taking forward the Hampton Court agenda of delivering concrete results and benefits to EU citizens.
I should like to introduce this debate on the European Commission communication, but before I do so, I thank the European Scrutiny Committee for providing the Government with such an excellent opportunity to elaborate our position on the Commission paper and the other documents tagged to this debate. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) on his election to the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee. I know from previous Committee sittings that he is an extremely effective and knowledgeable member of the Committee, and I wish him well in his new role.
As I underlined during the European Standing Committee debate on “Plan D for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate” in May, the Government attach great importance to communicating with Parliament and the citizens whom we serve on European issues. Hon. Members on both sides of the House will no doubt recognise that we all have a role in promoting awareness and engaging the wider public in the discussion of such issues. In the case of policies linked to the European Union, dispelling the plethora of myths and misconceptions, which are unfortunately too prominent in our public debate, is a particular challenge.
No matter what the document says—I agree with the Minister that it is a good document—will he undertake to the House that he will continue to go out to the public up and down the country and explain the benefits of our membership of the European Union? That approach goes over the heads of the editors of some of our tabloid newspapers, who want to rubbish everything that happens in the European Union.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his intervention. I had a particularly useful and interesting visit to his city, Leicester, where I found a positive response from the people who had spontaneously arrived to discuss European issues. I was grateful to him and to other Leicester Members for arranging that meeting.
Bearing in mind the fact that the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) participated in the forum to investigate both sides of the argument on the European issue, we now find that a pamphlet has been published by the Paris think tank Notre Europe, financed in part by the Commission’s directorate-general for culture and education. Why should Mr. Andrew Duff and his friends, who believe that there should be a new European constitution, have their publication financed? Should not those on the Eurosceptic side who apply to the European Commission for finance to put forward the Euro-realist view—which, after all, is winning—also get money?
When I used the word “spontaneous”, I knew that I risked combustion from the Opposition Benches. Given the hon. Gentleman’s persistent interest in the subject over more years than both of us would care to remember, if he submitted a pamphlet on culture and education in the European Union to the relevant department, I am sure that it would be considered, along with others, for publication. I look forward to receiving a draft copy from him.
The pamphlet had nothing to do with culture and education; it had to do with the European constitution, and wanting to put in place the very thing that the Government have completely mucked up.
I think that I have dealt with the hon. Gentleman’s point.
As the Commission’s “Plan D” rightly stresses, citizens are much more interested in the practical policies affecting their daily lives than in arcane institutional questions. The Government therefore broadly welcome the ideas and proposals contained in the Commission’s “A Citizens’ Agenda”, published in May, which sets out its strategic thinking on taking forward the future of Europe debate. The Hampton Court agenda, one of the many successes of our recent EU presidency, provided the inspiration for much of the substance of the Commission’s “A Citizens’ Agenda” and the subsequent decision at the June European Council to concentrate on what was described as a Europe of results.
Given that the last opinion poll on the constitution showed that 86 per cent. of the British people would vote against it and only 14 per cent. were in favour, would not a substantial change of policy direction in Europe be necessary before the British people could even contemplate being more enthusiastic about Europe?
Obviously, the results in France and the Netherlands are what concern the European Union’s leaders. I shall not speculate on what might have happened had a referendum been held in this country. We have two results, and those are the results that concentrate the minds of European leaders, because they must be dealt with as part of the debate about the future of Europe.
I look forward to the official Opposition trying to distinguish their position from that of the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash). Recently, there has perhaps been a greater connection between the two than historically—we will no doubt find out whether that is still the case in a moment. This Government, however, believe in real engagement with the European Union, and in leading the way with key partners on the European agenda.
More specifically, “A Citizens’ Agenda” sets out a view of Europe’s immediate priorities. The European Union should focus on delivering results on issues that matter to citizens, and on the economic reforms needed to make the EU competitive in today’s global economy. We need to intensify our efforts to deliver practical benefits across areas as diverse as energy, EU competitiveness and the environment. Much as the Opposition would somehow like us to believe that one of their priorities is environmental protection and the fight against climate change, their approach is obviously at odds with their attitudes towards the European Union. Being pro-environment and pro-European are two sides of the same coin. No one can seriously advocate the effective protection of our environment without seriously supporting powers for the European Union to do so. That is the challenge that the Conservative party has so far avoided. It has no credible policy on either issue, and its real position is shown by its continued determination to withdraw from the biggest political grouping in the European Parliament, whose commitment to environmental protection, unlike that of Conservative MEPs, is unequivocal.
Will the Minister tell the House which new competences he would like the EU to have on environmental matters?
The issue is clear. We support the existing competences of the European Union, which the hon. Gentleman cannot say about his party, given its determination to change fundamentally the European Union without saying how it is going to do that. We know a little more clearly whom it will do it with, however—one party from the Czech Republic is on offer so far. As I have indicated, the Conservative party talks about environmental protection, but the truth is that it lacks support anywhere for achieving its aims. Perhaps the British people will therefore examine carefully its claims to want to protect our environment, and ask how it plans to do so.
I do not want to cast any aspersions on the private grief of the Conservative party. The most pro-environment policy to take forward, however, would be the complete abolition of the common agricultural policy. In our limited way, we are trying to grapple with that, and are now likely to be fined because of the problems with the Rural Payments Agency. So far, however, the vast majority of European states have made no attempt whatever to change from direct subsidy to their farmers to some form of sensible environmental policy. What are we doing to help to change their minds?
I am sorry that my hon. Friend takes that point of view, but he is not strictly accurate. The percentage of total spending by the European Union in that regard has decreased from 70 per cent. to a little more than 40 per cent., which is a significant change. Moreover, as was agreed at the end of the British presidency, there will be a further and fundamental review of how the EU spends its money, concentrating in particular on whether it has the right priorities. If my hon. Friend sets out his views with the usual clarity and force, as I anticipate that he will, they will clearly be taken into account, not only in this but other countries.
When the Minister discusses the need for reform of agriculture, has he noted the way in which many of the new accession states have managed to blend into existing European agricultural patterns? For example, Slovenian farmers have been claiming for many more animals than actually existed on their farms. While they are truly integrating themselves, that is not necessarily the best fashion in which to reduce the budget.
I am sure that my hon. Friend is not relying on occasional anecdotal evidence that he has drawn from odd sources around. The way in which the debate on future financing took place and concluded shows that new member states, which have the most to gain from ensuring that the European Union prioritises competitiveness, research and development and delivering both the Lisbon and Hampton Court agendas in its spending, gave strong support to the British view of future financing.
It is appropriate that this debate follows the one on the Fraud Bill, as the Commission’s accounts have yet to be signed off, and one of the paragraphs in the documentation provided as helpful background to the debate states:
“Trust in the European Union has dropped from 50 per cent. of citizens trusting the EU in Autumn 2004 to 44 per cent. in Spring 2005.”
I suspect that the Minister was able to vote in the last referendum of the British people on European Union membership in 1975. I am afraid that I am too young to have done so. One now has to be at least 49 years of age to have taken part in that referendum. Is not it time to give the British people another referendum on that matter?
If that was a none-too-subtle way of identifying my age, I confess that I did vote, and I voted on the winning side. What is important, though, is for us to have a discussion about the European Union. Do I detect from the hon. Gentleman’s views a hint that he and other members of the Conservative party would like the United Kingdom to leave the European Union? I see that there is approval for that idea on the Conservative Benches, where there is obviously a strong strain of opinion influencing the way in which Front Benchers behave.
What about those on the Labour Benches?
My hon. Friends are clearly offering constructive advice and support, as they consistently do—do they not?
I was talking about the constitutional treaty. I should emphasise that there is currently no consensus on the precise way forward. Since the French and Dutch “no” votes, the Government have consistently made it clear that this is not a matter for one member state alone; it is for the 25 member states together to make decisions about the treaty’s future. The June European Council agreed that the German presidency should present a report to the European Council in 2007, based on extensive consultations with member states. As a result, I have had a number of conversations with other EU partners on finding the right way forward. It is therefore important for me to indicate to Parliament how our own thinking on the subject is developing, and I intend to take an early opportunity to set out the underlying principles of our approach.
I hope that my comments will be considered helpful. Does my right hon. Friend agree that when it comes to a European Union of 27 states, the status quo in terms of the EU’s internal arrangements is not acceptable or practical, and that certain changes will be necessary to make it work effectively? Does he agree that all parties in the House, and all parts of all parties, will have to grasp the nettle at some point?
My hon. Friend makes a good and practical point. As the European Union has enlarged, it has become necessary for its decision-making processes to be efficient and effective. It would otherwise not be possible for it to make important decisions in the interests of its people.
Surely what my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Mr. Borrow) has said about the future of a Europe with 27 members makes the case for a looser arrangement of independent democratic states, co-operating voluntarily for mutual benefit when that is appropriate, rather than a centralised European state.
I do not accept my hon. Friend’s description of the operation of the European Union. As a very distinguished former Conservative Prime Minister said when speaking of the Conservative Government’s application to join the EU in the early 1960s, what is on offer is a pooling and sharing of sovereignty. We recognise that the benefits of that pooling and sharing outweigh the loss of sovereignty in significant areas.
I know that my hon. Friend is concerned about and committed to environmental protection. His “looser arrangement” of member states would not be able to deliver the kind of environmental protection that we require in the 21st century, because we would not have the legal ability to enforce decisions of that kind in all 27 member states, or indeed among prospective members of the Union. That is the fundamental problem that the Conservative party is refusing to address, with its transparent pretence that it is concerned about our environment, when it is failing to deliver the means whereby our environment can be protected.
rose—
I appear to have provoked a storm of protest. I give way to the hon. Gentleman at the back.
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. He has been very generous.
Things appear to have moved on since the stuff that people were trotting out 10 years ago. Is the Minister not aware of the findings of an ICM poll of 1,000 chief executives in this country? They showed that 52 per cent. think that the EU is a failing organisation, 54 per cent. think that the disadvantages of over-regulation outweigh any benefit to be had from a single market, and 60 per cent. want our arrangements with the EU to relate only to free trade. Does the Minister not agree that things have moved on considerably, and that people now think it is a bad thing to be in the EU, not a good thing?
I did see the results of that poll, and I have seen the results of a number of other polls which do not entirely bear out those results. I know that the hon. Gentleman has a particular view of the European Union, and it is not terribly surprising that he probably picked out the poll result that accorded with his own—I am tempted to say “prejudices”, but that may be a little harsh.
There is a wide range of views. The view that I think is clear is that of the Confederation of British Industry, which recognises that the United Kingdom is an integral and important part of the EU and equally recognises, as I hope the hon. Gentleman will as well, that it is in the vital interests of British business for us to continue to be a successful part of the world’s largest single market of some 460 million consumers. The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but I hope he can explain to British businesses that are trading successfully in that single market how they would operate if we were outside it.
Surely the Minister is not arguing that environmental protection stops just with the European Union. Surely if we are talking about environmental protection, it must apply to the whole of the European continent, so how come it stops at the borders of the EU?
I was not suggesting that for a moment, but if 27 member states can from 1 January next year agree on environmental legislation to protect the environment, that would not only represent a substantial proportion of the population and geographical area of the continent of Europe, but allow us to approach international negotiations much more effectively than would otherwise be the case. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) continues to shake his head, but he needs to reflect carefully on the views of other political parties elsewhere in the EU—with the exception of a handful of right-wing ideologues and a handful of people who appear, for the moment at any rate, to want to join the Conservatives in 2009, but even they are having considerable doubts about the right-wing drift of the hon. Gentleman’s party.
Given that we are discussing the effectiveness of the EU at environmental protection, will the Minister explain why, under current proposals for the EU carbon trading system, the Germans are allowed by the British Government to allocate more carbon to their industries than they actually produce now?
We have never suggested that the existing system provides an ideal solution. We want it improved and developed, because it suggests a way forward in reducing carbon emissions. Unfortunately, the Conservative party has rejected that system without coming forward with any alternative practical proposals, which puts it in very considerable difficulty. The Conservatives cannot say that the system that is now beginning to have some effect is not worthwhile without putting forward some practical alternatives that can be seen to deliver reductions in carbon emissions. The scheme is a start: it needs improving, but it is nevertheless in place now, so we need to develop and improve it.
I want to return to an earlier point about the effectiveness of decision making in the EU now that it comprises 27 member states and is growing. What is the British Government’s attitude to the increasing inequality between large and small states, particularly when there are now so many small ones? What does the Minister think of the nonsense of having one commissioner for every country? As the EU expands, a Commission with 30-plus commissioners simply will not be able to operate effectively. What we should be arguing for is a commission of no more than 12, for example.
My hon. Friend tempts me to begin negotiations well before they need to start. She will be aware of a provision in the Nice treaty that goes a small way to delivering what she wants, in that after 1 January next year the number of commissioners will, in the event of further enlargement, be reduced below the number of member states. However, it has to be discussed further before implementation.
rose—
I had better make some progress, as other hon. Members want to take the opportunity to contribute to the debate.
The June European Council also welcomed the citizen’s agenda communication and its proposal to produce a 50th anniversary declaration. It is right that we should celebrate the anniversary of the treaty of Rome and 50 years of European achievement, including the spread of peace, security, prosperity and democracy. The Government look forward to engaging constructively on the declaration setting out Europe’s “values and ambitions” next March.
Following the successful model of an autumn informal summit a year ago at Hampton Court, the European summit at Lahti on 21 October provided a welcome opportunity for EU leaders to take forward the “delivery agenda”. Discussions at Lahti focused on tackling the twin challenges of climate change and energy security, improving Europe’s record on innovation and addressing our citizens’ concerns on migration. EU leaders also discussed the grave situation in Darfur, and had a working dinner with the Russian President Putin.
The Lahti summit provides us with a good basis for further delivering the policy agenda outlined at Hampton Court. It is central to building an EU that continues to make life better for its citizens. Our vision is of an EU with a fully liberalised energy market and a strong dialogue with key energy-producing states, leading the way globally in tackling climate change by exporting ideas such as the emissions trading scheme. Our vision is of an EU that is more prosperous, because it will attract investment and compete effectively with the new economic giants of India and China. Our vision is of an EU where businesses can work across borders without red tape and be the home of European champions; an EU that is more effective, with a powerful voice in the world, working to eliminate poverty and promote development; and an EU that has successfully enlarged to include the western Balkans and Turkey, and has supported reform in neighbouring countries to bring them closer to European standards. Above all, we want an EU that is more relevant as it continues to make life better for its citizens, and one that enables Europeans to take advantage of, rather than retreat from, a changing world. This Government are at the forefront of that European agenda.
The Commission’s commitment to delivery is entirely welcome. This Government are a long-time advocate of a modern European Union, assertive in tackling and responding to the challenges of the 21st century. We have an unequivocal and proactive engagement in the EU, working with our European partners to push for progress in those areas, such as climate change, terrorism and globalisation, in which
“by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone”.
Only by tackling those issues confidently and collectively can we build an EU that our citizens recognise as adding value to their lives. I commend the motion to the House.
I join the Minister in congratulating the European Scrutiny Committee, which has done a fantastic job in producing the reports, and its new Chairman, who will, I am sure, continue the excellent record of his predecessor in seeking to expose what is going on and ensuring proper scrutiny. Following the rejection of the constitution in two referendums, it is vital that the British Government make a clear contribution to the debate about the future of the European Union.
The constitution proposed more EU powers, more qualified majority voting, a move towards a single foreign policy and a single foreign Minister. In essence, it was the continuation of everything that has gone wrong with the EU in the past, including a burgeoning bureaucracy with decisions taken too far away from the people, a structure that—according to one of its own commissioners—has allowed the €600 billion cost of regulation to outstrip the direct benefits of the single market. No wonder that the ICM poll for Open Europe found that 52 per cent. of the 1,000 British business leaders questioned thought that the EU was going in profoundly the wrong direction.
The people of France and the Netherlands offered us an historic opportunity to turn things around. Their referendums knocked the wind out of the sails of the old-fashioned advocates of ever closer union. The chance was there for Britain to lead Europe towards a more open, flexible, deregulated and free-trading future. The tragic, or perhaps just farcical, failure of the Government to rise to that challenge is laid bare by the reports before us.
The 12-month period of reflection passed and was extended. The Austrian presidency called on members to report on their national debates so that a new plan could be synthesised, but nothing came from this directionless Government. As the Committee so scathingly observed in its 31st report
“All in all it is hard to avoid the impression that the United Kingdom has been significantly less involved, at all levels, in the process so far than have other member states, parliamentarians and citizens.”
The Minister referred to his belief that the Government are at the centre of the debate in Europe, but that certainly was not the view taken by the Committee and I do not think that any rational Member, considering what has happened in the past 18 months, could possibly share that view. Surely that was not what the Prime Minister had in mind when he stirringly told the European Parliament that the peoples of the European Union
“are wanting our leadership. It is time we gave it to them.”
Meanwhile, the German Chancellor has argued for a relaunch of the constitution and the French debate has become a significant part of their presidential election, with talk of a mini treaty and various other options. The British Government still have not said whether they support the constitution now or have some other vision. We read last week reports that the Foreign Secretary denounced the constitution as a “grandiose project” that had failed. That is welcome, but the Prime Minister’s signature remains on the constitution and motions for its implementation remain on the Order Paper. Today the Minister said that at some point in the near future he will give an outline of his views on the future of the European Union, but that will come after a protracted period in which we are meant to have been having a national debate about the issue. I think that we deserve rather more, especially as we stand just a few months away from the Berlin declaration, which is due in March next year, and the German Government’s plan to relaunch the drive for a new EU constitution. However, the British Government, after 18 months of pathetic vacillation, have failed to shape that debate at all.
Following on from my question to my right hon. Friend the Minister, would the hon. Gentleman care to explain whether his party believes that a 27-member EU will need changes to its internal management? If so, what ideas will it propose in the coming debate?
The internal management may well need changes, but it is also important that the EU seeks to do less so that it can cope with its existing agenda. A central problem is that the EU is failing to make the necessary progress in matters such as energy policy in the single market precisely because its ambitious political agenda is diverting attention from the things that matter. However, our highest priority is to remove social and employment regulation in this country from European control and bring it back under British control. That would be an important start in the process that the hon. Gentleman has in mind.
The national debate called for in the document entitled “Plan D for Democracy” was never allowed to happen in this country. The Finnish presidency has called for new powers over our police and courts. “A Citizens’ Agenda” calls for
“an initiative to improve decision taking and accountability in areas such as police and judicial co-operation and legal migration”.
What do the Government think about that? I have asked that question repeatedly, but received no clear answers.
I know what Conservative policy is in respect of bringing back the social union, but is that not hypocritical if the single market is retained? Workers can be exploited across Europe, yet they will have no protection. That is ludicrous: surely we should get rid of the single market as well.
That may be the hon. Gentleman’s policy, but it is not mine. It was rather amusing when the Minister suggested earlier that there were great differences of opinion among Opposition Members, given that he was clearly glossing over the large divergence of opinion on the Benches behind him.
The fact that the debate has not been allowed to happen means that I and many others feel left in the dark about the Government’s policy and intentions. In its 31st report, the European Scrutiny Committee says, in reference to the Minister’s explanatory memorandum, that
“it is not clear…whether the Minister supports or rejects the Commission’s proposals for using Article 42 EU to move police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters to the First Pillar, where unanimity in the Council would not apply.”
That opacity was maintained as we approached the Council meeting at which the proposals were discussed. Astonishingly, it was maintained by the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Enfield, North (Joan Ryan), when she appeared before the European Scrutiny Committee last week.
I am listening to the hon. Gentleman with interest. Will he say which parts of the constitutional treaty he supports?
I do not support the treaty, I oppose it. I wish that we had had the opportunity to hold a referendum on it, as I and my party would have opposed it very vigorously. I am sure that we would have secured a very large majority against it, and it is a shame that we had to leave it to the French and the Dutch to do that job for us.
The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department was asked by the European Scrutiny Committee whether the Government supported the use of the so-called passerelle to extend EU powers over justice and home affairs. According to the uncorrected transcript, which I think is accurate, she said:
“Can I just say on your first comment, the fact that I have not ruled it out does not mean that I am ruling it in. It means that I have not done either. I would like to be clear with the Committee on that point.”
This lack of clear leadership was further shown by the Minister’s summary:
“I think the situation we are in now is that it is up to the Finns, who hold the presidency, to handle the proposal to decide where we go next.”
So here we have an area of policy in which just three years ago the Government said that they were opposed to the extension of qualified majority voting whereas now Ministers are happy to drift along with proposals from the Finns without even telling the British people where they stand.
Especially bizarrely, the Home Office says that its concerns are the same as those that arose in relation to the EU constitution, passing over the fact that the same Government signed that constitution and have yet to withdraw their support from it. Why can we not have the same honesty, clarity and leadership that has been shown by the Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell, who said:
“My vision for Europe is that instead of constantly seeking to enlarge the competence of the union that the justice and home affairs ministers concentrate on practical measures of co-operation between states to enhance security and combat terrorism.”
He is also quoted in the Irish Examiner, arguing that giving up the veto in this area
“would seriously affect the operation of Irish criminal law and give the commission the exclusive right to propose matters in this area which is now shared with member states”.
The Irish Justice Minister has been clear about where the Irish Government stand on this issue while the vagueness and lack of direction of the UK Government’s European policy has been a constant theme of all the papers before the House.
I concur with much of what my hon. Friend has said. Will he be good enough to enlighten me on one point? We are against the constitution; we voted against it in principle in the House and we are setting our face towards the idea of some form of association of nation states. However, if it were to transpire that the other member states were not prepared to accept our rejection of the constitution and our idea of movement towards a form of association of nation states, does my hon. Friend agree that it would be more than sensible for us to consider the option of withdrawal from the EU?
The crucial thing for my hon. Friend to understand, as I am sure he does—he has such a clear understanding of these matters—is that treaty changes need unanimity. Therefore, when the British people were to have the opportunity to vote against the constitution, which I am sure that they would have done convincingly, there would have been no possibility of the change proceeding.
So this vagueness and lack of direction from the Government run like a thread through all the documents before us.
Do I take it from what the hon. Gentleman said that a future Conservative Government in the very distant future would commit themselves to a referendum on any treaty changes, and that that is a firm commitment?
I am not in a position to speak for Conservative Governments in the very distant future, but I can say that the forthcoming Conservative Government will ensure that there is a referendum if any treaty change is proposed that would transfer further powers from this country to the EU. It is our policy to bring powers closer to the people and not see them go further away. We do not believe that power should be ceded without the express support of the people in a referendum.
I shall quote further from the Committee’s excellent findings. It said:
“Although the Minister’s explanatory memorandum is significantly better in explaining the Green Paper than his departmental colleague’s in explaining the Commission’s proposals on ‘Europe in the World’…”—
so some marks go to the Minister for that—
“it is no better in explaining the Government’s view on the proposals therein. We do not consider that support for the ‘broad thrust of this Green Paper’ is adequate, and would instead like to know what the Minister thinks of the proposals, and what reply the Government plans to offer.”
On the document “Europe in the World”, the Committee has this to say:
“We are less clear than the Minister that the position taken by the Foreign Secretary on the question of ‘double-hatting’ and his are one and the same. He seems to be arguing that the Foreign Secretary was referring only to a situation where an ‘in situ’ EU Special Representative was also made head of an extant EC delegation, and that this is in some way significantly different from the possibility that he describes in a future Bosnia and Herzegovina. If there is a distinction, it is one that at present escapes us.”
The Committee goes on to say:
“The debate on ‘A Citizens’ Agenda’ will also provide the House with an opportunity to explore the Government’s thinking on this and other relevant issues, which the Minister continues to be regrettably reluctant to share with it at present.”
I was hopeful that the Minister would take this opportunity to share some of his thinking with the House, but all he has promised is an outline at some point in the future. The Committee went on to note that
“the Minister says that he hopes we find his Explanatory Memorandum ‘informative’. On the contrary, its cursory summary of the Communication is uninformative, as is his statement of the Government’s views”.
The Committee then sets out a perfect summary of the British Government’s stance on European policy, by stating:
“The Government’s general position appears to be to shelter behind the obvious absence of any consensus on the future of Europe and to say that it will inform the House of its views once there is one. This is somewhat at odds with the notion of increasing the involvement of national parliaments in decision-making.”
The last in my selection of excerpts from the Committee’s splendid report comes from the conclusion, which states:
“We consider this stance unacceptable, and ask that the Minister provides the government’s views, now, on the detailed proposals in the Communication—which ones he does not agree with, and which ones he endorses.”
I hope that the Minister is embarrassed to hear that catalogue of criticisms from a Committee of the House, and that, even at this late stage, the Government will be prepared to engage in a debate about the future of the EU.
The Commission’s initial premise in the document, “A Citizens’ Agenda” was the right one: the EU should concentrate on addressing the real expectations of the peoples of Europe. However, the document is punctuated by references to rebuilding the political project that was rejected last year in two referendums—the need to “embed” projects in a “coherent political agenda”; the “political ambition” of a new institutional settlement; the need for a political declaration as the precursor to a new treaty and the commitment to the Hague programme, extending EU powers to justice and home affairs. None of that is wanted by the British people, yet the Government have failed to set out an alternative vision. We are left completely in the dark as to their intentions, as was the EU Scrutiny Committee.
We should make it clear now that the EU needs a profound change of direction. We should be calling for the centralising projects of the constitution to be consigned to the dustbin and for an end to efforts to take justice, policing and criminal affairs away from national democracies. We should call loud and clear for a more flexible, deregulated European Union and we should start today.
I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. The rock is being damned by the Opposition’s faint praise for the work of the European Scrutiny Committee; the hard place is trying to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Lanark and Hamilton, East (Mr. Hood) as Chair of the Committee.
My hon. Friend held that position from 1992, when the Committee was the European Legislation Committee, until he demitted office on 18 October 2006. He now represents Parliament on one of the NATO Committees. It is a great honour, but greatly difficult, to follow someone who outlasted 10 Europe Ministers and five Committee Clerks—quite a record. He may have been the longest serving Chair of a Select Committee. He made many friends and many important contributions to progress in Europe, especially in strengthening the role of COSAC.
I want to represent the Committee’s position, much of which has been quoted selectively. The Committee doubted that the communication provided a new vision for the future of the EU—which future would be of great importance to everyone in the UK. It doubted that the proposed agenda, which was not new, would be effective in bridging the gap between the EU and the public and found that the Government were generally unwilling to give more than, at best, a sketchy view on the proposals in any of the important communications. We found that the Government’s position seemed to be to shelter behind the obvious absence of any consensus in the EU on the future of Europe. Instead, they preferred to say, in their explanatory memorandums and in the ESC Sub-Committee debate on “Plan D for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate”, that there was no consensus on the future of Europe and that they would inform the House when one emerged.
The Committee thought that it was right to recommend the communication, along with the documents tagged to it, for debate on the Floor of the House, to give Ministers an opportunity to set out their views on it and the outcome of the discussion in the European Council. As the Minister noted, in paragraph 8 of our 38th report of 18 October, we invited him to discuss the issues in today’s debate.
When we look at the huge scope of the communications—on Europe in the world, neighbourhood policy, trade and competitiveness, development, strategic relations, political dialogue, common foreign and security policy, disaster response, crisis management and European security and defence policy—we find that there is a huge range of agendas. A question on our agenda was asked by House of Lords Sub-Committee C. We repeated it in our 38th report, but it remained unanswered. It was about
“which of the proposals in ‘Europe in the World’ could be implemented without further consideration of the Constitutional Treaty.”
Having listened to the Minister today, I am not convinced that Members serving on the European Scrutiny Committee and other hon. Members have a clearer notion of the Government’s view. I am not convinced that any of us know whether the Government take the Foreign Secretary’s view or the Minister’s view, as they seem to diverge on the double-hatting of EU officials in defence security policy. The question has not been answered, but we hoped that it would be answered before today’s debate.
We should welcome substantial elements of the European transparency initiative document, including what it says about consultation, the disciplining and registration of the lobbying process in Europe, and transparency. I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson) would welcome the document, because it will introduce a binding EU-level framework on member states that will ensure a consistent approach to access and transparency with regard to all beneficiaries of EU funds. From the Committee’s point of view, when anyone asks the Commission for the facts, it either says that it does not have them to hand, or it says that it cannot give them to anyone because it must first obtain the permission of the member state that spent, or mis-spent, those EU funds. The document will be a great step forward, if it is introduced across the EU.
I thank the Minister for his considered view, which appears in the addendum to our 38th report of 18 October. It is an excellent document, and it represents progress. I would have liked him to explain further what he said in that addendum, because it gave us some heart that we would be able to engage in serious dialogue. Although it has not yet been deposited by the Government, the Commission’s 2007 legislative work programme has been introduced, and I look forward to a dialogue with the Minister, as well as the opportunity to work with our colleagues in the other place, on the programme’s details. I should be grateful if we secured a debate on the subject.
We received a disappointing result to a perfectly courteous request from the Committee for a detailed explanation of the Government’s position on the items in the document, although the items themselves are to be welcomed. I welcome the Minister’s statement that the EU is seeking no new competences; that is what everyone wanted to hear. People want a position of stability, so that we can have a genuine debate in this period of reflection, as it is called, after the constitution failed to be adopted in some countries.
May I take this opportunity to congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his appointment as Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, of which I, too, am a member. We may have slight differences on policy questions from time to time, but I think he will bring an enormous amount to bear on the working of the Committee, and we are very pleased to have him as our Chairman. However, may I point out to him that, in addition to what he said, we also said in our report that, on the future of Europe,
“The Government’s general position appeared to be to shelter behind the obvious absence of any consensus on the future of Europe and to say that it would inform the House of its views once there was one.
We considered this somewhat at odds with the notion of increasing the involvement of national parliaments in decision-making”.
Would the hon. Gentleman be good enough to elaborate a little on the very important comment that we made at that point?
I think that we hoped that the Minister would be involved in the dialogue and would report back to us on the Government’s view and the position taken. If there has been dialogue and the Government have not transmitted that to the House, that is disappointing. If there has not been dialogue, that is probably even more disappointing. I have always had a view of the Commission. I would say that I was a friend of the European project, but one who wishes to be critical of the process. There have been many advances in the process, but it has left the citizen behind. The citizen does not understand those advances.
If there is a dialogue, I hope that the Minister will tell us what meetings have taken place, what the conversations have been and what the Government’s position has been in those conversations. We can then assess things from our point of view as members of the Committee. Sometimes people feel that the Committee is full of Euro-anoraks, but we are just people who take the process seriously. May I put a marker down? I hope that the House will take the process of European scrutiny and European dialogue as seriously as the people who sit on our Committee, because sometimes it does not.
We must welcome the hon. Gentleman to his post as Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee. We believe that he will do an excellent job, following on from his predecessor. We look forward to working with him over the coming years.
On transparency, do we not sometimes get the feeling that Ministers would prefer to continue to negotiate in smoke-filled rooms, rather than in the open? Some of that negotiation in smoke-filled rooms led to some poor decisions in the past: for instance, Cyprus being permitted to join the Union before any resolution between the north and south, and Bulgaria and Romania being able to join with only a one-year deferment, rather than being held until such a point as they complied with the necessary EU regulation.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for reminding me. It was a great pleasure to be nominated by all the groups on the European Scrutiny Committee. That may mean that people expect me to face three or four ways on every issue at the same time, but I am not a Minister and I do not intend to do that. I also recognise the divergent thinking that symbolises the way in which the hon. Gentleman approaches his duties. In the European Scrutiny Committee, he always tries to get off the subject and on to another, equally important, subject, but not necessarily one on the agenda.
There is a list of things that are going to happen: the 50th anniversary declaration, the Leiden summit and so on. They are all virtuous, but they are not new. They would not be seen as new by the citizen. This process of reflection and these three communications—the one that we discussed before on dialogue and the present two—are about connecting with the citizen. The game is given away by one of the Commission’s statements:
“the EU can make its external policies more coherent through stronger co-ordination between member states and the institutions”.
That is the fundamental flaw. In the Commission’s logic, if something is over the heads of the people or out of the sight of the people, that does not matter as long as the institutions advance.
We could do much better. I will offer some personal thoughts. The question should be, “Can we make things the best that they could be and can we prevent them from being the worst case that they could be?” I believe that the secret of success is the process, rather than the target solution. If the process is not secretive or directive—centralisation for the EU is obviously natural for the Commission—and if it is genuinely consultative, it will be progressive and something that we can welcome.
May I make one last suggestion to the Minister? He could campaign for not just simple language, but the end of the use of acronyms. What is the OHR in the BiH duties of the EUSR? What is the CFSP? I know what it means, but most people do not. I still do not know what the ESDP is—and I just read it out on to the record. The latest document refers to CARS 21. I always worry when the word “cars” is connected to the EU because there are hon. Members on both sides of the House who want the EU to become a car crash. I want it to be a success. I hope that the Minister will give us an indication that he has been thinking about these things and that the Government are putting forward a view in the dialogue.
I wish to start by making a brief comment on yesterday’s announcement by the Home Secretary on the limitations on migration from Bulgaria and Romania, given that it has a link with the debate. Liberal Democrat Members were disappointed that such an important announcement was made by way of written statement, rather than oral statement, because it meant that Opposition Members did not have the opportunity to raise questions and concerns about the practicality of the proposals.
The enforcement of the scheme will ask an awful lot of the immigration and nationality directorate, which the Home Secretary has already described as “not fit for purpose”. Those of us who represent constituencies in which there are many asylum seekers will know that the IND struggles enough as it is without having an additional burden placed on it. However, it is right to have transitional arrangements, given the especially high number of immigrants who came here from Poland and the other accession countries. We have real worries about the implications for the black economy and gangmasters, so it was disappointing that we were not able to raise them in the House yesterday.
“A Citizens’ Agenda” aims to answer questions on the future of Europe. Although there is significant disagreement between Members on both sides of the House—and in the parties represented on both sides of the House—the document raises interesting ideas, although there could be some question about whether it reaches a conclusion. Part of the answer about the future of Europe is an examination of how Europe can become more effective at delivering the priorities of the citizens of Europe, such as prosperity, solidarity and peace. If the EU is to be genuinely connected with the people living in it, it needs to work on the issues that are at the top of those people’s agenda.
Too many people, including many hon. Members, regard EU institutions as remote and completely unconnected to daily life. The institutions sometimes do not help themselves because even when they are working on matters of prime importance, they are not necessarily good at getting that message across, linking with people and consulting.
Several elements of the constitutional treaty were designed to solve that problem. Many of them, especially those dealing with openness, transparency and accountability, were entirely sensible and could have made a difference. They could have improved people’s perceptions of the EU and their trust in its institutions. However, the resounding defeats in France and the Netherlands showed that we still need to connect with people so that they understand and feel part of the structure that is being created.
May I seek clarification on whether the Liberal Democrats are united on this matter? Do the Liberal Democrat Members in the Chamber agree with the statement made by the Liberal Democrat MEP and leader of the group in the European Parliament, Andrew Duff, in which he proposed:
“Those EU countries which reject the EU Constitution should be demoted to the status of ‘associate member’”?
Is that the Liberal Democrats’ position?
As we have discovered from several interventions in the debate, there are differing views in all the parties. However, the Liberal Democrats are more united than it appears the other two parties might be.
The gentleman who was quoted is the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the European Parliament, not some Back Bencher, so his views are important. May I ask the hon. Lady about Liberal Democrat policy in the House? Do the Liberal Democrats still support the European constitutional treaty? I thought they did.
It has been made clear that the constitutional treaty in its present form is dead in the water. The Liberal Democrats support reform of the European Union. I shall explain some of the issues that have arisen from that debate.
The Liberal Democrats are a pro-European party but we are not entirely uncritical. As we have heard from Members on both sides of the House, there are fundamental problems with aspects of the EU and there is a need for reform. The document speaks of increasing the openness and accountability of European institutions and minimising bureaucracy, both of which are key. The starting point could be examining the transparency of the Council of Ministers, because there is a lack of transparency and openness about the decisions made in that institution.
“A Citizens’ Agenda” calls for the greater involvement of national Parliaments in decision making and policy development in the EU, which we welcome. Any extra democracy and openness can only be a good thing. We would also like to see national Parliaments more involved in decisions about subsidiarity, another topic covered in the document. We need to ensure that decisions are made at the most appropriate level, rather than power being sucked up to the European Commission or the EU institutions. If we are to reconnect European citizens with the institutions in Brussels, they need much more clarity about where decision making lies, and they must be certain that that is the most sensible and appropriate place for a decision to be taken.
I am delighted that the hon. Lady and her party are committed to subsidiarity. Can she give me her party’s first priority for a power that should be brought back from the EU to domestic control?
That is part of a much larger debate that needs to take place. Each area of policy needs to be considered individually, so I would not prioritise any particular one. Policy should be taken as a whole so that the entire system makes sense and so that people can understand where power lies and where decisions will be made.
Will the hon. Lady give way?
No. We have had enough debate on the matter.
“A Citizens’ Agenda” speaks of deeper economic integration and the building of the single market, to which other hon. Members have referred. The main tool for that is the stimulation of growth through the single market and competition policy. There are clearly issues of concern in this area, but removing the final barriers to trade, work and travel is critical to the future of Europe. That ties in with enlargement.
We would welcome an informed debate on enlargement. There are many anecdotes going around that are not necessarily true, and there are issues that are not being discussed but need to be discussed, so that people understand what they are letting themselves in for and what sort of Europe we shall have. We therefore welcome the Commission’s report on the EU’s enlargement strategy, which is due later this year, and hope it will be a key part of that process.
The EU could do more to concentrate on the areas where it could achieve most. We welcome the idea that every EU citizen should enjoy full access to their fundamental rights, but I am less convinced about the idea of an entitlement card. It needs to be explored, but it has the hallmark of a meaningless gimmick, though the principles behind it are to be welcomed.
We would like to see a more effective common European asylum system and greater police and judicial co-operation. With a common threat of terrorism against all western European countries, co-operation and co-ordination across borders becomes more essential every day. With that goes the need for the EU to safeguard the rights of individuals affected by cross-border law enforcement. I am sure I am not the only Member present who has constituents who have become mired in the morass of international legal co-operation. Trying to help them has given me a new understanding—or, rather, a new appreciation of my lack of understanding—of the present system. Further work is needed to clarify that.
In preparing for enlargement, the EU must move ahead with plans for closer co-operation to guard the external borders of Europe—both to share costs more fairly and to ensure uniformly high standards—because if it does not that could be a weakness for European countries in the future.
That links in with the need for a strong European neighbourhood policy. The first steps that have been taken have been a good attempt, and they have made progress in stabilising neighbouring countries, but we must go beyond what is currently being done. There are also doubts about the commitment of some member states to that. It needs to be tackled by all member states together.
We welcome the sentiments in “A Citizens’ Agenda”. However, alongside the European Scrutiny Committee’s concerns, which have been eloquently explained, we worry that it might just be another set of vague, high-falutin’ platitudes about Europe’s values and ambitions, and that it will not do anything in the long run to re-engage with the public and help change people’s perceptions of the EU.
We believe that what is needed to achieve real change are concrete reforms to make the EU more efficient, more democratic, more transparent and more accountable. They would include increasing oversight of the unelected Commission, a charter of fundamental rights to protect people against EU laws that infringe their basic rights, strengthening the powers of the elected European Parliament compared with the secretive Council of Ministers, and more open and democratic decision making. Therefore, although, overall, positive messages come out of this, real reform is needed and we wait to see what concrete proposals come out of the process.
The title “citizens’ agenda” highlights the problem that we face, because we in this country are not citizens—actually, we are subjects.
Therefore, we have a difficulty, and I want to talk today about the relationship between those who govern and those who are governed, because that lies at the heart of the problems that we have in respect of all the debates about the European Union. There is an implied consent, and when that implied consent no longer exists, two things happen: first, people withdraw into the private sphere, which means that they no longer go out and vote; and, secondly, they no longer care, and when they no longer care they get to the second stage—they openly revolt. In the EU, the implied consent is being withdrawn. One reason for that is that implied consent usually exists only because those who are being governed know that, every so often, they can kick out those who govern them, and that cleansing process reinvigorates the implied consent. But at the European level that simply never happens.
The European elections are like a phantom pregnancy. They go through all the stages and get bigger and bigger, but in the end they do not deliver anything. That is because we do not vote for a Government and we fight those elections on national labels. What does it mean to vote for the Conservatives, when they then sit with the European People’s party? Well, even they do not know about that.
I strongly agree with my hon. Friend about people becoming alienated when they are ignored. Does she agree that citizens’ sense of being ignored—when they need jobs and their welfare state is under threat, and so forth—is a factor in the rise of the extreme right in parts of Germany and elsewhere in Europe, and that that presents a very dangerous possibility for the future of Europe?
Yes, extremists, whether from the right or the left, appear to be offering certainties, and people want certainties. That is worrying.
But I want to look at our own house, before we criticise the rest of Europe. There are two options. We can either draw more of the decision making up into Brussels, which clearly has not worked, or we can draw it down to member states, which is what I think we need to do. In that regard, we should start at home. Let me give an example of what I mean. Early in October, I turned the radio on and tuned into the “Today” programme, hoping to have my daily rant at John Humphrys. Our Secretary of State for Trade and Industry was talking about age discrimination legislation. I thought that it was very good legislation, and that I would have enjoyed, and have felt proud as a Labour MP, and campaigning and saying, “This is what we have done.”
But what happened? That is the first I had heard of that legislation, so I sent an e-mail to the Library, asking whether the House of Commons had ever debated that it. The Library wrote back saying that the legislation was statutory instrument 2006/2408. It could find no debates on it in the Commons, but there was a debate in the Lords, on 30 March. Of course, the Lords cannot amend statutory instruments. I read the relevant Lords Hansard and discovered that they did indeed debate it—from 4.22 to 4.54 pm, which is a grand total of 32 minutes. I did a little more reading, and I was given the website link for the relevant research paper. This morning, I asked for a hard copy of it. It has not been printed yet.
Since 1997, there have been nine attempts to introduce anti-age discrimination legislation—via ten-minute Bills and amendments to existing legislation, for example— so this issue has exercised the House. That is good, but I would have liked to know about it. There is another reason the House should debate such legislation at length. When Ministers stand at the Dispatch Box and explain their understanding of such legislation, courts then refer to such statements in interpreting that legislation.
There was another element of that “Today” programme that really upset me. When the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry was asked whether the new anti-age discrimination legislation would be incompatible with certain UK legislation, he said that it had yet to be tested in the courts. I do not have a problem with legislation being tested in the courts, but we need to give courts guidance on how we regard it. When such legislation affects all our constituents—indeed, this legislation will have ramifications that we have not even dreamt of yet—we need to be much more realistic about how we deal with and debate it in this House.
I have three suggestions. First, we should have a proper Europe Minister. By that I mean a Minister who is in the Cabinet, who has regular—[Interruption.] The current Minister for Europe is a perfect candidate and I would propose him for that role. Indeed, I want to enhance his role. In addition to being in the Cabinet, he should have regular question sessions at the Dispatch Box as the Minister for Europe, during which he explains all the decisions taken at European level that impact on domestic legislation, and how matters will be co-ordinated across Whitehall. That role is currently fulfilled by our permanent representative in Brussels, but I would like it to be fulfilled by someone of Cabinet rank who is regularly answerable to this House. Indeed, in terms of its political significance, that role is almost one for the Deputy Prime Minister.
Is there not a great danger in describing the post of which my hon. Friend approves as the Minister for Europe? Just as the Minister with responsibility for European agriculture matters ends up representing agriculture in government, so the Minister for Europe ought to be called the Minister for Britain. The mechanism ought not to be simply a transmission belt.
I am sure that, whatever the title of the position, the House would soon knock whoever holds it into shape. I would also move that role out of the Foreign Office, because this is a domestic issue.
My second suggestion is that MEPs should debate with Members of Parliament issues on which they have a vote; for example, rapporteurs should debate significant legislation with MPs. We should not go to Brussels—they should come here. A debate in this House on the service directive would have been extremely helpful, and I, for one, would love to see more of Mr. Andrew Duff, so that he can explain the Liberals’ position in this Chamber. For once, that would flush out the hypocrisy of the Liberals, who are the most fierce integrationists in Brussels, but who say that they want to withdraw from the fisheries policy when they fight general elections. We would have a bit of fun, particularly when we heard what the European People’s party had to say.
Thirdly, whatever the nature of the debate on the future of Europe, we must at some stage openly acknowledge that there is a big divide between countries that are members of the single currency and those that are not. The latter will require far deeper political integration to create an effective single currency—there is absolutely no way round that. If we go on pretending that that is not the situation, we will not even begin to have an honest debate.
It is great to have a debate on the citizens’ agenda, but we need to start to examine the failures of this House to bring it closer to its people and to have a bit more openness about problems that are staring us in the face while we go on pretending that they do not exist.
We have been debating something that does not exist, as there is no citizens’ agenda in Europe. The public—the voters—of Europe have always been treated as political adolescents to be patronised and then ignored by the political class who drive the project forward. Europe’s political elite—they are often very candid about this, at least on the continent—see themselves as having a vanguard role in building an integrated, centralised Europe around which the public must coalesce. If we add to that the fact that all multinational bureaucracies have an instinct to expand and never to reform themselves, we have a recipe for what we do indeed have—a remote, centralised, often corrupt and certainly wasteful form of government from which the public feel completely alienated. There is now a lot of evidence for that, including a succession of no votes, not only on the European constitution but in Sweden and Denmark and an initial no vote in Ireland on the Nice treaty. Moreover, the turnout in European parliamentary elections has, on average, fallen in every single election since 1979, despite the fact that the Parliament has more and more power. The stronger it gets, the fewer people vote for it.
I think that what I have said so far is uncontroversial. It has been a general theme of this debate that something needs to be done to re-engage the public; so it is that we have in the documents before the House something called plan D. I do not know what happened to plans A, B and C, but perhaps I had something to with the latter, along with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart). She and I had the honour of representing this House in the Convention on the Future of Europe, which was an attempt to tackle these issues of alienation. We were instructed to simplify the treaties and to create a Europe closer to its citizens. Of course, that instruction was ignored; instead, the Convention wrote itself a constitution, which was all about giving more powers to the very European Union institutions that had created the problem in the first place. Put simply, the constitution failed. However, although it was turned down by the voters of France and Holland, the Prime Minister, bizarrely, not only signed but still supports it. Presumably, therefore, the Government’s formal position is that that discredited document should be brought into effect in its entirety.
I very much endorse my right hon. Friend’s comments and those of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Mr. Stuart). I should point out that next week we vote on changing the Standing Orders that deal with questions of how the House handles this business. Is it not extremely important that we emphasise in that debate, by amendments or otherwise, the supremacy of this Parliament over the European Communities Act 1972 to allow ourselves to veto legislation when we know that it will do a great deal of harm to the people of this country and the people of Europe?
I agree with my hon. Friend. The House has a crucial contribution to make to openness and transparency. A notable feature of the wonderful plan D is that it advances the proposition that people should be better informed about decisions that are made on their behalf but does not tackle the problem of the vast number of committees in Europe that are submerged from public view. When Lord Kinnock was vice-president of the Commission, he told an Austrian newspaper three years ago that
“the citizens do not know that there is a secret governing system in Europe… We have more than 300 formations in which officials from the member states meet and pass decisions. That is the largest source of bureaucracy and the black hole in European democracy”.
At the same time, Professor Larsson, an academic from Sweden, noted the existence of 1,352 other committees under the Commission that meet in private.
However, plan D tackles none of that. The submerged part of the iceberg will therefore remain hidden from public view and parliamentary scrutiny. Let me give the House another relevant example. I am interested in trade reform and fulfilling all the promises that we made last year in the public debate and lobbies about making poverty history. We need to reform our trade procedures, tariffs and quota systems for the benefit of not only those whom we represent but the poorest people in the poorest countries.
I naturally turned to the European Union debate on the subject because it takes the lead on trade policy. It transpires that most of the decisions originate in a committee called the “article 133 committee”. I asked to see the minutes of the discussions on those crucial subjects in the first half of the year. On 15 occasions, I was told that I could not access the minutes. They were blocked—indeed, censored—by something called the “general secretariat”. The one set of minutes that I obtained was of a meeting that officials from this country attended on 17 February. The decisions and the discussions are interesting, but, in 16 places, the word, “deleted” appears. In other words, the especially interesting part of the discussion has simply been erased from the record. As an elected person, trying to do my best for my constituents in delivering the agenda on trade reform, I not only have no influence on the discussions but cannot find out what is being discussed. However, none of that is the subject of plan D. The much-heralded initiative on openness and transparency does not tackle the issue.
It is easy to make points about the number of committees. I daresay that, if one added up all the UK Government committees or those of any other member state, one would probably find that there were more than those at European level. However, I do not believe that the right hon. Gentleman wants to withdraw from the British state in the way in which he apparently wants to withdraw from the European Union. Would not he do better to turn his attention to devising constructive reform rather than advocating withdrawal from the European Union?
I have a constructive suggestion—opening up all the secret committees to public scrutiny.
The Government are guilty of secrecy in the House. I serve on the European Scrutiny Committee, along with the distinguished new Chairman, who contributed earlier. Our deliberations take place in private. The public are not allowed even into those. In the previous Parliament, we passed a motion to open up the Committee to public scrutiny so that the press and the public can see what we do on their behalf. That sat in the in-tray of the then Leader of the House and he did nothing to change Standing Orders. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) is right—not only the European Union but the British Government have a conspiracy against the public. That makes any initiative about openness and transparency a sham.
The documents also refer to the allied question of over-regulation and discuss the need to reduce the burdens and intrusions suffered by businesses and the public. I have counted last year’s directives, regulations and binding decisions, of which there are 2,900. That adds to the acquis communautaire in the European Union, which already runs to more than 100,000 pages. The European Scrutiny Committee grapples with the issue as best it can, but we cannot stop those regulations, and, increasingly, the Government cannot stop them, too, because more and more of them are decided by majority voting. Again, the analysis is correct, but the policy is lacking.
The hon. Member for Cardiff, Central (Jenny Willott) referred to one of the specifics in plan D, the entitlement card. Who will pay for the entitlement card? What will be on it? Will it include a chip containing all 100,000 pages of the acquis communautaire to let us know what we are entitled to in the European Union? Is that really the way to close the gap between the public and the politicians in Europe? It has also been suggested that a corps of European good will ambassadors will go around telling us about plan D. Have they arrived here yet—I have not met them? Who will pay for them? I am willing to meet them, because I am a man of good will.
There is a serious problem, and it cannot be solved by reviving a discredited European constitution. If we are to create a people’s Europe rather than a politician’s Europe, if we want a democratic Europe rather than a bureaucratic state and if we want an open Europe rather than a closed shop, we need the fundamental, thoroughgoing reform of the entire way in which the European Union is structured, financed and run. Such a project is entirely lacking in the documents, and it was not even attempted in the Convention on the Future of Europe. In a notably weak contribution this afternoon, the Minister gave no hint of any Government ambition in that direction. It will therefore fall to this party, when in government, to take forward that task not only on behalf of the people of this country, but on behalf of the people of Europe, who are struggling to create a different Europe that yearns to be free.
I want to make a few brief points in the last few minutes of the debate.
I did not altogether agree with the contribution by the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory). If we are to engage the citizens of Europe within the European Union, we need a clear, understandable way of making decisions. The existing European Union decision-making process is confused. Power lies in the Council of Ministers, but Ministers tend to say, “It was not us, guv’. It was those nasty Commissioners in Brussels who made the decision.” Citizens do not know who to blame when incorrect decisions are taken and who to get at when the decision-making process is taking place. The existing arrangements for decision making are inadequate for a European Union of 27 member states. Somehow or other, the process must be improved and made not only more transparent, but more efficient.
Key issues for the citizens of Europe include the Hague agenda, which concerns migration, terrorism and crime. The Conservative party has said that it wants nothing to do with that agenda, but the citizens of Europe know that it matters and that there must be a European solution. The Hague agenda has been launched, but it is now in the quagmire because the decision-making process in the European Union cannot take it much further. We need to do something to enable decisions to be made. I accept that the different legal systems and legal traditions mean that that is not easy to do, but the European Union needs to deliver that agenda.
On energy policy, individual European Union states are making bilateral deals to ensure their energy supplies for the future. Yet the citizens of Europe know that there ought to be a European Union-wide energy policy to ensure that all the peoples of the Union have adequate and affordable energy supplies.
In relation to the development of a single market, I was struck this week by the tension between a national state approach and a European approach. The European civil aviation industry is dominated by Airbus, an international consortium. As a result of the decision by BAE Systems to sell its 20 per cent. stake to the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, however, it is now dominated by the French and Germans. From a company point of view, I have no doubt that the aerospace industry in Broughton and Bristol would flourish in a European single market, because it would be competitive with anywhere else in Europe. Airbus, however, is influenced by national considerations from the French and German Governments. That is a key tension. Unless we tackle those sorts of issues, the European Union will not be in a position to compete with the US or the emerging economies of China and India. If we do not recognise that industries need to be European Union-wide to benefit from the single market, we will come out on the wrong side of the globalisation argument.
It being one and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on the motion, Mr. Deputy Speaker put the Question, pursuant to Standing Order No. 16.
Resolved,
That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 9390/06, Commission Communication: A Citizens’ Agenda—Delivering Results for Europe: and supports the Government’s view that it welcomes the principles behind ‘A Citizens’ Agenda’ and the Commission’s commitment to taking forward the Hampton Court agenda of delivering concrete results and benefits to EU citizens.
International Development
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Liz Blackman.]
I wish to begin by thanking all those who contributed to the White Paper that is the subject of today’s far too brief debate. I hope that those who take a careful note of what we say in this Chamber will recognise the desire on both sides of the House for more time to discuss these very important matters. I wish to thank Members on both sides of the House who have contributed to the White Paper, and the remarkable civil servants at DFID who wrote it. I also wish to thank my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary for his unstinting support and guidance.
For me, the White Paper was the result of three years in this extraordinary job, years in which I have learned a great deal and reflected much on the causes of global poverty and what needs to be done to help so many of our fellow human beings to transform their own lives. The facts are painfully clear. It is a scandal—there is no other word for it—that we live in a world where every minute a woman dies in pregnancy or childbirth; where every day, dirty water kills 5,000 children; and where, every year, malaria claims 1 million lives, tuberculosis 2 million lives and AIDS 3 million lives. But for me, the greatest scandal of all is that that happens, not in a time of famine and global war, but in an age of unprecedented potential. It happens in a world eight times richer than it was 50 years ago.
That potential—the power of politics to change things, of economic development to transform lives, of scientific ingenuity to save lives, and of working together to make all this happen—is immense. But so are the challenges that we face as trade, technology, migration, climate change, terrorism and disease mould our world into a new shape.
As more and more people in the developing world move to towns and cities to try to improve their lives, where will the homes, the water, the sanitation, the public services and the jobs they will need come from?
As the world’s population increases by half as much again in the next two generations, how will we stop many of the as yet unborn from emerging into a life of grinding poverty? How will we cope with pandemics such as avian flu or severe acute respiratory syndrome that could spread right across the globe if they are not dealt with quickly? What will we do if rapid economic change, inequality and arguments over scarce resources result in violence? How will we deal with the effects of the climate change that is already upon us, never mind that which is yet to come? How will we deal with the rising sea levels, the floods, droughts, hurricanes and crop failures, or with the movements of people who will not stay still to drown or die of thirst?
The challenge is simply daunting, but as we contemplate the future, one thing is clear beyond doubt—without good governance we will not be able to defeat poverty, or climate change, or war, or famine. That is why we put good governance at the heart of this White Paper.
Good governance is important for all countries, but especially for those fragile states in which 300 million of the world’s poorest people live. In those states, corruption in often more prevalent, Government structures are weaker and violent conflict is more likely. I welcome yesterday’s International Development Committee report on conflict and development, which said that investing in the causes of conflict is much better, and much less costly in money or lives, than trying to pick up the pieces later.
Peace and security are the fundamental expressions of good governance. There cannot be any development in countries where there is conflict. That is why the UK has helped to build peace and security in Mozambique and Rwanda, for example. It is why we are doing the same in Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan and Iraq, and why we are trying to secure peace in Darfur. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the humanitarian workers, to our staff and to local staff, to the people working for non-governmental organisations and to the soldiers of many nations for the courage and professionalism that they show in those most difficult of places.
We are going to increase our efforts in fragile states, and invest more in at least 10 countries where security is a major concern. We will help with reintegrating ex-combatants, and we will support access to justice and monitor human rights. We will try to reduce the spread of small arms, and that will include trying to win support for an international arms trade treaty.
Good governance is also about effective states that are capable of doing things for their people, and about creating the conditions in which economies can flourish so people can have the chance to earn a living. Effective states respond to what people want and need and, in turn, can be held to account. Good governance means that people have the right to choose their leaders and change them, and to have a say and to be heard. Good governance is about ensuring the rule of law. It is about good policing and upholding human rights and freedoms. It is about fighting the corruption that steals money that could otherwise be spent on buying medicines or on getting children into school. Corruption, we know, hits poor people hardest, and poor women most of all.
How does a society—any society—ensure good governance? What makes the difference is what people choose to do. They must demand that their Governments secure such things for them, and that is why we will go on helping Governments to build their capacity. We are setting up the governance and transparency fund so that Parliaments and civil society, the media, trade unions and those working to improve transparency and openness can be helped to hold their Governments to account.
That is why we want to continue to make sure that our aid money goes where it is intended. Our new governance assessments will help us to do that. They will help us to recognise when a country is improving and to determine what to do when there are problems. This approach will build on the three simple questions that we already ask of our partners—are they committed to reducing poverty, do they uphold human rights and international obligations, and are they fighting corruption and promoting good governance? Depending on the answers that we get, we will take decisions about the kind of aid that we give.
Even where governance is awful, such as in Zimbabwe, we will not walk away, as that would be to punish poor people twice over—once for being poor, and a second time for having a lousy Government. The same is true for corruption. We need to be tough on it and on its causes, because the only solution is that countries must change the culture in which corruption thrives. They must enforce the law and implement the checks, the balances and the openness needed to guard against it.
While I agree with every single thing that the Secretary of State has said so far, I invite him to consider the last comment that he made. One has to strike the balance between whether it is better to take a strong position or not. Surely we have to engage in a naming and shaming operation. This could come from external sources so that people in those countries know when things are going wrong. If we do not have proper external accounting arrangements, we will not be able to prove the point which will be followed by the naming and shaming.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman, who has campaigned long and hard on this issue. I agree that naming and shaming—exposure, transparency—is the right approach to take, but I differ with him in that I think that the exposure has to come from within the countries themselves, because that is the only way to fix the problem in the long term. He is right about the power of that searchlight to change practice.
Governance is also an international issue. Bad governance can be caused or made worse by the actions of rich countries and their companies. For every bribe taken, there has to be a bribe giver; for every stolen dollar that is spirited out of a developing country, there has to be a bank account somewhere for it to go into. That means that we have to be more effective in stopping bribery and, where money is stolen, in finding it and giving it back. In August this year, the UK returned £1 million of assets to Nigeria seized by the Metropolitan police from the former governor of Bayelsa state. It is a start, but we can and must do more.
Our new anti-corruption action plan will help us to do that by investigating and prosecuting bribery cases, dealing with money laundering and recovering stolen assets with the help of the new police unit staffed by the Metropolitan police and the City of London police and partly funded by DFID. We will continue to promote the extractive industries transparency initiative and look to extend its principles to other areas of public procurement such as construction, health and defence, where we know that corruption is a problem.
We all know that economic development is the single most powerful way of pulling people out of poverty. It is the private sector, from farmers to street traders and foreign investors, who create growth, but Governments have to create the right conditions for that growth, and aid can help to do this.
I, too, agree with everything that the Secretary of State has said and I commend him for the work that he does. Does he agree that we could do much more to help the poorest people in the third world if we had control over our own trade policy? We could set an example to the rest of Europe and the world by taking away trade barriers that would help people to lift themselves out of poverty without insisting that they get rid of the barriers to trade into their country. Surely if we had control over our trade policy we could do far more to help than even the Secretary of State would like to see.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that changing the world trade rules would make a real difference. I shall come on to that point in a moment. I part company from him when he says that the solution is for us to take back control over our trade policy. We need all the countries of the world to change the rules, not just Britain. That is why the White Paper commits us to supporting poor people in trying to get better access to markets to sell their goods. It is why we intend to double our funding for research to improve agricultural productivity, help countries adapt to climate change, and develop the drugs and vaccines that they need.
We will continue to press for a trade agreement to enable developing countries to earn their way out of poverty. Although the Doha talks are currently deadlocked, we are not going to give up on our attempts to create a freer and fairer trade system for developing countries because, as every single one of us knows, these talks matter. They are the best hope for developing countries to raise the money to pay for the doctors, the drugs, the hospitals, the teachers, the schools and the textbooks that they need.
I, too, welcome the White Paper. On the subject of the world trade talks, my right hon. Friend will be aware that at the Hong Kong conference last year an agreement was reached for special measures for the poorest countries. In the light of the needs of the poorest countries, can he confirm that the EU—with which we are closely involved in negotiations—will implement that package unilaterally, given that the talks may be suspended for some considerable period?
Britain played an important part in pushing for that package; it has been agreed in principle and is fundamental to making progress. In truth, we will have to consider what to do if things remain stalled, but the best way to move them forward is to get agreement in the Doha talks and we intend to continue to push for that. We know that economic development has changed the lives of people in this country over the last 200 years, and it will do the same for people in developing countries.
That takes time, however. We need to help now so that everyone can see a doctor when they are ill, go to school, drink clean water and have a safety net when times are hard. With our aid rising to meet the UN 0.7 per cent. target by 2013, we will increase our spending on those public services to at least half our bilateral aid budget. We will make long-term commitments through 10-year plans so that countries can make long-term decisions. When my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and I visited Maputo just before Easter, we said that we would put £8.5 billion into education over the next 10 years, so that the money that we and other donors commit can be put alongside the money that developing countries raise for themselves to match their plans to get children into schools, to employ teachers, to build classrooms and to buy textbooks.
There are practical problems, but we will do more on AIDS and maternal and child health. We have already committed to doubling our spending on water and sanitation in Africa by 2007 and to doubling it again by 2010, because clean water changes women’s lives. We will significantly increase our spending on social security in at least 10 countries in Asia and Africa over the next three years, because we know that small amounts of support are one of the most effective ways to help people out of the cycle of dependency.
I hesitate to intervene because the Secretary of State is talking such obvious sense. The aims and objectives of which he speaks are of course enshrined in the millennium development goals, but to what extent is his Department addressing the issue of population growth in those countries? If a country’s population is growing at 3 per cent. a year, it needs 3 per cent. more schools, roads and hospitals, so to what extent is the right hon. Gentleman incorporating those issues in his thinking?
The hon. Gentleman raises an important issue. Our most practical contribution is to provide a lot of support for reproductive health in developing countries, so that families, women in particular, have some choice about their fertility—partly through the provision of services and partly by women having a stronger position in their society. In the long term, as we all know, population growth relates to economic development; as societies develop economically and people feel safer and more secure, family sizes decline. Evidence from across the globe is clear on that point.
None of that will work if we do not deal with the ultimate test of global governance—climate change. That is the single greatest threat facing development today. The countries that did least to cause the problem face the biggest costs and consequences. Many poor countries are struggling to cope and they will need more energy if their economies are to develop. As the White Paper made clear, DFID will make action on climate change a priority, as the Environmental Audit Committee asked us to do in its report, published after the White Paper. That means helping poor people and poor countries to adapt to climate change, working to give developing countries access to clean technologies, including energy production, so that they can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions without damaging their economic growth. It means agreeing a stabilisation target and a new international framework to share out the earth’s finite environmental capacity. For all that we shall need international action and effective international institutions.
The Secretary of State glossed over the report of the Environmental Audit Committee. As I am the only Member in the Chamber who participated in that report, I want to point out that climate change did not occur at the same time as the White Paper, and that the report to which the Secretary of State alludes is very damning indeed about DFID’s placing of the environment. Can the Secretary of State tell the House how many environmental advisers he plans to recruit to DFID to take forward his programme of incorporating climate change measures and aid?
We are indeed planning to recruit more staff and I shall be happy to give the hon. Gentleman the precise figures. The report made some criticisms, but it failed to give DFID credit for what we have done already and it failed to recognise what was in the White Paper—I was slightly surprised about that. Furthermore, at times the Committee’s report reads as though we were still a former colonial power running developing countries. We are not. They are in charge of their destinies and they have to be prepared to take things on. However, the Committee made many important points about why we all need to take the issue more seriously, and I greatly welcome the report in that respect.
We need international institutions that work, but the principal institutions of multilateralism—the UN, the World Bank, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund—were created for the world of two generations ago. We need international institutions that work effectively to meet the challenges of the 21st century. That is why we are pushing for reform in the UN, including through the high-level panel, and that is why we have led the argument for reform of the UN humanitarian system—with some success: there is a new humanitarian fund, so that when disaster strikes, the UN can get to work straight away. That is why I am holding back £50 million from the World Bank until I am convinced that it has improved its practices on conditionality, and why we want European aid to be more effective. I mean not just European Commission aid, but aid from all European countries, because almost all the increase in aid that will be promised before 2010 will come from Europe.
The list of challenges that I have set out is daunting enough, but the real question is whether we have the will, the hope, the courage and the belief to change things. History should encourage us to see that we do and we can, because we have made progress. In the past 40 years, life expectancy in developing countries has increased by a quarter. In the past 30 years, illiteracy rates have halved. In the past 20 years, 400 million human beings have been lifted out of absolute poverty. We are close to eradicating polio from the face of the earth, and there are three times as many people on antiretroviral drugs in sub-Saharan Africa as there were 12 months ago. Is that enough? No. Is it progress? Yes.
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Yes, but for the final time, because I want to wind up my speech.
I am extremely grateful to the Secretary of State, who has been most generous in giving way. To take him back to what he said about the United Nations and climate change, does he agree that there is a case for rewriting the UN charter, so that alongside the three pillars of the UN—development, human rights and the prevention of conflict—there is a fourth on the prevention of climate change? That should be one of the key overall objectives of the United Nations, which is the only body with the international moral authority to deal with the issue.
I agree with that sentiment. The UN, like any other institution, must adapt to a changing world. Much time and energy would be involved in trying to get agreement on a change to the charter, and it would be a matter of tactics, but I am absolutely with the hon. Gentleman on the principle of making the UN take climate change more seriously, as my remarks have demonstrated.
In the end, the issue is whether progress is made, and whether we make a difference. I think that, with the help of other countries, Britain and its money, ideas, effort and politics are helping to change things. Very soon, the international finance facility for immunisation will be launched, and it aims to save 5 million children’s lives over the next 10 years. The debt cancellation agreement for which many people fought so hard at Gleneagles has already wiped out the debts that 20 of the world’s poorest countries owed to the IMF, the World Bank and the African Development Bank. Zambia can now provide free health care in rural areas because of that deal. Our education funding in India has enabled 9.5 million children to go to school for the first time. In Kenya, we are distributing 11 million insecticide-treated bed nets, and that could save 167,000 children’s lives. That is practical action that makes a difference.
Each of those examples, and many others, show that when human beings bring together the hope, the courage, the will and the belief, we are capable of transforming our lives. That is what people in Edinburgh marched for, and what people campaigned for. That is what we are in politics for, so let us get on and do it.
I start by strongly supporting the Secretary of State’s comments about the way in which this debate has been shoved on to the schedule, at the fag end of a Thursday afternoon, when many Members cannot be here. As a result of the short time available for debate, few Members will be able to take part. It is more than a year since we had a debate on international development, and I hope that the usual channels will conclude that that is simply not good enough.
Let me start by making the Conservative position absolutely clear. We strongly support the Government’s goals for international development as set out by the Secretary of State today. Support for the British contribution to international development is not a Labour or Conservative policy, but a British commitment, and the Secretary of State knows that he can rely on support from across the House. I will go further: at a time when the Government’s failures—whether on public service reform or across the spectrum of Home Office policy—are the currency of practically every news bulletin and comment column in our press, the Secretary of State and the Minister are, uniquely, doing a good job, and we applaud them for it. From time to time, we have differences of opinion about how to make British policies more effective and how to reach the millennium development goals faster, but in many ways, however, the Government are on the right track.
The situation is not all doom and gloom. A few days ago, I heard about an HIV/AIDS clinic in Namibia that recently closed its doors, not because of a lack of funds but because the spread of new infections in the area had been curtailed. As the Secretary of State said, we have made good progress on polio, and far fewer children die from diarrhoea than was the case 20 years ago, because oral rehydration therapy is more widely available. Far too many children, however, continue to suffer. As the Secretary of State said in the House yesterday, and as he reiterated today, there are three times as many people on antiretrovirals as there were just 12 months ago.
There is a nucleus of African states whose Governments are increasingly committed to doing the right thing. People such as Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda, are showing leadership. They are tough on corruption and they serve the people whom they are honoured to lead. Their example shames the corrupt, self-serving dictators and autocrats who, alas, still populate the developing world. We can work well with those improving Governments and, by their example, show the rest what can be done. At the moment, the friends of development operate in a benign climate. There is political consensus on the importance of development, and all parties are committed to the unified British approach to development.
There is mass public support for the development agenda, as Gleneagles showed last year. Germany has agreed to back that agenda and take it forward when it assumes the G8 presidency next year. However, we must not take public support for granted. Our aid budget is set to rise to 0.7 per cent. of national income by 2013. Indeed, that is the only spending commitment that the Conservative party has announced so far. To put that percentage into context, based on current economic predictions, the equivalent amount in cash will be well over double what it is today. Taxpayers rightly demand clear and transparent spending. As the funding rises so, too, will their expectation that output should match input. Our aim is to achieve the millennium development goals but, on current trends, the 2015 target will not be met. Ironically, Asia will probably achieve its MDGs, but Africa will not do so. In five years’ time, when the period covered by the White Paper comes to an end, people will look at the MDGs and realise that they will not be achieved, despite a rising aid budget. They will be right to ask tough questions, so we cannot afford to leave any doubt in the public’s mind about whether the money has been well spent. We must be able to demonstrate the concrete, tangible results of their investment. If we do not achieve those results, we will lose the determination of purpose and public confidence that have fuelled the enthusiasm and commitment to development.
I warmly welcome the call in the White Paper to focus our aid on the poorest people and countries, as well as its resolute poverty focus. We have rightly moved on from the time when aid was tied to commercial interests, and the White Paper correctly notes that aid is more effective when given to countries with good governance. Even in those countries, however, not all aid projects are effective. Aid selectivity is not enough—we need stronger aid evaluation, too. We need rigorously to evaluate aid projects, giving more money to those that work, and refraining from supporting those that do not, to achieve the greatest possible reduction in poverty and suffering with our finite aid budget.
Aid projects are not always well evaluated. A recent internal report entitled, “How effective is DFID?”, showed that the Department often has little awareness of whether its aid has been spent on effective projects or whether it has obtained good value for money. I was disappointed by the lack of new proposals on improving aid effectiveness in the White Paper. DFID must take the lead by guaranteeing the independent evaluation of project effectiveness. There should be greater use of impact assessments to discover exactly how our aid is helping people, which is why I have proposed an independent aid watchdog to scrutinise British aid.
It is, I acknowledge, sometimes difficult to measure the effectiveness of aid. The Statistics Commission recently highlighted the problems with using the MDGs to measure DFID’s performance. A poor country could be making progress towards the MDGs despite ineffective aid programmes, or the positive effects of an effective aid programme could be masked by negative outside factors. The White Paper would have been a good opportunity to grapple with some of those difficult issues and to suggest improvements in the way in which aid effectiveness could be consistently and rigorously assessed and compared.
The White Paper’s focus on governance is, of course, enormously important. Without good domestic institutions, outside aid cannot lead to victory in the battle against poverty. I note with interest the White Paper’s pledge for DFID to double its spending on science and technology. New technologies—in particular, vaccines and medicines—have the potential to do immense good. However, we should not forget that many technologies already exist that allow us to reduce suffering cheaply: $5 malaria bed nets, DOTS treatment for tuberculosis, vaccinations that protect an entire family from disease for a few pounds, and oral rehydration therapy that can save a child’s life for 20p. The challenge is to roll out those technologies, as well as to invent more of them. We must ensure that new technologies are appropriate to the context in which they will be used. That is why I am particularly interested in progress on microbicides, which could empower women in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
I welcome the discussion of migration and remittances in the White Paper. Sending money back to developing countries is often a costly business. I look forward to hearing what specific ideas the Secretary of State has to help lower the cost of remittancing. Economic growth is clearly central to development. One has only to look at India and China to see that. The White Paper rightly identifies trade as a crucial driver of wealth creation and development. Last week, I met the deputy US trade representative, Ambassador John Veroneau. He is not a man with whom one would wish to play poker. However, I got the impression that he is willing, in principle, to go further to make the Doha round work. Indeed, President Bush has given such instructions. Commissioner Mandelson has also indicated that he is willing to go further. As soon as the mid-term elections are out of the way, I urge the Government to press hard for real movement in the Doha talks.
The White Paper also indicates support for an international arms trade treaty. It focuses on the need for the treaty to include all the world’s major arms exporters, rather than to be overly rigorous in what it enforces. There is a tension between a universal and relatively weak treaty, and a stronger treaty ratified by a small number of Governments. The priority must be to ensure that countries such as China sign up to it and then live up to their obligations. Perhaps in his summary the Minister could say a little more about how and when the treaty might get some flesh on its bones.
I am pleased that the White Paper covers the crucial issue of how climate change and environmental degradation interact with international development policy, as the Secretary of State said. As I saw in Bangladesh recently, climate change will hit the poor hardest and fastest. It has arguably had an effect on the crisis in Darfur and it will lead to more natural disasters. The idea of an independent world humanitarian report to monitor how well the world responds to humanitarian crises is a good one.
I warmly welcome the decision to focus more on disaster preparation and mitigation, rather than simply responding to disasters once they have happened. One of the major problems with current aid efforts is that we have not worked out a good way of making the transition from immediate humanitarian relief after a catastrophe to long-term reconstruction. Sadly, there are a number of examples of that around the world. I hope that we will hear more from the Secretary of State on that and I hope that he will press for better co-ordination, auditing and accountability in relation to the aid funds that are used in response to disasters.
Much of the White Paper focuses on the issues that I have been discussing—governance and aid—but there are some other important areas that the Government may have overlooked. For example, addressing gender inequality should play a major role in international development efforts. Women often bear the greatest costs of poverty. Too many girls do not go to school. Women bear the brunt of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. According to Amartya Sen, the most effective aid projects are those that improve access to water, so that women spend less time walking miles to fetch it, and those that improve female education.
The White Paper also largely neglects the growing role of China and India in international development. The geopolitical landscape is changing, and the growing prosperity of India and China pose new challenges for DFID. Last week, in Beijing, I struggled to resolve the conundrum that Britain is spending £150 million over the next few years in a country that had a trade surplus last month of $15 billion. However, even as those countries approach middle-income status, we must not forget that hundreds of millions of people in western China and states such as Bihar in India are very poor. Indeed, there are more poor people in India than there are in the whole of Africa. In reality, India and China lift hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty each month because their economic policies embrace growth and they benefit from participation in the international trading system.
I was slightly concerned by the inconsistent analysis in the White Paper of the role of business. Private businesses are the ultimate engines of growth here and in the developing world. Multinational businesses create employment, drive up wages and working conditions, and help to spread technology. They contribute to not just growth, but social justice. However, the White Paper confines the role of business to one chapter, and when it refers to international partners, business does not seem to be one of them. The private sector should not be defined in such a limited way. There is a role for business in building water infrastructure and providing health care, education and other basic services. DFID should be open-minded about working with businesses to achieve more. I welcome the White Paper’s robust stance on tackling corruption by business, but the Secretary of State and the Department of Trade and Industry will know how treacherous an area this is: one man’s bribe is another man’s free lunch. As well as clamping down on the private sector when it does wrong, we must celebrate and encourage its achievements when it is a force for good, which it is for the vast majority of the time.
The White Paper contains some 170 action points. They cover a broad and rightly ambitious agenda and I am pleased to say that I agree with at least 150 of them. Many of them require DFID staff to engage with international stakeholders, and I hope that the Department has the capacity to deliver on them.
I had hoped to interrupt my hon. Friend before he moved off the subject of business. Will my hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to Grameen banking and welcoming the Nobel peace prize that was recently given to its founder? Will he also acknowledge that there is a real role for the growth of private funds, which I believe are developing quite substantial amounts towards Grameen banking? There might be a solution there to some of the kinds of poverty about which the White Paper talks.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his timely intervention. In July, I had the great pleasure of spending two or three days in Bangladesh with Professor Yunus, the man who founded the Grameen bank. I join my hon. Friend in saluting the excellent news that came through last week. I hesitate to draw his attention to the article that I wrote in The Times when I got back from my trip, but he might find it of some minor interest.
I look forward to generous British support for the 15th round of the International Development Association replenishment at the World Bank next year. Despite much investigation in Washington last week, I remain somewhat confused about the Secretary of State’s decision to withhold £50 million from the World Bank. I am assured that the bank’s use of conditionality with regard to privatisation and trade liberalisation affects hardly any of its newer lending, and DFID itself is an admirable champion of freer trade. However, I am sure that the Secretary of State knows what he was doing. While it was certainly not always the case, the World Bank’s programmes are hugely respected around the world today, and Britain’s role is greatly respected in the bank, too. We should give the bank our firm support at this time.
Does my hon. Friend agree with what Tearfund says in its briefing paper about economic partnership agreements? It is absolutely essential that EPAs are completely reformed. The Government have clearly approached the subject with a little bit too light a touch. We must tackle the EPAs and ensure that we get proper economic liberalisation.
My hon. Friend’s point is the subject of much debate. If he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I hope he will be able to develop his argument about EPAs.
I am glad that the White Paper recognises that UN reform is crucial. The Secretary of State made that very point in his speech. All of us who engage with the UN on the ground know that the organisation is full of the most talented and dedicated people, but that they are all too often let down by organisational weakness. The UN has been guilty of mission creep into areas beyond its core competency. I hope that the Government will support measures to slim down the number of United Nations agencies, and we must improve the UN’s performance in co-ordinating the world’s response to humanitarian disasters.
Finally, I shall deal with the importance of conflict resolution and pay a warm tribute to the Select Committee report that was published yesterday. This is probably the most crucial area of all in international development, and although I shall not detain the House long on it, I want to say a word in the context of Darfur. Conflict resolution is so important because no matter how much aid and trade people receive, if they have been forced out of their village and are living in a camp, they will remain poor, destitute and frightened.
When the UN agreed last year, amid much mutual congratulation and back-slapping, to embrace a responsibility to protect, it offered hope to those waiting for help in Darfur’s camps, but the international will to give meaning to that responsibility to protect remains woefully inadequate. The problem is compounded by the fact that people who have suffered in Darfur and seen the failure of international action in that area, and who note that in Lebanon it took the UN only 30 days to intervene effectively, must come to the conclusion that the world counts the life of an African as of less value and less importance than the life of others. That is a challenge to us all.
Is not one of the differences between Lebanon and Darfur that in Lebanon the international community had the co-operation of the Government of Lebanon, whereas in Darfur, regrettably, we do not have the co-operation of the Government of Sudan?
I do not propose to enter into a debate on the comparison between Lebanon and Darfur, but the position facing the international community was in many ways more complex in Lebanon than in Darfur. The point I make to the hon. Gentleman, who I know thinks carefully about these matters, is that the sort of African that I am describing, who watches intelligently what is going on around the world, is very likely to draw the extremely uncomfortable comparison that I have just put before the House. I reiterate that that is the challenge to all of us as we seek to reform the international architecture in the way that the Secretary of State and I have set out.
The White Paper that we are considering has the potential to stimulate an enormous amount of good. The public determination that Britain and the rest of the developed world should make a huge commitment to lifting the poorest people in our world out of poverty is the task that the Government and all of us as politicians are charged with implementing. As I discuss the White Paper with those involved in the world of international development—with the members of NGOs, DFID personnel and groups of dedicated professionals engaged in development work far and wide—I am constantly struck by their commitment, enthusiasm and determination that this generation will make the greatest possible contribution to ending the scourge of international poverty which blights the life chances of so many in Africa and the poor world. I hope that the White Paper will play a modest part in steering our activities in the right direction.
rose—
Order. At the risk of stating the obvious, there is not much time left for the debate. Hon. Members will do themselves a favour if they make relatively short speeches, so that I can get as wide a variety of contributions as possible.
I declare an interest as a member of the Select Committee on International Development. I welcome the comments of the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell). The report published yesterday on conflict and development is crucial and is one of the best reports I have been privileged to participate in drawing up in almost 20 years in the House. It deserves a full debate on the Floor of the House and should be the subject of our next debate on international development. I shall leave it to our Chair to say more about that.
The world is eight times richer than it was 50 years ago, yet the inequalities between the rich and the poor are widening. There seems to be enduring, endemic poverty in the world. The Economist, in its future trends, suggested that we should focus on four themes in the next 50 years—in the first half of the century. The first of those themes was the development of economic globalisation, including India and China, but still excluding African countries. The second theme was the pace of climate change, to which Members have referred. The third theme was the impact of migration, which will massively increase and has been underestimated. The fourth theme was the persistence of faith and religion.
I welcome the White Paper, which is subtitled “making governance work for the poor”. I found it to be a brilliant summary of where we have got to on the subject both here in Britain and internationally. I felt that it was a good workbook or handbook; it tells some of the good stories of what has been achieved, as well as what we are up against. I recommend it, and I hope that there is a reprint—and, if there is, that it is distributed to schools and elsewhere—because it is a good volume.
In my remarks, I do not want to concentrate on governance and corruption. There is a view that 2005 was the year of international development. It was certainly the year of increased money and commitment to the aid budget—a doubling of it, in our case. I should mention that I welcome the commitment from the Conservative party; the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield has done very well to get his one commitment—and, I say with some edge, we shall watch that space. In 2005, there was some good work on aid and on debt—although there is much to do on trade, as other Members have mentioned, and I wonder whether there is an agenda for that. But at least it was a good year. However, although 2005 was a good year, on page 29 of the report there is a piece of graffito that says, “2006 corrupt. We need change.”
In facing up to corruption, there is a danger that aid is not used well. An agenda that focuses solely on corruption might take away the dynamic that has focused all our attentions on tackling poverty, so I do not want to focus on corruption.
I was in Ethiopia last week as part of an attempt to tackle corruption and to address good governance. Does my right hon. Friend accept that many people on the ground recognise that corruption and good governance are crucial to their lifting themselves out of poverty? Does he agree that although, as he says, we should not concentrate solely on that, it is fundamental to everything that flows from it?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his remarks, and I hope that others will underline what he says, because I agree that it is crucial; I will listen to other contributions on that, and I am convinced of the point. But other points are missing from the report, and I want to focus on them.
Good governance is about more than simply elections. We seem sometimes to think that good governance equals having elections, but my experience in visiting countries and occasionally being an observer of other countries’ elections—as other Members occasionally are—is that there is an emphasis on getting people organised so that they get to the polling booth, on organising the voting booth, on making sure that voters stamp their thumbs properly on the ballot paper, and on making sure that they are organised into lines. Often, when officials and civil servants are helping in the process of ensuring that elections take place well—they do so with the best intentions, so I say this without a pejorative edge—it is as if the people just need to be shepherded in the right direction, and then on the day of the election the problem is solved. Elections are sometimes seen as the end of a strategy, rather than the beginning of a process. We must focus much more on the process of politics, and on an election being a part of that process.
Let me just point out that in 1945 there were 32 countries with a universal franchise—countries that we would call democratic—and that there are now 192. So elections are taking place regularly, but I think that we have more to do, because in many cases we are a long way from having what I would describe as participatory democracy, built from the base upwards.
I suggest that we, as practising politicians, cannot leave election processes to officials. We, as politicians committed to political parties, could do much more to help build up political processes in emerging democracies, and particularly in fragile states, so that we do not leave countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo thinking that it can have an election that might reinforce the existing elite and that then the show is over. No: I hope there will be more elections, even though that one was its first for 30 years. That process will help the transformation of that society.
I particularly welcome the commitment given on page 124 of the White Paper to building links between community groups, tenants and residents groups, local government, faith communities, schools and businesses and charitable organisations here in Britain. I want a much more mutual conversation about building participatory democracy—one that does not assume that we in Britain have done it, have all the answers and have a perfect democracy. We have not, but we can learn from each other through exchanges and by building a much more mutual conversation.
Page 20 of the White Paper contains the most important passage in the whole report. Under the heading “Understanding good governance”, it refers to
“Providing ways for people to say what they think and need. Implementing policies that meet the needs of the poor. Using public finances to benefit the poor—for example to encourage growth and provide services. Providing public goods and services in ways that reduce discrimination and allow all citizens—including women, disabled people and ethnic minorities—to benefit.”
That is a basis for working on the theme of participatory democracy—by building, perhaps, from the base up.
Secondly, I want to echo the points that the Secretary of State—and, indeed, the shadow Secretary of State—made about the pace of climate change. As desertification, the destruction of forests and flooding in Bangladesh show, it is the poor who pay the highest price for the lack of action in the northern hemisphere. The onus is on us to do much more, for the practical reason that they cannot: they do not have the capacity to prevent such occurrences or to address their impact. We need to do a lot more to blend the climate change and poverty eradication agendas.
Indeed, one theme that has emerged is the good will of people toward addressing climate change. They are willing to change their behaviour—to change their light bulbs, unplug appliances and get personally involved. I want the climate change and poverty eradication agendas to be fused, so that people say, “Can we live a bit more simply, so that other people can simply live?”, as Ghandi once said. If we are altruistic toward the environment, we might also be a bit more altruistic toward the idea of reducing the gross inequalities between the rich and the poor. We should fuse together those agendas, rather than continuing to believe that it is a question of trees versus people—an attitude that we are still a little locked into. Trees and people go together, and we must realise that fusion.
To my mind, the millennium development goals do not focus sufficiently on employment, which is an issue that does not resonate loudly in the report. Of course we need business development and economic growth, but we need a much stronger focus on employment. We must take into account the increase in the world population, to which reference has been made, and the emergence of China and India, but the real issues across the globe are going to be job generation, employment and under-employment.
The meetings that I have held in my constituency about making poverty history have been very positive, but one went wrong. It was held around the time that the Chancellor announced an extra £10 million for schools in Africa. One person at the meeting who lives in one of the poorer communities in inner-city Leeds—and who has every good will toward African countries and their development—said to me, “John, why should I support money for Africa? I am not against training and educating them, but if we do, they might be trained better than I am, and the jobs will go there and not here. What will we do about unemployment here? What about migration trends? Where will the work be within the world?” We should not draw up protectionist boundaries, but we need to address much more seriously the questions of migration and employment.
Is the growth agenda about job generation and employment? That issue is not dealt with in the millennium development goals, but it is a vital question in East Timor. Young men who participated in the conflict there and who were once armed are now standing around saying, “Where are our jobs? We have handed in our guns, but if we do not get jobs, we will start fighting again.” Exactly the same is being said in Freetown, in Sierra Leone, and in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Without work, people do not have a vision of the future.
There is another very encouraging statement on page 25 of the White Paper:
“The UK will…adopt a new ‘quality of governance’ assessment to monitor governance and our partners’ commitment to fighting poverty...use this assessment of ‘quality of governance’ as well as commitment to the three principles—reducing poverty; upholding human rights and international obligations; and improving public financial management, promoting good governance and transparency, and fighting corruption—to make choices about the way in which we give UK aid.”
That offers a strong human rights agenda based on tackling corruption, the initiative that the Secretary of State is launching, and making good governance work for the poor.
This is about not only tackling corruption and improving accountability but building up a culture, here in the north as well as in the south, of what I would describe as economic justice. We should institute that concept as a different paradigm that brings together the agendas on the environment and tackling poverty. Tackling poverty is a universal challenge: north and south; urban and rural. Tackling wider inequalities is about good politics; they go together. The report helps us to realise that.
Democratic politics must be developed in depth from the base up. In African countries especially, that means taking account of the structures of solidarity, community and hospitality that already exist and working through them to blend new shapes of democratic participation.
I modestly suggest that politicians who get behind the agenda of tackling poverty as an economic and a political agenda will do much to restore faith in politics and the processes of politics. That is a challenge not only for African and poor countries but for us here and now.
The White Paper is in many ways a report card on the past and an agenda for the future. I join the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell) in saying that the Department for International Development is right to give itself good marks. I join, too, in some of his criticisms, although the number of international quangos that he proposed for various forms of monitoring put a chill through my heart, as I would hope that monitoring could be a matter for this House.
The Secretary of State is well able to make his own case, so let me use my time to raise some of the missed potential in the DFID report. On trade, we all learned of the suspension of the Doha round with trepidation, as we are conscious that if it fails the greatest losers will be the developing countries. Aid and debt cancellation are interim tools. Trade is the tool that countries can take to themselves; it empowers them to make their own future. While I fully support an agenda that moves rapidly towards free trade, trade agreements must allow the policy space for developing countries to adjust their economies. In the Doha round, the language used was “special and differentiated treatment”.
If Doha is revived, the timetable will be exceedingly tight and will present a big challenge to the developing countries in getting their voice heard. I hope to hear that during these negotiations DFID will be actively trying to get across the message of developing countries, because it was largely drowned out in the earlier stages. If Doha fails, what role will DFID play in the bilateral and regional trade treaties that will undoubtedly enter the vacuum to ensure that our understanding of developing country needs is properly expressed and protected? Given that the European economic partnership was not a side issue, we particularly need to know how the partnership between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries will progress. I am afraid that that issue gets left to the Department of Trade and Industry, but it should be centre stage for DFID.
What worries me even more is that we are in benign economic times. It is the easiest phase in which to get an agreement that benefits developing countries. However, if we lose the opportunity and major economies begin to go into recession, it will become increasingly hard to reach for that prize.
Let us consider pro-poor development. We all understand that trade and development work for a significant section of people in developing countries—India has been cited as an example many times. However, trade and development work for approximately 50 per cent. of the people in India. For at least half, there is no progress and 30 per cent. are losers, including subsistence farmers now reduced to casual labour and living at the roadside, utterly displaced. I could give many examples but I do not want to take up the House’s time. The White Paper does not include a coherent strategy for the losers from development. There are some projects and programmes, some micro finance and infrastructure and I was glad to read the language of social security in the document. However, there is no consistent and coherent approach to tackling the needs of the group.
There must be a partnership between Governments, the private sector, civil society and the international community but many of the solutions will be counter-intuitive. For example, a solution may mean reinforcing the way of life of those who will continue in subsistence farming and not convert to commercial farming. I met Dalit women in Andhra Pradesh and, for them, the commercial farming happening around them is the greatest threat to their existence. It is not an option for them because of the land that they farm. They are faced with either joining the commercial flow of life and becoming casual labour or finding a way to reinforce their traditional style and approach. There is no consistent discussion of that in the White Paper.
Many of the most vulnerable people and many of those who lose out are women. As I have said in other debates, the Department for International Development’s language is full of references to gender equality and the importance of women, but does that translate into delivery? A good example is retrovirals to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS. There is hardly ever a programme to follow up the women who have been identified as HIV positive. The system does not regard them as significant in the way it should.
Disability is a cross-cutting issue. There are 400 million disabled people—the population of a large country—in the developing world, yet disability, because it is a cross-cutting issue, never makes it to the top of any agenda.
I want to speak about climate change and low carbon development. Yesterday, I heard part of the Secretary of State’s speech in one of the Committee Rooms. He said that he had been treated rather unfairly by the Environmental Audit Committee. I therefore reread the relevant section in the White Paper. Frankly, it is timid. We have 10 years in which to act on climate change or reach a tipping point. The urgency of the matter is not conveyed in the language or the programmes.
We all know that the poor suffer most from climate change, which could involve, for example, flooding, because of their dependence on agriculture, water scarcity or conflict. Darfur is an example of a conflict in which climate change and population movement has played a role.
The White Paper contains an excellent analysis:
“Initial estimates put the additional cost of meeting the energy needs of developing countries with cleaner, more efficient sources at over £40 billion a year.”
I looked for a suggestion about how to find the £40 billion a year, but the White Paper includes little more than talk about supporting the World Bank’s energy investment framework. We must scale up our effort. I agree with the right hon. Member for Leeds, West (John Battle) that it is essential to bring together the pro-poor and climate change agendas. The two are not in conflict and we must find a way of weaving them into our approach. That does not get the rich countries off the hook. We created 70 per cent. of the CO2 pollution in the atmosphere, and we must deal with it. I come from a council that has taken direct action on those issues, and I look forward to hearing support for that action on both sides of the House—that has not happened locally, but I hope that it will happen here.
Time is short, so I shall raise the remaining issues fairly quickly. I am concerned about DFID’s shift from programme support to budgetary support—I am not concerned about the principle, but I am concerned about the way in which the balance between the two has been struck. Governments should make their own decisions, and we provide budgetary support to recognise and facilitate such decision making. Civil society is the group that holds Governments accountable, and funding must come from outside Government control if it is to be independent and effective.
DFID has acknowledged the difficulties of building the environmental agenda into budgetary support, because it is extremely difficult to provide aid to fragile states through a budgetary support mechanism. Many NGOs wonder whether the pendulum is swinging too far, and I have a suspicion that much of the motivation behind the shift into budgetary support is to cope with the difficulties presented by the Gershon cuts, which are reducing resources and manpower in DFID at a time when the budget is growing. Budgetary support is a lower manpower strategy, which has made it the direction of choice. However, that is not how policy should be driven, and DFID needs to consider that point.
I hope that some of the hon. Members who were responsible for the brilliant report about conflict and development will speak in this debate, so I shall be brief on that point. The White Paper lacks clarity on conflict and resolution. Page 47 of the White Paper includes a wonderful picture—I do not know what an opium poppy looks like, but I am willing to guess that that picture shows an opium poppy field, and it looks like an advert for the excellence of the crop.
The White Paper does not address the tension between foreign policy on the one hand and reconstruction and development on the other. In Afghanistan, the US mission is search and destroy, while the UK mission is said to be reconstruction and development. In Lebanon, we supported the destruction of our own reconstruction. In Palestine, it is unclear whether we are committed to development or whether we are merely providing life support for a failing and declining economy.
In conclusion, I join other hon. Members in saying that this subject, which involves a five-year plan for the poorest people in the world, is far too important to be crushed into a two-hour debate on a Thursday afternoon, when only a handful of hon. Members are present. The underlying issues deserve the attention and scrutiny of the House. If we act collectively, we can make sure that those issues come to the Floor of the House far more frequently.
I congratulate Ministers on this DFID White Paper, which is both inspiring and sober. It gives us hope on what can be achieved and warns of the great hurdles ahead. I also congratulate the production team, because this excellent document is beautifully presented, easy to read and composed of 100 per cent. recycled material.
My main parliamentary interests are the environment and gender, so when I joined the International Development Committee, I brought those issues to my deliberations, and I see the White Paper from that perspective. Nowhere is global co-operation more vital than in tackling climate change. As the Gleneagles communiqué noted, around 2 billion people lack modern energy services, and global energy demands are expected to grow by 60 per cent. in the next 25 years. Before the ink was dry on that communiqué, the scientists were telling us that the situation was even more critical. As the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) said, the tipping point for irreversible change could arrive by 2020.
The consequences for development are awesome, which is why I greatly welcome chapter 7 of the White Paper, with its stark headlines, “Climate change poses the most serious long-term threat to development and the Millennium Development Goals” and “Developing countries will need support to adapt. The costs will be huge.” As other Members have said, the effects of climate change will bear down hardest on those who depend most on environmental factors for their livelihood. Last year, in Malawi, our Select Committee saw the terrible effects of the previous year’s drought, and the dependency of people on foreign food aid. In neighbouring Mozambique, we saw the devastation brought by floods and torrential rains. As the White Paper says, three of the four natural disasters—droughts, floods and cyclones—are weather-related, and 97 per cent. of deaths from natural disasters occur in developing countries.
The devastating consequences of climate change are our responsibility. The challenge is for all of us to face up to the fact that all our promises, and all our expectations and hope for development, could be negated by climate change. The G8 meeting at Gleneagles attempted to bring that to the fore, and it is critical that DFID leads the way in pursuing that Gleneagles agenda. Following on from that meeting, Globe UK, the all-party environment group, of which I am vice-chair, set up the G8 plus five dialogue to bring together parliamentarians to advance the Gleneagles agenda. We have worked closely with the World Bank on its energy investment framework, and we look forward to monitoring DFID’s work in the field. When my hon. Friend the Minister sums up, will he give his assessment of the response of regional development banks to the World Bank’s investment framework for clean energy?
On my second interest, gender, I am afraid that, like some other Members, I must be critical of the Department. Women make up the vast majority of the poorest. They are poor because they are members of the poorest communities, but also because they are women. Women experience discrimination in every sphere of political, social and economic life and at every age. African women are the world’s poorest people. They have the lowest life expectancy, and Africa has the greatest disparity between women and men in access to education, literacy and income in the world. Tackling women’s poverty and inequality requires a transformation in relations between women and men, and a transformation in the way in which we define development. It also requires a definition of good governance—which, as the Secretary of State has said, is central to the report—which recognises the implications of gender differences for people’s access to essential public services, political participation and economic opportunity.
The Department for International Development has a twin-track approach, combining specific activities aimed at empowering women with a commitment to pursue gender equality in the mainstream of all development programmes. To date, however, those commitments have not been implemented thoroughly or consistently. One World Action, in giving evidence to various reports, has argued that women’s rights and gender equality are not a high priority outside the social development department of DFID. It says that, today, evidence of effective gender mainstreaming outside that cluster remains disappointing. I add to that assessment my dismay and astonishment that a 15-page consultation document on conflict policy produced by DFID does not mention the word “women” once.
Six years ago, however, the UK led the international community in promoting Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. That resolution, unanimously adopted, recognised the disproportionate effect of conflict on women and underlined the essential role of women in the prevention of conflict and as full participants in post-conflict peace building and reconstruction efforts.
Earlier this year, in recognition of the importance of that resolution, DFID, the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office produced an action plan. I hope that my Front-Bench colleagues will appreciate how disappointing it is that the consultation document on conflict includes no reference to women or to the action plan. I trust that my hon. Friend the Minister will give me an undertaking that that serious omission will be corrected when the actual policy document is produced.
The points that I have raised about gender are not new. My right hon. and hon. Friends will recognise them from various sessions in the Committee. There is, I think, a critical need for DFID to change the way in which it is working. I know that the Secretary of State has acknowledged the need for a gender strategy, and I hope that one will be produced very soon.
Although the White Paper contains references to women in the context of micro-finance and girls going to school, it is very light on all the other important issues, such as the climate change and economic agendas. As the Secretary of State says, good governance is at the heart of the White Paper, but governance that denies the rights, basic needs and interests of women and girls—the majority of the population—cannot be considered good governance. No Government who neglect the rights, needs and interests of women and girls can be described as legitimate, and nowhere is that more important than in developing countries and countries recovering from conflict. I hope that my ministerial colleagues will give much fuller consideration to those issues, and will endeavour to strengthen accountability in relation to them.
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate. Although I have made criticisms, I have not the slightest doubt that we have one of the best international development Departments in the world—possibly even the very best.
I am grateful for the opportunity to follow the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) and to endorse all that she said, not only in terms of the contribution that we are making but in terms of her contribution. I assure the House that she is assiduous in presenting the issues that she raised. In my view, the Committee does not listen to her enough, and does not respond enough. If she continues to speak, we will.
As a co-vice-chair of Globe UK, I consider issues of climate change to be fundamental. Although I do not think that all the criticisms of the Environmental Audit Committee are entirely fair or valid, I think that the Department must look again at what it is doing in its environmental and climate change programmes, and decide whether it can incorporate some of the Committee’s recommendations in its future work.
We are constrained by time. I agree with others that we require far more time to debate issues such as these, and I think that the Leader of the House—who will be presenting proposals next week—should take account of the fact that this is not the right way to treat the business with which we are dealing.
There is much in the White Paper that I support. I agree with the right hon. Member for Leeds, West (John Battle): it is extremely well produced, a good read and a very good statement of policy. I am not sure that its content is radically new, but it provides a very good focus on “where we are at”. If some of what I say is critical, it is only because of the time constraint: there is no time to give praise, but there is time to make suggestions.
Very briefly, then, I will say that there is cross-party recognition of the commitment to the 0.7 per cent. target. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell) for reaffirming that on behalf of his party. There is, however, a need for clarification of how we are to achieve that target. There is also total support for debt relief, but I think that the Secretary of State will know what I am going to say next.
It is true, of course, that when countries whose debt has been liquidated and which were servicing the debt in some way are relieved of that duty, money is released that can go into poverty reduction programmes. The Secretary of State must accept, however, that a good many countries were not servicing or repaying their debt, and writing off a debt that was not being repaid does not produce any more money. It seems to me that including all that debt relief as if it were a contribution to our 0.7 per cent. target is at least a little debatable. Would the Secretary of State be prepared to conduct an analysis to establish where money is and is not being genuinely released, and come up with an adjusted figure representing the real extra benefit from debt relief? That might help to define our contribution. Having said that, I obviously welcome the commitment to the 0.7 per cent. target, but the Secretary of State knows that some people say that, as a consequence of incorporating debt relief this year, there has been no real increase in the spend on development itself. Clearly, we should expect to see increases year on year.
The Secretary of State was right to say that when we are working with developing countries, governance is crucial both for them and for us. Simply handing over money to corrupt regimes to siphon off is neither good for poverty reduction, nor the credibility of the programme. We must find ways of dealing with those circumstances. One of the problems in very poor countries where Governments do not pay their civil servants, teachers or nurses, for example, is that public service is no longer regarded as a job, but as a franchise. People have to go down below to get bribes from the people they are supposed to serve in order to sustain their family’s income. We have to find ways of ensuring that that does not happen.
It is interesting to note the launch of the campaign by the Mo Ibrahim foundation to form a league table of governance and give an award to the African leader who achieves the most. I have often said that one way of resolving problems of super-incumbency, if I may call it that, in Africa is to ensure that whatever presidents get in office, ex-presidents should get double, which might encourage people to move on.
The relationship with the World Bank is the next important matter and the Secretary of State has made much of his withholding of £50 million. He told the Select Committee that he believes that it has already galvanised the bank into focusing attention on his concerns about conditionality. In a few weeks’ time, we will see what the response is. I am sure that the Secretary of State would acknowledge that the reality is that we will be giving more money to the World Bank and we will be working with it. It has put tackling corruption high up its agenda, so it has to be a welcome partnership, which we will support.
The Secretary of State’s dilemma is that if he has a rising budget, and a reducing head count, more money will go by definition into international institutions that we do not control directly or into budget support. Finding ways of ensuring that our objectives are realised in that context—without necessarily imposing new conditions—is highly important.
I am not omitting climate change from my discussion because I believe that it is less than absolutely central, but only because I agree with what has already been said and I want to put that on the record.
On trade and the Doha round, it is simply unacceptable that the promise of delivering on a development round should be allowed to die or even to slumber. It would be a matter of shame to me if the EU contributed in any way to such a failure. I hope that the British Government will do everything in their power to persuade the EU, over which we have some influence, to take a bold step—[Interruption.] I hear someone shouting, “What about the Americans?”, but we do not have institutional control over the Americans whereas we do have institutional engagement with the EU. Of course the Americans must respond. After what the Conservative spokesman said about the mid-term elections, I hope that America will be more prepared to do so.
Surprisingly, however, I have a little bit more confidence that the Bush Administration might deliver on a Doha round than a reconstructed Congress after the November elections. That Congress looks to be more left-wing in one sense, but more protectionist in another. There is an opportunity here, but if we do not seize it now, the consequences will be unacceptably bad. If we reflect on the fact that the EU puts three times more money into agricultural subsidies than into its entire overseas development budget, that can only fill us with shame.
The Secretary of State believes that budget support is an important mechanism for delivering aid. In principle, I and members of the Select Committee agree, but it does have its problems. Setting up 10-year partnership agreements, which create commitment and continuity, is a good approach. Given the all-party support for the basic principle of increasing aid, I hope that those agreements will be fully honoured and endorsed in principle, subject to the vagaries of what happens. It is important that the development of civil society in these countries is viewed as part and parcel of the process of budget support. The parliamentary network of the World Bank and all sorts of other bilateral arrangements with parliamentarians and civil society are important so that people know what is being given to a Government and where it is coming from. The right questions should be asked to hold people to account. The objective is to create the capacity for the Governments and the citizens of affected countries to deliver their own outcomes. If it is understood in that context, it is a project that it is well worth continuing with—and, I hope, delivering.
On the issue of conflict, I welcome the comments by the Secretary of State on our report and his assertion that it is a legitimate subject for debate in the Chamber rather than in Westminster Hall. The issue is the extent to which one single conflict can wipe out the whole value of the world aid budget, and there is more than one conflict going on. For example, what happened in Israel and Lebanon over the summer is a classic case in which we now have to divert massive amounts of aid money into Palestine because the conflict destroyed the Palestinian economy. I am not saying that those poor people should not be helped, but the conflict diverted funds and that means that other poor people, whom we want to help, will not get funds. That is an indication of the problem.
This is not the moment to have a debate about whether all the conflict situations we are in are ones in which we are totally blameless. The ones that we have considered in Africa are not ones in which the United Kingdom can be said to have been involved, but we have tried to promote peaceful solutions.
Real issues arise from the role of British and European companies in contributing to the promotion and extension of conflict by dealing in conflict goods. When the Committee took evidence, there was an exchange between the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) and the chairman of Afrimex. The hon. Lady asked him whether he was aware of the OECD guidelines after the UN had identified his company. He said no. The hon. Lady asked if he had referred to the DTI and again he said no. She then asked whether the DTI had ever contacted him, and again he said no. That tells us that the DTI is not at one with DFID in ensuring that British companies are squeaky clean in the engagement in and possible contribution to conflicts. We need to resolve conflict resources, we need higher standards and we need to stamp out corruption inside and outside the countries involved if we are to ensure that we are not party to promoting or encouraging conflict in the future. Those are issues that need to be thoroughly debated.
This is an excellent report. I have only a few minutes to speak, so I shall concentrate on a few points that have not been entirely explored this afternoon. I generally welcome the recommendations in the White Paper.
One theme of the report is corruption and accountability, and what is said is good as far as it goes. But let us not forget that the issue of tackling corruption and ensuring accountability is not one only for developing countries. There are banks, financial institutions and big companies in rich countries, including the UK, which have a lot to answer for in the way in which they have encouraged corrupt practices, laundered money and preyed on corruption in developing countries. We have a lot to do on that issue. We are doing some work, but we could do more. If I had more time I would mention the Christian Aid recommendations, which we should take seriously. It is not only for “them, out there” to deal with this: it is also our responsibility.
The issue of climate change has been discussed and I agree with all that has been said on that so far today. But we must remember that it is not an issue for 10 years’ time: it is happening now and the consequences are felt not just in developing countries. The boat people in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic who are affecting us in the European Union are also partly a consequence of climate change. It is important to recognise the link and, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, we need a debate on the issue, because there are still some unresolved tensions between the interests of development and of tackling climate change. We have to ask how far we can rely on opening up markets as a way to meet developing countries’ needs, if in so doing developing countries rely on methods of transport—for example, air travel—that, apart from contributing to climate change, may not be sustainable in 10, 20 or 30 years. Air travel over longer distances may not be sustainable. My suspicion is that the answer will be to emphasise the need for regional co-operation and development for developing countries. That is a matter about which the report is a little weak, and I hope that the Department will say more in the future about how it intends to develop regional co-operation among developing countries.
Finally, I turn to peace and security. Many hon. Members have mentioned the very worrying threat of a nuclear arms race developing in the middle east and east Asia. Whatever North Korea is doing with its apparent nuclear tests, it seems pretty clear that devoting the resources necessary for its programme will impoverish even further an already impoverished country. Another danger is that it will set off a nuclear arms race in countries in the region. Even though some of them may be relatively rich, experience shows that an arms race will subsume resources from the poorer countries as well, as they will also feel that they must do something about their security.
That emphasises the need to get a genuine non-proliferation process under way. We must try again to make progress with getting the world community to agree a non-proliferation treaty, and we must also build a stronger set of the multilateral organisations, agencies and agreements that will give us the long-term peace and security that are essential if we are to achieve real development in the longer term. We must not settle for having a few measures that will be undermined by the greater insecurity that always affects countries in the developing world much more than those elsewhere.
I do not want to say a word against the Secretary of State, for whom I entirely share the esteem already expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell). The right hon. Gentleman made an excellent speech, but it is clear that he did not succeed in persuading his colleagues, including the Leader of the House, of the importance of this debate. To allocate only an hour and three quarters—that is, less than an hour for all the Back-Bench speeches—is nothing less than contemptuous of the subject.
I am left with trying to make three points in about four minutes. First, international development is a very peculiar subject. It is the only one that we discuss in the House where we target inputs—in no other field would we dream about targeting 0.7 per cent. of our GDP. It is a very un-businesslike approach, although I accept that we are so committed to it, psychologically and politically, that we cannot go back on it. However, we should not deceive ourselves into believing that spending more money will automatically achieve progress in poverty reduction.
In fact, the connection between spending money or targeting inputs and achieving outputs is very uncertain. Sometimes, the connection may be an inverse one. The western world has spent about $2.3 trillion on aid in the past 50 years, with very inadequate outcomes. For about 20 years, the highest per-capita recipient was Tanzania under Nyere, but per capita income there fell in that time. That tells us that we must be quite sceptical.
Secondly, that need for scepticism means that we must be careful that aid is properly spent. We must ensure that it does not displace expenditure by recipient Governments away from health or education programmes and on to arms or greater bureaucracy. We must be sure that Governments do not pursue the sort of perverse and damaging economic policies, such as excessive taxation or excessive and perverse regulation, that only undermine entrepreneurship. We must foster a climate that encourages foreign investment, and make sure that corruption is controlled and punished appropriately.
The Government are in a mess in respect of the whole question of conditionality. They seem to accept it in areas such as human rights and governance, but not in economic policies. I prefer the word “partnership” to conditionality, for obvious psychological reasons, but it is essential that there be a dialogue. Let us be clear: there is no point in spending our taxpayers’ money if its effect is counteracted by the recipient state adopting unfortunate and inappropriate policies.
We should not run away from conditionality. In that context, I am worried about the Secretary of State’s argument with the World Bank. It is far from clear to me that the conditionality that the World Bank is imposing is unreasonable. If it is imposing sensible conditionality on the economic policies pursued by donee countries, we should support it.
Thirdly, precisely because conditionality is important, we cannot achieve our purposes in poverty reduction and development spending in general alone. It is crazy to think that there can be 25 or 30 bilateral dialogues between 25 or 30 separate donors and a recipient country. That is hopeless. There cannot be 25 or 30 different sets of monitoring arrangements or sets of donors demanding several days a year with key Ministers and officials in the partner or recipient country. The officials and Ministers would not have time to do anything other than meet donors. We therefore need to make sure that we co-ordinate much more effectively and systematically than we have done so far. We have done so sometimes, in an ad hoc way. In some countries we co-ordinate effectively with other donors. We should make it a rule—we can do this within the European Union—that we develop one set of policies and have one dialogue so that we are not sending different signals to our EU partners or to the Commission. We should agree with them on the strategy for a country. We should then launch a co-ordinated single dialogue; we should agree with the donee country on common targets and approaches. We should set up a single monitoring procedure. It is much more difficult to do it outside the EU, but we should do it pragmatically where we can with the World Bank and other donors. The United States always wants to do its own thing; I understand that. But we can co-ordinate. We should have formal protocols. The opportunity is there precisely because of the structure of the EU.
I hope that the next time we discuss this subject we can give it the attention that it deserves. All the rhetoric about trying to help 2 billion people who are in desperate straits, which they certainly are, looks pretty empty if the House of Commons cannot even come up with two hours of time to debate the subject.
I join others in complaining about the paucity not of the quality of debate but of the quantity. It has been far too short. It was, however, opened by two excellent speeches. The Secretary of State set out with great clarity the priorities of the White Paper and he was followed by my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell), the shadow Secretary of State, who set out in an intelligent, committed and compelling speech why the Opposition welcome the White Paper, underpinned by an emphasis on good governance, capability, responsiveness and accountability.
The White Paper correctly acknowledges the importance of structural reform, including the necessity to modernise the multilateral institutions, build individual country structures and develop absorptive capacity. It rightly considers methods and delivery mechanisms to focus resources on the alleviation of poverty, tackling humanitarian crises, preventing conflict and promoting peace, thereby ensuring security, incomes and public services. For the first time, the White Paper considered in detail strategies for mitigating and adapting to the threat that climate change could have on international development. We commend this ambitious focus.
We welcome and support the continued high priority to be given to health, education, access to water and sanitation and prevention and cure of disease, which pose immediate threats to future development. Confronting those challenges must remain at the forefront of our efforts if we are to achieve the millennium development goals. As the right hon. Member for Leeds, West (John Battle) said, good governance is not simply about democracy. Successful states require effective institutions such as an independent judiciary, a free media and strong and pluralistic civil societies. The evidence suggests that states that are accountable and responsive to their citizens are stronger and better placed to mitigate and respond to disasters, and significantly more likely to benefit from economic growth and attract foreign investment.
It is essential that the international community work to tackle corruption. Corruption and growth are inversely related. While it remains less expensive to bribe a Government official to obtain a concession than to pay the full market price, limited progress will be made. The White Paper commits to a new quality of governance assessment, which must be given a wide remit. The current World Bank assessment of governance is weighted heavily on the degree to which a country has liberalised its economy, as opposed to, for example, whether the media are independent. We welcome the governance and transparency fund, which strengthens civil society and the media, as there is a direct correlation between countries with a free media and sustained economic growth.
As the Secretary of State said, economic growth is the most effective way of alleviating poverty. It creates independence and ultimately promotes saving and investment, and contributes to the absorption of future economic shocks. The private sector creates growth and we welcome the White Paper’s latent recognition of that fact.
Governments in developing nations have a role in ensuring that the private sector has the optimum environment in which to flourish: low regulation, access to economic opportunity and competition. In addition, there must be conditions in which access to credit, micro-finance and property rights are secure. Developing nations have a role in providing macro-economic stability. They also have a role in the world trade system, in which they must be allowed fully to participate without being restricted by unfair trading rules, as many Members pointed out. In a modern interdependent global world, economic growth is impossible without access to global markets and we are all disappointed that the Doha development round is—to put it politely—deadlocked.
We are also concerned that there is limited consideration in the White Paper of infrastructure development. Rightly, there is significant emphasis on providing services such as health, education and disease prevention, but we must not overlook other fundamental developmental challenges, such as building transport networks, communication capabilities and electrification in rural areas. That will enable regional trade and the expeditious delivery of medical supplies, and allow countries to develop a diverse and balanced economic base. They will then be able to graduate from exporting purely agricultural and other basic commodities to making value-added products.
The real challenge for the developing world is to enable economic growth and wealth creation, which are the drivers of poverty alleviation, without causing environmental degradation. Although the problem of climate change may seem remote by comparison with poverty, disease and economic stagnation, it will most dramatically affect the poorest people, who currently rely on rain-fed agriculture for their livelihood and income. It will also have an impact on population movement, and create a significant increase in environmental refugees. It is worth looking at an expansion of greenhouse gas permits on an international market basis to cut emissions and promote spending on cleaner fuels and energies.
DFID must ensure that its impacts are taken into account in every bilateral funding decision, by considering both the impact of its projects on climate change and how climate change affects its projects. The Opposition agree with most of the White Paper and acknowledge DFID’s global reputation as a provider of development assistance. As a result of the Department’s work, significant progress has been made in some countries. However, there must be a change in the fortunes of developing nations; they need the establishment of good governance and effective state organisations, investment in infrastructure, wider and deeper debt relief, adaptation to environmental changes, more robust disease prevention, increased access to public services, reform of the global trade routes, a strong and pluralist civil society and more effective conflict prevention, as well as reconstruction, macro-economic stability and secure property rights.
The White Paper rightly acknowledges many of those challenges and it is essential that it is translated into effective and expeditious action. Ultimately, we must assist developing nations to progress from aid dependency, and that will require sustained economic growth and wealth creation, not just wealth redistribution.
I welcome the many contributions to the debate and I recognise the House’s appetite for further opportunities for lengthier discussion of the issues.
I particularly welcome the support for the White Paper’s focus on governance. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (John Battle) and the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds) rightly highlighted the fact that although dealing with corruption is crucial, we must recognise that the governance agenda is much broader than that. It includes access to justice and a free media, the importance of strong civil society, developing effective local government, a strong civil service and effective Parliaments and ensuring effective elections. That is all part of the increased work on governance that we intend to do.
In his opening remarks, the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell) welcomed the White Paper and raised the question of results. I do not accept his implicit comment, or indeed the implicit comment of the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies), that the Department focuses only on inputs, although I accept that we have to do more to communicate the results of our development assistance.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State referred to the extremely effective assistance that we are providing in India. Between 2003 and 2005, that aid helped to give 9.5 million more children access to primary school. The hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford is, quite sensibly, pro-European, so he may be interested to know that the European Commission contributes to that programme of assistance, as do the Indian Government through their effective programme of development assistance.
The hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield questioned the Department’s effectiveness. He asked whether we could be still more effective, and suggested that we needed an international body to evaluate donor performance. May I gently remind him of the development assistance committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, an international force that already evaluates donor performance? Recently, its representatives visited the Department for International Development to conduct a peer review, in which they said:
“The UK is currently seen by many aid practitioners and donors as one of the bilateral models for today’s evolving world of development cooperation.”
It went on:
“DFID has inspired and endorsed both the Paris declaration on aid effectiveness and the EU action plan on harmonisation.”
I accept, however, that we cannot rest on our laurels, and we must still do more.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the arms trade treaty and the time scale for moving forward. I hope that he will forgive me, but I do not wish to pre-empt the vote on whether to move forward and discuss an arms trade treaty that takes place later today. I hope that voters will decide in favour of progress, and there is considerable support for that position, but we cannot afford to relax. Rightly, he raised the issue of the emerging donors—China, India, South Africa and Brazil. I hope that he is reassured to know that our permanent secretary recently visited Beijing to discuss China’s role as a donor. Yesterday, senior officials and I met a delegation of senior officials from China who are involved in aid programmes, and we discussed the exact issues that he raised.
Will the Minister give way?
In light of the time, I will not, and I apologise for that.
I join the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) in praising the contribution of Mohammed Yunis. Some 2 billion people still do not have access to credit, which is one of the factors that fuels the opium trade in Afghanistan. Britain’s businesses and financial sector have a role to play in helping us to give people access to credit, and we are working with them on that issue.
The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) asked whether the desire to move from project to programme spend is driven by Gershon. I can reassure her that projects still have their place, as budget support is not always appropriate. We use a variety of aid methods, and we will continue to do so, but if we want to reach all the poor in a developing country, if we want all children to have access to primary schools, and if we want all pregnant women to have access to a skilled attendant, we have to build the Government capacity, and that is why budget support continues to be important.
The hon. Members for Richmond Park and for Wantage (Mr. Vaizey), my hon. Friends the Members for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) and for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz), and the right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) all raised the issue of climate change. I remind them of the commitment given by my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State and the Chancellor to push the World Bank and other international financial institutions on the issue of an investment framework. We hope that that will galvanise some $20 billion in investment in low-carbon technologies. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford asked about the contribution of regional development banks, and I hope that she is reassured to hear of the work that President Kuroda of the Asian Development Bank is doing on that issue.
I recognise that our Department needs to do more work on climate change. In my evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee, I committed the Department to recruit additional staff to work on climate change. I hope that hon. Members accept that that process is under way. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford raised specific concerns about our commitment to women. Most recently, on a visit to Pakistan, we released £90 million to help to improve access to good maternity services. We have taken the lead on pushing the plight of women affected by HIV/ AIDS on to the international agenda. At the recent UN high level meeting, we pushed for a bold political declaration that ensured a commitment to protecting women’s rights. As she recognised, we are in the process of developing a new gender action plan, which will set the agenda for strengthened work on gender equality. I have taken on board her point about the need to reflect those concerns, and the point made by the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield about the need—
It being Six o’clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE (CONSEQUENTIAL PROVISIONS) BILL [LORDS]
Ordered,
That the National Health Service (Consequential Provisions) Bill [Lords] shall be proceeded with as if it were a consolidation bill and Standing Order No. 58 (Consolidation bills) shall apply.—[Mr. Alan Campbell.]
With the leave of the House, I will put motions 6 and 7 together.
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Ordered,
That, at the sitting on Tuesday 31st October, the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motions in the name of Mr Secretary Alexander relating to the Crossrail Bill not later than three hours after the commencement of proceedings on the first Motion; such Questions shall include the Questions on any Amendments selected by the Speaker which may then be moved; proceedings may continue, though opposed, after the moment of interruption; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply.
Ordered,
That, at the sitting on Tuesday 31st October, paragraph (2) of Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments) shall apply to the Motion in the names of Mr Alex Salmond and Mr Elfyn Llwyd as if the day were an Opposition Day; proceedings on the Motion may continue, though opposed, for three hours and shall then lapse if not previously disposed of; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply.—[Mr. Alan Campbell.]
Satellite Navigation (Vehicles)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Alan Campbell.]
Part of my political credo is that technology should be man’s slave, and not his master. Therefore, I welcome the introduction of satellite navigation in principle, even though I have not yet got it and have never used it. Four million drivers in this country use it already and satellite navigation is fitted as standard in one in every five cars. Half of all motorists have planned routes using internet mapping, which is a closely associated technology. We have seen a commodity grow from an expensive gimmick for the few to a more affordable must-have for the many in little more than a few months—high street stores have already noticed that Christmas is coming.
The aims of satellite navigation are worthy: simple navigation with updated mapping information; onscreen mapping that is not too intrusive or dangerous; avoiding hazards or congestion, thus saving time and fuel; and even, perhaps, someone to talk with on long journeys. If only it were that simple.
Millers Dale is a quiet village on the southern border of my constituency. Through it runs a narrow road in a steep-sided valley under a tall bridge carrying a former railway line. It is a poorly lit stretch of road, with no pavement underneath the bridge. It is bad enough for children to navigate that road on foot in the dark after the school bus has dropped them off, but the situation has got more frightening than ever recently and has become more dangerous since the number of HGVs using the road—the A6049—has increased considerably.
Why has that happened? Long-distance lorry drivers, perhaps from eastern Europe, who are not familiar with the geography of Britain might find themselves making a delivery in Liverpool or Manchester. If they seek the quickest route back to the southbound M1, the satellite navigation system will direct them through Millers Dale. That does not make any sense, but someone who does not know any better than to follow its advice will take that route.
In Brookbottom, on the western border of High Peak, a coach load of 40 tourists from London spent more time than they had planned enjoying the Peak district after their coach became wedged on a tight bend. A tanker lorry did something similar a week earlier. Typical of satellite navigation’s idiosyncrasies is to take people down short cuts that turn out to be anything but. Coming west on the A624 from Chesterfield, heading for Stockport or Manchester via the A6, one reaches the picturesque village of Sparrowpit, where a pub called the “Wanted Inn” perches on a hairpin bend. Satellite navigation tells drivers that if they turn right immediately behind the pub and then first left, there is a straight road over to the A6, which cuts off a corner and saves 3 or 4 miles. It is up a short hill and then down a very long one. There is a great view of Manchester from the top, for those who like that sort of thing. At the bottom of the hill, however, around Blackbrook, there are a couple of hairpin bends that can only be described as mean. Woe betide the articulated lorry that tries to take those blind bends at any speed—as some have, aided and abetted, no doubt, by the helpful person who removed the weight restrictions signs from the Sparrowpit end of the road.
Once drivers have navigated that road, they have another problem, according to my constituent, Guy Martin. His TomTom satellite navigation system apparently shows the A6 as a single carriageway—in effect directing drivers the wrong way up a lane of a dual carriageway. Mr. Martin complained to TomTom when his device told him that its memory was full and he could not upgrade the information that it carried. He wrote to the local press about it. His letter in the local paper said:
“I complained to Tom but after several weeks had no reply.”
Now, being slagged off in the local press is nothing new to me, except that I had seen Mr. Martin’s original e-mail, which he kindly copied me into. He actually wrote:
“I complained to Tom Tom”,
but a helpful sub-editor removed the duplicated word and thus committed a calumny against me. I am delighted to report that the following week’s letters page contained both a correction from Mr. Martin and grovelling apology from the paper’s editor for criticising my status as a Member of the House so unjustly. I hope that TomTom replied in due course.
No discussion of satellite navigation would be complete without a reference to Swansea City’s football ground, the Liberty stadium. Apparently, satellite navigation systems still direct people to the club’s former ground, the Vetch, which it has not used since the end of last season. A visiting team from Bradford nearly missed a game recently due to delays caused by incorrect data on the satellite navigation system. It is said that the police trawl Swansea every Saturday lunchtime looking for lost and literally misguided motorists in search of a football ground.
Stories about satellite navigation have acquired the status of urban myths, but it is difficult to believe that they are not all true—after all, they have been in the newspapers. There have been stories about vehicles being directed down steps at Sheppards Barton, or the wrong way down one-way streets in Glasgow. Thirty pensioners were stuck for four hours when their coach became caught between the grassy banks of a lane in Forest of Dean. Signs showing weight restrictions, and even no-through roads, are being flouted by the score in Somerset, Cornwall and Devon more often than ever. Cars have courted disaster when attempting to ford the River Avon at Luckington, or when being directed to the edge of a 100 ft cliff in north Yorkshire. All those stories have appeared in the national or regional press in the past two weeks.
It is easy to blame satellite navigation for the problem, but weight restriction signs exist to guide motorists, and being in possession of satellite navigation gives them no excuse to ignore such a sign. No one tells a motorist to ford a stream that is too deep, or to risk driving a car off a cliff edge. Most pedestrianised streets are pretty well marked. As the Royal Automobile Club said in the 15 October edition of Scotland on Sunday:
“Just because a computer tells you to drive into a ditch or whatever, it doesn’t mean you have to do it”.
So, what is all the fuss about? Frankly, I am not too worried about what happens to cars, even though research shows that a fifth of all young drivers no longer carry a road atlas and that two thirds of them do not know the significance of a road being marked in red—it is an A-road—on a map. However, lorries can do an awful lot of damage even at slow speeds, whether that is to a bridge in Bodmin, or to garden walls in Shaftsbury. Such damage is also testified by the experience of Mr. Isherwood of Chapel Milton, which is in my constituency.
Mr. Isherwood’s case relates to lorries travelling along the A624 from Glossop without realising that there is a height limit under the railway bridge outside his house. Rather than getting stuck under the bridge, the lorries try to turn round and go back to the previous junction at Hayfield, which is some three miles back, but there is simply no room on the road for them to do so. Cars in the car park of the Crown and Mitre pub and Mr. Isherwood’s garden wall have thus been the frequent victims of lorries that have tried to carry out multi-point turns. “Ah, but,” the industry will say, “height limits are not our responsibility.” That is my point.
I wrote to the Department for Transport some weeks ago to ask what it was going to do about misleading, out-of-date and unhelpful data being incorporated into, or downloaded on to, satellite navigation systems in vehicles. The Minister of State, Department for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman), who will reply to the debate, acknowledged that there was a problem, but said at that time that voluntary regulation by the industry was the answer. That was at a time when even the AA and the RAC—those champions of the deregulation of driving—were calling for the recognition of possible hazards caused by satellite navigation.
I congratulate my hon. Friend, however, because I read in the 15 October edition of Scotland on Sunday that the Department has set up a review because:
“As the use of satellite navigation becomes more common, there is a need to ensure that devices do not pose a safety risk through driver distraction. It is also necessary to ensure that their routing strategies do not encourage the use of ‘rat-runs’ or give ill-advised or illegal instructions to the user.”
I hope that that will be achieved by licensing the production and sale of satellite navigation equipment.
Several satellite navigation systems offer the driver the option of telling him or her—I suspect that it is mostly him—the location of speed cameras, and we can debate whether that is a justifiable purpose of satellite navigation. In the future, we might expect satellite navigation to tell us where congestion can be found and how to avoid it, where roadworks are to be found, and where congestion charging is in place. In the more distant future, it might tell us the different rates of road pricing that will apply in any given area. Yet I think I am right in saying that at present no publicly available satellite navigation system can tell us what weight, height and width limits apply to any particular road. Even the Ordnance Survey, whose data are the source of much satellite navigation information, has only just started to collate information about the width, weight and height restrictions on 110,000 of our bridges—there are probably more. The Ordnance Survey spokesman said very sensibly in the Birmingham Mail just two weeks ago:
“A single bridge strike can lead to a loss of business and higher insurance premiums as well as the costs of the repair. Other drivers can also be affected if surrounding roads have to be closed.”
Height and width restrictions on roads are intended to protect structures, vehicles, drivers and passengers. Only a fool would not heed the advice that is given on these matters. Weight limits exist, by and large, for the same reason, but they are also used as a tool for traffic management by local authorities to improve the quality of life in certain communities.
I am envious of the hon. Gentleman for getting the debate, as I was trying for one on the same subject. May I vouch for one of his examples? Sheppards Barton is a mediaeval cobbled street ending in a flight of steps next to my office in Frome, and a very surprised driver found himself delivering coffee down there the other day. The hon. Gentleman is right. One of the problems that we see in my constituency involves heavy lorries, often with overseas drivers. They unload at Poole and look for a north-south route, but one is not obviously available. They rely on satnav, which takes them along a road such as the A357 through Blackmoor Vale and through delightful villages such as Henstridge and Templecombe, which cannot take heavy vehicles. Do we not need a route hierarchy built into the geography of the satnav system, so that drivers are advised of sensible routes and communities are relieved of heavy traffic?
When I reach the end of my speech, the hon. Gentleman will be pleased with the conclusions that I reach and the questions that I put directly to the Minister. I had not appreciated that Sheppards Barton was in his constituency. I thank him for that intervention.
More and more often, drivers ignore weight limits, particularly those that are used for traffic management purposes rather than to protect vulnerable bridges. That is being exacerbated by the use of satellite navigation. Bearing in mind that those weight limits in particular are not usually targeted at cars but at heavy goods vehicles, I shall ask my hon. Friend the Minister a number of questions, and I promise to leave him plenty of time to answer them.
Will my hon. Friend introduce a system of licensing for satellite navigation service providers? Will he ensure that weight, height and width limits on bridges are incorporated into satellite navigation data as soon as possible? Will he ensure that local authority weight limits imposed on roads as part of a traffic management strategy—the anti-rat run strategy that his Department has mentioned—are also included? Will he ensure that statutory speed limits are included in satellite navigation within a few years? Will he ensure that after a certain date new satellite navigation systems will be required to issue audible warnings when speed limits are exceeded by a certain amount, and where weight, height and width limits are in danger of being exceeded at all?
Will my hon. Friend work towards a common European standard for satellite navigation systems to ensure that commercial traffic entering the UK complies with our regulations? Will he give local authorities the power to designate roads as not recommended for heavy commercial vehicles and oblige satellite navigation systems to take note of such recommendations? Will he make it obligatory for all satellite navigation systems to be capable of being updated automatically, easily and preferably free?
As I said earlier, satellite navigation systems have become a new generation of urban myths, but they are founded in truth. That truth has led to unnecessary discomfort, distress and damage. One day it may lead to a death. If we are to make the most of the technology, we must be clear what we want it to do for us. We must also be clear that it does what we want it to do, and that the obvious benefits of satellite navigation are socially useful and not limited by what the market wishes to provide.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt) on securing the debate, and on beating the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) to it. The debate follows on from my exchange of correspondence with my hon. Friend in August, and I am delighted to have this opportunity to speak, because it gives me the opportunity to inform the House about the public consultation that we recently initiated and is now under way.
My hon. Friend is right that satellite navigation is a controversial subject. Many people consider it to be a blessing and would not leave home without it, while others—including both contributors to the debate—fear that it is responsible for leading people and their vehicles astray. However, I should say to both of them that a lot of the information that my hon. Friend has asked me to force the inclusion of in satellite navigation systems would not be available on maps either. Some of it would be available on Ordnance Survey maps, but most people do not use Ordnance Survey maps when they are planning a route. They tend to use other sorts of motoring atlases that do not usually include information such as height and weight restrictions. So even if people use the old-fashioned way of navigating, they can end up with the same problems. Therefore, we need to be a bit careful not to blame satellite navigation for all the ills of road traffic.
I understand that; the Minister has made a good point. But 10—or certainly 20—years ago, most driving was done locally, and certainly most journeys were within Britain. Now, however, people drive many more road miles, and their journeys increasingly take them across the country to areas that they do not know—and into countries that they do not know, too. So perhaps there is more reason than ever for putting such information into the public domain.
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend in that respect. The point that I am making is simply that satellite navigation might give us an opportunity to improve people’s routing, and to do things that we might not have been able to do in the past when we had the old, paper-based sort of routing.
I must confess that I have no sense of direction, so the satellite navigation system in my car is invaluable, and it also steers me past traffic jams, which often saves me a great deal of time when I am travelling to Parliament on Monday mornings. On the other hand, it recently sent me down a road that turned into a cart track, where I was up to my wheel arches in mud. So, like many people, I see both the strengths and the weaknesses of satellite navigation systems.
There are different kinds of in-vehicle electronic routing systems. Some of them simply provide routing advice based on digitally mapped roads, and I suspect that many of the problems that my hon. Friend has detailed have come about as a result of those systems. Others, which are known as dynamic route guidance systems, provide routing instructions according to real-time prevailing traffic and road conditions. Those types of systems are automatically updated with the latest information available to the company that provides the service, including on roadworks and the location of traffic jams. Some systems are integral to vehicles; others are portable devices that can be moved from vehicle to vehicle. Well-designed route guidance systems have the potential to reduce congestion and improve safety on the road. For example, drivers can listen to guidance without taking their eyes off the road. There is no need for them to look at their maps while moving, or to cause congestion by stopping to study their maps.
The software used to determine a given route is based on a hierarchy of roads, with motorways and dual carriageways favoured over slower, smaller, and generally local and residential roads. The route selected should always use principal roads, except at the start and end of a journey, where that might not be an option. That approach would normally avoid unsuitable routing, for example along single-track roads. However, it is possible that dynamic route guidance systems would suggest such a route as a diversion, in the event of problems on motorways and A-roads. Non-dynamic systems would not normally suggest unsuitable roads, provided that the area required is served by motorways and A-roads.
However, we are aware of concerns about vehicles, especially large or heavy vehicles, being guided on to unsuitable roads—my hon. Friend has given many examples of why we should be so concerned—and about the safety and traffic problems that can arise. We have legislation on in-vehicle information systems, including a licensing regime for some devices, but it dates back to 1989 and 1990. Since then, technology has surged ahead at great speed and may well have overtaken that legislation. We have few hard statistics to illustrate the scale of the problems that might be arising, so the Department for Transport carried out a brief survey of local authorities earlier this year. Analysis of the responses showed that a majority of the authorities that replied had received no complaints about inappropriate routing within the last 12 months. However, all the complaints that had been received related to heavy vehicles, and the local authorities’ view was that the number of reported incidents is rising, which could lead to problems in future.
The survey highlighted examples of vehicles being directed to local roads with access restrictions of some kind—such as weight, height or width limits—and heavy vehicles, especially foreign vehicles, being diverted from motorways on to inappropriate local roads. Many of the reported problems arise from satellite navigation systems designed for cars being used in trucks. Clearly, this is unwise. Heavy vehicles might be directed along a route that, although entirely suitable for a car, is inappropriate for a lorry. Local highway and traffic authorities do of course have the ability to make traffic regulation orders and to place traffic signs to restrict access on the part of some or all types of vehicles. Orders can include limits on vehicle weights, widths and lengths. Unsuitable roads, bridges and tunnels can therefore be made “off limits” to inappropriate vehicles by means of orders and signs.
It is obviously essential for drivers of heavy vehicles always to act with common sense, and to look at, and take action on, all relevant road signs. But if truck drivers follow a guidance system designed for a car slavishly without paying proper attention, they might breach these orders. I am aware that satellite navigation systems are coming on to the market that are aimed specifically at heavy vehicles and trucks. Although they have yet to be tested by the Department, one would hope that they will avoid some of these errors. But such drivers are required to ensure that they are using a system that is designed for their vehicle, and not for a car.
While the map used by a navigation device should be up to date, whatever system is used—be it cutting-edge electronic gadgetry with all the bells and whistles of dynamic route guidance, or a simple paper road map—drivers are responsible for ensuring that their driving decisions are legal and appropriate. Drivers cannot blame their satellite navigation systems for their failure to drive lawfully. They certainly cannot blame their systems if they drive the wrong way down a one-way street, because there are clear signs at the entrances to all such streets showing that it is not appropriate to enter at that point.
The police and courts can take a range of appropriate enforcement actions. For example, the offence of failure to comply with a traffic sign can be punished with a fine, points on a driver’s licence, or even discretionary disqualification. Car drivers, too, could conceivably breach traffic regulation orders or other road traffic requirements, were they to follow route guidance without taking account of road signs and their own common sense. We have heard some anecdotal evidence of that happening, but it appears from the results of the local authority survey that problems with trucks are more common.
System and map providers are aware of the problem of heavy vehicles using car route guidance. Some heavy vehicle-specific systems, which include information such as bridge heights and width and weight restrictions, are now available on the continent. I believe that a system with some of these features has recently come on to the UK market; I have no doubt that others will follow.
I am sure that the market will deliver a solution to this problem in time, and I do not want to interfere in that market without good reason. But I do take very seriously the concerns expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak and the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, and the Department for Transport has just launched a full public consultation on route guidance systems. This is an initial consultation exercise and, depending on our findings, it might be followed by a full statutory consultation on possible changes to the current licensing regime.
The consultation has two aims. First, we want to ensure—by legislation, self-regulation or some other option—that satellite navigation and other route guidance systems are safe for drivers and other road users. For example, we need to ensure that these systems do not cause serious distraction to drivers. Secondly, we want to ensure that the guidance offered by such systems avoids the problems of inappropriate routing. Our wider approach to better regulation suggests that a deregulatory approach would be best, perhaps in association with a self-certification process, but I have an open mind and I want to hear all good ideas. I assure my hon. Friend that I am not in any way prejudging the outcome of the consultation.
Our consultation began on 9 October, to coincide with the opening of the intelligent transport systems world congress, which this year was hosted in London and at which I saw plenty of innovation. The consultation ends on 9 January. We have sent consultation papers to a large number of individuals and organisations, and they are available on the Department’s website. We are inviting all stakeholders’ views on the best way forward. I will ensure that the views that hon. Members expressed today are fed into the consultation process and that today’s Hansard is made available to the consultation team.
The Minister’s comments are very encouraging. Is the Department prepared to consider not simply directing people away from roads that are unsuitable because they have weight or height restrictions, or similar, but taking an active role in encouraging heavy goods vehicles on to roads that are better suited than a road such as the one that I mentioned, which does not have such restrictions placed on it? It is grossly unsuitable for very heavy lorries, but because it is an A-road people are entitled to use it.
I understand what the hon. Gentleman is getting at. If we can come up with a way to designate such roads and provide that information to the makers of guidance systems, I am certainly prepared to consider it. The designation system is based on A, B and unclassified roads, so, given that the hon. Gentleman is talking about A-roads, one cannot blame a guidance system manufacturer for guiding vehicles down them. We would have to come up with a system that differentiates where it is appropriate and inappropriate. It is difficult to legislate in this area because lorries often have to make deliveries on roads that the hon. Gentleman and I would probably think inappropriate as a route because their destination means that they have no alternative.
We want to consider other concerns that have been expressed about such systems. For example, consumer groups have found widely differing results in performance tests. Other studies have suggested that many drivers, particularly young people, are becoming dependent on navigation systems because they are not confident in map reading. I also have to bear in mind our recent statistical analysis suggesting that 32 per cent. of accidents are caused by a failure to look properly. Systems that distract drivers are clearly to be avoided. We want to consider such issues carefully before making recommendations. If it is true that drivers are depending on such devices, that reinforces the need to do whatever is necessary to ensure the systems are safe and fit for purpose.
We have been working to get the best from these systems in other ways. For example, we have included simple and straightforward advice to drivers in the Highway Code. Rule 128 already warns of the risk of distractions from in-vehicle systems such as route guidance devices. The code explains that drivers must be in proper control of their vehicles at all times. They must not allow themselves to become distracted by such equipment while driving. If they need to adjust the equipment, or to study it closely, they should find a safe place to stop.
We are also working with industry interests. Some time ago, the Department developed guidelines for assessing route guidance systems against standards—known as human-machine interface, or HMI, standards—to reduce the potential for driver distraction. That work led to the creation of a European statement of principles on HMI that was issued by the European Commission and adopted by the major vehicle manufacturers. The Department also commissioned the Transport Research Laboratory to produce guidelines on assessing the routing strategy of systems. That provides manufacturers with an evaluation tool to reduce the possibility of inappropriate routing.
Meanwhile, all responses to our consultation will inform our development of proposals. I am looking forward to seeing those responses in due course. If hon. Members have any more examples that they want to bring to my attention or any further questions, I am happy to receive their representations. I look forward to debating the subject again, perhaps after the consultation as we decide the way forward.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Six o’clock.