House of Commons
Thursday 23 November 2006
The House met at half-past Ten o’clock
Prayers
[Mr. Speaker in the Chair]
Oral Answers to Questions
Education and Skills
The Secretary of State was asked—
New College Nottingham
The Department has received two representations about Basford Hall’s future, although we are aware of the high level of local interest in New College Nottingham’s proposals. The Learning and Skills Council will need to consider proposals from the college, and made it clear in a recent letter to the college, which my hon. Friend may have seen, that it must be satisfied that learners will continue to have convenient access to facilities for education and training that meet their needs, and that levels of participation in the area will not be adversely affected.
My constituency has some of the worst educational deprivation in the UK. At none of the seven secondary schools can youngsters stay on. We have fewer youngsters going on to university than in any other constituency. If ever a constituency needed to keep its last remaining further education base open, it is Nottingham, North. Will my hon. Friend facilitate further discussions between all parties in the Nottingham area, including New College Nottingham and other FE providers, private sector providers, the community and the voluntary sector, so that we can ensure not only that that further education college is preserved, but that it reaches out into the communities that need FE the most?
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his campaign. He has had two meetings with my hon. Friend the Minister for Higher Education and Lifelong Learning, he has had an Adjournment debate on the topic, and I notice that he has a parliamentary newsletter campaigning on it. All the other Education Ministers appear in it but I do not, so I shall have to have a word with my hon. Friend about that. Let me make it clear that only in exceptional circumstances would we expect to see the removal of a significant further education site from an area of educational deprivation. We have seen no evidence of any such exceptional circumstances in this case, so I urge New College Nottingham to draw up a proposal, and, yes, we would expect the Learning and Skills Council to use its good offices to work with all partners to develop a solution that will enhance skills training for young people in my hon. Friend’s constituency.
Adult Education
We do not hold details of current programmes centrally, but between 1997-98 and 2005-06 investment in further education increased by 48 per cent. in real terms. Public investment in adult education will increase again by 7 per cent. to over £3 billion in 2007-08 compared with 2006-07, and we will continue to support over 4 million adult learners and safeguard £210 million for personal, community and development learning. In order to tackle skills gaps in our work force, we will increasingly focus funding on longer courses that lead to qualifications, so that adults have the right employability skills. This will result in a reduction in publicly funded places on low priority short courses and non-accredited provision. However, that will be offset by increased funding for skills for life courses, train to gain activity and those studying for their first, full level 2 qualification.
The Secretary of State would accept, I think, that in the next 10 years, two out of three jobs created in our economy will be for older workers because of demographic trends and the shortage of youngsters coming through the school system. I am sure he would also accept that between 2005 and 2008, according to the Association of Colleges, we are due to lose some 700,000 places for adults in our FE colleges. Given that in constituencies such as mine, the main way in which older workers get back into learning and training is through non-accredited courses, how can the right hon. Gentleman justify the almost total eradication of community education in north Yorkshire, so that now, unless people can afford to pay for a non-accredited course, they simply cannot find one?
The hon. Gentleman knows about these matters from his long experience. I do not recognise the figure of 700,000. The LSC said that when we make the transition—which, remember, Foster recommended in his report—we must be much more focused on employability skills, given the circumstances that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. It was the LSC that said that the net result would be a reduction of about 230,000 in fully publicly funded courses. It has since scaled that figure down to about 200,000, but that is set against the courses available in train to gain where, so to speak, the caravan of learning goes to small businesses and offers a service to them, rather than small businesses having to seek out that service. The important point is that we should have the courage and fortitude to see the change through. I know the hon. Gentleman accepts that. It means some painful decisions in colleges because the taxpayer should be funding our priorities, and the level of funding that the college asks the individual and the employer to contribute has to be much greater. That is the essence of the Foster review and of our approach.
It is not just a question of people having to pay more for adult education courses. People in Burley and Wharfedale in my constituency have suffered because Bradford college has closed Burley grange, which provided adult education courses. Will the Secretary of State look again at the financial provision for adult education courses to prevent such closures from occurring? What are he and the Learning and Skills Council doing to ensure that buildings such as Burley grange in my constituency are protected so that they are used for education purposes and not sold off for purposes such as house building?
Following incorporation, further education colleges are in charge of their own property. Shipley college has very good links with employers. We understand that good progress is being made towards full cost recovery. The number of adults in further education is increasing, as is the investment in further education. The difference is the focus; we focus remorselessly on those who do not have at least an adult level 2 qualification, and from next year, we will focus on 19 to 25-year-olds getting a level 3 qualification—that is where taxpayers’ money should be spent—on train to gain and on the huge expansion in apprenticeships. If we prioritise everything, we prioritise nothing. I have outlined our priorities, which are the right ones for the country. I accept that there will be problems in places such as Shipley, and in other places, but we need to overcome them to put FE in a far stronger position than it has been in the past.
I understand what the Secretary of State is saying, but is he not concerned that there are pensioners in my constituency who cannot afford to take the courses because the fees have gone up so much? Many who want to upskill, or to retrain and reskill, find that the courses have been cut and are not in existence. What reassurances can he give on this? It is all very well for him to talk in these words, as he does, but real priorities exist in areas such as mine in south-east London, which are suffering because of his redistribution of money so that courses are not available for my constituents.
I will try to find another way to talk other than in words, but at the moment it is just about the only way I have got.
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about 60-plus learners. In 1996, there were 78,000 60-plus learners in FE, whereas there are now 147,000. On personal, community and development learning, which is learning intrinsically for the sake of learning, we have ring-fenced and safeguarded £210 million, both now and into the future, and that remains available.
I believe that Bexley college is in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. As he well knows, it under-delivered in 2005-06 to the tune of providing only 84 per cent. of the provision that it should. It had a bad inspection in 2004. It is now satisfactory and things are improving. I am sure that Bexley college, like others, will adapt to this new situation and succeed.
I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House, or at least Labour Members, will want to join me in congratulating my right hon. Friend on the increase of more than 7 per cent.—more than £3 billion next year—in public investment in adult education. Does he share my concerns that we have not got the balance quite right in the past on the investment made by the Government, by individuals and by employers in adult education? Does he not think that employers need to do a lot more if we are to have the sort of investment in our adults that we need?
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Having been placed at the heart of the skills agenda—employers have rightly argued that previously it was educationists, civil servants and politicians who told them the skills that they would need in the future—I think that employers recognise that, through the sector skills councils and other measures, we have put them at the heart of this process. I think that the Leitch report will have a lot to say about the balance of who should be doing what in providing the skills we need for 2020.
Returning to a point made by the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), Leitch’s first report found that 70 per cent. of the work force of 2020 are already in the workplace now. That makes the issue of even higher priority than it has been before.
I, too, welcome the increased funding for adult education. In my constituency, part of our plan to make it easier for people in work to access the training that they need is to build a new education campus with both higher and further education elements. I am delighted that the Learning and Skills Council has indicated that it will make the funding available for its own component of that. Will my right hon. Friend provide me with the reassurance that my constituents need that the application before the Higher Education Funding Council for England for the higher education component will also be taken seriously?
I assure my hon. Friend that it is being taken seriously. Even as we speak, 14 per cent. of higher education is carried out in FE colleges and, with the welcome expansion of foundation degrees, that will increase. It is important that we see further education in relation to the skills that it provides not only at an intermediate level—levels 2 and 3—but at level 4 and above so that it provides the skills that we will need in the future.
I accept my right hon. Friend’s statement about the need to focus on adult skills, but will he also consider carefully the decisions that are being made by learning and skills councils about non-accredited courses? Some non-accredited courses are the way in which the most disadvantaged adults come back in to education, and we need to ensure that such courses are available and that we build on them. They are not the same as leisure courses. The tendency is for colleges to focus on those who will attain level 2 very easily, and the most disadvantaged can often lose out.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We recognise the importance of that first level; that is why the foundation tier is crucial and we are considering these pathways that adults can gain. Entry to employment—E2E—had its successes and failures, and we think that we need a new foundation tier. One of the other issues that my hon. Friend mentions repeatedly—she mentioned it again in an excellent contribution to the Queen’s Speech debate on this subject—is the role of union learning reps in the job of being almost evangelical about learning and education. That is something we need to expand and build on. It is an important point and does not detract from our priorities; in fact, it adds to our ability to meet them.
The Secretary of State said that demographic change means that opportunities for older learners and workers are vital, but adult learners are seeing their courses cut across the country, as we have heard from Members from all parties. The Association of Colleges says that 700,000 places have been cut; the Secretary of State says 200,000. He has talked about priorities. Will he tell us, therefore, how many of the courses that are being cut relate to older learners, and how many relate to employment and to vulnerable groups such as disabled people? Learners deserve to know the facts, colleges need to plan and, frankly, this House deserves more than bull and bluster.
Let me make one important point about the disabled and people with learning difficulties. We are prioritising provision for learners with disabilities or learning difficulties, with a record £1.5 billion being spent on 640,000 learners. That is an increase of £200 million and of 60,000 learners in the past two years alone, so that is crucial. I obviously do not have the detailed information about the age profile of people on such courses, but I am clear—even more so since my visit to the AOC conference this week—that FE colleges realise the need to change and the need to drop shorter, low-priority, less expensive courses in favour of longer, more expensive courses that lead to something at the end for the individual involved.
The spokesmen from the two Front Benches—the three Front Benches, even—should not disagree about this fundamental issue, given the fact that by 2014 two thirds of workers will require at least intermediate skills at levels 2 or 3 and that by 2020, 40 per cent. of jobs will be filled by graduates. There will need to be 5 million more highly skilled jobs and, perhaps most frightening of all, the number of unskilled jobs will go down from 3.5 million to just over 500,000 by 2020. If that does not focus our minds on the need to change course with FE, despite all the pains, and all the bull and bluster—which I believe comes from the Opposition rather than from us—nothing will. I hope that Leitch adds to that focus when his final report is published soon.
While I recognise the importance of the shift—my right hon. Friend’s comments demonstrate why it is a strategic shift—will he specifically consider sports coaches? One of the dilemmas is that they are older adults. The Government have a policy of trying to drive up the standard of community coaches, and there is a problem. I have met Ministers but will my right hon. Friend take a specific interest, so that we can deliver another Government target and ensure that the legacy of the Olympics applies throughout the country?
I had trouble remembering that my hon. Friend was the Member for Loughborough until he finished his question. I accept that the issue is important. My hon. Friend the Minister for Higher Education and Lifelong Learning has been to Loughborough to discuss the matter, focusing on sports in schools, especially the school sports partnership, which will lead to two hours of high quality PE and training by 2010, increasing to four hours thereafter. This is the age of the sports college coach.
I am sure that we understand what the Secretary of State says about the number of people going into adult education, but does he accept that the mix of people is crucial? Does he also accept that, at places such as Weston-super-Mare FE college, where I am a governor, the number of places for people over 25 on courses above level 2 is being cut? As the hon. Member for Warrington, North (Helen Jones) said, there is a problem with the number of people who are trying to get back into the work force and require non-accredited courses as an interim step. It is crucial that the FE sector responds to the needs of those groups—those returning to work, those who have been made redundant and need to reskill and older workers. At the moment, it is taking a backward step.
I do not accept that. I do not know the circumstances in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, but if he writes to me, I shall look into the matter. However, public money is finite and needs to be concentrated on our priorities. The majority of people who already have skills and are at level 2 or above should make a bigger contribution. That does not apply to those on low income, those who have just been made redundant—normally a package is put together in those circumstances—or other groups of people who qualify for free further education. The presumption has always been that everyone at an FE college will pay 25 per cent. of the costs. FE colleges rarely charged that. The presumption has now moved to 37 per cent. and by 2010, it will move to 50 per cent. That is not the full cost of the college course, but it constitutes a necessary rebalancing of finances between the taxpayer, the individual and the employer. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan) said earlier, that is the important message to get across.
School Meals
Local authorities are using a range of measures to increase school lunch take-up. They include: improving dining areas to make them more attractive to eat in; creating promotional materials on nutrition and healthy lifestyles, and involving parents in activities such as tasting sessions for the new food.
This Government are offering an unprecedented £477-million package of support to help schools and local authorities improve school food and increase take-up.
A recent BBC survey showed that the take-up of healthy school food was falling. Will my hon. Friend consider the eat well, do well scheme in Hull, which introduced free healthy school meals in all our primary schools and special schools and led to doubling the take-up? In some schools, more than 90 per cent. of children have taken up the healthy school meals option.
My hon. Friend makes a good point about what Labour-run Hull chose to do in 2004—it was ahead of the game. I accept her general comments about take-up and the BBC survey. However, although we accept that there are problems with take-up, which we anticipated two-and-a-half months into the new standards, we are in this for the long-term and we believe that we will make a difference to take-up. The BBC survey had 59 responses out of 150 local authorities, of which approximately 35 had experienced problems with take-up. That means that 115 did not respond to say that they had problems with it. Having said that, I understand that we need to work on the matter. We are therefore doing a great deal with pupils, schools and parents to ensure that take-up increases.
Is the Minister aware of the excellent work being done by the British Pig Executive—BPEX—to promote the uses of pork as a nutritious, low-fat food? Could he spare 30 minutes to meet representatives of BPEX to discuss how pork could be more widely used in our schools, which would be welcomed by the award-winning pig farmers of South Norfolk and elsewhere?
That is a very good local press release for the hon. Gentleman—I congratulate him on that. I would be delighted to meet him and his constituents, perhaps over a bacon sandwich. The interesting underlying point here is that the School Food Trust is doing important work in relation to balanced food in our schools. We are putting about £477 million into this project between now and 2011 and, for the first time since the 1960s, we are seeing a subsidy on school food, which is very important.
I do not know where the Minister was at quarter to 7 this morning, but if he was watching television he would have seen an outside broadcast featuring the catering staff of the City of Leicester college. The training of such staff is crucial to the take-up of healthy school meals. Catering staff in my area—at least 40 per cent. of whom are in the private sector—are worried by the lack of a common approach by employers towards paid leave for attending the relevant vocational and training courses. Will the Minister assure me and those members of staff that they will not lose pay when they attend such courses? That is important to the individuals concerned, and to the take-up of healthy school meals.
I assure my hon. Friend that I was watching the “Breakfast” news programme this morning, and I saw some of the excellent work that is being done. The staff at the City of Leicester college was one of the areas that was highlighted, so well done to them. My hon. Friend will be aware that we are setting aside £2 million for regional training centres to help catering staff to get skilled up to the levels that we require. We are also introducing new national vocational qualifications at level 1 and level 2 to assist this process. My hon. Friend makes an interesting point about staff being able to take time off to attend classes. I am certainly of the view that most good employers would agree that their staff should be able to get skilled up in the work place in order to make their contribution to healthier school food.
There are 4.6 million children who decide not to take school meals—healthy or otherwise. Perhaps they prefer to eat bacon sandwiches, in support of the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon). Does the Minister accept that, while schools have a right and a duty to inform parents of the healthy options for packed lunches, principals and teachers do not have a duty to act as food police, to remove items from lunch boxes or to deny youngsters the opportunity to eat their packed lunches on school premises just because the principal deems them to be unhealthy?
It is not part of our plan to ban packed lunches, but head teachers and teachers in many schools take a responsible role in helping to educate children about quality food in their packed lunches. An important part of what we are trying to do is to get the message across to children, not least through the entitlement to learn to cook a nutritional meal by the age of 16. It is important, however, in handing down that education to the children, that the message also gets back to the parents. Parents have an important role to play, not least in raising the take-up of healthy school meals.
The Minister just mentioned children’s entitlement to learn to cook a nutritional meal by the age of 16. In that context, will he have another look at food technology in the curriculum? Rather than teaching our children how to design a Mars bar, perhaps we could teach them how to cook a shepherd’s pie.
My hon. Friend makes a good point. We are working on this with the School Food Trust. I understand that about 70 per cent. of schools offer food technology lessons. We will also be working with extended schools to ensure that there is an entitlement for all children to be able to learn to cook a quality meal—not just with Mars bars, but with healthy, nutritional food—by the age of 16.
Teachers’ Pay
The Government are not the employer of further education staff. Further education colleges were established as independent organisations by the Conservative Government in 1992. We believe that it is important that colleges retain the discretion to make their own decisions about pay for their staff, within their overall budget. However, the 48 per cent. real-terms increase in funding that this Government have delivered to the further education sector has helped to improve pay levels in FE.
I am grateful to the Minister for his reply, although he must now go back a long way—1992—for justification in relation to the problems for which the Government are responsible. A report from the Learning and Skills Council makes it clear that colleges are receiving 13 per cent. less per student than schools for providing the same type of course. That equates to about £400 per pupil or £600,000 per college. If we are to allow colleges, such as the Bournemouth and Poole college in my constituency, to compete more fairly with schools, does he agree that we should pump money not only into lower and intermediate skills but into further education?
I was not going back a long way; I was comparing like with like. Since 1997, the Government have increased funding to further education colleges by 48 per cent. in real terms, which compares favourably with a 14 per cent. real terms cut in the last five years of the previous Conservative Government. The funding gap, however, is an issue. Last year, we made a commitment that that 13 per cent. gap should be reduced. In one year, we reduced it by 5 per cent. and we have plans to reduce it by a further 3 per cent. by 2008. In the longer term, we will establish a common funding arrangement system for all post-16 provision to ensure comparable funding for comparable activity, regardless of institution. The Government have credibility on the issue, and I fail to understand how the Conservative party, which is committed to £21 billion of public expenditure cuts, can have that.
I welcome my hon. Friend’s commitment to establishing a common funding system in the longer term. Given the development of the 14-to-19 curriculum following the Tomlinson report’s recommendations, should not the common funding system apply from 14, not just 16? Does he not agree that the best way to deliver the 14-to-19 curriculum is through a managed, co-ordinated tertiary system, and not through the proliferation of more new small sixth forms?
In direct response to my hon. Friend’s last point, different options are needed for young people, and we should not shut off such choices. On reducing the funding gap, before the Government’s commitment last year, the critique that that was just warm words had some validity. But the commitment last year to reduce the funding gap by 5 per cent. in one year, by a further 3 per cent. by 2008, and then to establish a common funding system, is real evidence that we are making progress.
The gap in staff pay and per pupil funding has already been mentioned as but one of numerous funding discrepancies between colleges and schools. Colleges, for example, pay VAT on supplies, whereas schools can reclaim it from the Government. Does the Minister consider that fair?
That is a long-standing issue, and the independent status under incorporation of further education colleges confers real advantages, which is right and proper. FE colleges have prospered under that system. The increased funding available has driven up success rates, but funding anomalies remain between the two systems. Our commitments of last year are starting to make progress on that, as FE college principals up and down the country to whom I talk recognise.
Geography
We are investing £2 million over the next two years to promote geography in schools. Our action plan for geography, which includes new resources and training for schools and chartered status for excellent geography teachers, was launched earlier this year. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is also launching the education outside the classroom manifesto next week, which will be of particular importance to geography.
I am, of course, grateful to the Minister for that helpful reply. But is it acceptable, at a time when citizenship is at the heart of the Government’s agenda, that one in five pupils was unable to locate the United Kingdom on a world atlas, while one in 10 was unable to mention a single continent, according to a survey of 1,000 six to 14-year-olds for the new magazine National Geographic Kids? In addition, thousands of children from London were unaware that they lived in the United Kingdom’s capital city. I learned about the oceans, seas, mountains, capitals of countries and major rivers of the world—
And Macclesfield.
Yes, and Macclesfield. Should we not get back to some of the fundamentals of geography education in our schools?
I am always slightly wary of surveys connected with the launch of magazines encouraging parents to ensure that children learn more geography, but, speaking as a geography graduate, I am very keen for them to learn more geography.
The hon. Gentleman will be interested to know that we are piloting a new geography GCSE in some areas, so that pupils can learn not just about the joys of Macclesfield—about how the settlement developed in response to the copper mines and silk mills, and about the magnificent citizens of the town—but about some of the key issues that we face in the House, such as uneven development in different regions and countries, globalisation, sustainability, futures and interdependence. In fact, I think that the new geography GCSE would be an excellent qualification for us all to obtain.
Speaking as a former geography teacher, may I suggest that we would have more confidence in the Government’s policies on geography if a Department for Transport consultation on the location of London’s airports had not sited the Isle of Wight just off the south coast of Portland Bill?
As the Member representing Portland, I can say that while I can see the Isle of Wight from my constituency when I am in Swanage, it is a very clear day when I can see it from Portland. Perhaps I will refer my friends at the Department for Transport to the new GCSE and see whether they are interested in it as well.
My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) was right to mention the survey by National Geographic Kids, which highlights some serious issues in our schools. The Minister will be aware that the number of pupils taking GCSEs in geography has dropped by a staggering 40,000. Does he share our concern about the drift away from the study of core academic subjects? The number of pupils achieving five or more GCSEs graded A* to C in English, maths, science and modern languages has fallen from 30 per cent. five years ago to just 25 per cent. last year.
Geography remains the fourth most popular GCSE, behind English literature, French and history, which are all serious, traditional academic subjects, so I do not entirely recognise the picture that the hon. Gentleman paints. The number is certainly falling, but it is falling in the context of more choice. I think that the Conservative party believes in choice in education, as we do.
We can all play around with statistics, but the hon. Gentleman is well aware that by any measure—including that employed by the chief inspector of schools, who yesterday said unambiguously that schools were continuing to improve alongside the public’s expectations—and according to any analysis of results at 16, 18, 11 or any other stage of education, things are improving radically and rapidly in our schools.
Excluded Pupils
When previously excluded pupils are admitted to new schools, the funds relating to them will be transferred to the receiving schools. Additional support may also be available to schools from local authorities’ behaviour support services, in the form of resources and support staff.
I think the Minister will agree that the exclusion of a pupil should represent the beginning of another process, not the end of that person’s education. What advice would he give to three schools in my area, Cleeve, Tewkesbury and Winchcombe, which are getting together to try to deal with all excluded pupils so that they do not miss out on education and do not cause further trouble in society? What support, particularly financial support, is available for arrangements of that kind?
I know that such initiatives have been very successful, notably in Coventry and Lincolnshire. Local authorities have delegated funds for facilities such as pupil referral units to groups of schools so that they have an interest in looking after excluded pupils and returning them to mainstream education, which is where the vast majority belong. I wish them well, but it is for the schools to negotiate with local authorities themselves. The innovation unit in the Department has given some support to trailblazers, but it is now well established that groups of schools can offer much better outcomes than local authorities directly running referral units. That has been shown in many areas all over the country.
Can we ensure that we have full and proper protection for our teachers against violent pupils? If a child has been excluded from a school because they have been violent towards a member of the teaching staff, they should not be foisted back on to the school or on to another school against the wishes of the teachers there.
I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that we have made it clear that heads can permanently exclude pupils who are very disruptive or violent. Guidance for exclusion appeals panels makes it clear that a permanent exclusion should not normally be overturned in a range of circumstances, including violence or the threat of violence.
Leicester University Medical School (Funding)
The Higher Education Funding Council for England allocated £61 million to the University of Leicester for 2006-07, which is an increase of 4 per cent. over the previous year. The allocation of that funding within the university is a matter for the institution.
I am delighted by the increase from the HEFC, but unfortunately—as the Minister will know—funding is a joint responsibility between the Department of Health and the Department for Education and Skills. The NHS is cutting the training and education budget by 10 per cent., which professors at the University of Leicester medical school have described as ridiculously short-sighted and seriously damaging. Will the Minister please get in touch with his colleagues at the Department of Health and, if I may use the expression, get a grip on the Secretary of State for Health and ensure continuous and sustained support for university medical education in Leicester and elsewhere?
I understand the concerns about the Department of Health reductions. It is working with the Council of Deans to understand the exact impact of those reductions on training and education throughout the country. We are working closely with our ministerial colleagues on the issue and I certainly understand the issue that has been put to me directly about the right and ability of universities to plan for the longer term. I hope that we can deliver that. Despite the challenges, we have had a 71 per cent. increase in medical undergraduate numbers since 1997, which contrasts very favourably with the 50 per cent. cut in the nurse training programme that took place in the early 1990s.
I share some of the concerns that have been expressed by the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan). The medical school in Leicester is one of the finest in the country. Has my hon. Friend the Minister received an explanation from the Department of Health about why the new, state of the art medical school will be moved from its proposed site at the Leicester general hospital in my constituency to the Granby Hall site, because of a reduction of £200 million in the pathway project? Will he give us an assurance that the funding from his Department will not alter, despite the fact that the Department of Health is cutting money in particular area?
I know that my right hon. Friend takes a close interest in these issues, but I am not aware of the specific details of the point he makes. I would be happy to meet him to discuss the issue. Leicester university is relatively badly affected as a newer medical school, as it receives a greater proportion of its funding for staff from the NHS rather than from the HEFC. I understand the concern and I am talking to colleagues in the Department of Health so that we can ensure greater predictability of funding in the longer term for universities.
May I inform the Minister that the suddenness and savagery of the cuts are affecting not only the University of Leicester university medical school but many other universities? The cuts are breaking contracts that they have with the NHS and disappointing thousands of nursing students who have invested time and money only to find that there are no jobs for them. Above all, the cuts are making it inevitable that there will be a critical shortage of nurses in a few years’ time. Does the Minister agree that the mismanagement of the funding is bad for nurses, doctors, universities and, above all, patients?
There are issues involved, but we need to learn from the experience of what happened in the early 1990s when the cuts in the nurse training programme make what is happening now pale in comparison. We learned from that experience and that is why I am in discussion with my colleagues in the Department of Health to ensure that we have stability and predictability for future funding patterns. I am determined that we will achieve that.
Higher Education (Outside Speakers)
Universities’ responsibilities in regard to outside speakers were addressed in the guidance we issued on 17 November about tackling violent extremism in the name of Islam. This built on guidance issued by Universities UK last year on dealing with hate crimes and intolerance, which I supported. I do not believe that further guidance is needed at present.
The Minister will be aware that section 43 of the Education Act 1986 provides that our education institutions must take reasonable steps to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured. Will he therefore agree that it is vital that lawful speech is not banned from universities and that ad hoc, home-made, no-platform policies, often drawn up by student unions, which are aimed at a group of people, regardless of their speech content, are not an acceptable and lawful way to deal with the problem?
I know that the hon. Gentleman takes an interest in this issue and I am conscious of the provisions of the 1986 Act. The guidance that we issued last Friday is consistent with that Act. Most certainly the guidance is not an attack on free speech. It makes it abundantly clear that all sorts of views that people may regard as being extreme or radical are nevertheless perfectly legitimate and acceptable. What is not acceptable is the advocacy of violence and terrorism, and the guidance was targeted at that. It needs to be made clear that a blanket no-platform policy is not consistent with the 1986 Act.
May I ask the Minister why he felt it necessary to publish guidelines relating to extremism specifically in relation to Islam?
We published those guidelines after long discussion with many people throughout the higher education sector and based on a recognition of a serious and real threat of violent extremism in the name of Islam within that sector. It is not widespread and university campuses are not hotbeds of violent extremism, but, nevertheless, that threat is the most serious one that we face and we are right to work with the universities to ensure that it is properly handled.
I agree with the Minister that we cannot get into old-style, no-platform policies. Does he agree that there is a serious problem of banned Islamic extremist organisations trying to recruit at universities? How many cases have there been of banned Islamic extremist groups trying to recruit? What progress is he making in banning Hizb ut-Tahrir from recruiting on university campuses? Does he agree that vice-chancellors are entitled to call on police support if banned groups with nothing to do with universities try to recruit on campus?
With specific reference to Hizb ut-Tahrir, my colleagues in the Home Office have made it clear that the assessment of whether to proscribe Hizb ut-Tahrir has been under review since the summer. As for specific incidents on campus at the moment, we made it clear in the guidance that any university would need to consider the individual speaker, their previous statements and the risk of an offence being committed under the terrorism Acts and other legal provisions. Last Friday’s guidance is about helping universities to get through that process. Individual university institutions have already taken such decisions on a number of occasions and I am happy to give the hon. Gentleman the exact figure in correspondence.
Skills Training
Jobcentre Plus and the Learning and Skills Council work closely together on large scale redundancies to ensure that redundant employees have the skills they need to secure sustainable and productive jobs. Help is given, tailored to the needs of the individuals, employers and the local labour market.
Over the summer, three long-established York companies—British Sugar, Norwich Union and Nestlé Rowntree—announced between them in excess of 1,000 redundancies. That will put particular strain on the local training agencies; demand for adult training will be higher than usual. Will my hon. Friend give me an assurance that sufficient funds will be made available to the Learning and Skills Council in North Yorkshire to ensure that those needs are met and that the redundant workers can find alternative jobs?
All of us will be disappointed by the decisions taken by the companies mentioned by my hon. Friend, and I extend our sympathy to the affected employees. I am pleased to be able to say that the local economy in the Yorkshire and Humber region is vibrant and flourishing, and many of the people affected will, I hope, quickly find new jobs. But my hon. Friend is right that this is an important moment, when the agencies concerned—the LSC and Jobcentre Plus, as well as agencies such as the regional development agency, Yorkshire Forward—must work together to provide help and support to people who want to acquire new skills. I certainly will ensure that those agencies create an effective partnership to respond directly to the needs of the individuals who have been affected by these decisions.
Solicitor-General
The Solicitor-General was asked—
Fraud Trials
Both the Crown Prosecution Service and the Serious Fraud Office prosecute cases of fraud. For the Serious Fraud Office the average length of a contested trial is 54 sitting days—those are days when the court actually sits. Interestingly, in the past four years since 2002, 26 fraud trials have lasted more than six months and eight trials have lasted for more than a year. The CPS, which prosecutes most fraud cases in this country, does not hold information on the length of trials, although it can give information about its success rate.
I am most grateful to the Solicitor-General for that reply. Will he tell the House what the cost of those trials has been, owing to their length, and what proposals the Government have to look into ways of changing the situation? Where a fraud trial is taken by a judge alone, what will be the implications in respect of the right of appeal against the decision of that judge sitting alone?
I cannot give the costs of each of the trials at this point, but I will write to the hon. Lady on that. On her question about our proposals to reduce the length of fraud trials, I should say that their length has been reducing quite significantly in recent years. The Serious Fraud Office has worked hard to ensure that cases are brought before the courts and are able to be tried within a reasonable period, and it has managed to reduce the number of sitting days, but they are still quite long, as is clear from the figure I have quoted. In respect of non-jury trials, obviously a defendant would have a right of appeal in a similar way to a defendant tried before a jury.
Will the Solicitor-General confirm that the conviction rate in cases brought by the Serious Fraud Office is one of the highest for all forms of prosecuting authority? Will he also take this opportunity to tell the House whether it is thought that there would be any reduction in the length of trials if they were to be heard by a judge alone? I understand from speaking to members of the judiciary that they unanimously think that there would not be any reduction in the length of trials as a result of that.
The Serious Fraud Office has an increasingly good record on convictions. However, the main reason we need to move towards having about half a dozen cases a year—the most complex and serious, and the longest running, cases—decided by a judge sitting alone is that, in order to deal with the presentation of oral evidence before courts, prosecutors have in the past had to split trials and to ensure that there were only sample indictments, which meant that only some of the charges were put forward effectively and tried. The result is that the full criminality of some very serious fraud cases is never exposed in court because of the nature of the case—because it is necessary to present oral evidence as there is a jury. As we would be able to expose the full criminality before a judge, some trials may not take less time. There may be a need to go through all the evidence. In some cases there may be a saving in time, but that is not the primary issue. The issue is to expose the full criminality of serious fraud cases.
Diversity and Equality
A recent report by Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service inspectorate has commended the CPS for its significant recent progress on equality and diversity. At senior levels—chief Crown prosecutors and above—the CPS complement is made up of 29 per cent. women, 12 per cent. ethnic minorities and 6 per cent. disabled.
I am sure that my hon. and learned Friend knows how many women and members of minority groups hold senior positions in the general civil service and are appointed as senior judges. What lessons does he think the CPS can teach those other groups, especially senior judges?
Of those in the senior civil service, 3.5 per cent. are from black and ethnic minority communities, 27 per cent. are women and 2.3 per cent. are disabled. Of 108 High Court judges, 11 are female and one is from a minority community. Three out of 37 Lord Justices of Appeal are female and none is from ethnic minority communities. One out of 12 Law Lords is female and none is from ethnic minority communities. I can see that the CPS could well teach lessons to many people.
While I welcome greater diversity and equality both in the CPS and in the civil service as a whole, will the Minister assure the House that appointments and promotions within those institutions will be based on merit and ability, not ethnicity and religion?
I can. It is important that we promote on the basis of merit, but also that we have a CPS that reflects our society as a whole. We need to ensure that we recruit people from minority communities who have the required qualities and merit that deserve promotion and to recognise that many women have failed to be promoted in the past due to the nature of other demands on them. We must create a work atmosphere in which women and members of ethnic minority communities are able to have their just deserts in terms of promotion.
British National Party (Leaders' Acquittal)
The Law Officers have discussed the case with the Crown Prosecution Service, and we are considering with colleagues whether the case has any wider implications.
Will my hon. and learned Friend be more specific? Will he speculate on whether his proposals would have the effect of banning obnoxious comments such as those made recently by Nick Griffin and Mark Collett of the British National party?
Griffin and Collett made their statements in early 2004. They were prosecuted for making racist statements, and they were acquitted by a jury. Griffin claimed in his defence that he was not attacking Asians, as had been alleged, but was attacking Muslims, and that was not against the law at the time. Parliament has passed new laws on incitement of religious hatred. Those laws were watered down by the Opposition during their passage through Parliament. It is difficult to know whether a jury might have convicted under the new law. It would have been better if the Government’s stronger Bill had been passed. Even if they were acquitted, the statements by Griffin and Collett, and their politics of stirring up hatred, remain despicable.
One should be careful before introducing any new legislation. In a free society, people have a right to be abusive about other people’s faiths, including the one to which I am an unworthy subscriber.
I very much hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is not suggesting that we should encourage people to stir up religious hatred in any way. That would certainly not be a desirable thing. The aim of Parliament in passing the legislation was to reduce the amount of religious hatred that is stirred up. We know that members of the BNP have been responsible for stirring up hatred for quite a long time.
I hope very much that the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Crown Prosecution Service will not be reluctant to prosecute any other people who might be involved in such activities just because of those acquittals. Will my hon. and learned Friend give an assurance that they will continue to judge cases on the current policy of success of prosecution in exactly the same way as they have done before? When does he expect that the change in the law hinted at by the Chancellor and the Lord Chancellor following the acquittals will be enacted?
I can reassure my right hon. Friend that the CPS will continue to make decisions based on the evidence before it and the public interest involved in prosecuting cases and that it will not resile from prosecuting cases that ought to be prosecuted. We hope to introduce the change in the law during the coming year.
Nobody in Parliament holds a brief for any member of the BNP or what they stand for, but, given that Parliament took a view, with hon. Members from all parties taking a view, about the legislation that has just been passed, does the Solicitor-General agree that the wise thing is to let the new legislation come into force and let it be tested? One can then form a judgment on whether any further change is needed. Instantaneous reaction by people, none of whom sat through the trial, is hardly a wise way to proceed.
We will give very careful consideration to the legislation and to whether further legislation is needed. The CPS made its decision to prosecute based on comments made by Collett that were against Asians and by Griffin that were against Islam and Muslims. It would have been illegal to make those comments if they had been against Jews or Sikhs. We need to strike a balance between the freedom of speech on religious matters and stopping extremists stirring up hatred about individuals based on their religion. The jury made its decision based on the law in 2004. That will soon change. If the new watered-down legislation is not strong enough, we may need to plug the gap, but we will see how it works.
Business of the House
May I ask the Leader of the House to give us the business for the coming weeks?
The business for next week will be as follows:
Monday 27 November—Conclusion of the debate on the Queen’s Speech.
Tuesday 28 November—Consideration of an allocation of time motion, followed by all stages of the Investment Exchanges and Clearing Houses Bill.
Wednesday 29 November—Second Reading of the Fraud (Trials Without a Jury) Bill.
Thursday 30 November—A motion to approve a European document relating to the Hague convention followed by, a motion relating to the House of Commons Members’ fund, followed by a debate on rail performance on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
Friday 1 December—The House will not be sitting.
The provisional business for the week commencing 4 December will be:
Monday 4 December—Remaining stages of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill.
Tuesday 5 December—Opposition day [1st allotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject will be announced.
Wednesday 6 December—The regular biannual debate on European Affairs on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
Thursday 7 December—Estimates [1st allotted day]. Subject to be confirmed by the Liaison Committee.
Friday 8 December—The House will not be sitting.
I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 30 November and 7 December will be:
Thursday 30 November—A debate on the report from the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee on organised crime in Northern Ireland.
Thursday 7 December—A debate on the report from the Home Affairs Committee on terrorism detention powers and from the Joint Committee on Human Rights on counter-terrorism policy and human rights: prosecution and pre-charge detention.
It may also assist the House if I tell Members that printed calendars giving details of the sitting days and therefore the recess dates until October 2007 are now available in the Vote Office.
I thank the Leader of the House for giving us the business for the coming weeks and for alerting us to the printed calendar, which will be of interest to all hon. Members.
On another issue that is of personal concern to many hon. Members, the Boundary Commission for England reported to the Department for Constitutional Affairs on new parliamentary boundaries on 31 October. In an answer on 24 October, the Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, the hon. Member for Lewisham, East (Bridget Prentice) said:
“I would hope to be in a position to lay the draft order early in 2007.”—[Official Report, 24 October 2006; Vol. 450, c. 1775W.]
The Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland is reviewing its proposal and is likely to delay its report. Will the Leader of the House confirm that the delay in Northern Ireland will not be used as an excuse for delaying the process in England and Wales, and that the required order will indeed be laid before the House early in the new year?
I am conscious of the fact that we have just had Education questions, but there was no suitable question on the Order Paper to ask about the Ofsted Report on standards in secondary schools that shows that half of secondary schools are failing to meet the required standards. May we therefore have a statement from the Education Secretary on that Report?
The right hon. Gentleman will be aware of growing concern about the Government’s response to the threat of pandemic influenza. Earlier this week, the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences accused the Government of failing to listen to expert advice, and of stockpiling a single drug that may not be effective in the doses originally proposed. On 3 July, my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), the shadow Health Secretary, wrote to the Secretary of State for Health about preparations for pandemic influenza and, on 27 July, she replied:
“you mention that many in Parliament would welcome a debate on pandemic influenza in Government time.”
I hope that the Leader of the House is listening, because the letter continues:
“I am copying this letter to Jack Straw, the Leader of the House to bring this to his attention”.
Why has there been no debate on the subject in Government time, and will the Leader of the House undertake to provide such a debate before the Christmas recess? That is, of course, if the Health Secretary can spare the time from her discussions with Yates of the Yard.
Transport is the subject for today’s Queen’s Speech debate, but may we have a statement from the Secretary of State for Transport and the Chancellor on the review of Britain’s transport needs over the next 10 years? Will they explain why the business man whom they appointed to conduct the so-called independent review, Sir Rod Eddington, moved back to Australia in the spring and took on numerous other jobs there, and why the review is now being conducted by a team of civil servants in the Department for Transport? It is hardly an independent review if it is being written by the Government. Or have the Government simply accepted that, like the three previous major transport studies—from the Deputy Prime Minister’s 10-year plan onwards—and all the multi-modal studies, the latest review will lead absolutely nowhere?
May we have a statement from the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on the budget for the Olympics and the current status of the London 2012 project? In July 2005, the Leader of the House and I had the privilege of welcoming, in the House, the news that we had won the Olympic bid. However, there is now confusion between figures quoted by the Culture Secretary and statements made by the Mayor of London, who, rather churlishly, complained that the Culture Secretary saw fit to give some figures to Members of Parliament. The Mayor also claimed that any extra costs would be recouped from sales after the Olympics, but he did not say whether the money raised would go back to the lottery and council tax payers. A statement to the House by the Culture Secretary would clarify the position, clear up the confusion, and allow Members to press home the point that although it was a wonderful coup to win the Olympics, and although they will be a great boost for this country and will leave a lasting legacy, that is not an excuse for a blank cheque, signed by Ken Livingstone and drawn on the national lottery and London council tax payers.
To take the points in order, in respect of boundary commissions, I see no reason whatever why the delays experienced by the Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland should prejudice our considering the report for England and Wales as early as possible. If there is any change to that, I will, of course, let the right hon. Lady and the House know.
On the Ofsted report, I must tell the right hon. Lady that over the past 10 years there has been increasing rigour in inspections, and an increase in standards overall. Indeed, Christine Gilbert, the chief inspector, said yesterday:
“International comparisons in recent years show that our pupils can increasingly hold their own alongside their peers in the developed world.”
Of course, some schools are not up to standard, and that is why we have been so rigorous in pushing standards, as well as levels of inspection. However, overall, the result set out in her report is that schools, and the children in them, are doing better than they have ever done. It really is not appropriate given her party’s record on education when in government for the right hon. Lady to try to minimise the progress that has been made by teachers, parents and, above all, children.
The number of flu vaccines available to GPs has increased from 7 million in 1997 to more than 13 million in 2006. I do not think that there is any particular need for a debate, but there will be Health questions next week.
There will indeed be a debate on transport—I have just announced it. Next Thursday, there will be a debate on rail performance when there will be every opportunity to raise the issues to which the right hon. Lady referred. Everybody knew that Rod Eddington—a distinguished business man who led British Airways brilliantly for five years—would return to his native Australia, but that did not stop him coming back to the UK to conduct his study, which he has been doing to great effect. Moreover, his proposals will be against the background of huge improvements in the numbers of passengers travelling on the railways in the past 10 years. Given that under the Conservatives there was inexorable decline and continued disruption in the railways and for the passengers carried, for there to have been a 40 per cent.—[Interruption.] Even the shadow Secretary of State for Transport now accepts that privatisation was a disaster, in the way it went forward. For there to have been an increase of 40 per cent. under Labour is astonishing.
On the Olympics, Ken Livingstone is a loyal member of the Labour party—[Laughter.] From time to time, he has always been loyal. He was elected by the populace in London and we all have high regard for him. However, as Chairman of the Cabinet Committee on the Olympics, I have to say that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, was right, and not wrong, to publish detailed figures so that a judgment could be made.
indicated assent.
I am glad that the shadow Leader of the House accepts that.
Ken can write as many blank cheques as he wants, but they will not be banked, or paid, because it is for the Government to decide. One of the key decisions we made in pushing for the Olympics was that the Government had to stand behind the bid, so we will make decisions about the overall cost.
That is not what Ken is saying.
I know that is not what Ken is saying, but it does not alter the fact that what I am saying is the truth—[Hon. Members: “Oh.”] Ken will not mind that, because he has always been fairly imaginative in his language. Before I get pulled up by the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) for going on too long, I can tell the right hon. Lady that I, as Chairman of the Cabinet Committee, my right hon. Friends the Culture Secretary, the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and indeed all those involved in delivery, are assiduous in bearing down on the costs. Progress is being made. Costs are being pushed down. Of course, we are right to be worried about cost overruns, but we are two years further ahead compared to the equivalent Olympics in Athens or Sydney.
Is my right hon. Friend aware of the increasing tendency of Departments in answers to Members of Parliament to refer them, when information is required, to websites? Is he also aware that often the websites are inaccessible, not only to Members, which might be understandable, but to their more computer-literate staff and, indeed, when that fails, even to the Library? Will he give a direction to Departments that when they provide websites in their answers they should also lay the information in the Library, so that it is readily accessible?
I am well aware of my right hon. Friend’s concern; indeed, this morning I signed a letter to him, which said that I was ready to revise the guidance we issue. When I answered many more written questions than I do nowadays, my approach was to excise references to websites and to provide the information, when that could be done in reasonable form, in the body of the answer. I believe that all Ministers and Departments should follow that practice. On occasions, information should be made available by reference to a website, but I agree with my right hon. Friend that that should be only when the information can be, and has been, accessed in hard copy that has been made available both to the Member asking the question and in the Library.
May I ask yet again for a debate in Government time on Iraq? Before the Leader of the House tells us that we had a debate yesterday in the context of the Queen’s Speech, may I say that that is no substitute for a structured debate on the Government’s strategy in Iraq? There is a debate in another place on 5 December, notwithstanding the Queen’s Speech debate. May we have such a debate as a matter of urgency?
I ask in passing whether the Leader of the House will confirm what the Prime Minister said yesterday: that the White Paper on Trident will be published before the end of the year and that we will have a statement on it?
On a matter that is of great importance to the scientific and medical community, David Cooksey’s report on the future of the Medical Research Council and NHS research is to be published shortly. Will the Leader of the House arrange for a statement to be made on the basis of that report? I would imagine that that would come from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as it was he who originally announced the merger of the two research bodies. However, given that the announcement will please some and upset others, and knowing the Chancellor’s allergy to anything that might be construed as bad news, perhaps it will come from the newly appointed Minister for Science and Innovation.
The Attorney-General has a duty to give advice not only to the Government but to the House. Will the Leader of the House find a way for the Attorney-General to share with the House what he shared with a press conference this week: his opinions on future measures to deal with terrorism? He has supported views that have been expressed from the Liberal Democrat Benches and others over recent years on the use of intercept evidence and the possibility of qualified interview after charge. He has also rejected the view that we need to extend the 28-day detention period, saying that on
“extending it any further we need evidence to demonstrate that that is needed.”
When asked if there was such evidence, he replied:
“Well, I haven’t seen it yet.”
As that view is an important counterweight to the frequently expressed views of the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister, may it be shared with the House?
Lastly, may we have a debate and a statement on the future of the sub-post office network? We are told that decisions are imminent, but we have still not had that debate. When we do have it, will a suitable Minister explain what has happened to Postwatch, the body that was set up to monitor and express the views of the consumer? It tells me that it cannot do its duty in respect of attending protest meetings about sub-post office closures, or even getting around the MPs in its area, because its time is limited and it is not given the opportunity to do its job. If Postwatch cannot express the views of the community, and if we cannot, how can we defend our sub-post office network?
I accept entirely that Iraq is a profoundly important issue that needs to be the subject of regular debates, but it is slightly odd to demand a debate on Iraq the day after we have had a debate on Iraq, in which my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary made some important announcements. However, I promise the hon. Gentleman that, of course, we will keep that under review.
Our hope is to have a White Paper on Trident before the end of the year. A statement should accompany it.
Sir David Cooksey’s report is not ready for publication and I have not seen it, but I will certainly bear in mind the hon. Gentleman’s request that there should be a statement. There will certainly be a written ministerial statement. Whether an oral statement is appropriate remains to be seen.
On the Attorney-General, it is not unheard of for current practice to apply, when the Attorney-General is in the other place and the Solicitor-General is in this place. We have just had questions to the Solicitor-General, who answers for the Attorney-General in this House. Of course, I note what my right hon. and noble Friend the Attorney-General has said on a variety of issues. What he has said in respect of extending the 28-day detention period is no different from what the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have said, which is that we await evidence. Of course, we would not propose to move unless and until there was good evidence in favour of moving. That is without question.
On the Post Office, in due course there will be an oral statement on the future of sub-post offices, but we have already had a number of debates on that matter. It is a proper matter to raise in business questions, but I must tell the hon. Gentleman, as I do other hon. Members, that I have yet to hear any serious understanding of what he and they know to be true: that the introduction of electronic banking and the availability of broadband internet in many and increasing numbers of homes, especially in rural areas, has profoundly and adversely affected the business of post offices. That is simply the case. We have put more than £2 billion to support post offices, and rural post offices have benefited by £500 million. Furthermore, contrary to the nonsense that we often hear, particularly in Conservative and Liberal Democrat areas, without any fear or favour for their constituents, it cannot be a sensible use of public money—even in a Liberal Democrat world—continually to subsidise rural post offices at such a level when 800 of them have on average only 15 to 20 customers a week.
rose—
Order. May I remind the House that in this afternoon’s debate Back-Bench speeches are limited to 12 minutes, so there is pressure on time? I ask Back Benchers to put just one supplementary question to the Leader of the House. A brief question and a brief answer would help.
Is the Leader of the House aware that the High Court of Justice in Northern Ireland this morning issued a declaration, which must accompany the draft Water and Sewerage Services (Northern Ireland) Order 2006? That order is scheduled for consideration in Committee next Tuesday, which does not give much time for parliamentarians to assess the implications of the declaration. Will the Leader of the House take steps to have that consideration deferred, given that the judge draws attention to the fact that a Grand Committee debate that was to take place never happened? Will he also ensure that copies of the judgment behind the declaration are placed in the Library for Members and that the European Commission letter of formal notice that was issued in respect of this legislation is also available to Members?
I will get the judgment put in the Library of the House. As to whether a debate can be delayed, I will consult my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
A campaign that started in my constituency to seek better protection for the fabric and artefacts of ancient churches from the ravages of bats is gaining support from parishes across the country. Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on an issue that is causing distress, anger and frustration among the custodians of churches across the land?
I will do my best. I understand the concern that the hon. Gentleman correctly raises about the effect of bats—[Interruption.] People may mock, but it is a very important issue for those concerned about the preservation of our ancient churches.
Will my right hon. Friend ask the Paymaster General to make a statement about the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights on 14 November 2006, which may have implications for decisions about the overpayment of tax credits? At the moment, the decision is made by a group of civil servants with no independent appeal and the only recourse is judicial review. As I understand it, the ruling would make that inadequate under article 6. Will my right hon. Friend look at that matter?
Yes, I will. I know that my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General is studying the court judgment and its implications with care and I will invite her to make her response to the House in due course.
Will the Leader of the House take the opportunity to congratulate members of the Press Gallery, who appeared to notice an announcement made yesterday by the Foreign Secretary in her speech that every single participant in the debate seemed to miss—namely, that British forces are going to be withdrawn from Iraq in the spring? I have read what the Foreign Secretary actually said and I can see how a complexion can be placed on her words, but it was not the characteristically honest announcement for which this Government have become famed. Would it not be a good idea to have a properly structured debate on the matter of Iraq, so that we can hold the Government properly to account?
Like the hon. Gentleman, I am always happy to toady to the Press Gallery and congratulate Britain’s finest journalists there. [Hon. Members: “Name names. Where are they?”] My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary set out the Government’s position, which has been set out in those terms on a number of previous occasions, so it was a matter of surprise to members of the Government as much as to others that that interpretation was put on it.
My right hon. Friend has a long reputation for protecting the interests of Parliament and the electorate, so will he ask the Cabinet Office either to direct private offices to stop using 0870 numbers for people to approach them by telephone or to give a full statement of the amount of money raised by that method in order that the House may take a view?
Yes, I will. My hon. Friend has raised the matter with me, and it is completely unacceptable for Members of Parliament to be fobbed off with 0870 numbers as the only available number for contacting the private office. I am making that clear to my ministerial colleagues.
May we please have a debate on the need for the development of a sustainable community in Aylesbury vale? Given that my area of the country is expected to absorb an additional 1,000 houses every year for each of the next 20 years, does the Leader of the House accept that it is vital for the Government to explain how we shall have the adequate transport infrastructure, sufficient NHS provision and adequate supply of school places in order that my constituents can look forward to an improvement in their quality of life, and not to a deterioration?
I accept that the demand for housing and the increase in family formation, particularly in areas such as the hon. Gentleman’s in the south-east, is very intense. We have sought to modify that demand—for example, through the Thames Gateway and efforts to move jobs right out of London and the south-east. Of course, Ministers and local authorities have to take account of the impact not just of building new houses, but on all other services. The hon. Gentleman is a very serious Member of the House, and I say to him that there is no easy answer. Certainly, pulling up the drawbridge and suggesting that there should be no further development—I know that he accepts this—is not part of that approach. Getting a proper balance is part of it. It is difficult, but it is achievable.
When will the decision of this morning’s Cabinet on Trident replacement come before Parliament? Bearing in mind the concerns of the Quakers that the Government have not conducted “a proper threat assessment” or explained
“the purpose and relevance of ‘nuclear deterrence’ in relation to current security threats”,
will the White Paper properly address those issues or will it be a new dodgy dossier? Did the Government take those assessments into account in their decision?
Order. One supplementary is fine.
I have great respect for the Religious Society of Friends, but with the best will in the world, it will not be possible to please everybody on all sides of the debate. I doubt whether, whatever we say, we will please most people from the Society of Friends.
On the process, our intention, which we hope to achieve, is to publish a White Paper, hopefully before the end of this calendar year. Of course there will be a statement on the White Paper, whose purpose is to set out the Government’s judgments about the future of Trident, including, fundamentally, the issue of threat as we see it. Then, as I have already made clear on a number of occasions, there will be a debate in the House in Government time and a vote on the Government’s proposition.
May we have a full debate on further constitutional change within the UK? That would allow Labour Members to continue their incoherent attacks on independence and continue to suggest that the Scottish people—seemingly uniquely—cannot make a success of their independence. In fact, it has been so successful that support for independence is at an all-time high. Today, we have opened up a seven-point lead over Labour in the opinion polls for Holyrood. Will the Leader of the House therefore encourage the Prime Minister, his colleagues and all his Scottish Labour colleagues to continue what they are doing? They are doing it so well.
The hon. Gentleman should not pay too much attention to mid-term election polls. I sat on the Opposition Benches comforting myself month by month between elections, not about 7 per cent. leads in polls but about 25 per cent. leads, and we still lost continually. On any serious test, the Scottish National party’s position, which is to weaken Scotland’s economy and society and the United Kingdom as a whole, will be rejected again and again by the Scottish people.
As our present Trident weapon can be operated effectively until 2024 at least—nearly 20 years—should not we debate the timing of the recent announcement? Is not it vital that we have the right decision and not a rushed decision?
It is not remotely a rushed decision. If my hon. Friend looks at the time scale from the original decision on Trident in the early 1980s and how long it took to be implemented, or at earlier decisions, he will see that very long lead-in times are involved. There may be an argument as to whether we need to take a decision now, but the Government believe that we need to take one in the next few months, and everything that I have seen confirms that it would be prudent to do so. There is no suggestion of the decision being rushed or of it not being made by the House.
Sir Hayden Phillips will shortly submit his final report on party funding. The Leader of the House was unable to accede to my earlier request for a debate on the interim report. Will he therefore give an assurance today that there will be an early debate in Government time on Sir Hayden’s final report to establish whether we can move forward from the present position, which even the Government recognise is very unsatisfactory?
I shall have to discuss this matter with my right hon. Friend the Chief Whip, but I hope that we can have a debate on it.
Will my right hon. Friend intercede and ask the Government seriously to consider the recommendation of the Alzheimer’s Society that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence should broaden its remit so that the second-class citizens in England who are about to be denied drugs such as Aricept for mild dementia can be provided with those drugs, as patients in Scotland are? The Government’s remit for NICE appears to be more about money than medical science.
I am certainly happy to consider this issue, but it is not fair to say that the Government’s remit for NICE is just about money. NICE has decided in favour of providing some drugs that are proving very costly to the NHS, but it is entirely proper that it made those recommendations on medical and not cost grounds, and that those decisions are being implemented. The arrangements in Scotland are slightly different, but that is one of the benefits of devolution. The Labour party did not push devolution so that our colleagues in Scotland and Wales would do things in the same way as us. We pushed it so that they could take their own decisions.
Will the Leader of the House arrange for the Government to make a statement on their housing policy for key workers and what progress there has been? The crisis that key workers face is not confined to the south-east; it also affects the south-west. For example, in Teignbridge, the multiplier between earnings and house prices is greater than anywhere in Surrey.
The hon. Gentleman knows that there is great variability in house prices across the country. If he wants a debate about the situation in his constituency, he should request an Adjournment debate or a debate in Westminster Hall.
Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on the treatment of Nadia Eweida and British Airways’ decision to ban its staff from wearing crosses while allowing other staff to wear other faith symbols such as turbans or hijabs? He will be aware that many of our constituents are very angry about that decision, that religious leaders such as the Archbishop of York have condemned the company for its decision, and that more than 100 MPs have signed parliamentary motions asking BA to reconsider.
I hope that my hon. Friend is successful in raising this matter in Westminster Hall or in an Adjournment debate here. The Government do not take a position on this case, but I share his concerns about it. I have great admiration for BA as an airline, but I find its position on this quite inexplicable. Like the rest of the House, I have strongly supported the right of Sikhs in private companies and public services such as the police and the Army to wear turbans. I have also strongly supported the right of women of the Muslim faith to wear the hijab in all circumstances, and therefore find the ban on wearing a cross or Star of David in equivalent circumstances wholly inexplicable.
The Prime Minister was quoted as telling our troops in Afghanistan that the future of 21st century civilisation is being worked out in that extraordinary piece of desert. May we have a debate on why we have only half a brigade in Afghanistan trying to cover an area the size of Wales?
As I said to the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), we keep under review the question of whether we should have debates on such key issues. I cannot promise that there will be a debate on Afghanistan in the next few weeks, but there was every opportunity to make that point yesterday. As for our troop contribution, we have 5,000 troops there and are the largest single troop contributor to the NATO force. Given other pressures on the British forces and the obligations and responsibilities of other NATO members, any increase in force levels should fall first on other NATO members. I know that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will raise this issue at the NATO summit early next week.
The national lottery living landmarks fund has shortlisted 29 schemes for consideration, not one of which is in the north-east but eight of which are in the south-west. May we have an early debate on the fund’s operation to explain why no schemes in the north-east were considered to be good enough or to meet the criteria, particularly bearing in mind the spend on lottery tickets in the region?
That is an interesting point. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport is also concerned that there should be a proper spread across the regions, not least bearing in mind the different levels of spend on the lottery by my hon. Friend’s constituents and mine, for example. I will draw her attention to my hon. Friend’s comments.
Does the Leader of the House anticipate that the promised debate and vote on the future of Trident will take place under this caretaker Government or after a new Prime Minister has been appointed?
Nice try! We intend to have the debate fairly shortly under the brilliant Government led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair).
May we have a debate about the need for an immediate grant of planning consent so that a young constituent of mine can receive medical treatment at home? A mobile kidney dialysis unit is to be placed in the proposed building in the garden of his parents’ house, but that opportunity might be lost because of the length of time required to gain planning permission.
I understand my hon. Friend’s concern on this important issue, and I shall draw it to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. I shall also consider whether there might be an opportunity for this to be raised as a general policy issue during our debates on the Bill on planning gain later this Session.
The declaration that the High Court in Belfast says should accompany the Water and Sewerage Services (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 was based on the view that the Government have not conscientiously considered this important matter. Will the Leader of the House urge the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to ensure that there is no further parliamentary progress on this order until the Northern Ireland Grand Committee, which is meeting in Belfast on 12 December, has had the opportunity to debate the order fully?
As I told my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), I will draw to the attention of our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland the concerns that have been expressed by hon. Members on both sides of the House.
On 12 September the directors of Farepak wrote to their customers telling them that they had to pay their bill by 6 October to enjoy the biggest, best Christmas ever. The company went into liquidation seven days later. We now know that the parent company asset-stripped Farepak of £35 million, Halifax Bank of Scotland got its cut, and Sir Clive Thompson, the chairman of the company, effectively robbed hundreds of thousands of decent people of Christmas. Does my right hon. Friend agree that although Halifax Bank of Scotland may not have a legal responsibility to those individuals, it has a moral responsibility to them?
On behalf of the House, I commend my hon. Friend for his efforts on behalf of Farepak customers and employees. The situation is truly scandalous. The more we find out about it, the more it stinks. I hope the inquiry that has been set up under section 447 of the Companies Act 1985 gets to the full truth of all that happened. Meanwhile, I agree that whatever legal obligations Halifax Bank of Scotland may have, it certainly has strong moral obligations in the situation.
Further to his remarks about trying to clear up the confusion surrounding the London Olympics, will the Leader of the House also clear up the matter of VAT payments that might be attracted by the London Olympics? He is aware that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has suggested that there will not be a VAT liability and that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has begged to differ. Given that London taxpayers may end up picking up the bill if there is an overrun, they will not be very impressed if that payment goes straight to the Treasury’s taxation coffers. When will Ministers clear up this important issue?
It is an important issue, but it will not delay the building of the Olympic infrastructure or detract from the success of the games. As the hon. Lady would expect, it remains a matter for detailed discussion between my right hon. Friends the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.
Against the background of the dirty dealings going on in Farepak, does my right hon. Friend understand the frustration of those who have lost their occupational pensions, and who will suffer not just this Christmas, but every Christmas? Will he use the same energy to get a satisfactory conclusion for those people?
Yes, I will. I will raise my hon. Friend’s concerns, which are shared across the House, with our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
Reverting to the subject of Trident, may I suggest to the Leader of the House that we should debate early-day motion 239, which is in my name, next week?
[That this House, noting that it is the intention of the Government to ask it to consider the replacement of the Trident missile system with an enhanced system for the delivery of nuclear weapons, believes that, before it is asked to consider such a policy, a committee of at least seven right hon. Members should be appointed by Mr Speaker to consider the desirability and the cost of replacing Trident with an enhanced delivery system together with alternatives to such a policy; considers that the Government should furnish to that Committee such information and documents they require; further requires the Committee to report not later than 12 months from the date that it is established; and further requires that until its report shall have been received, the House shall not be asked to consider any motion for the replacement of Trident.]
Early-day motion 239 provides a mechanism for addressing the Trident issue: that Mr. Speaker should appoint a Committee of at least seven right hon. Members, not necessarily Members of this House, to receive evidence from the Government on the cost of replacing Trident and on the alternatives, that we would therefore have an independent assessment of the need, and that we should not vote on the issue until we have received a report from that Committee.
That is an interesting idea but not one that will find favour with the Government. It would never find favour with any Government. That was not the approach adopted, for example, by the Thatcher Government when there was a vote on the existing Trident system in March 1981. The right hon. and learned Gentleman was in the House and supported that decision in those days. That seems an appropriate way to proceed. It is a decision for Government. We will provide as much information as we can and put it in the public domain in the White Paper. There will then be a period of reflection on the White Paper, followed by a debate in Government time and a vote. That seems to me to be the way to proceed.
On Trident, can the Leader of the House give us any information on the nature of the question to be put to the House? What weight does he give to the views of General Sir Patrick Cordingley, who was on the “Today” programme this morning, and the views of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales?
I listened to Patrick Cordingley and found him less convincing than he usually is. His argument did not add up to much. As regards the question, there is no great surprise about that. If there is a Government recommendation in favour of a replacement for Trident, the motion will be, roughly speaking, in those terms. It is then for right hon. and hon. Members on either side of the House to table amendments to the motion if they wish, and it is a matter for Mr. Speaker whether those amendments are called for a vote.
Although reasonable progress is being made on the miners’ compensation scheme, two classes of workers remain without compensation and without the likelihood of compensation. Yesterday the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) raised with the Prime Minister the case of surface workers and he was offered a meeting with the Prime Minister. I am concerned also about those who worked in small privately run mines for at least a part of their time. That seems a very difficult matter. Will the Leader of the House ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to make a statement to the House, or whether a responsible Minister can set up a meeting with hon. Members who have an interest in the matter to see whether progress can be made?
The hon. Gentleman will recognise that we have made substantial progress, with over £3 billion in compensation paid to over half a million disabled miners or their widows. I accept, however, that there are some who have so far missed out. I will pass on the hon. Gentleman’s concerns and see whether a meeting can be set up with the relevant Minister.
The current public consultation on the draft code of school admissions policies comes to an end next week. My right hon. Friend will recall that during the passage of the Education and Inspections Bill earlier this year, school admissions policies became an extremely important part of the debate. At that stage the Government, to their credit, decided to withdraw the former draft code, pending further debate and consideration. In view of the importance of the matter, is it possible, once the Department for Education and Skills, has assessed the responses to the public debate, to find time for a debate in the House? Would that not give us an opportunity—
I shall certainly give consideration to a debate. There will be plenty of opportunities on the Adjournment or in Westminster Hall, and I will also draw to the attention of our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills the concerns of my hon. Friend.
rose—
Order. We must move on.
Orders of the Day
Debate on the Address
[fifth day]
Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [15 November],
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, as follows:
Most Gracious Sovereign,
We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament.—[Alun Michael.]
Question again proposed.
Home Affairs and Transport
I inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition and that Back-Bench speeches are limited to 12 minutes.
I beg to move, as an amendment to the Address, at the end of the Question to add:
‘but humbly regret that the Gracious Speech contains no measures enabling the Government to fulfil its commitments to the people of the UK on their security, public services and the quality of their daily lives; further regret the absence of proposals to permit telephone intercepts and post-charge interviews to be introduced as evidence in order to strengthen the Government’s ability to prosecute those involved in terrorism, or to tackle rising violent crime, overcrowded prisons and the mismanagement of dangerous offenders; welcome those measures which will deliver additional public protection in practice but deplore proposals such as the removal of trial by jury and the circumvention of the criminal justice system which will be costly, counter-productive and which will undermine democracy and the rule of law; and further regret the absence from the Gracious Speech of plans to police the road network more effectively, to catch more drivers without insurance, road tax or appropriate licences, to encourage motorists to choose cars with lower carbon dioxide emissions, to tackle the competitive problems faced by British hauliers or to deal with the gridlock on the roads and the overcrowding on the railways and on public transport systems in cities.’.
For some time now, the Labour party has been trailing the fact that home affairs would be the centrepiece of the Queen’s Speech. Newspapers have been littered with blood-curdling headlines emanating from the Home Secretary, his boss the Prime Minister, and his other boss the Chancellor. Why? I shall deal with the real reasons later in my speech, but one thing it is not. It is not a mark of success. It is a clear mark of failure.
If our streets were safe and our borders secure, the subject would not be the pre-eminent public concern of the day. If anyone believed the Home Secretary’s constantly repeated statement that crime is down 35 per cent.—a statement that he repeats with progressively more desperation—he would not have a problem, but nobody does believe it, not in the poorest inner-city estate or in the highest palace in the land. We have that on the very best authority. The Gracious Speech told us that legislation would be introduced
“to enhance confidence in Government statistics.”
This may be the first Government who have to legislate to make people believe their spurious figures.
To understand what we ought to have had in the Queen’s Speech, as opposed to what is there, we must understand what has gone wrong and what needs to be fixed. This has been the year from hell in the Home Office, possibly the worst year in its 224-year history. Prisons are full to bursting, dangerous prisoners have been absconding and there has been murder after murder by killers on parole or probation. Staggering numbers of foreign prisoners have been released on to our streets, and still fewer than 100 have been deported. There have been massive errors in immigration policy—20 times the expected number of people have arrived from eastern Europe—and we have an immigration department both demoralised and wracked with scandal.
As a result, the Government lost a Home Secretary and got a new one; that was the second Home Secretary lost in two years, and the Government also lost their third Minister in three years. It serves to remind us that this disaster is not a one-year wonder but a severe systemic and serial failure, which is still worsening under this Home Secretary.
Why has this serial disaster occurred? The overarching reason is three obsessions: a compulsive over-reliance on legislation; an obsession with central control and an avalanche of targets, guidelines and directives, which have buried what initiative was left in the Department; and an addiction to headlines, which compounded the situation and had the effect of reducing the Government’s attention span to something less than 24 hours.
Will the right hon. Gentleman add a fourth reason: the job is probably almost impossible for one individual to do? Is there not a strong case, given the history of Home Secretaries having to resign, for somehow breaking the post up into a more manageable process?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I do not agree with the assertion, because if it were true, the same story that we have seen in the past year, and indeed, according to my observation and his, in the past three years, would have been true for 200 years. It has not been, and there have been great Home Secretaries who have dominated this brief. I think of some Conservative ones, with which he would not agree, but, as a tentative sop, I shall mention Roy Jenkins, who was able to dominate the brief.
The job cannot be divided up between, for example, prisons and immigration, because there is a problem in that interface, or between prisons and police, because there is an issue in that interface. It cannot be broken up. It must be done properly, by focusing on what matters and not on the next day’s headline.
Home affairs is touted as a centrepiece of this Queen’s Speech, not because the measures in it will correct the failure of the past 10 years—they will not—but because the Home Secretary wants to look tough by comparison with his rivals, most notably the Chancellor, who has appointed himself the new overlord for home affairs. I think that the Home Secretary agrees with the use of the word “overlord”—he is the origin of it, which is why he agrees.
The real choice is not between tough and soft, but between smart and dumb. It is about whether we focus on the art of the possible or the art of the plausible. I shall not give the Home Secretary an offer on which of those he is and which of them the Chancellor is. The fact that propaganda took precedence over action in this most fundamental of Government responsibilities is at the core of their failures.
In response to the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten), I point out that it is uncanny that almost the same series of events has led to failures in each area of the Home Office—immigration, criminal justice and terrorism. First, came the serious failure of policy judgment, which might be called the Jack Straw stage—I am sorry that he is not present. As a result, there was a catastrophic explosion in the size of the problem, which might be called the Blunkett stage. As a result of that, the Home Office was overwhelmed and the problem began to look insoluble, which is the Clarke stage. Finally, the Government try to cover up the problem, fiddle the figures, and create an avalanche of initiatives that grab headlines and divert attention but do little to solve the fundamental problem. On the basis of this Queen’s Speech, that is the Reid stage.
Let us consider immigration. This Labour Government, in their first parliamentary term, replaced a number of restrictive Conservative laws on matters ranging from welfare to the so-called white list, as a direct result of which, immigration soared—by 2002, the rate of net immigration had trebled.
As a direct result of that, the immigration and nationality directorate was overwhelmed, and consequently, the Department—under ministerial direction—began to do ever more absurd things in a desperate attempt to get on top of its job. It let people in who were obviously not fit for their job—we all remember the one-legged roof tiler and so on; it turned a blind eye to what it knew was false documentation, a matter that emerged as a result of a whistleblower’s leak; and it ignored sham marriages and bogus colleges. Ministers started to cover up such things, and as a result one Minister lost her job. Today, we have 300,000 failed asylum seekers and more than 500,000 illegal immigrants, and there were 600,000 legal migrants last year alone.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the biggest disgraces was the Government’s prediction that every year only 10,000 migrant workers would come from the accession countries? We know that the figure is now in excess of 500,000. Is he aware that 54,856 of those migrant workers are now claiming some form of state benefit?
My hon. Friend is entirely right. We have raised the issue time and again with successive Home Secretaries and with other Ministers. It was one of the things that they got wrong in that first Parliament, and it reinforces my case.
What is the Home Secretary’s answer? The Department is still overwhelmed, and, of course, he famously blamed the civil service by describing it as “not fit for purpose”.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
I shall in a moment. What is the Home Secretary’s answer in this Queen’s Speech? It is more powers for immigration officers, which is fine, as it is half a step in the right direction. The full step would be a properly constituted border police force, as we have recommended. The Government’s 800 increase in the number of immigration officers is also welcome—450 of them are serving police officers, so the real increase is only 350. To put that in context, it is one new immigration officer for every 1,300 illegal immigrants already here, so the officers will be quite busy.
We will support the Government’s tougher stance on the employers of illegal immigrants. The task would have been easier if they had bothered to enforce the existing law on illegal employers in the first six years of their Government, before the Morecambe sands tragedy. It would have been easier still if one of the illegal employers was not the Home Office itself. All the proposed measures will be only a pin-prick, and, on that note, I give way to the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound).
I think that I thank the right hon. Gentleman. I hope that he gave way on the first syllable of that word rather than the second. Many in this House are delighted to see him moving away, in his robust style, from the cloying embrace of the Polly Toynbee school, but does he agree that reducing the IND staff by 2,000, as happened under the last Conservative Government in 1996, was hardly the best way to address this issue either?
I shall start by giving the hon. Gentleman credit. I stole his joke really. I got it from the fact that last week he received an award from The Spectator for being the parliamentarian of the year, which was given entirely for the way he intervened on someone else on the basis of old fags, or some such thing.
Returning to the hon. Gentleman’s point, of course Governments make judgments about things that go up and down. Labour Members often talk about the relaxation of embarkation controls. We get blamed for a change made on that in 1994, but the simple truth is that that decision was made when the problem was not as big as it is now, or as big as it was between 1997 and 2000. It is a fair point, but it does not relate to this.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Is it on this issue?
Okay, then.
Given that, in order to make cuts, the last Conservative Government reduced the number of immigration officers, will the right hon. Gentleman explain how, in the context of cuts of £21 billion, the Conservatives will increase the number of officers and have a border police force?
I refer the hon. Gentleman to my response to the previous intervention. I shall leave it at that.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
I shall in a moment. Let us consider what the Government are doing now. They are still refusing to put a limit on immigration. We would apply such a limit. They are still putting their faith in e-borders, which will not be properly in place for eight years—we are supposed to deal with immigration without e-borders for eight years—and in the hopeless white elephant of ID cards, which will not properly start for four years and which will never work as the Government claim.
In response to the excellent intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound), the right hon. Gentleman said that the problem was not as big then as it is now. Will he confirm that when the Conservatives were in power it took 22 months to process an asylum claim, and anyone coming here to claim asylum knew that they would be able to stay for virtually two years before anything happened, which sent out the signal that people should carry on trying to come here?
This from the party that has 280,000 failed asylum seekers here, by the National Audit Office’s estimate, and has a Home Secretary who does not even know how many there are. He says that there are 450,000, but that there might be some duplicate files. It is not the length of time that matters but how many are here for their life that matters in this decision.
The sequence that we have recently seen—flawed policy judgments followed by a catastrophic failure of delivery, followed by an avalanche of problems that overwhelm the Department, followed by a flood of initiatives that will barely touch the problem—is repeated elsewhere, not least in crime. The Prime Minister famously said that he was going to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime, no doubt with the best of intentions, but he has been neither. People often think that prison policy is just about being tough on crime, but half of all crime is committed by ex-cons, so the failure to rehabilitate criminals is, in itself, a cause of crime. The shortfall in prison places is in major part a consequence of the Chancellor seeing every successive Home Secretary as a rival—indeed, as his main rival—at the time that they were Home Secretary. [Interruption.] Indeed—some things never change. So, he starved them of cash, particularly for prisons. The Home Secretary brags about 16,000 extra places under Labour, a major part of which were commissioned under the previous Government, but either way there are nowhere near enough to deal with the burgeoning levels of violent crime.
The Labour party persuaded itself that prisons did not work and that community punishments did. Sadly, that is not true. The Government’s flagship intensive supervision and surveillance programme had a failure rate of 90 per cent. last year—in other words, 90 per cent. of the people who went through it reoffended. Their drug treatment and testing orders had a failure rate of 80 per cent. last year, and reoffending rates after prison have soared to record levels as a direct result of overcrowding, which means that the public face hundreds of thousands of extra crimes. That is a dire indictment of Government policy, and because of that policy failure the system as a whole has failed. [Interruption.] That is why—I say this directly to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs—there are too many murderers on parole. That is why 8,000 crimes a month are carried out by those on probation. That is why we have foreign prisoners on our streets.
This policy failure paralyses our police, cripples our courts and undermines our whole justice system. Of course we should use community sentences where appropriate, and of course we should use secure psychiatric placement where appropriate, but we should not be forced into the misuse of community sentences or any other short-cut alternatives to justice that the Government propose—I am thinking particularly about this morning’s announcement on the use of cautions for violent crimes—simply because there are not enough prison places available.
The gaff was blown last week on the real reasons for the policy failure in a letter from the Deputy Prime Minister. I used to be the Deputy Prime Minister’s shadow, which is an interesting concept in its own right, and I miss his leaked letters. This one was very pertinent. He described how the Treasury objected to the Home Secretary’s plan because it might lead not to the 8,000 extra prison places that the Home Secretary had promised but to an extra 450 prisoners. The Treasury was successful. When the Home Office was asked what the effect of the Home Secretary’s so-called tough sentencing reforms would be, it said, “Not more than 110 extra prisoners.” So much for being tough. The Home Secretary’s Offender Management Bill is supposed to reduce reoffending and protect the public, but without enough prison places it will not.
Incredibly, exactly the same problem occurred with the fight against terror. After 9/11, the security budget remained frozen and the agencies lost two years when they should have been expanding to meet the threat—two years that we cannot get back. In 2002, the Government launched their counter-terrorism strategy, Project Contest, designed to root out the source of terrorism in our society and to prevent radicalisation. That was described a year ago by the No. 10 delivery unit in shocking terms. It said: “The strategy is immature”—this was four years after 9/11—and went on:
“Forward planning is disjointed or has yet to occur. Accountability for delivery is weak. Real world impact is seldom measured”.
That from the Prime Minister’s delivery unit about our first line of defence against terrorism.
We should not be surprised. The Government’s attitude to dealing not with the general Muslim community, who are as law abiding and honourable as the rest of us, but with those who would splinter and fragment our society has been at best negligent. When the so-called cartoon protestors waved placards inciting violence and even murder, Ministers dithered for days before, at last, arrests were made. The Government must be honest and respectful with the moderate mainstream Muslim community, but unrelentingly tough with the preachers of hatred and sedition.
What do you want, political arrests?
Well, arrests do matter—this is about home affairs. The authorities took seven years to prosecute Abu Hamza. We were told that there was not enough evidence; he was convicted on 11 counts. We were told that they needed new laws to convict him; most of his convictions were under public order legislation from 1861. [Interruption.] It was not Gladstone—it was probably Palmerston; as far as I am aware, it was not a new Labour Minister.
The problem is worse than it need be and I suspect that that is why we do not have a terrorism Bill before us today, although one is promised. The Home Secretary is struggling to pull together a strategy that works, and it is vital that he succeeds. The single most important action in stopping the growth of home-grown terrorism is preventing the radicalisation of young Muslims. That is one reason why this House was right to reject the Government’s call for 90 days’ detention without trial last year.
We believe that the Government will propose to extend the detention powers. May I suggest to my right hon. Friend that if we are to have satisfactory evidence for that, it needs to be independent? I suggest, therefore, that we should call for a special committee to be set up by Mr. Speaker to receive evidence from the police and the intelligence services and then to report to this House on whether there is a ground for extending the detention period, and that we should postpone the conclusion until we receive the report of such a committee.
My right hon. and learned Friend has had a long and honourable record in defending liberties in this place, but I think that the defence of liberty is something that this House should hold to itself, and I am loth to agree to an abdication or even a delegation of that judgment. I am not saying out of hand that there is no mechanism that we can use to do that, because some of the evidence will by definition be secret. I will return to that in a moment, but my first instinct is not to say that we should subcontract the matter.
I am following the right hon. Gentleman’s argument with great interest. I do not find it entirely persuasive, but it is well made. Before he moves away from the arrest of the so-called cartoon protestors—I appreciate that he has on his Bench the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), who pursued a criminal through the streets of London, and I am sure that he would do the same—is he seriously suggesting that there should be a caveat whereby police officers in the Metropolitan police do not arrest offenders without the approval of a Minister? If he is suggesting that that is either the reality or the desideratum, that would be an abdication of any liberty.
That is a ludicrous reading of my comments. After that weekend, there was a long delay in arresting anybody. At the time, no one was required to remove masks—that, too, was worth being raised by the Home Secretary with the police authorities. There was a sequence of three days when Ministers said that we must not touch the matter and dithered right, left and centre. There is a role for the Government not, of course, in initiating prosecution, but in showing leadership about our response to a clear incitement to violence.
There is a connection between my right hon. Friend’s responses to the previous two interventions: the Government’s attitude, especially that of the Prime Minister, who fails to secure our confidence in his statements. That is why we must look for the additional evidence to which my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) referred. The attitude conveys signals that pressurise the police to stay away from criminals whom they should arrest.
I shall not be drawn down that route. I simply say that it is interesting that a party that argued effectively for Executive detention for 90 days—a much more serious issue than the one that my hon. Friend raises—presents such a line of argument. The Attorney-General reminded us only a few days ago that there is no evidence for more than 28 days.
More important, locking up someone without cause for 90 days risks creating a recruiting sergeant for terrorism and a friendly sea in which terrorists can swim. Tough talk is not always smart action. When public safety is concerned, we will always examine the evidence, as the Attorney-General advised, but we will take a lot of persuading.
Last year, after the 7 July atrocity, the Conservative party—and, to be fair, the Liberal Democrats—sought a cross-party consensus with the Government about terror legislation. We made several proposals, some of which—most notably, the criminalisation of acts preparatory to terrorism—the Government took up. We released the Government from previous undertakings to Opposition parties in order to allow the legislation’s progress to be accelerated. Then the Prime Minister decided that he wanted a political battle about 90 days’ detention without trial. He politicised the debate about terror and suffered his first defeat in Parliament.
We hear regularly from the press that they have been briefed that the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister want to outflank the Conservatives on the right on terror legislation, and that that is their new strategy for political recovery. Frankly, that is utterly disreputable. The decisions that Governments make on such subjects should be driven solely by sober consideration of long-term public safety, not short-term political advantage. Decisions should be made not between right and left but between right and wrong.
In the fine balance between protecting our lives and our way of life, two things should clearly be done. The first is to allow terrorist suspects to be interviewed after charge. We proposed that last year because it would enormously enhance the effectiveness of the police and lead to more terrorists being convicted with little impact on the rights of the innocent. If the Government had chosen to act quickly, that could be the law today. It could have been law, for example, before the alleged terrorist case in August.
Secondly, the ability to use intercept evidence in court is long overdue. It would lead to more terrorists being convicted and locked up. Almost every other major country in the world uses intercept evidence. I have received detailed briefings from the Government about why we do not. None has been remotely convincing. The best approach is that recommended by the Newton committee. It recommended appointing an investigating judge, who would be responsible for presenting to the trial a balanced extract of the evidence, which would not allow identification of sources or techniques. That would be fair to the accused and not allow the defence to go on a fishing expedition into the evidence. That is straightforward, workable and fair. Many people support it, not least Lord Lloyd, a Law Lord and past interception commissioner.
Last week, I watched the Home Secretary receiving the politician of the year award from The Spectator. I congratulate him—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] We all congratulate him. He was especially pleased to receive it from the Leader of the Opposition. I enjoyed his speech, although it was not written by Lord Tebbit, as he claimed—it was far too right wing for that. I suspect that the award reflects not the past six months, which have not been comfortable for the right hon. Gentleman, but expectations of the next six months. I wish him well in the next six months, although I acknowledge that I am the last person to give advice on leadership contests.
However, the award that I would like the Home Secretary to get next year is that of statesman of the year. I should like him to win it by doing the exact opposite of what the papers expect him to do. I should like him to win it by putting public safety ahead of political advantage. That will not be easy. It will mean shouldering the responsibility for failures of political leadership and not simply blaming the immigration and nationality directorate, the probation officers, the judges, the courts, the public and so on. It will mean being straightforward with the public and Parliament and admitting systemic failures, whether they constitute illegal immigrants in the Home Office or terrorist suspects escaping control orders. It will mean less obsession with headlines and more focus on managing the Home Office.
The legislative programme before the House will not fix the serial catastrophe that is new Labour’s Home Office. The responsibility for doing that rests on the shoulders of the Home Secretary. If he takes the easy route—the avalanche of irrelevant initiatives, the headline-a-day—the public will pay the price through increasing crime, overflowing prisons and uncontrolled migration. There would be only one good result—the end of the Government. It would be richly deserved.
I understand that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, but I should have received with gratitude an element of it in the speech of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis). To begin by attacking me for admitting openly past systemic failures and end by commending that approach, which would apparently raise me to the stature of statesman, is an inconsistency of considerable proportions, even for the right hon. Gentleman.
With national security, it is better to believe facts rather than unspecified, anonymous and second-hand hearsay reports, apparently from journalists who brief the right hon. Gentleman confidentially. I prefer a national consensus on national security. I have said so not only privately but publicly. I have said so to my party—most recently in my conference speech. I seek national consensus on national security.
However, one cannot build a national consensus on national security on the irresolution and shifting sands of weak leadership that seeks to avoid every difficult choice on every conceivable occasion. I will refer to that in my speech, but not in order to suggest that we should not seek a consensus; I simply emphasise that it cannot be based on irresolute seeking of the lowest common denominator. It is not possible to get a consensus that embraces everyone, including Polly Toynbee, on every issue. It may be nice to be likeable but it is better to display qualities of leadership than likeability.
In the first half of the right hon. Gentleman’s speech he discussed other issues, such as crime, about which it is desirable to have a national consensus, but on which there is not the same imperative to seek one as on national security. I listened to him carefully about crime and the causes of crime. He spoke with all the authority of a member of a Government under whom crime doubled and convictions fell. He had the supreme evidential qualification of speaking with the authority of someone under whose Government the chance of being a victim of violent crime was multiplied by three. That Government saw police numbers fall in every year from 1993.
What has happened to the chance of being a victim of violent crime since this Government came to power, on the recorded crime basis?
I was not calculating the crime figures at the time when they were going through the roof and police numbers were falling, but by any comparable standard, we have reduced crime by 35 per cent. under this Government, compared with an increase of 100 per cent. under the Conservative Government—[Interruption.] I will come to some of these elements in the course of my speech. However much Conservative Members want to pick on this or that item, the incontrovertible fact is that under the Tories crime doubled. Under this Government, crime has been reduced by 35 per cent. That is the authority with which the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden makes his statements today.
Incidentally, the resolution that the right hon. Gentleman expressed in robust terms today resulted in his party voting against the banning of handguns. His party is against ID cards at the same time as claiming that it will track people going in and out of the country. He is a member of a would-be Government who voted against the entire Criminal Justice Bill in 2003, including the proposals for life sentences for serious and dangerous offenders, and for five-year minimum custodial sentences for those in unauthorised possession of a firearm. The Conservatives voted against all those measures, yet they have the cheek to come to the House today and lecture us.
Will the Home Secretary tell the House how many more people have been killed by unlawfully held firearms under his Government than under the previous one?
A damned sight fewer than would have been killed if we had failed to ban handguns, which is what the hon. Gentleman voted against.
Perhaps the Home Secretary’s selective amnesia prevents him from mentioning that violent crime has risen from 600,000 cases in 1998 to more than 1.2 million under his Government.
I have not said for one moment that every single aspect of crime has been reduced. However, it is incontrovertible that crime has fallen by 35 per cent.—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman shrugs his shoulders. Of course it has nothing to do with him; it is the Labour Government who brought it down. Under the Conservatives crime went up, not by 35 per cent. but by 100 per cent. So when the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden comes to the House and gives us a lecture on being tough or being soft, let us remember the authority with which he does so.
The right hon. Gentleman said that this was not about being tough or soft, but about being fairer and smarter. He said it with all the authority of someone who had just discovered that tremendous, profound truth—
Hold on a second.
Amazingly enough, I recall my speech to the House on 20 July—my first as Home Secretary—in which I said that our policy was not
“about being tougher or softer; it is about being fairer and smarter”.—[Official Report, 20 July 2006; Vol. 449, c. 473.]
It is nice to see that the right hon. Gentleman is well read, at least.
Conservative Members have clearly forgotten certain key measures that have been passed by this House. The result of those decisions on domestic violence, led by this Government, has been a reduction of 17 per cent. in recorded violent crime against women, where those measures are in place. Those are the kind of measures that we need—measures that are focused on the people who most need our help.
Absolutely. For the first time in our history, we have a reduction in recorded domestic violence, as my hon. Friend says. Nevertheless, I would not pretend that we have conquered every upward trend in crime.
Moreover, I would not pretend that there are no new developments in this world. This is the astonishing thing about the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden. His thesis in his opening speech was, “Well, you’ve passed some laws. That should be the end of it. Why do you need to pass any more?” The Conservative party is grappling with the question of modernity. The right hon. Gentleman was kind enough to give me advice on leadership contests. As a failed candidate, he is in a majority among his colleagues in the Conservative party, all of whom can claim a failure of some sort in contests for the leadership of their party or their country. Let me give him a bit of advice. If he aspires to lead this country in the modern world, there is a secret that I should tell him: the world keeps changing. I know that that will come as a profound revelation to the Conservative party.
The only constant is change. The funny thing about this world is that when we embark on a new day, things happen differently. Things change in the world. People invent new things, like mobile phones—they are transportable telephones, in case the right hon. Gentleman has not come across them—then other people want to steal them. So we get new crimes. When we have completed one set of challenges, the changes in the world bring another set to our doorstep.
Presumably the Conservatives’ hero is the Duke of Wellington, who, circa 1820, thought that the British constitution and our state and social affairs were so profoundly perfect that nothing needed to be changed. When we scratch the surface of the Conservative party, we find that that attitude is still there. I must remind the House that it was the Duke of Wellington who said of that great social invention, the train, that, while he did not have anything against it, he was worried that it might allow the lower orders the opportunity to wander aimlessly through the country. He was a model of modernising Conservative leadership if ever I saw one. The point is that we need to provide security in a fast-changing world, with the emphasis on the word “changing”.
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, then perhaps I should start my speech.
Does the Home Secretary believe that the security of this nation will be helped if 450,000 Bulgarians and Romanians enter the country unchecked? Given his grasp of statistics, will he give the House a prediction? Does he believe that it will be 15,000 people who come from Bulgaria and Romania, or 450,000—the number that have come in from the recent EU accession countries?