House of Commons
Tuesday 4 December 2007
The House met at half-past Two o’clock
Prayers
[Mr. Speaker in the Chair]
Oral Answers to Questions
Transport
The Secretary of State was asked—
London Bridge Station
The final phase of Thameslink construction will involve complete remodelling of the track and platform layout at London Bridge. We are working with Network Rail to ensure that inconvenience to passengers is kept to a minimum while the works proceed.
Does the Minister agree that the building of phase 2 of the East London line would be helpful in ensuring that passengers going to the City who currently have to go into London Bridge, with the associated disruption, could use the East London line as an alternative? Does he consider that project to be good value for money, and will his Government support it financially?
The hon. Gentleman will, of course, know that phase 2 of the East London line is a matter for Transport for London. He is right to say that the line might provide some assistance for passengers otherwise inconvenienced by the work going on at London Bridge. However, there are alternatives that might provide the same kind of relief for passengers using London Bridge during the construction period. He will have to be patient, because in April next year Network Rail’s route utilisation strategy for south London will be published. That will contain a list of all the options, and I am sure that the one that he mentions will be given due attention by Network Rail and by the Government.
My constituents welcome the commitment to rail demonstrated by the Minister and his colleagues, as delivered by First Capital Connect and advocated by Bedford commuters association, which welcomes the start of the Thameslink project, with developments such as the one at Luton Airport Parkway station. It welcomes the promised extra trains that will be delivered—
That is understandable, but a supplementary question must be brief, and this is a little speech. Perhaps the Minister will answer the hon. Gentleman.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support. Thameslink is a vital part of the high-level output specification that we announced in July, with £5.5 billion going towards a project that some suggested might never happen. It is happening, it is being built, and by 2015 it will have been completed, under this Government.
As the Minister is considering construction works in south London, will he confirm that he knew that the five international platforms at Waterloo station were due to be released at least five years ago—
Order. I apologise—I should have stopped the hon. Gentleman sooner. That has nothing to do with the question before us.
Victoria overground station—[Interruption]—is also likely to be subject to major overhaul in the years ahead. Will the Minister personally ensure that the essential maintenance programme is properly phased, because presumably a lot of London Bridge traffic—[Interruption]—will otherwise have to go to Victoria and Charing Cross?
That was nicely done, Mr. Speaker.
I can assure the hon. Gentleman that in planning the works Network Rail will make great efforts to avoid the inconvenience that he mentions. I cannot undertake that I will ensure personally that that happens; Ministers are not best placed to make such provision. However, he is right to say that lines to Victoria will be subject to some inconvenience and disruption during the Thameslink construction, and it is up to Network Rail to minimise that wherever possible.
Does my hon. Friend agree that the disruption caused to south London suburban services by the Thameslink construction programme will be avoided only if phase 2 of the East London line is built first, freeing up badly needed platform space at London Bridge? Will he meet me and other south London MPs to consider a proposition that would be in everybody’s interests?
As my hon. Friend knows, my door is always open—but I would correct him in at least one respect. The completion of phase 2B of the East London link is not the only way of relieving pressure on London Bridge during construction. As I said, the options for what Network Rail can do will be set out in the route utilisation strategy to be published next spring. The funding of the East London line, while a matter for Transport for London, will of course be considered as part of that strategy if it is seen that the construction of that phase would have a beneficial financial impact on works that would otherwise be funded by the Department for Transport.
Given that the route utilisation strategy consultation is due some time next year, one begins to wonder how many endless consultation processes we will have to go through. This process is called Thameslink 2000; it is now 2007. Will the Minister ensure that the consultation process does not lead to the programme being put into the sidings?
My first ministerial decision on taking office was to rename Thameslink 2000 as Thameslink. The hon. Gentleman is perhaps getting confused between consultation on two different issues. The consultation currently under way is the one on Network Rail’s route utilisation strategy. However, Thameslink is now being built. It is going ahead and will be fully funded in the next control period between 2009 and 2014.
The Thameslink development, the lengthening of platforms and the increasing of the electricity supply to increase capacity on the Southeastern network is very welcome in my constituency. When my hon. Friend is considering the route utilisation strategy, will he remember that south-east London is not served by the London underground? That means that there is a heavy reliance on overground rail services for commuters into central London. When he is considering the outcome of that process and the number of trains that might be serving central London, will he also consider that issue for people in south-east London?
My hon. Friend is correct, which is why the route utilisation strategy and the consultation process under way at the moment are so important to his constituents and those of many other hon. Members.
Carbon Dioxide Emissions
Transport has a vital role to play in supporting sustainable economic growth, but it is clear that it must also play its full part in the UK’s overall framework for reducing carbon emissions. That is why we are investing record amounts in public transport, providing people with better information about their travel choices, making fuels cleaner and vehicles more efficient, and leading the argument in Europe for including aviation in emissions trading.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for putting that on the record, as the Department is seldom given the credit it deserves for what it is doing to reduce carbon dioxide. Does she agree that measures that win public support are most likely to be effective? The measures that she is considering, such as introducing aviation into the emissions trading scheme, and the renewable transport fuel obligation, are far more likely to succeed than banning people from taking holiday flights and making them pay to park in supermarket car parks, which are the proposals coming from the Conservatives.
I thank my hon. Friend for his kind comments. It sometimes seems to me that the Conservative party is torn irrevocably in two different directions, and cannot choose between the two. He is right to point to policies such as the renewable transport fuels obligation, which, I can inform the House, make up nearly a quarter of the CO2 savings in the Government’s climate change objectives. I am clear about the scope to go further, and that is why the Department recently published a response to Eddington and Stern, which sets out the progress that I hope we can make.
But will the Secretary of State get a bit radical? Does she realise that unnecessary emissions are caused when a vehicle has to stop unnecessarily? Why does she not trial some of the schemes in force in the United States of America, where vehicles are allowed to turn on a red signal—over here, we would allow a left turn—and consider other schemes whereby during non-rush hour periods, traffic lights do not go to red unnecessarily but flash amber in all directions?
I think that the right hon. Gentleman is referring not to the report by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) on economic competitiveness, but that of the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) on the environment, which illustrates how torn the Conservative party is. Of course, we are prepared to listen to constructive suggestions on all the issues, but to return to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman), it is important that we are able to convince people that credible propositions are in place that are likely to succeed in reducing CO2 emissions.
We all want to reduce carbon emissions, and we have to balance that with the importance of air travel to regional economies. Would my right hon. Friend consider making the air route between Durham Tees Valley and Heathrow airports a public service obligation route to protect the prosperity of the north-east?
I congratulate my hon. Friend on championing the cause of his constituents. It is important that we maintain and revitalise regional air services in the UK economy, which is one of the reasons why, provided that the strict local environmental conditions are met, the Government support in principle the third runway at Heathrow airport. If we have more capacity at Heathrow to serve more regional destinations, it should become possible to re-energise local and regional economies.
In view of Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot’s recent announcement on tracking containers, why have the Government chosen to exclude imports from the Climate Change Bill? Does the Secretary of State realise that goods travelling much of their journey to the UK by lorry have a much higher carbon footprint than those that travel the whole way by sea?
Of course it is right that we take any action that reduces CO2 emissions in a way that is cost-effective and delivers the maximum CO2 reductions consistent with economic growth. The Climate Change Bill, which is the UK’s framework for delivering substantial reductions in CO2 emissions—at least 60 per cent.—considers domestically sourced CO2. Of course there is an argument about how we treat imports, international aviation emissions and emissions that are not domestically sourced, but I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree that we are leading the debate in Europe and beyond.
Bus Services
Today I have published a consultation paper, “Options for strengthening bus passenger representation”, covering England. This follows our earlier commitment to consult on ways to ensure that bus users have their say when key decisions are being made, and to provide a more influential voice for bus passengers.
I thank my right hon. Friend for that, but will she ensure that when local authorities and local bus service providers such as Centro in Birmingham make rescheduling announcements, pensioners who rely on those services do not find them drastically cut at the stroke of a pen, and that clear consultation is put in place instead?
My hon. Friend is right to highlight some of the problems in his constituency. People feel strongly if a bus service is suddenly taken away, particularly if they have not been consulted. One of the options for our new bus champion body would be the ability to conduct research into what people want from their bus services and what they get from them. If necessary, the process can be about naming and shaming operators that do not meet the public’s expectations. That is what passengers want to see.
The Minister will be aware that one of the issues causing consternation to users of bus services in rural areas is the break-up of routes following the community drivers regulations. In a debate in the other place on 19 June, the Minister’s noble Friend Lord Bassam invited representatives of rural bus companies to meet officials to discuss the issue. Has that meeting taken place, and if not, when is it likely to do so?
I had a meeting with some of the coach operators and smaller bus companies in which we discussed that issue. One of the problems is that when the legislation was going through, representations were not made and evidence was not forthcoming about some of the potential problems down the road. The Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick) has also taken an interest in the matter. We have to bear it in mind that there is a safety issue, too, which is about carrying passengers, sometimes on quite long routes. We have to achieve a balance between ensuring that safety is properly covered and the need of operators to run those routes.
Is not the best way to get the public involved through the local democratic process? In particular, would it not be better if decisions on quality contracts under the new Local Transport Bill were made by locally elected councillors, rather than a quango composed of transport commissioners?
Perhaps it would be helpful if I explained the process that we would expect any approvals board to go through. We would want local authorities to carry out a consultation and make a properly costed proposal on how they wanted to put together a quality contract. It would then be for the approvals board to ensure that those costings were correct, that the consultation had been carried out and that the scheme was going to work. That will provide local authorities with greater certainty that they will not be judicially reviewed, and operators with the knowledge that the scheme has been properly considered before it goes ahead.
My constituents have made clear their position on the concessionary fares scheme. We have a problem because of our geography, in that many of my constituents need to travel across the border into Wales. I have tried to make my constituents’ views clear to the Welsh Assembly Government, but having received a somewhat unenthusiastic letter from the Deputy First Minister, I would welcome the Minister’s support, working with colleagues in the devolved Administrations, for making the concessionary fares scheme work more smoothly across the UK’s internal borders.
I certainly hope that we can ensure that the concessionary fares scheme works smoothly. I have to say that it has been greatly welcomed among elderly people and people with disabilities. It will operate at a cost of about £1 billion a year. It is running now at the local level and it will be extended to the national level from April. Of course we want to see the scheme operating properly across the borders.
Does the Minister agree that such plans should be capable of being implemented as speedily as possible, should be meaningful and capable of delivering what local people want, and should be designed so that those local people cannot be unreasonably frustrated by appeals and recourse to judicial review by bus operators?
I assume that my hon. Friend is talking about the quality contracts scheme as opposed to the concessionary fares scheme. I absolutely agree, which is why we have tried to ensure that our approvals board is established to avoid difficulties and secure greater certainty—we can never reach complete certainty, but we can at least bring about greater certainty—for local authorities that proposals have been through an independent process and can proceed as quickly as possible. Local authorities need that certainty, and where bus operators may be withdrawing services from an entire area because they cannot meet a contract, we also need certainty that the proposals have been through an independent process.
Does the Minister realise the effect that the so-called 50 km rule is having on the provision of bus services, particularly in rural areas? In some cases, routes are being segmented, resulting in increased cost and inconvenience to passengers; and in other cases, routes may be axed altogether. Clearly, this is not a safety issue, because in order to comply, it is possible to change the passengers but not the driver. Will the Minister apply, as Finland has already, for a derogation to restore some sanity in this area?
As I said earlier, I have had discussions with operators about this issue. The Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town is having further discussions. Those issues were not raised when this was going through the directive process, and it is important to remember that this is about ensuring the safety of passengers as well as working conditions for drivers. Those should be put together, as the decision has been taken to make longer journeys safer for drivers and also for passengers. We should bear that in mind when we hear the hon. Gentleman saying that we should do away with it all.
My right hon. Friend will be aware that bus wars have broken out in Preston, with Stagecoach trying to muscle in on the town’s profitable routes. We are seeing races down the road and jostling for position at stops, which is putting passengers at risk. Would the Minister be willing to visit Preston to meet local authorities and representatives to discuss the situation? I am afraid that there will be injuries, and possibly even a death, if things carry on as they are.
I know that my hon. Friend has been extremely concerned about this matter. He raised it in an Adjournment debate last week, to which the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town, replied. I met the owner of Stagecoach recently and, having heard the representations of my hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mr. Hendrick), I made clear my concerns about the situation. I do not know whether my hon. Friend is aware that the traffic commissioner has taken a strong interest in this issue and has taken the decision to convene a public inquiry into Stagecoach’s behaviour, which will start within the next two weeks. I will certainly keep in touch with my hon. Friend about this matter, and I would, of course, like to visit his constituency. It is also important to ensure that Lancashire county council, as the transport authority, is involved, in order to try to resolve what is clearly a very difficult situation.
Will my right hon. Friend confirm that local authorities and members of the community have the right to scrutinise bus companies’ accounts? I ask that because, like all of us, I want to ensure that the routes being subsidised are the routes that people need most, even if they are less profitable, and it has been suggested that subsidy is being put into profitable routes so that shareholders get a dividend.
I suggest that my hon. Friend respond to our consultation document, which deals with what the new body that we are establishing may be able to do. I imagine that some of the companies’ accounts are in the public domain, although some may of course be commercially confidential. My hon. Friend may wish to suggest, in response to our document, a method of making it more obvious where money is being spent and where routes are not being run.
Lewes-Uckfield Line
Reopening regional or rural lines will not normally be the most effective way of delivering the capacity increases that, as the rail White Paper explained, are our priority. I nevertheless remain willing to consider any reopening proposal that is supported by a proper business case and can be funded privately.
I am grateful for the Minister’s supportive comments here and elsewhere. He will know that a strong cross-party campaign, backed by a professional board including members of Network Rail, wants the line to be reopened. Can he guarantee that if a business case is produced—and I accept the need for that—he will look sympathetically at the possibility of providing funds? Sometimes it seems that it is easy to obtain funds for new roads, but not funds for new railways.
I can certainly guarantee that we will look at the business case. Capital costs would have to be met entirely by the private sector, but as well as the private investment that would be needed for the rebuilding of the route, extra finance might be required to enable trains to run along it, in which case the Department would have to step in and decide whether there was a value-for-money case for those services. If a robust business case is supplied, however, I shall be more than happy to consider it, and ensure that my officials give it a fair hearing.
A strong argument in favour of reopening the link is the increased popularity of the existing service to Uckfield, but one of the consequences of that increased popularity is that hundreds of cars are being parked every day, very inconsiderately, in residential areas because of the lack of parking at the local stations. Will the Minister work with councils and the appropriate rail authorities to see how the problem can be addressed?
There is indeed a growing problem with car parking at Uckfield, complicated by the fact that existing land owned by BRB (Residuary) has been tied up in a five-year development plan of which only one year has elapsed. However, if the council is willing to re-examine a policy that, I understand, restricts access by cars to any feasible car park on the site from the high street, it may be possible to find a way of making progress on this important issue.
Concessionary Bus Travel
The Department for Transport will deliver a national publicity campaign, which will start in the new year. We will also provide travel concession authorities with a comprehensive communications toolkit, containing resources that can be adapted for local needs and including advertising material.
I am grateful for that response, especially as a member of the Public Bill Committee that aimed to ensure that the concessionary bus fare scheme would operate nationwide. In Crawley a good Labour council has provided the constituency with a concessionary scheme for decades, but will now be able to offer something far beyond the boundary. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important for people to know that that will be happening very soon?
I entirely agree. We must ensure that the message reaches everyone who is entitled to use the new passes. I congratulate my hon. Friend’s local authority on the service that it has delivered until now, and I am sure that the whole House looks forward to the start of the nationwide scheme next year.
Is the Minister aware of the problem of who will pay for concessionary fares in tourist areas such as that governed by Harrogate borough council, part of which falls within Vale of York? The council will potentially be left with a shortfall of £1 million. Where is it supposed to find that money, which corresponds to a 10 per cent. increase in council tax?
We are aware that a number of local authorities are saying that they cannot afford the scheme. However, the Department’s calculations of the amounts that each local authority will receive have been generous, based on assumptions of take-up set against experience of the take-up of existing local schemes elsewhere. Additionally, the Department will supply £212 million next year, on top of the Government grants for the scheme locally, to make sure that all travel concession authorities will be able to ensure that the scheme is available to its residents.
Will my hon. Friend ensure that local newspapers, such as the Chorley Guardian, the Lancashire Evening Post and the Chorley Citizen, carry the adverts, because as older people read local newspapers, that will be a good way of clearly getting across the message that this Government have provided the concessionary travel?
I am sure that my hon. Friend’s local newspapers will carry his mention of their titles in their copy next week, and that will assist in getting the message across. We have built into the grants to local authorities an element of local communications funding, and it is to be hoped that the local travel authorities will be able to take advantage of that.
But as my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) pointed out, the Government’s concessionary scheme does have some malign consequences. In Bromsgrove, for example, the local council has offered free parking to disabled and pensioner citizens, but that has now been put in jeopardy by the cost of the new national concessionary scheme. What do the Government think is better: local determination of transport priorities or their own national schemes?
Travel concession authorities can appeal in a number of ways if they are unhappy with the way in which the scheme is likely to be introduced in their area. There has always been discretion for travel concession authorities to offer a scheme different from the national one. What we are introducing next year, with hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, is a de minimis scheme that will apply right across the country for all pensioners and for most disabled people. This is a huge step forward for people right across the UK.
Railway Safety
As my hon. Friend knows, this is a matter for Network Rail, which tells me that the company’s practice is to clear trees where they might endanger or delay trains.
Is my hon. Friend aware of the work of Professor Rory Mortimore of the university of Brighton, an international expert on geotechnical matters? In his report relating to my constituency he claims, with a lot of evidence, that because of the limestone structure of the cuttings, this could lead to dangerous slippages. Is the safety of passengers not a matter for my hon. Friend’s concern?
I am aware of the professor’s report; my hon. Friend supplied a copy of it to me during a meeting with her and her constituents, who have expressed concern about this issue. She should be aware—Network Rail has informed me about this—that the part of the cutting in question has been without vegetation for long periods in the past without the consequent slippages that she fears. However, although it is ultimately up to Network Rail, as a private company, to decide how to deal with this matter, I understand that it will have a meeting with her and her constituents later today to try to come to agreement on a way forward. It is incumbent on Network Rail to consult local residents where there is concern about such procedures. However, it is also incumbent on Network Rail to make sure that the railway is safeguarded and is free from the risk of such slippages. I would trust Network Rail to use its own scientific advice to come to the appropriate conclusions.
Concessionary Bus Travel
I could refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer I gave a few moments ago. However, in case he was unable to hear that, let me tell him that the Government are providing local authorities in England with an extra £212 million next year for the national bus concession in England. This extra funding is based on generous assumptions about the probable cost impact of the new concession, and we are confident that it will be sufficient in total.
But what the Minister calls generous funding is actually less than the rate of inflation, when the operating costs of bus companies are rising by more than that, so is this not just another example of a scheme whereby the Government get the local council tax payer to fund one of their announcements?
We know that some local authorities are claiming credit for the introduction of this scheme and not giving any credit to Government. We are proud of the amount of money that we are giving, which, as I mentioned, is £212 million this year—it will be £217 million next year and £223 million the year after. Bus operators have the opportunity to appeal if they are not satisfied. So many more people are using buses as a result of our transport policies, and we regard that as a success.
Would the Minister care to congratulate Conservative-controlled Kettering borough council—of which I am proud to be a member—which is going to build on the Government scheme and ensure concessionary travel for pensioners at peak times too? [Interruption.]
I am being encouraged by Labour Members not to congratulate the hon. Gentleman’s Conservative local authority, but that would be ungracious, so I congratulate him and his local authority. As I said in answer to the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride), who is not in her place, some travel concession authorities provide more than the minimum scheme that we are introducing; but that minimum scheme is a big step forward on what went before.
The Minister is big enough to deal with matters, and I am delighted that he congratulated my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone). Will he deal with the question of rural areas and remote villages, where sadly there is little, if any, public transport? How can people in those villages, who often live on their pension or on a very low income, take advantage of this scheme, which I applaud? [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) knows that I applaud anything good, even if it is introduced by the Labour Government. What will the Minister do for people in rural areas where there is little or no public transport?
The hon. Gentleman is being kind and generous enough to welcome what is being introduced in the Local Transport Bill. We have been doing what we can to support rural communities and rural bus services, and the Bill will deliver even more.
Order. The hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway) is a newer Member of the House, but when a question is put he should remain within the Chamber at least until we get to the next one. He is not the only offender I have had to pull up a few over the years.
The Minister will, of course, remember that the principle of concessionary travel enjoyed support across the whole House. The key point was how it was to be funded. The trouble is that the Government’s sums simply do not add up. The level of increases in extra funding that he is proposing are less than inflation, and he will have received many representations from councils telling him that they will face deficits as a result of the scheme over the next two to three years. For example, Southampton city council estimates a deficit of £1.5 million—before a delayed appeal; the council is reimbursing at 67p in the pound and the operating company seeks 74p. All that will happen in a number of the scheme areas, because the Government have underfunded this, is that council tax will increase by more than 10 per cent.
That is the second time that that figure has been mentioned. Obviously it is a line that has been produced for these questions. As I have said, we are confident that our calculations on the amount of money needed to support the scheme will be more than adequate, and an announcement will be made shortly.
The national bus concession will be available on all eligible, registered local bus services, which can include some—but will include by no means all—community type transport services, for example, services that are provided under a section 22 permit, charge a fare and are open to the general public.
I think that I welcome that answer. The free local bus scheme has been wonderfully effective in our area, and we are looking forward to the national scheme. Will the Minister meet me and other colleagues to prevent the apparent anomaly that someone who is entitled to use the free national bus pass but who cannot do so because they physically cannot get on those buses may not be able to use it on a community transport bus service? Will she confirm that in an area such as Derbyshire, where the community bus services are scheduled, regular and responsive to demand, such people will be eligible to use the national concessionary bus fare?
I would certainly welcome a meeting with my hon. Friend and her constituents to explain the issue. If a community transport service is restricted to a particular group of people—perhaps people with disabilities or elderly people—it would not be eligible under the concessionary fares scheme. However, other community transport schemes are eligible, such as those in rural areas that are demand-responsive so that someone can be picked up at a particular time. Many dial-a-ride services operate in that way.
I think that I share the puzzlement of the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Judy Mallaber): we are not sure that the Minister’s reply is the one that we want to hear. In my area, the Mendip community transport scheme will cease operation next year, apparently because of a lack of funding. That scheme is the only option for many people who have no access to other public transport because it is a very rural area. A concessionary fare scheme is useless without a bus to ride on, so it would be helpful if the scheme applied to community transport schemes of that kind. I ask the Minister to look into that.
I am, of course, prepared to look into that. However, I re-emphasise that the changes to be introduced in April will not change the eligibility, so I am not clear why the hon. Gentleman thinks that the bus service will stop because of the new scheme. If a community transport service is open to the wider public, it can participate in the concessionary fare scheme. The Local Transport Bill will make changes that will make it easier for community transport services to operate by, for example, allowing the payment of drivers, which has been widely welcomed by the Community Transport Association because it will make it easier to run the type of services that we are talking about.
Quality Contracts
The proposals in the Local Transport Bill aim to make quality contracts a more realistic option for local transport authorities by replacing the “only practicable way” test with a new set of public interest criteria.
I welcome that comment, because locally elected integrated transport authorities should be able to choose whether to introduce quality contracts in their area. I wish to press the Minister on the role of the approvals boards, which have been mentioned already. Can she confirm that it will be the job of the approvals board to ensure that transport authorities have gone through the proper process in reaching a decision to introduce quality contracts? Those unelected approvals boards should not have a right of veto simply because they happen to disagree with the decision reached by elected local representatives on the transport authorities that quality contracts are the right approach for bus services in their area.
I shall explain how we see the composition of an approvals board. It will include the traffic commissioner, a transport expert from the area and a transport economist. The idea is that the approvals board will ensure that the local authority has gone through the proper process of consultation, but in addition the approvals board process will ensure that the scheme will work in practice, that the economics add up and that it is a viable service for the local area. It is about providing more certainty for local authorities that their decisions will not be judicially reviewed—although that cannot always be guaranteed—and for operators that a new scheme has been subject to independent scrutiny and is likely to operate efficiently.
Railway Overcrowding
Existing and future demand for rail travel was assessed in preparing the rail White Paper that was published in July. It was that assessment, and the associated need to tackle existing and potential overcrowding, that led to the capacity enhancements specified in the White Paper.
Several times in recent weeks, I have been delayed, squashed, boiled or left standing on the train between Cheltenham and London—an experience that is both common and expensive for many of our rail users. Will the Minister report progress on practical steps, such as the redoubling of the line between Swindon and Kemble, that might improve the situation?
Of course I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman’s experience, which is shared by many people commuting into London and the larger conurbations around the country, but the Government have committed to invest £15 billion in our railways in the five years between 2009 and 2014. If he wants to hear about practical measures, I can tell him that a rolling stock plan will be published early next year, and that 1,300 new carriages will be rolled out over that five-year period. Depending on the industry’s response, I hope that his constituents and the line to which he referred will benefit from that investment.
Topical Questions
I am delighted to answer. My Department has recently begun a major consultation on the expansion of Heathrow airport, subject of course to strict environmental limits. It has also invited bids for a new fleet of inter-city express trains. Later this week, I shall meet the US Transportation Secretary to discuss a range of transport issues.
What account has been taken of massive Government-imposed house building in the planning of train capacity in towns such as Leighton Buzzard, where the trains are already full?
I hope that is a sign that the hon. Gentleman and his party now support the Government in our attempt to build the houses that first-time buyers so desperately need. Given my experience at the Department for Communities and Local Government and now at the Department for Transport, I can assure him that the two Departments are joined at the hip when it comes to planning for more houses for first-time buyers. It is essential that we build sufficient capacity so that people can travel by train, road, bus or however they want to move around. In that way, we can meet the needs of a growing population, and of those who will live in the houses yet to be built.
I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman does not know that the property will become available to the Government only in March 2008, or that there will be a substantial infrastructure cost after that date as we remodel the railway to accommodate more domestic rail services. However, the ultimate answer to his question is that we have to invest in capacity. That is why the rail White Paper—which his party unfortunately did not welcome when it was published—proposes that an extra £10 billion be invested in additional capacity on our railways.
Has the Secretary of State been briefed by the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), about the public commitment given on television last May to me and to my hon. Friends the Members for Basildon (Angela E. Smith) and for Dartford (Dr. Stoate)? We were told by my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman), who was then a Transport Minister, that following statutory consultation our constituents would be given a reduction of 90 per cent. on the Dartford toll. Not unreasonably, folk are beginning to ask when the Government will deliver on that commitment. Discuss.
As it happens, that is something that I have been discussing recently. I can assure my hon. Friend that I have been looking at a number of the options for the fulfilment of that commitment. We will issue a consultation paper very shortly.
Why has the Secretary of State not been prepared to defend in Parliament her plans for the expansion of Heathrow? That is the third time that she has made what she has claimed to be an important announcement away from the Dispatch Box. Is she simply running scared of answering to MPs who represent people under the flight path, and will she explain why she is proposing to disregard her Department’s own report on noise?
I am happy to come to the House at any time to talk about the importance of aviation expansion. Heathrow is subject to strict local environmental conditions. The hon. Lady must know as well as any other Member that our policy was set out in the 2003 air transport White Paper, which supported in principle a third runway at Heathrow, as well as a second runway at Stansted, subject to the strict local environmental conditions being met. Last week, or the week before, we published a rigorous scientific assessment of how those local environmental conditions might be met in certain circumstances. An oral statement is not normally made in such situations; however a written statement was laid in the House, and as the hon. Lady can see I am happy to discuss the issue on any occasion—unlike the hon. Lady, whose policy on it is not actually clear.
We believe that four key environmental tests must be met before any Government can take a responsible decision on the future of Heathrow. When the Secretary of State’s predecessor gave the go-ahead for T5 he stood at the Dispatch Box—at least he turned up here—and promised that flight numbers would be capped at 480,000. Will the Secretary of State admit that thousands who have to live with aircraft noise on a daily basis will feel wholly misled by that statement, which she is consigning to history before T5 is even open for business? Will she confirm that her consultation document contains no clear or credible guarantees on capping the number of flights at Heathrow? Is not the whole consultation a sham, because—
Order. Topical questions are for the benefit of Back Benchers, so I expect only one supplementary from Front Benchers, or two when there is an allocation, but the hon. Lady had about five in there somewhere. The Secretary of State should answer just one supplementary.
I am disappointed not to be given full rein, because I was trying to work out what the policy of the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) was—to back or to oppose the third runway, in principle. If she wants to stand up and tell us whether she is backing her right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), or indeed—
Order. Those things are not the business of the Secretary of State at the Dispatch Box today.
My hon. Friend knows that I have great respect for his tendency to be able to talk rubbish. He is right; litter can make train journeys far less enjoyable. I do not think it is necessarily the place of Transport Ministers to tell rail companies how to keep their trains tidy, but it is incumbent on the train operating companies to make sure that they do not lose their necessary lead as an environmentally friendly mode of transport. That applies not only to the energy and type of energy used to move the trains; it should also take account of the environment inside trains. My hon. Friend is absolutely correct.
The hon. Gentleman raises a valid concern. Network Rail’s intention is to move towards a seven-day railway, but that will not be possible while possession overruns continue. I was a victim only last month when I was forced to move from a Pendolino Virgin express at Wigan because of a Network Rail possession overrun. Having spoken in detail with Iain Coucher, the new chief executive of Network Rail, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that there are plans to make sure that possession overruns do not occur or that, when they do occur, they are far less frequent, but he is right to raise that concern. We cannot move to a seven-day railway until possession overruns stop altogether.
All the patronage predictions for the service that the hon. Gentleman refers to show that over the next seven years there will be an increase in the number of people who want to use it. If he believes that the Government should be in a position to micro-manage the railways, to dictate fares to train operating companies—there is a price associated with that—and to dictate exactly where and when trains should stop, that is an interesting policy, but I suggest that he discuss it with his own Front-Bench team first, because they are absolutely opposed to it.
The Christmas drink-drive campaign was launched last week to continue to ram home the message that drinking and driving do not mix. The whole House will agree that, over the last 30 years, drinking and driving has become socially unacceptable. However, as my hon. Friend points out, there are still too many people dying as a result of alcohol-related crashes—some 540 last year. The police will breathalyse twice as many people this month compared with any other month. We are spending £1.6 million on the Christmas campaign. We had a special campaign in the summer, on which we spent £3 million, that focused on young male drivers in particular. We will do everything we can to get the message across that people ought not to drink and drive, particularly at Christmas. I am grateful to him for raising that question.
The consultation on Heathrow that started last week could result in nearly a doubling of the number of flights. The Department for Transport is setting up a number of public exhibitions, but both Ministers and civil servants have refused to attend a single public meeting. Will the Secretary of State please tell her Department that we live in a democracy, and that when 700 people are probably going to lose their homes and thousands of people their half day of peace, they deserve to have a face-to-face discussion and proper engagement with decision makers? Will she please instruct her Department to agree to come to the many public meetings that are offered?
I congratulate the hon. Lady on having a policy on Heathrow, unlike Conservative Members. At least we know where the Liberal Democrats stand: total and utter opposition to Heathrow—unfortunately with a devastating potential consequence for jobs and the UK economy. But she is right to say that we ought to have maximum public involvement, which is why we are writing to more than 200,000 local residents who might be affected by the changes. My hon. Friend the Aviation Minister has regularly been seeing many of the individuals and groups involved, to give them the opportunity to voice their opposition or put their concerns directly to him and have them addressed.
The Tories are so divided on Heathrow that they should call in ACAS. On the one hand, we hear total opposition, and on the other, the Front-Bench team talk about strict local environmental conditions—[Interruption.]
Order. I am not going to allow the Secretary of State to talk about what the Front-Bench team have in mind; this is about what the Secretary of State has in mind. These topical questions are for the benefit of Back Benchers.
I understand that the project in question has been given priority for expenditure between 2011 and 2015 by the regional transport board in the hon. Gentleman’s area. Of course, if other projects drop out of the programme, it is possible that that will be brought forward. We set up the regional funding allocation because we want local politicians to make decisions for their area, and to advise the Department for Transport accordingly. It is better that local decisions be made locally, and it is not incumbent on Ministers to overturn those local decisions.
My hon. Friend is right to raise the issue of carbon emissions and aviation. We are leading the argument in Europe and internationally to try to include aviation emissions in trading schemes, so that we make sure that aviation pays the price for its contribution to damaging the environment. She mentions airlines that travel extraordinary distances to avoid paying some charges. That contributes to carbon emissions, and obviously it is not in line with what we would like.
Nimrod XV230
I am able to inform the House today of the findings of the Royal Air Force board of inquiry on the crash of RAF Nimrod XV230 in Afghanistan on 2 September 2006. First, I know that the entire House will join me in paying tribute to the 14 service personnel who lost their lives in that tragic incident. Our thoughts are with their families and friends, and with the men and women of the armed forces, who I know feel the loss of their colleagues very deeply. I would also like to pay tribute to RAF Kinloss. That close community was hit hard by the Nimrod tragedy, but it has maintained magnificent support for the Nimrod crews deployed in support of operations in Afghanistan.
I remind the House that the purpose of a board of inquiry is to establish the circumstances of the crash and to learn lessons. A board of inquiry is a statutory process under section 135 of the Air Force Act 1955 and is convened for any air accident. It makes recommendations to the chain of command on its findings; it does not seek to apportion blame. I am placing a copy of the board’s report in the Library, redacted only to withhold personal information that we are required to protect under the Data Protection Act 1998 and information that could prejudice the security and effectiveness of the armed forces.
The report is a detailed technical document. I am conscious that, in the time available for an oral statement, I will not be able to do justice to all the issues that it raises, so I am making a supplementary written statement that sets out the board of inquiry’s conclusions in more detail, along with a summary of its recommendations and the actions taken by the chain of command.
The board established that on 2 September 2006, RAF Nimrod XV230 took off from its deployed operating base at 09.13 hours, Greenwich mean time, on an essential operational flight. The initial stages of the mission appear to have gone according to plan. At 11.11 hours, approximately 90 seconds after completing air-to-air refuelling, the crew experienced almost simultaneous fire and smoke warnings. Smoke was observed in the cabin, and flames were observed from the rear of the engines on the starboard side. Shortly afterwards, the aircraft depressurised. The crew commenced emergency drills and at 11.14 hours transmitted a Mayday alert and turned to head for Kandahar airfield. At 11.17 hours, a Harrier GR7 pilot reported that the aircraft had exploded.
A combat search and rescue team confirmed that there were no survivors. Subsequently, the site of the crash was secured for as long as it was considered safe to do so by a combined force of Canadian and British units. As quickly as possible, the board of inquiry was convened and travelled from the UK to the operational theatre to begin its investigation.
The board of inquiry has conducted a thorough investigation with the material available to it. Throughout this process the board has been assisted by other independent agencies, including two air accident investigators from the air accidents investigation branch of the Department for Transport. It has been unable to identify with absolute certainty the cause of the fire. None the less, the board has deduced the most probable area where the fire started, and the probable causes of the events and factors that led to it.
The board of inquiry concluded that the crash was not survivable. The cause was a fire that most likely resulted from escaped fuel igniting against a hot pipe in a compartment near the starboard wing-fuselage attachment—the No. 7 tank dry bay, not in the bomb bay as some have previously suggested. The fuel probably gained access to the pipe through a gap between two types of insulation. The fuel most likely came from one of two sources: a pressure-relief device in the main fuel tank, which may have released fuel during air-to-air refuelling, or a leaking fuel coupling.
It is clear that the crew of Nimrod XV230 faced a series of complex and demanding emergencies. Throughout this incident they acted in an exemplary manner, calmly performing drills initiated by their captain in an attempt to save their aircraft. All are a credit to their respective services and to their families. I am sure the whole House will join me in honouring their bravery and their professionalism.—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]
This was a tragic accident, but there were a number of contributory factors that the board has identified. Both fuel and hot air components are present together in the No. 7 tank dry bay. The underestimation of that hazard was considered by the board as a contributory factor. Further possible contributory factors that could not be discounted and which are subject to further investigation include the fuel and hot air systems maintenance policy, the age of some of the component parts, the lack of a fire detection and suppression system within the No. 7 tank dry bay, and the failure to consider the cumulative effects of a number of changes to the air-to-air refuelling capability when it was formally incorporated into the aircraft in 1989.
The board found no evidence that the maintenance or servicing conducted on the aircraft was a cause or contributory factor in the loss of XV230. It also concluded that, while the continued commitment to long-term operations places pressure on the Nimrod force, there was no evidence that this was a cause or factor in the loss of the aircraft.
It is clear to me that some of the findings of the board of inquiry identify failings for which the Ministry of Defence must take responsibility. On behalf of the MOD and the Royal Air Force, I would like to say sorry for those failings to the House, but most of all to the families of those who lost their lives.
At the time of the accident, the Department took action to ensure that a similar scenario could not occur again on the Nimrod aircraft. Those measures have been revised as the board’s findings have emerged. The chain of command has accepted the majority of the board’s recommendations and continues to pursue the outstanding recommendations made by the board to enhance the safety of our aircraft.
The hot air system remains switched off so that there is no hot pipe against which any fuel could ignite, and we have an enhanced inspection regime to examine for any sign of fuel leakage. QinetiQ has conducted an independent investigation into the fuel system and confirmed that, in light of the measures taken since the crash, the fuel system is safe to operate. Air-to-air refuelling has also been suspended subject to further investigation. The Chief of the Air Staff’s professional judgment is that the Nimrod fleet is safe to fly. I have accepted his advice.
By its nature, the board was not in a position to go into the history of those arrangements or to assess where responsibility lies for failures. I do not underestimate the difficulties that face those responsible for assuring aircraft safety. Flying will never be risk-free. But I do believe that the families of those who died are due more of an explanation of the history than the board of inquiry could be expected to provide. I have therefore decided to put in place a review of the arrangements for assuring the airworthiness and safe operation of the Nimrod aircraft over its service life; to assess where responsibility lies for any failures; to assess more broadly the process for compiling safety cases, taking account of best practice in the civilian and military world; and to make recommendations.
I intend that the review should be led by a senior Queen’s counsel assisted by technical experts on aviation systems, who will examine all relevant papers and interview all those in a position to assist. BAE Systems, the aircraft designer, and QinetiQ, which supported the Department in consideration of the safety case findings, have agreed that the review will have their companies’ full co-operation. The review will be able to recommend a full public inquiry if that is considered necessary and will keep the families of those who died informed of progress. We will publish the findings of the review, subject to considerations of operational security. I shall make a statement shortly confirming the membership and terms of reference of the review.
All the families have already received lump-sum payments through the armed forces pension scheme or the armed forces compensation scheme and, where appropriate, ongoing pensions are now in payment. However, we are also in contact with lawyers representing a number of the families over additional claims for common law compensation. I have directed that those claims be assessed and settled as quickly as possible and I have directed that substantial interim payments be made to those families where appropriate.
I recognise that the board of inquiry report will be painful reading for many, but I hope that the families and friends will take some comfort in finding answers to many of the questions that arise after an incident such as this.
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement and for the briefing earlier today.
This is a grim day. I echo the Secretary of State in conveying the profound condolences of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and all Conservative Members to the families of those who lost their lives in this tragic incident, and in paying tribute to the immense courage and professionalism of the crew of Nimrod X-ray Victor 230, who gave their lives in the service of our country. Their role, and that of their fellow Nimrod crews, continues to be vital for military operations.
The tragedy should bring home to the nation the very real sacrifices being made on its behalf by the men and women of our armed forces, not least in the Royal Air Force, whose fixed-wing and helicopter crews are constantly exposed to danger on operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. I also thank the board of inquiry for completing an extremely thorough job in very demanding circumstances. Although it is clear that the board has been unable to establish definitively the cause of the crash, its analysis would seem to be as accurate as it is possible to be.
Two key issues arise. First, although the age of the aircraft itself may have been ruled out as an issue, the systems failures are clearly a factor of age and maintenance. With on average 40 fire-related incidents a year for the past 20 years and 52 fuel leaks in a six-month period last year, both the Royal Air Force and the manufacturer were acutely aware of the potential hazards arising from the Nimrod’s ageing systems. Secondly, the aircraft should have been replaced by the MRA4 four years ago. It is nothing short of a scandal that the new aircraft will not enter service for at least another four years.
As the Secretary of State confirmed, the report is detailed. Many detailed technical questions arise, but I shall confine myself to just six. First, why was the recommendation, made by BAE Systems in 2004, to install a hot air leak warning in the location of the hot air ducting rejected following an earlier incident involving another Nimrod? Secondly, is it true that the investigation carried out last year by QinetiQ found that repair teams were using out-of-date manuals and equipment, and that there was
“considerable loss of expertise and experience as trade specialists have left the team”?
If so, is not that an example of the dangerous run-down in Royal Air Force numbers, which are now 1,500 below strength?
Thirdly, since the hot air pipe running past the No. 7 fuel tank was effectively redundant because the requirement for an on-board systems cooling had reduced, why was not it removed or rendered inoperable before now?
Fourthly, the board finds that the fuel and hot air systems maintenance policy was a contributory factor to the loss of the aircraft. Why has guidance on ageing aircraft systems, which was recommended in 2006, not been issued?
Fifthly, if all air-to-air refuelling involving Nimrod aircraft is suspended, does not that seriously inhibit the aircraft’s ability to carry out its vital role in Afghanistan?
Sixthly, how does the Secretary of State intend to manage with the elderly fleet for the next four years, as fuel leaks continue to increase?
Does this tragic incident reveal the underlying truth: our armed forces are operating at a tempo well in excess of that for which they are resourced? I hope that the Secretary of State can dismiss as wholly untrue today’s press reports that the Prime Minister is looking for a further £15 billion of cuts to the defence budget.
Today, every serviceman and woman, together with their families, will look to the Secretary of State, in exercising his duty of care towards them, to stand up for them and demand that they have the resources to do the job.
First, may I thank the hon. Gentleman, who has an appreciation from his own service of the challenges that the Royal Air Force faces and the risks that are associated with the job that it does? His words will be welcomed by the RAF and especially by the families and communities that support it. They are appropriate words to recognise the scale and nature of the sacrifice that people are prepared to make and the challenges that they are prepared to face. I thank him for them.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the age of Nimrod, which, as he knows from the detailed briefing that he received, the board of inquiry raises and believes to be, in a limited respect, a contributory factor. The key issue, as I am sure he knows, about an aircraft is whether it is fit to fly. The board of inquiry confirmed that the Nimrod has a very good safety record overall. That is incontrovertible. As I said, the board of inquiry identified age as a contributory factor, but we need to consider that in the context of the whole report. It identified two components, whose condition may have been affected by age. Since the incident, the important thing is that we have removed the hazard by turning off the source of ignition, without which a fire is not possible.
I did not recognise the circumstances that informed the hon. Gentleman’s first question, but that may be a failing on my part. As with several questions that he poses, I am sure that he accepts that it falls squarely in the remit of the review that I have announced today. Those questions are entitled to an answer. They cannot be answered by the BOI and should be answered by a process of independent investigation, and I have therefore set up the review. The questions will be passed on directly to the principal reviewer when he is appointed. Indeed, any other questions that Opposition Front Benchers identify as needing to be asked should be fed into the process in due course.
In dealing with the comprehensive questions that the hon. Gentleman posed, let me deny that there is any truth in the story in the media this morning to which he referred. There is no truth in it.
On the basis of the BOI report and its conclusions, the three matters that one could have identified as contributory factors as a consequence of resources were considered and specifically said not to be contributory factors to the accident. They were: maintenance—not the system or policy of maintenance, but maintenance itself; servicing the aircraft; and operational pressures, about which the hon. Gentleman made, with all due respect to him, inappropriate observations. Those matters were all considered by the BOI, in an entirely independent fashion, not to have been contributory factors in the accident.
Finally, the hon. Gentleman raises the issue of operational effectiveness in the absence of air-to-air refuelling. That will of course restrict the amount of time for which the Nimrod can fly, but it can fly for nine hours without such refuelling. As he knows, other ISTAR—intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance—resources are being deployed to the operational theatre that could be used to gain the information that operations require.
I wish to express my condolences and sympathy to the family and friends of the fallen servicemen. The 14 men deserve our utmost gratitude and admiration for their service to the country.
I commend the Secretary of State for the way in which he delivered the statement: he always gets these situations right and strikes the appropriate tone.
I welcome the statement and the board of inquiry report, which is comprehensive and detailed. However, 14 months is far too long to wait, especially given that there is to be a further inquiry into this incident. That has not been fair on the families, who wanted earlier answers. Can the Secretary of State assure us that such delays will not be repeated in future?
Why were the warning signs—the significant increase in coupling and seal leaks in recent years, the blow-off fuel from tank No. 1 draping the side of the aircraft in previous sorties, and the gaps in insulation of the hot air piping—not heeded? Is not that a failure of the process rather than individual judgments?
I welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement of a review, which should help to provide some of the answers that the board of inquiry was unable to provide. Fundamentally, however, why are we still relying on an aircraft design that is almost 40 years old, is based on a failed civilian version and was originally intended for hunting Russian subs? Was the in-service date for the new MRA4 delayed because of failures by Ministers to make a decision? Are not the Government forcing the ethos of the armed forces to change from “can do” to “make do”?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his words of condolence and support for our armed forces, particularly for those most directly associated with the Nimrod force, who will find them welcome.
As I explained, the board of inquiry process is a creature of statute. It is required to take place, it is instructed by the commissioning authority, which is the command of the RAF, and it is entirely independent of Ministers and should continue to be so. It is an important process as it stands in that environment, uninfluenced by Ministers. I am not in a position to give the hon. Gentleman assurances in relation to the length of time that the board of inquiry has taken—about 14 months, as he said. As he will be aware, the commissioning authority reconvened the board when it had reported because there were unanswered questions that it wished to have answered. That is entirely how the process is intended to work. It is self-contained and does not report until it is complete. That is in the control of the board, and so it should remain.
Nobody should infer from what I have said that there is any criticism of the way in which the board of inquiry conducted its affairs or the time that it took. This was a very complex inquiry with a very small amount of evidence, and I think that it has done an absolutely excellent job with the evidence that was available in working out what most likely happened to the Nimrod XV230. I do not think that there is any room for saying that if it had done it more quickly it would have done a better or more appropriate job. I hear what the hon. Gentleman has to say about failures. He expresses in different words the failures identified by the BOI and that raise the questions required by the supplementary review.
I would like to deal with an issue raised by the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman that I did not address—the in-service date for the replacement MRA4. That has been delayed by about seven years. The principal reason for the delay has been technical challenges in the design and production of the MRA4, and we have had to extend the period of service for which we plan to keep the present MR2 fleet in use. I have to say, however, that despite the age of this aircraft, it is still considered to be the premier maritime patrol aircraft in the world. In other air forces around the world, older aircraft are performing perfectly good jobs.
The age issue is relevant, as the board of inquiry identifies, but the most important question is whether the aircraft is fit to fly. Not only because of its very good safety record, but because of the application of the recommendations of the board of inquiry and the lessons learned from it, and the institution of further safety measures that have taken place as a result of our increasing knowledge—particularly of this incident—I am absolutely clear that the aircraft is airworthy and is fit to fly.
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement, and I concur with everything he said about the bravery of the RAF crew. There is nothing new in the use of ageing aircraft, or the considerable extension of the life of aircraft, but by definition, older aircraft are harder to maintain, and the propensity for accidents to occur becomes greater. I wonder whether my right hon. Friend is in a position to do anything to bring forward the in-service date for the replacement of the Nimrod.
I thank my hon. Friend for reinforcing a point that I have now made twice, but which bears repeating. The calendar age of an aircraft is not an indicator of its operational utility, its condition or its remaining service life. The Nimrod is maintained to strict standards and if we did not have confidence in the aircraft, we would not allow it to fly. Moreover, it is common practice in military and civil aviation for what are known as ageing aircraft audits to be carried out to ensure the structural integrity of the airframe of an aircraft. A Nimrod audit was conducted in 1993 and reviewed in 2003. That process takes place every 10 years, and as an additional safety measure, we are extending the scope of the audit to consider the age of the internal components of the aircraft, such as the fuel system, as well as its structure.
As for the replacement Nimrod MRA4, the in-service date is still 2010. I have explained the reasons for the delay in bringing it into service. Although that is disappointing, it has been necessary to ensure that the technical issues that arose were resolved prior to production of the aircraft, which began last year. I am not in a position to suggest to the House with any confidence that that date could be brought forward, given that production of the new aircraft started only last year.
We have heard of the lack of a fire-detection and suppression system. Will the Secretary of State tell us what the review will cover? Will it be limited to the Nimrod aircraft, or will it also cover things like explosive suppressant foam in this and other aircraft?
Does there not seem to be a difference in approach to the safety issues that face us? When danger is discovered on the railways, no expense is spared to put everything right as early as possible. Is there a difference in approach when it comes to dealing with the armed forces? I hope that there is not. Will the review cover lots of different types of aircraft, and what will be the criteria on which the Secretary of State accepts or rejects any call for a public inquiry?
The issues that the right hon. Gentleman raises in relation to fire detection and suppression will of course be part of the review. Given the probable cause of the accident, had the risk from the hot pipe in that void of the aircraft been correctly estimated, it is almost certain that a range of options to reduce the likelihood of a fire would have been considered. The options may have included redesign, to fit a fire suppression system in the dry bay, as it is known, but it is much more likely that action to prevent the risk by removing the potential ignition source would have been taken, and that is exactly what we have done since the loss of the XV230.
The right hon. Gentleman asked whether such events are responded to appropriately when they occur. The decision to shut off that source of ignition was taken within a matter of days of the loss. There have been ongoing changes in relation to the safety of the aircraft in response to information as it emerges. We did not wait until the board of inquiry reported.
It is not my intention to conduct a wide-ranging review beyond the circumstances of this incident for a very good reason: I am conscious that part of the purpose of the review is to answer the questions that the families have, which are revealed by the board of inquiry. I am anxious—I have spoken to some of the families today, who also expressed this anxiety, which is perfectly understandable—that we should not have a process that delays the point at which they can achieve closure on the events, start to deal with their grieving and move on with their lives. I am very conscious of that. A further inquiry would of course be expected in the form of a coroner’s inquest into the incident. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will understand that I shall have to balance all those considerations.
In answer to the point that the right hon. Gentleman raised about whether we are concerned that the failings in the analysis and in the safety case for the Nimrod may have been repeated in other aircraft, we have asked those who have responsibility for safety cases to review them all in the light of the findings of the BOI, to ensure that there are no such failings in safety cases for other aircraft.
rose—
Order. I understand hon. Members’ concerns and interest in this statement, but I ask for a single question and a single response, so that more may put their questions.
I welcome the Secretary of State’s expressions of sympathy for the bereaved families in their dreadful loss. He is aware that they are looking for openness and transparency, yet were not included in the board of inquiry process. Will he therefore consider providing reasonable legal costs for those families, so that they can be represented at the inquest into the deaths on an equal footing with the MOD?
Because of the nature of a board of inquiry, it would have been entirely inappropriate for the families to be engaged in the process in the way that my hon. Friend suggests they could have been. The purpose of the board of inquiry was to identify what had happened and what lessons could be learned from that, in relation to the causes of the accident. I will consider to the issue that she raised in relation to the coroner’s inquest. I am conscious that coroners are independent of Government and that the process of a coroner’s inquest is designed to proceed in a particular way. I do not want to make decisions that change the character of a coroner’s inquest for reasons to do with the circumstances of an individual case, but I will give the issue some consideration.
I thank the Secretary of State for the advance copy of his statement and for the Ministry of Defence’s efforts in briefing the families and parliamentarians today. I also welcome the review that he initiated in his statement. The inquiry confirmed that the crew did everything that they could in the circumstances to save the aircraft. They were brave professional aviators to the last. That is recognised at RAF Kinloss, and by the entire service and civilian community in Moray. We pay tribute to the crew today.
The inquiry has found that the age of the Nimrod aircraft was a possible contributory factor to the crash in Afghanistan. That is a serious cause for concern as it impacts on the rest of the fleet, which is nearly 40 years old. Only recently, another Nimrod aircraft suffered a serious fuel leak and it has proved impossible fully to understand why it happened. It is also a cause for concern that the inquiry confirmed the loss of experienced engineering personnel from RAF Kinloss. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the Ministry of Defence will do everything in its power to restore confidence in the Nimrod fleet, which performs such a vital military role?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I also pay tribute to him as the MP for the area in which RAF Kinloss is based for supporting those families and the community through a very difficult time and for the very responsible and professional way in which he has dealt with me over this very difficult issue. I have no hesitation in giving him the reassurance that he seeks. The safety of those who fly in these aircraft is our priority; it is not secondary to any other consideration. I have given careful thought to the issue of age and to all the other issues identified in the BOI as contributory factors. I am assured—and I accept those assurances—by those who have the vast technical ability and experience to understand these matters, and having gone into them in detail myself, that this aircraft is safe to fly and airworthy. I would not allow it to fly if I did not believe that to be the case.
May I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement about the inquiry, in which he said that all those in a position to assist will be interviewed? Will he confirm that that includes all service personnel who have relevant information and, indeed, ex-personnel who flew Nimrods in similar circumstances in the past?
I understand my hon. Friend’s point. Part of the reason for making this announcement is that, around this terribly tragic incident and in the time it has quite properly taken the BOI to come to its conclusions, there has been a lot of speculation and partial leaks of bits of information into the public domain. I know that some of it has been extremely distressing for the families involved. I am seeking to provide an independent comprehensive process of assurance to the families and others that the questions they want answered can be answered. I believe that that process can answer those questions and I am sure that a number of people will want to contribute to it. It is not for me to describe in detail from the Dispatch Box absolutely everybody who should be allowed to contribute to the process. The reviewer and those who support him will have to make that decision, but I am absolutely certain that he will want to speak to the category of person that my hon. Friend identified.
When we hear, as we did from my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth), explanations of the cost pressures on the number of personnel involved with maintenance and when we hear that decisions to fit fire-suppressant kits had not been followed through, it is very hard for Members to accept that cost has had no bearing on the maintenance of this aircraft. Will the Secretary of State explain what he meant when he said earlier:
“The chain of command has accepted the majority of the board’s recommendations and continue to pursue the outstanding recommendations”?
What does he mean in particular by “pursue the outstanding recommendations”? Why have all the recommendations not been accepted, or are there cost implications for them as well?
The hon. Gentleman will have time to read the BOI report in due course. All I am doing in this statement is reporting on that report. The three possible sources of contributory factors—maintenance, servicing and operational pressures—that could have been created by cost pressures have been discounted by the BOI. I have already said and will not repeat where the failings lie. In my view, those failings are best pursued in terms of investigation through the review that I will set up. That review will go back a considerable distance because it will need to. It will, of course, be open to the reviewer to consider where decisions may have been made in relation to cost.
There were 33 recommendations, 21 of which have been accepted outright by the chain of command and the implementation of eight of which is being actively considered. Four have not been accepted. On recommendation 5—a recommendation to determine the specific life of fuel seals—the judgment was that a better precaution would be to take mitigating action through an improved inspection regime and a targeted seal replacement programme. Experience shows that the life of seals varies, and that simply replacing the seals at an arbitrary point may introduce more problems and have a detrimental effect on safety. One recommendation, on the utility of parachute escape on a Nimrod aircraft, is not being pursued as it is not considered feasible. Recommendation 20, to review the design of the No.1 fuel tank, is not being pursued because it has been addressed by the limiting of the amount of fuel in the tank. Recommendation 28, to increase the stock of BOI kits, is not being pursued because BOI kits are available from other sources.
I welcome the announcement of the review. Along with other members of the Defence Committee, I met Nimrod crews in Kandahar earlier in the year. They are doing a tremendous job in very difficult circumstances. I also welcome the announcement that the families will not have to fight for compensation through the civil courts, and that the Secretary of State wants to settle very early.
Rumours are circulating in the aviation press that both BAE Systems and QinetiQ informed the MOD about the fuel problem two years ago. When the review takes place, will those rumours be thoroughly investigated? If they are accurate, we need to know why no action was taken, and also why the individuals concerned made that decision.
Order. I asked for single questions.
There is a very straightforward answer to my hon. Friend’s question. That is exactly the sort of issue that the review will have to investigate.
The review is of course welcome, but will the Secretary of State address himself again to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot) about fire suppression systems? In particular, will the inquiry be able to examine American practice in this context?
I believe that the terms of reference of the review will specifically require it to look beyond our shores—beyond civil and military aircraft in the United Kingdom, and into the international field—when considering what recommendations to make.
Will the Secretary of State acknowledge that the new generation of Nimrod aircraft being built in Woodford, in my constituency, are technically and operationally far superior to the aircraft currently in use? Given the present operational difficulties and resulting bad publicity for the aircraft, has he a message for the 1,200 dedicated workers who are employed on the new MRA4 project?
The new MRA4 is exactly that—a new aircraft, which has been mostly designed as new from first principles. It has modern design features and safety standards including complete refurbishment of the fuselage structure, bomb bay doors and tail assembly, along with other significant safety features. Moreover, 94 per cent. of the parts are new, compared with those of the MR2. I understand that the aircraft is now in production. Testing and commissioning processes will then be necessary. From the information I have received—this is why I signed a production contract last year—those responsible for construction have faced significant technical challenges, but have overcome them and will be producing a world-class aircraft.
We are all desperately sorry about the 14 servicemen who lost their lives in this incident. The Secretary of State has come to the House to apologise for specific failings which he has identified, and for which the Ministry of Defence must take responsibility. What are they?
They are the failings that are spelt out in the BOI report, which I listed in short in my statement. They can be found in more detail in the expanded statement that I have placed in the Library of the House, and which will be available to Members. They are specifically failings in relation to the failure of the safety case to identify the nature of the hazard of the collocation of the hot pipe and a possible fuel leak.
The Secretary of State has confirmed that the fire-suppressant system lies at the heart of the inquiry, but bearing in mind that there are more than 40 fire-related or smoke-related incidents every year on Nimrods, surely the Secretary of State owes it to the House—and, indeed, the RAF—to explain why not one, but two, reports highlighting the problems and dangers as a result of the absence of a fire-suppressant system were ignored. The Government should come clean and say why those important reports were ignored.
Let me say two things to the hon. Gentleman. First, there have been fires on board Nimrods—there is no question about that—but this is the only incident of a fuel fire on board a Nimrod. Secondly, the hon. Gentleman ought not to leave the House with the impression that there are no fire-detection and suppression systems fitted to the Nimrod MR2, because there are: it contains a number of fire-detection and suppression systems, which are fitted as appropriate to areas of the aircraft where a potential fire hazard has been identified. Now that the BOI report has been completed, the Nimrod IPT—integrated project team—will consider forms of hazard investigation as part of the Nimrod safety case. If there was indeed a failure to fit fire-suppressant systems to the bomb bay—and I do not accept that that was a failure—that will be just the sort of issue that the review will need to look at. That is precisely the sort of question it must answer, and it would be inappropriate of me to anticipate the outcome of the review.
The Secretary of State is aware that Europe is trying to have a military aviation authority. Will he explain why Rolls-Royce, which has been pushing the Government to accept this standard for years, has been ignored? Will the Government sign up to the European military aviation authority, to bring military aircraft in line with civil aviation? If there is a problem, what is it? Will the Minister sign up to this as soon as possible?
I shall consider the issue the hon. Gentleman raises. I am not in a position today to give him a detailed response, but I shall write to him on it.
I congratulate the Secretary of State on the way in which he has made the statement today, and also on the fact that he has highlighted the bravery and professionalism of the crew. All parents of RAF personnel are concerned when their children go into fields of operation. We are very proud of their bravery, but we expect the Government to do everything they can to make the equipment as safe as possible. I note that the Secretary of State said in the statement that the age of some of the components might be related to the accident. Has he instigated a programme of speeding up the replacement of components?
In respect of those components that were identified as aged and that might have been contributory factors, we have instituted specific changes to the maintenance and inspection policy. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his words of support for a service that I know is close to his heart for the very obvious reason he explained.
Opposition Day
[3rd allotted day]
Political Parties (Funding)
We now come to the debate on the Opposition motion on the funding of political parties. Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.
I beg to move,
That this House notes with concern the corrosion of public trust in democracy following the recent succession of scandals over the funding of the governing political party; regrets that a comprehensive package of proposals to reform electoral law was not achieved by the inter-party talks owing to the refusal of the Secretary of State for Justice and the Labour representative, Mr Peter Watt, to accept a comprehensive cap on donations; observes the unhealthy increase in back-door state funding through the £6 million of funds allocated to special advisers and the funding of over 3,000 press and communications officers across Whitehall and its quangos; asserts that the Communications Allowance is an unhealthy extension of taxpayer funding for party propaganda that advantages the governing party; and calls for a comprehensive package of reforms to restore public trust and to support a vibrant local democracy and voluntary activism, which must include an across-the-board cap and annually a genuine individual choice for union members on whether they wish to donate to their favoured political party.
This motion is in two parts. The first refers to the current admitted lawbreaking, and the second refers to the need for—
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
I would like to finish my first few sentences before giving way, if the hon. Gentleman will permit me to do so. I shall then be happy to give way.
The second part of the motion refers to the need for comprehensive reform of party funding to restore public trust in the political process. It is important to separate the two parts. The fact that one party admits having broken the law, as it stands, is no reason—
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Order. It is very obvious that at this moment in time the right hon. Gentleman is not giving way.
The fact that one party admits having broken the law is no reason to change the law. The events to which I shall return in a moment provide no reason to reform the law—it should merely be complied with. Let us be clear that we are not talking about oversights or late declarations. We know that such things happen—they probably always will—and no system is perfect.
The Secretary of State for Justice will doubtless say that all this is being inquired into. That is meant to be reassuring, but one of the inquiries is being undertaken by a former Labour party general secretary—so we know that it will be totally impartial. Another inquiry is to be carried out by the former Bishop of Oxford. Although he is undoubtedly admirable and intelligent, this situation is the last refuge of the desperate. I doubt that when he was appointed to the Bench of Bishops he was told that he would need to be qualified in electoral law and forensic accounting.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
The right hon. Gentleman is not going to give way.
We wish the former Bishop well as he endeavours to peel away the layers of onion skin to disclose whose money this really was and how many people knew that the donations from Labour’s third largest donor were being illegally declared.
Let us consider Mr. Mendelsohn, who was personally appointed by the Prime Minister to raise money for the election that never happened. We are told that Mr. Mendelsohn sat next to Mr. Abrahams at a dinner in April, and according to Mr. Abrahams he knew at that time that the donations were being hidden. Mr. Mendelsohn admits that he knew, albeit from a later date, that the source of the donations was being hidden, but he maintains that he did not know that that was illegal, although he was uncomfortable—
I shall give way in a moment. So uncomfortable was Mr. Mendelsohn that a mere two and a half months later he wrote a letter—not to the Electoral Commission, as one might have expected, but to Mr. Abrahams. He says that he did so as a prelude to putting matters right. It was doubtless coincidental that the letter was sent on the very day that The Mail on Sunday contacted Labour with evidence of the lawbreaking.
I am most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. On the question of illegal donations being made to political parties, will he confirm that Lord Ashcroft is domiciled in the UK for tax purposes and can therefore lawfully make donations to the Conservative party?
I can confirm unequivocally that any donations made by Lord Ashcroft or any companies associated with him are entirely permissible. I just say to the hon. Gentleman that he should be a little careful where he is going—[Interruption.]
Order. Let the right hon. Gentleman speak.
Only one party is being accused of lawbreaking and only one party’s leader has admitted that the law was broken—just in case the hon. Gentleman has not got the message, it is his party.
Let me be clear that I am accusing the right hon. Gentleman’s party of lawbreaking, because Lord Ashcroft is not domiciled in the UK for tax purposes and is therefore a foreign donor. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm whether or not Lord Ashcroft is a foreign donor?
Just in case the hon. Gentleman did not hear it, I said I can confirm that any donations made to the Conservative party by Lord Ashcroft or his companies are completely permissible, properly declared and on the record. The leader of the hon. Gentleman’s party—the Prime Minister—who promised that things were going to be cleaned up has admitted that his party broke the law.
The right hon. Gentleman will no doubt have seen the article in The Daily Telegraph today by Rachel Sylvester in which she says that yesterday she made a telephone call to ask whether Lord Ashcroft is resident in this country and whether he pays tax in this country. Rachel Ashcroft—[Interruption.]
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Rachel Sylvester, a journalist for a Conservative newspaper, says that the public has the right to have precise answers to those two questions. So without dodging or evasion, are the answers yes or no?
I could scarcely have been more unequivocal than I was. If the right hon. Gentleman has evidence of any impropriety, he will no doubt provide it. The simple fact is that there is no evidence: our donations have been properly made and properly declared, and all have been made by permissible donors.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Give way!
Order. We are having a debate, but it is getting far too noisy in the Chamber, and that is unfair to the right hon. Gentleman who is speaking—[Interruption.] Order. Others will seek my protection if they are shouted down.
If further interventions from Labour Members are of the same quality, I would prefer not to waste the House’s time.
Does my right hon. Friend share my concern about the potential tax liability of people who have, knowingly or unknowingly, received moneys from Mr. Abrahams in a potential partially exempt transfer, or have a matter to report to the Inland Revenue in terms of their own tax affairs? Are they not now in a very vulnerable position as a result?
My hon. Friend makes the point clearly that when it comes to concerns about propriety only one party has admitted breaking the law—the Labour party—and that has many more ramifications.
My right hon. Friend should continue with his forensic analysis. It is obvious that the Labour party Chief Whip has got the rough trade out, but they are cocking it up.
I do not think that my hon. Friend meant that rough, but he has given great offence to the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound), who is very sorry to be left out. I shall respond to my hon. Friend’s invitation to continue, although I understand why Labour Members want to distract attention from their current concerns. That is understandable, but they will not get away with it.
The most unbelievable part of the saga is the contention that neither Jon Mendelsohn nor Peter Watt knew that the practice was illegal. I have to say that that is literally incredible. The requirement to disclose the identity of donors was the central feature of the 1999 Bill that became the Political Parties, Elections and Referendum Act 2000, and that is not some arcane technicality, byelaw or obscure rule. The breach of that requirement is a criminal offence, and anyone involved in political fundraising knows that. It is page 1 of the fundraising manual. Labour functionaries know that; after all, they publicly complain about donations made by—
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
It may be that the point that I am about to make is the one about which the hon. Gentleman is so excited.
The Labour party has publicly complained about donations made by unincorporated associations, such as the Midlands Industrial Council, although those arrangements are signed off by the Electoral Commission and the membership of the MIC has been made fully public. Despite that, Labour made a complaint to the Electoral Commission and received a response. A letter to the then Labour party chairman from the commission cleared donations by the MIC and explicitly referred to the central legal requirement that no one in the Labour party now claims ever to have heard of. The letter was sent in October last year, and states that the Act
“requires that where a donor passes a donation to a political party via an agent, the agent must tell the party the original donor’s details so that the party can, first, establish that the donor is a permissible donor…and second, record the donation with the Electoral Commission as coming not from the agent but from the original donor.”
Now, it is possible that the letter went only to the chairman of the Labour party and was not seen by the then general secretary or by anyone involved in fundraising and that they have all been operating in complete ignorance of what I repeat is a central provision of the 1999 Bill.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
I do not want the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound) to feel left out, so I shall give way to him first.
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. To be described as “rough trade” is rather a step up for me. He has been speaking about the transparency of donations. Many of us were amazed to hear about the Midlands Industrial Council, from which many Opposition Members receive as much as £20,000 a year. In the spirit of frankness that he is espousing, will he support the release of the names of all the members and donors of the MIC?
I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman will have to go back to the drawing board, as we disclosed all the names at least a year ago and they are in the public domain. I give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood).
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. Does he agree that a governing party in these circumstances should not misread the mood of the nation or the House? The nation expects an honest statement of everything that has gone wrong and of what the party will do to put matters right, as well as a little humility.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The simple fact is that Jon Mendelsohn and Peter Watt must have known that the donations were illegal—
According to Mr. Mendelsohn’s own account, he knew from September that the donations were illegal. Surely it would have been completely extraordinary for him not to have told the Prime Minister, whose personal appointee he is, that there was a serious problem—
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on that point?
Order. I do not know what the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) intends to do about giving way but it seems, Mr. Simon, that he is not going to give way to you. Some quietness would therefore be of help.
The problem goes further than that—
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
I will give way in a short while, but I want to finish this passage in my speech.
Peter Watt, the Labour party’s former general secretary, sat with the Justice Secretary in the discussions that we held over recent months with Sir Hayden Phillips. He pressed for greater powers to be given to the Electoral Commission to probe exactly the issue that we are debating today—whether donations had been paid through proxies. He was Labour’s registered treasurer as well as its general secretary. Before that, he was the party’s legal and compliance officer, and the rules and laws that we are discussing are the stuff of what a compliance officer deals with, day in and day out.
I have a simple question for the Justice Secretary. Can he really say to the House that he believes Peter Watt’s claim that he did not know that the practice was illegal? He must know as well as we do how hollow that claim must be.
On knowing or not knowing, with hindsight can the right hon. Gentleman tell me why the Tory party did not know that Asil Nadir was a crook who stole £400,000 from shareholders? Why did the Tories not send the money back? Why did they take $1 million from a Chinese drug baron? They never sent that money back either. Who is on the moral high ground now?
We know that things are getting really difficult for the Labour party when the House’s ancient historian has to come to its rescue. That is ancient history.
The Justice Secretary was the Prime Minister’s campaign manager, so can he tell us what he knew about the attempted donation by Mrs. Kidd on behalf of Mr. Abrahams to the Prime Minister’s leadership campaign? The Justice Secretary was not ignorant of the law; as he often tells us, he took the 1999 Bill through the House so he knows very well what the law required. Will he tell us today what he knew about the Abrahams donation proffered through Mrs. Kidd? What conversations did he have with his fellow campaign manager, Chris Leslie, who having, as he put it, “torn up” the cheque, helpfully passed Mrs. Kidd’s details to the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), now deputy leader of the Labour party? It is to that hospital pass that I turn now.
The longer this saga goes on, the more unanswered questions arise. The right hon. and learned Lady’s husband is the treasurer of the Labour party. Her defence is that she took donations only from people her campaign knew personally or who were registered donors to the Labour party, so who at Labour headquarters did her campaign call to check Mrs. Kidd’s identity? How was it that Baroness Jay, on behalf of the Environment Secretary’s campaign, knew that Mrs. Kidd was not the true donor and that it was some kind of proxy donation? If both Peter Watt and Jon Mendelsohn knew—as they admit—that Mrs. Kidd was not a bona fide donor, anyone at Labour headquarters who was equipped to respond to such a check on Mrs. Kidd’s identity must surely have known that she was not the real donor.
I turn to the curious incident of the illegal donation—we now know for sure that it was—to the Scottish leadership campaign of Wendy Alexander, or, as we must now call her, the human shield. Here again, there are more and more unanswered questions. There was clearly an illegal donation. Mr. Gordon, who solicited the donation, said he thought it came from a UK company and was therefore permissible. It then emerged that the campaign knew that there was literally a question mark over the donation; it appears in a schedule of donations, with the word “permissible?”—with a question mark—attached to Mr. Green’s name. We read that the schedule apparently originated from Wendy Alexander’s husband’s computer.
At first, Wendy Alexander said she did not know about the donation. That is not true. How do we know? Because it turned out that she had written a thank-you letter to Mr. Green, to thank him not for a donation from his company, but for his donation. If that were not enough, the letter seems to have been sent to his home address in Jersey, so it rather gives the game away. It is not for us to speculate about Wendy Alexander’s position, but we note that the message has gone from Downing street for her to stand at her post lest the fallout is even closer to Labour’s high command.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
I shall give way, and then I want to move on to the case for reform.
I am impressed with the right hon. Gentleman’s assiduous attention to detail in naming donors. Will he answer a question for me? How is it that Coleshill manor, the campaign headquarters of the Conservative party, is funded by the Midlands Industrial Council? It is described by the right hon. Gentleman’s leader as an intricate part of the Tory party but it is registered with the Electoral Commission as a regulated donee—
Can the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) explain why there is such an intricate web of finance for that centre? Why is it not straightforward and easy for people to understand?
The hon. Gentleman is struggling a bit, as I think the House can appreciate. All those arrangements are registered with the Electoral Commission, which has been through them all and has approved them. There is only one party here that has admitted breaking the law, and that is his party.
I turn to the discussions that have taken place over the last 18 months under the chairmanship of Sir Hayden Phillips. These followed discussions between Tony Blair and my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) in March and April last year, in the aftermath of the revelations about loans. We have consistently argued for comprehensive reform that would deal finally with the perception that large donors have undue influence on political parties. I have to say that Tony Blair seemed to share that view.
Dealing with that perception requires, above all, a cap on donations. Everybody now agrees that a cap of £50,000 would accomplish that. But there is an important point here: the cap has to apply to all donations, from whatever source—whether individuals, companies or trade unions. Sadly, it has gradually become clear that Labour simply could not agree to genuine reform. As Tony Blair’s authority ebbed away and as he finally departed the scene, it became clear that Labour is so deeply in hock to the trade unions that it would not be allowed to accept even minimal reform.
I will give way in a moment.
The key to this is trade union affiliation fees. I want to set this out very clearly. It is not straightforward territory and it is important that it is properly understood. Trade union affiliation fees currently funnel £8 million to Labour. We are invited to agree that those fees should escape the cap on donations because, it is claimed, they are individual donations. [Interruption.] I see Labour Members nodding sagely and thoughtfully, but that claim is about as far from the truth as it can be.
Trade union law requires a union member to be able to opt out of paying the political levy, but in most unions it is incredibly difficult to opt out and members are not told of their rights. [Interruption.] If hon. Members will contain themselves and remain patient, I will disclose the evidence for that. If union members do happen to find out that they have that right, they have to be quite extraordinarily tenacious to exercise it. Of 17 trade unions that have online application forms, only three mention the right to opt out of the political levy. It is true that a small minority of union members—
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
I want to finish this passage, if the hon. Lady will forgive me.
A small minority of union members have succeeded in opting out of the levy, but polling has consistently shown that fewer than half of trade union members vote Labour. More than half vote for parties other than Labour. It beggars belief that those people are cheerfully making a voluntary contribution to a party that they do not even vote for. Indeed, it emerged during our discussions that a Liberal Democrat MP was surprised to find in the post a ballot paper for Labour’s deputy leadership election. [Interruption.] We do not know who that hon. Member voted for. Completely unknowingly, an MP elected for a different political party had become a member of the Labour party as a result of the supposedly voluntary donation.
It does not end there. In most unions, if someone does succeed in opting out of the political levy, they do not even get any money back. Their union subscription remains completely unchanged. The truth is that in most cases—not all—the money given to Labour under the guise of affiliation fees is entirely in the hands of the trade union barons. After all, it is the trade union leaders who decide how many affiliated members they are going to declare. Let us look at the numbers. Unison is one of the unions that does put the right to opt out up front on the application form. More than half its members have exercised that right and decided to opt out. Other unions, such as the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, and the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers, declare that 100 per cent. of their members pay the levy, with no opt-outs whatever.
Even that is not enough for two of the biggest beasts among Labour’s paymasters. Amicus and the Communication Workers Union both calmly state that more than 100 per cent. of their members pay the political levy. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) for his research on the subject. Amicus shows that 109.4 per cent. of its members pay the political levy, and the CWU declares that 104.1 per cent. of its members do; I am sure that that would not have happened in the Health Secretary’s time at that union. That shows what a sham the situation is. We are expected to allow what are plainly block donations by the trade unions to be treated as individual voluntary donations. It is laughable.
As the discussions drew on, it became increasingly clear that Labour was simply not committed to delivering, or able to deliver, on Tony Blair’s promise of comprehensive reform. We went the last mile in an attempt to secure agreement. Eventually, it emerged that Labour was intransigent, even on the most basic of changes. We suggested that the right to choose whether to pay the levy should appear on the membership application form. We thought that that was completely uncontroversial and would go through on the nod. The law requires a right to opt out; and what could be more simple, straightforward and obvious than putting a little tick-box on the application form, so that one can make that choice when filling it in? We put that proposal forward—uncontroversially, we thought—and the answer was no. The proposal was unceremoniously rejected. There was no argument about it and no explanation of why it was turned down—just a flat, straightforward no. That tawdry story need not be the end of reform. We would rejoin the discussions tomorrow if the Prime Minister showed that he was serious about real reform, but so far he has not done so.
I am drawing my remarks to a close.
Nothing that the Prime Minister said last weekend changed that one iota. If union members had a clear, accessible choice of whether to pay the political levy, and a choice of which party should benefit from that political levy, it could be said with a straight face that the money was genuine individual donations, although even that would leave the unions in a uniquely privileged position. Any renewed discussions need to focus on donations, not on spending limits. All the scandals that have disfigured party funding have arisen from giving to parties, not from parties spending.
Before people start talking about the arms race, let us deal with that issue. The Hayden Phillips team made a study of spending trends over the past 15 years. It showed that my party spent less in the last election than we did, in real terms, in 1992. It showed that the bulk of the increase in spending by the major parties in recent years is accounted for by big increases in what the Liberal Democrats spend.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
No, I am drawing my remarks to a close.
In his speech at the weekend, the Prime Minister claimed, no doubt inadvertently, that Sir Hayden Phillips had recommended local spending controls. He said that Sir Hayden
“recommends spending limits at both the local and national levels.”
That was simply not correct. In the draft agreement that Sir Hayden circulated, which is now in the public domain, Sir Hayden said:
“A single overall limit will apply to the expenditure of each party, including all its constituent organisations whether national, regional, local or other. It will be a matter for the party itself to decide how to disaggregate its spending within the overall limit between the years of the parliament and among the various organisations in the party.”
I am sure that it was inadvertent, but I am afraid that what the Prime Minister said at the weekend was simply not the case; it did not accurately reflect what was said. How monstrous it would be if, at a time when the amount that sitting MPs can spend promoting themselves in their constituencies out of taxpayers’ money has increased so much, their competitors would be barred by law from spending money that they themselves had raised from private supporters. I know that Labour MPs and Lib Dems are feeling a little vulnerable at present, but even they must see how indefensible such a move would be.
There must be not a penny more of additional state funding for parties without comprehensive reform that addresses the concerns that the public have about party funding. This has been a sorry tale of lawbreaking at the highest levels by one of Britain’s major parties. For the second time in two years, the police are investigating a Labour Prime Minister. I hope the Minister will provide some genuine answers and will also provide the public with some hope that long-term comprehensive reform can eventually be delivered. Given the way that his Government have stumbled from incompetence to chaos to lawbreaking, we may have to wait some time.
I beg to move, To leave out from “House” to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
“notes that political funding reform is essential to the future health of democracy in the UK and that Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech said that the Government would bring forward proposals on the regulation of party finance and expenditure; regrets that a comprehensive reform package was not achieved by the inter-party talks owing to the unilateral decision of the Conservative Party to walk away from a draft agreement put to the parties by Sir Hayden Phillips, despite the fact that the draft agreement faithfully reflected recommendations in Sir Hayden’s 15th March 2007 Report, which they”—
the Conservatives—
“had earlier welcomed; and urges all parties to engage constructively in order to achieve lasting reform in the public interest.”.
Let me begin with a proposition that, I hope, receives the approbation of Members on both sides of the House. In any modern society a well functioning democracy depends critically on the vibrancy of its political parties. It is the parties that are able to offer clear choices to the electorate. In turn, the activities of those political parties have to be paid for. Democracy does not come free.
Until the last quarter of the 19th century, British politics was famously corrupt, but the introduction of the secret ballot and then of funding limits led to a rapid change in the activities of parties and to the conduct of elections—a change that has been sustained to the present day. Yes, there have been some well publicised problems, and in some cases, as we have heard, breaches of the law, which have occurred over the past 15 years and, by turn, have affected all the main parties and whose impact I do not seek to minimise.
However, in comparison with our own history and with many comparable countries today, our party politics is clean, there is a remarkable absence of corruption, and almost everyone who gives to a political party, whether in large amounts or small, does so not to gain undue favour, but because they are committed to the principles of that party and regard it as their civic duty to support it. But it is right, too, that when issues have arisen, the House has sought to deal with them and, whenever possible, to do so on a consensual basis.
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. Last week, when the Prime Minister said that unlawful activities had taken place, he said that the money would be returned. Has the £650,000 left Labour party accounts, and where is it now?
I cannot answer that question; I do not know is the answer.
Perhaps I can ask a question that the Secretary of State can answer. He piloted the 1999 Bill so will he tell us in what circumstances an illegal donation to a political party is not sent back to the donor, but forfeited to the Electoral Commission?
We have made it very clear that the donation will be sent back, and the law is very clear. May I just say this? A number of questions have been raised by the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude), and will no doubt be raised by others, in respect of what is unacceptable and plainly unlawful, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has said. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned internal party inquiries, and that is quite right, but he omitted to mention that there is currently an inquiry by the Electoral Commission and also by the police. It would be improper for me to seek to answer questions that should properly be a matter for the police and for the Electoral Commission.
Does my right hon. Friend know what the following have in common: Tanbridge, the East Surrey Business Club, the Midlands Industrial Council, which is an unincorporated association, Westminster Circle, Conway Patrons Club, the 66 Club, the Ladies Luncheon Club, Marginal Magic and the Chelwood Club? Here is a clue—
Order. That is enough for the Secretary of State to be getting on with.
I suspect that they have something to do with the Conservative party.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
I will in a moment, but let me first make some progress.
We had committed to introducing legislation to oblige political parties to declare the sources of all donations above a minimum figure and to banning foreign funding. When we came to government in 1997, the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, widened the terms of reference of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. I point out to Conservative Members that throughout the 1990s we were seeking a full-scale inquiry into party funding in the face of the substantial scandals that were emerging among those on their Benches. A full-scale independent inquiry was consistently refused.
As I said, when we came in, the committee’s terms of reference were widened so that it could conduct a major inquiry on those matters. Under the chairmanship of Lord Neill of Bladen, it reported in October 1998. I worked closely with other parties to achieve broad agreement on its recommendations, and the legislative result was the Political Party, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. The 2000 Act was the first comprehensive reform of the regulation of political parties for more than a century, and I am proud that it fell to that Administration to achieve it. On the whole, as subsequent reviews have shown, it has worked well, although not as well as we had hoped. In one key area—that of local spending—it has had unintended consequences.
Will the Secretary of State say why the Prime Minister’s campaign tore up the cheque from Mrs. Kidd, but recommended her as a possible donor to the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman)?
I shall be happy to tell the Electoral Commission and the police should they ask that. We will wait until the inquiry is made.
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
I hope that it is a point of order.
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it in order for Conservative Members to make interjections without declaring an interest in respect of donations from secretive patrons’ clubs and others?
It is up to Members what declarations they make.
Do the Lord Chancellor and the Government anticipate making acting in good faith a reasonable defence in the next criminal justice Bill?
I notice that the Conservative party has adopted a holier-than-thou approach on this issue. Its Members are now saying that there is one approach for the Labour party and another for them. Yesterday, the leader of the Conservative party was asked about some of these matters and said, “You know, that was a completely innocent mistake. The rules are quite complex in some places and when you are asking, say, every Conservative association to make sure that every donation it gets has got to be properly declared to the Electoral Commission and all the rest of it, you are going to get mistakes.” So there are mistakes by the Conservative party, but, apparently, much more egregious errors by us.
It is gracious of my right hon. Friend to give way. On innocent mistakes, Lord Ashcroft promised in 2000 that he would clarify his tax domiciliary status, his residence and where he pays tax. It is now 2007 and the matter has still not been clarified by him or by the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude), who ducked the question disgracefully. Is that an honest mistake or something rather more sinister?
That is not a question that I can answer, but I noticed that, when the right hon. Member for Horsham was asked about the matter, he had carefully rehearsed replies, which failed to answer the direct question.
As the right hon. Gentleman said, the Government decided, with all-party support, to establish in March 2006 a further review of the funding of political parties, led by Sir Hayden Phillips. Along with the right hon. Member for Horsham, the hon. Members for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) and for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) and others, I have been heavily involved in that review. I express my admiration of Sir Hayden for the skill, professionalism and patience that he brought to the task.
Consequent to the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Simon), may I draw my right hon. Friend’s attention to Rachel Sylvester’s comments in The Daily Telegraph today? She wrote:
“The problem is that Lord Ashcroft chooses not to say publicly whether he is resident, and pays tax, in this country. I rang his office yesterday to ask the question again. ‘It is a private matter,’ was the response of his spokesman. But it isn’t. People who fund political parties should live in this country and contribute to the public services they hope to shape.”
As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Simon), we noted that the answers from the right hon. Member for Horsham were carefully phrased.
Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that any reforms that he introduces ensure that no rich business people can buy a party’s manifesto? I refer to the fact that Brian Souter, the owner of Stagecoach buses, gave the Scottish National party £500,000, only to find that the party dropped its proposal to reregulate the bus industry. My question will not cost £1 million, but the incident seems to me to be one of cash for favours.
Yes is the answer to the question.
rose—
Of course, I will give way, but I want to make some progress first.
Sir Hayden published an interim report in October 2006 and a final set of proposals in March 2007, which formed the basis for intensive discussions led by him, with a view to securing detailed, all-party agreement on the way forward. In that, we were helped by an agreed, unanimous report by the Constitutional Affairs Committee in December last year.
Sir Hayden’s report dealt with four sets of issues: the Electoral Commission and the regulatory framework; spending limits; donation limits; and state funding. On the first, there is all-party agreement, backed by the Constitutional Affairs Committee and the recent report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. All agree that the Electoral Commission should have a tighter focus on the regulation of political parties and the conduct of elections, and that it should be more proactive in policing the system overall. Reforms to that end will be included in legislation.
The second issue is spending limits. When the original reforms were introduced in 1883, election campaigns were conducted over a relatively short period, and almost exclusively locally. However, huge sums were spent—equivalent to well over £100 million at today’s prices. Those limits worked well so long as campaigning was mainly confined to local constituency campaigns, but with the development of national campaigning from the late 1950s onwards, the old regulatory system became very defective.
On the subject of the complicated mechanism that my right hon. Friend mentions, I am sure that the right hon. Member for Horsham did not mean to mislead the House earlier when he stated, in reply to my intervention, that all members of the Midlands Industrial Council had had their names published, given that we hear that the names were still emerging as recently as two hours ago. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is either confusion or just coincidence?
The simple truth on unincorporated associations such as the Midlands Industrial Council is that they have been used, albeit lawfully, as a means of avoiding disclosing the identity of the original donors. That is why Hayden Phillips’s Committee recommended—and we will do this—that the identity of beneficial donors to unincorporated associations should be made clear.
To help the House in relation to what the right hon. Gentleman has just said, could he confirm the tax status of Lord Mittal and of Sir Ronald Cohen?
An individual’s tax status is a matter for them and for the Inland Revenue and the Electoral Commission.
Neill looked very carefully at the question of overall spending limits and said that the majority of his Committee had concluded—
Order. The Secretary of State is not giving way. I ask again for calm.
Neill said that the majority of his Committee had concluded, at paragraph 10.31 that
“the imposition of national spending limits on political parties and other campaigning individuals, is justified”.
It must be a self-evident truth that the overall level of spending is the key driver of the demand for donations and of the problems that may arise over those donations. The Constitutional Affairs Committee was eloquent in warning about an escalating arms race between the parties, stating correctly that
“where the regulatory environment permits it the spending trends are all upwards”.
The Committee recommended that there should be a
“tighter cap on overall party spending”.
In his March report, Sir Hayden Phillips commented:
“However robust the controls we put in place over the sources of the parties’ income, the current problems of financial instability must be expected to recur unless we also do more to curb campaign spending. We should limit it through generally accepted, easily understood, and enforceable rules.”
It is true that, as the right hon. Member for Horsham said, spending had come down from the ludicrous levels that were reached in the early 1990s—that is thanks to our Act, not the Conservatives’ proposals. However, as Hayden Phillips recited, spending between the two parties at the last election stood at some £90 million in the year of the election, when it should have been a combined limit of £40 million, and some £60 million the year before leaving aside local expenditure. He went on to say:
“A vigorous election is good for democracy and we should not expect it to be cheap. But this sharp upturn is excessive and it cannot be in the public interest.”
He concluded:
“PPERA sought to control the level of spending, but it has proved inadequate to the challenge. Parties may be complying with the letter of the law, but not the spirit. The current approach is built around a definition of ‘campaign expenditure’ which is at one and the same time inadequate and excessively complicated. One expert has compared it, aptly, to building a dam in the middle of a stream. As the CASC noted in its report, the time has come for a new approach…All parties accept that campaign spending in an election period must be cut, and the cuts made to stick.”
He added:
“Spending limits could be set to embrace all national and local party spending, with the national party held accountable for delivering an auditable set of consolidated accounts demonstrating compliance with the limits.”
Does the Secretary of State accept that it is ludicrous for an inquiry is to report to someone—the Leader of the House—who is herself under investigation for the receipt of illegal donations?
No. The Labour party inquiry will report to the national executive committee.
My right hon. Friend is rightly considering further legislation, but when he brought in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, what prompted him to conclude that that legislation was necessary? We have heard about Chinese heroin barons and about Asil Nadir, but was it the research that revealed that 50 per cent. of peerages and knighthoods went to directors of companies that had given donations to the Conservative party?
My hon. Friend is entirely right. There was widespread concern, and Conservative Members have extremely short memories about unacceptable practices that took place in the Conservative party, above all, at that time. That was why we set up the inquiry under the chairmanship of Lord Neill, and we delivered on it on an all-party basis.
On Sunday, Labour Ministers said that the money from David Abrahams had been paid back. The Secretary of State says that he does not know whether it has been paid back. Labour Back Benchers have been free to smear Lord Ashcroft on his tax status, but the Secretary of State says that he does not know the tax status of Lakshmi Mittal or Sir Ronald Cohen. Does the Secretary of State feel that he has come to this debate properly prepared?
I was answering a specific question about two donors whose tax status had never been an issue. It is Lord Ashcroft who has clearly raised questions about his own tax status that so far he has refused to answer.
The right hon. Gentleman is going through the Hayden Phillips recommendations and it must be obvious to all reasonable people that the three political parties should feel obliged to reach an agreement along the lines of those recommendations as quickly as possible in order to restore some confidence in our political system. Would he move on to the key point of how trade union block grants should be treated under any system? Is he content to say that members of trade unions should be allowed to contribute like anyone else, giving voluntary contributions, and subject to the same overall limits that every other individual ought to be subject to?
I am extremely grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for what he has just said. He said that it is important that all parties move ahead to implement the Hayden Phillips recommendations. That is exactly our position and that of the Liberal Democrats, but it is not the position of the Conservative party. What is absolutely clear is that donation limits are an issue, and I shall come to the issue of trade union contributions. However, the fundamental issue that Hayden Phillips raised alongside those two was that of spending limits. The Conservative party was signed up to overall spending limits. When I made my oral statement on 15 March on the publication of Hayden Phillips’s report, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May), speaking for the Conservative party, said:
“We accept his main recommendations...we are happy to discuss spending caps on all year round non-election campaigning and proposals for tighter controls on third-party expenditure”.—[Official Report, 15 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 469.]
The right hon. Member for Horsham endorsed that. It is, therefore, something of a surprise to all of us engaged in those negotiations—I am glad to hear that the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) does not take the view of his party leader—to hear the Leader of the Opposition say that he does not believe
“a global spending limit year by year is right or necessary”.
If the right hon. Member for Horsham is now ready to stand up and say that he accepts what he and the right hon. Member for Maidenhead accepted on 15 March, and not the position of the Leader of the Opposition, we can make good and consensual progress on this issue.
No, no. I want the right hon. Member for Horsham to intervene.
Let me say to the right hon. Gentleman about this stuff on Government press offices, the communications allowance and so on, that if the only issue between us is whether there should be a discount for incumbency, we are happy to talk about it, but the truth is very different.
I do not mind the right hon. Gentleman dilating on this matter because I am a general supporter of the Hayden Phillips recommendations. However, the right hon. Gentleman has to answer the point about trade unions. It seems to most people in the country that that is the principal obstacle standing in the way of what is otherwise an obviously desirable agreement.
I said that I would come to that and I will. But I will also say to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that he understands the point, which the Conservative party leadership now does not—it had a different point of view six months ago—which is that the key driver of donations is the totality of spending. [Interruption.] Of course there is an arms race, and there has been one for many years. We sought better to control that in the 2000 Act. We controlled it somewhat, but not sufficiently. Unless we accept what the Constitutional Affairs Committee recommended and what is explicit in Hayden Phillips’s proposal, we shall not be able to secure far better control of overall spending and donations, which is what the whole House and, I hope, the whole country wishes.
Will the Secretary of State give way?
No.
Let me come to the issue of donation limits. Neill considered whether donation limits should be established back in his 1998 report, but came down firmly against them. The Liberal Democrats have consistently argued for them, but Neill’s view was shared by both the Conservative and Labour parties, so no provision was made in the 2000 legislation. In the light of Sir Hayden Phillips’s review, both parties now accept the case for such limits. Sir Hayden recommended that limits should initially be set at £250,000, reducing over a number of years to £50,000.
I said that I would come to the matter of trade union affiliation fees, which is exercising the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe and others. I said at the outset of this speech that we all had to have a care for the health of our political parties. We should also have a care for the fact that the history and current structure of each party is different. I learned a lot about how the other two parties operate—each of them is different—and I think that those present learned a lot about my party, too. In particular, they learned that, far from sitting around at the end of the 19th century deciding which party to support, the trade unions decided with others to form their own party, which in time became the Labour party.
On the question of different political parties having different structures, will my right hon. Friend turn his attention to the Tory golfing society, which appears to donate to a number of Conservative associations? May we have a transparent system for such societies, so that we can see whether any of their members actually play golf or whether they are simply funding mechanisms for the Tory party?
A very good idea.
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. Given that £127,000 has been given by trade unions to a number of Cabinet Ministers’ local constituency offices, including £10,000 to the Prime Minister’s local constituency office since the beginning of last year, does the Secretary of State not agree that the word “transparency” is meaningless unless the funding of political parties by trade unions is put on the negotiating table for full and frank discussion?
I do not know why the hon. Gentleman is busting a gasket saying that. The system is transparent—that is how he knows.
The Secretary of State seems to have missed the point. He does not seem to appreciate that the phrase “conflict of interest” comes into play and that unless the funding by trade unions is put on the table, the Cabinet and the Prime Minister will be accused of having a vested interest in the debate.
Order. Regardless of the office that any right hon. or hon. Member holds, we must be careful when we are making an accusation or a personal attack on anyone and ensure that we do not say anything that we might regret later. I ask the hon. Gentleman to be careful—I know that he did not mean it that way, but that is the way it came out. Let us just leave it at that.
The system is completely transparent—that is how the hon. Gentleman knows, as I have said. It is a great deal more transparent than many of the dining clubs that in the past have supported the Conservative party.
The hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara) talks about contributions from trade unions, but I wonder whether he would like to declare to the House his 50:50 Club contribution of £4,980 in 2006.
I look forward to that.
On the issue of the lack of symmetry in the constitution of different political parties, the Constitutional Affairs Select Committee warned that
“any move to change the nature of party funding must not stray into prescriptive devices to require political parties to organise internally in ways which violate the democratic relationship with other institutions”.
Sir Hayden Phillips endorsed that recommendation and the Select Committee was referring specifically to trade unions.
On donations, can the right hon. Gentleman help me? Is it fair and credible to claim ignorance of the law as a defence, particularly when it comes from a senior legislator such as the leader of the Labour party in Scotland? The right hon. Gentleman is the Justice Secretary, so what does he say to members of the public who look at this bizarre defence and expect to get away with it, too?
What I would say directly to the hon. Gentleman, who is so keen on devolution, is that my writ does not run in Scotland.
When a trade union is affiliated to the Labour party, the individual will—as the right hon. Member for Horsham parodied earlier—normally pay a small part of his or her subscription as a political levy, which goes to the Labour party in turn, but the individual has a clear right to opt out of paying, and many thousands actually exercise it. Trade union members can opt out any day of the week: they can choose which union to affiliate with and the union itself can choose to disaffiliate.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that outside the House, this debate is seen as bit like the pot calling the kettle black? What the British people want to see us do is resolve the issue of party funding. I assure him that they will not mind a cap on spending if it means getting fewer DVDs and fewer leaflets from political parties; what they would mind is state funding of political parties, which we should not introduce.
I think that there is probably widespread agreement with my hon. Friend on that matter. I am quite clear that overall party politics and our democracy would benefit if there were controls on both spending and donations, which is what Sir Hayden Phillips proposed.
Let us reflect on what Sir Hayden Phillips had to say on this issue, as it is central to the argument between our two parties. He said that
“much will turn on the treatment of the decisions by individual trade union members to pay money to the party to which their union affiliates. In my view these payments may be regarded as individual donations for the purposes of the new limit if, and only if, the decisions reached are clearly transparent and it is possible to trace payments back to identifiable individuals.”
That brings me, in turn, to the talks led by Sir Hayden Phillips over the summer. In July, we agreed that we would meet again on 3 September.
Can the right hon. Gentleman explain why more union members are affiliated than actually pay the political subscription?
We accept that there are some defects in the system, and we have made that clear. That is why we were ready to sign up to these proposals. If the hon. Gentleman and his party were prepared to do so, we could agree. This is a comprehensive package, as set out in Sir Hayden Phillips’s proposals at the end of August. A meeting was due on 3 September, of which all parties had good notice. It is a matter of record that the Conservative party cancelled that meeting at short notice and it then took eight weeks to resurrect it. As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) made clear, when we finally met on 30 October, the Conservative party walked away from the talks. I very much hope that the official Opposition will think again. We announced in the Gracious Speech that we would bring forward proposals in respect of party funding and regulation.
My right hon. Friend may be interested to know—I am sure the House will—that Lord Ashcroft says on his website:
“If home is where the heart is, then Belize is my home”.
Would my right hon. Friend like to comment on that?
Given that and all the unanswered questions raised by Rachel Sylvester, I am not surprised that the right hon. Member for Horsham was so unwilling to give a direct answer to a direct question.
Finally, let me deal with the issue of state funding. There has long been a significant element of state funding for political parties, through the free post and similar means and through the Short money, which we as a Government ensured was trebled and which now runs at £4.5 million a year for the Conservative party.
The Secretary of State has referred to various Hayden Phillips proposals. In fact, he has elided a number of proposals made by Hayden Phillips over a number of months. At the end of the talks in which I participated, I asked for all the papers produced by Hayden Phillips—including the background working papers and earlier proposals—to be published and put before the public. Why did the right hon. Gentleman flatly refuse to allow them to be published? Why will he not allow the public to see all Hayden Phillips’s work?
I should be perfectly happy for people to see it, but as the hon. Gentleman knows very well, the reason is that this was a matter for Hayden Phillips and not for us. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman knows that. Hayden Phillips was running the inquiry, and we were not.
The Neill committee noted that the arguments for and against state funding were “finely balanced”. The Phillips review concluded that there should be a degree of state funding, and presented proposals based on electoral support and the recruitment of members. We made good progress on three of the pillars outlined by Hayden Phillips in his draft agreement: on spending limits, on donation caps and on reform of the Electoral Commission. As the Prime Minister has said, we are yet to be persuaded of the case for a significant extension of state funding, but we recognise that it will be a source of continuing consultation.
Notwithstanding the clear and partisan decision of the official Opposition to walk away from the Hayden Phillips talks, I very much hope that they will think again. In the Gracious Speech, we announced that we would produce proposals in respect of party funding and regulation. The case for a comprehensive and fair package is overwhelming. It is set out in the report by the Constitutional Affairs Committee, and in Sir Hayden Phillips’s report and his later draft agreement. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister expressed his backing for it at the weekend. A White Paper is currently being prepared; we shall publish it as soon as possible, and present legislation thereafter.
We came very close to a consensus before, and I believe that with good will and with the assistance of Sir Hayden Phillips we can achieve one for the future. In any event, it is clear that we need the legislation. I commend the amendment to the House.
I suspect that any member of the public watching the debate and entertaining the perverse hope that he or she would be edified will have been sadly disappointed by what has been said so far. I think the country reasonably expects the House to treat a serious matter that underlies our democratic system with a degree of sobriety and perhaps, in some parts of the House, remorse.
This issue has been around for a good many years. Indeed, it was one of the subjects of the talks between the late Robin Cook and my noble Friend Lord Maclennan before the advent of this Labour Government, and there was a clear expectation that legislation would be presented to deal with what were perceived to be clear and mounting irregularities in our system. That was given added impetus by the Neill Committee. Let us remember why the Neill committee was engaged. It was engaged because of the Bernie Ecclestone affair—again, an example of clear abuse. The Neill Committee made a series of recommendations that eventually formed the basis of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, the legislation on which all this is based.
It may be valuable to look back at what was said by the Lord Chancellor in his previous position as Home Secretary in a statement on the funding of political parties back in 1999. He said:
“We came to office committed to reform. Our three commitments were, first, to require large donations to political parties to be disclosed; secondly, to outlaw foreign funding of political parties; and thirdly, to invite the Committee on Standards in Public Life to look into the wider question of the funding of political parties in the United Kingdom.”
He went on to say that
“for too long, public confidence in the political system has been undermined by the absence of clear, fair and open statutory controls on how political parties are funded”,
and he concluded by saying:
“By providing greater honesty and openness to our political system, we hope to restore public trust and to promote greater confidence in our democracy.”—[Official Report, 27 July 1999; Vol. 336, c. 134-136.]
I entirely agree with every word that the Lord Chancellor said on that occasion, and the tragedy is the degree to which we have fallen short of those expectations.
The hon. Gentleman can help that process by telling us on behalf of his party when it will give back the dodgy £2 million it received from the convicted criminal, Michael Brown.
I expected that intervention at some stage, so I thought I might as well give way to the right hon. Gentleman right at the beginning.
It was boringly predictable.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: it was boringly predictable. There has never been any question about disclosure of that sum; as a right hon. Gentleman, the right hon. Member for Warley (Mr. Spellar) will, I hope, accept that there has never been any attempt not to disclose the provenance of that money.
Let me read out the Electoral Commission’s statement, because that is the body set up under the provisions of the recently mentioned legislation to look into such matters. It says:
“The Electoral Commission has previously made clear its view that it was reasonable for the Liberal Democrats—based on the information available to them at the time—to regard the donations they received from 5th Avenue Partners Ltd in 2005, totalling just over £2.4 m, as permissible.”
It goes on to say:
“It remains the Commission’s view that the Liberal Democrats acted in good faith at that time, and the Commission is not re-opening the question of whether the party or its officers failed to carry out sufficient checks into the permissibility of the donations.”
If the Electoral Commission takes a different view—it has indicated that it will revisit this once law cases are complete—we will abide by whatever it says. That is the end of the matter. We have been perfectly open.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
No; the right hon. Gentleman had his chance and he blew it.
The concern is not only that the Government have fallen short of the expectations they themselves set out when introducing that legislation. I do not blame the Lord Chancellor for this, nor do I blame the plurality of Members of his party, just as I do not blame the plurality of Members of any party for the actions of a few within their parties. There is, however, a concern that the party of Government have systematically subverted their own legislation, and that is a very serious matter indeed.
The levity that has been displayed on the current occasion is entirely inappropriate. This latest episode has been described in the newspapers as a fiasco and a farce, and one commentator was prompted to employ a word I would not normally use in a debate: “dégringolade”. I have no idea whether it is a dégringolade, but I do think it is a tragedy. It is a tragedy not because of the particular circumstances, but because the consequence is further to undermine confidence in, and the standing of, not only the Labour party, but all the parties represented in this House, and that is a matter of concern to all of us.
Let me briefly deal with the present situation. There are questions that still need to be asked; the Lord Chancellor, or whoever replies to the debate, will probably not be able to give the answers, but they are questions that the country is still asking. I have no idea whether this is incompetence on a grand scale in the higher echelons of the Labour party or conspiracy—I think that the investigations will show that. I must say, however, that if it is incompetence, that is very difficult to believe given the calibre of some of the people involved and given the very clear instructions in the law.
The right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) was right to say that what we are talking about is not to do with just some petty rule book—this is about not the rules of a game, but the law of the land. There is not only a prima facie case of it having been broken in this instance, but that is also by the admission of the Prime Minister.
We hear that the Prime Minister’s party leadership campaign team rejected the donations from Janet Kidd. Why did it do that, and did it tell anyone else in the party when it did so?
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) has recently been pursuing his leadership campaign in the north-east, and that in doing so he has asked Durham police to look into certain planning applications without a shred of evidence that anything is amiss with any of them? Should the costs to Durham police of pursuing those investigations be considered to be a donation to the hon. Gentleman’s election campaign or should he be prosecuted for wasting police time when nothing is found?
The investigation will be a matter for the Durham police. If they feel that there are matters to be investigated, they will investigate them, but if they feel that there are no such matters, they will not investigate. That is the answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question.
The refusal of the donations by the Prime Minister’s campaign team is a matter of public interest. Given the climate of opinion following the cash for peerages affair, did the Labour party’s treasurer, chairman, secretary or chief fundraiser—or indeed anyone in a position of responsibility in the party—ask about the processes in place for clearing donations? Was guidance given to anyone who might be in receipt of such a donation? Were systems in place to apply the guidance given by the Electoral Commission? Does the Lord Chancellor seriously want the House to believe that the general secretary of the Labour party, who not only received the guidance from the Electoral Commission but was asked to comment on it, was ignorant of the meaning of the words that he read on the paper? He struck me as a very intelligent man who purported to have some integrity, yet he apparently did not understand the words that were put in front of him. I find that difficult to believe.
Was any guidance given to the candidates in the deputy leadership election about what their donation rules should be? If so, why did several candidates apparently not declare donations given, in clear contravention of the rules? What role did Mr. Chris Leslie play? Why did he put the Leader of the House’s campaign team in touch with Mrs. Kidd? Why did he turn down the money? Did he know the connection with Mr. David Abrahams? Baroness Jay apparently did know that a proxy donor was involved. How did she know that? Did she know the connection with Mr. Abrahams? Did she know Mr. Abrahams? Did she tell anybody else?
What precisely led Mr. Abrahams to want anonymity in the first place, given that he gave many donations with no recourse to anonymity in many other areas of public life? He was not reticent in his pattern of donations, so why was it only in the case of the Labour party that he wanted to hide a donation? Is it true that Wendy Alexander has been advised not to resign because to do so might have a knock-on consequence for the Leader of the House’s position? If so, who gave that advice and why?
These serious issues will not go away, but we have had many other donation rows—on cash for peerages, on the Bernie Ecclestone affair, on the Midlands Industrial Council, which has been mentioned, and on several other issues. Labour Members can cite several examples from a sedentary position; I am sure that it all helps the argument.
I give way to the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford).
I have listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s speech, but he really cannot get away with the answer that he gave earlier about the Michael Brown money. Has he been approached by any of the people who have suffered from the fraud by Michael Brown, and has the Liberal party given any consideration to how he came by that money and whether it is morally obliged to give it back?
The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting question, but I have not been so approached. Does he propose that the money be returned to Mr. Michael Brown, pending the court cases, or to some other person or persons unknown? The hon. Gentleman needs to think through his position.
On the broader issue of rich donors, I have to say that they are nothing but trouble, whether they give to my party, the Conservative party or the Labour party. That is demonstrably true and it demeans the political process when so much effort is made to woo people with large amounts of money. Apart from any due diligence that is required under the law, there are two key questions that the parties should ask. The first is how, and the second is why. How did the donors become as rich as they are? Was it by ethical means, and did it happen in this country?
On the point about rich individuals bankrolling political parties, is it not scandalous that the Conservative peer Lord Laidlaw, who is a tax exile, gave £6 million in gifts, loans and donations to the Conservatives, they brush that to one side as yet though it were of no consequence?
It is scandalous. It is also scandalous that any member of the legislature—of either House of Parliament—should choose not to be domiciled in the UK for tax purposes. The law should be changed to that effect. I listened to the circumlocutions adopted by the right hon. Member for Horsham and I fail to understand why he did not answer the perfectly proper question that was put to him about the position of Lord Ashcroft. However, the right hon. Gentleman was following in the footsteps of the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), who also found himself strangely tongue-tied on the subject in a press conference earlier.
When we are considering ethical issues and investments, I can give another example. I invite the Conservatives to take this one seriously, because it relates to them. They have received a series of donations from a company called Fidelity. The last such donation was for £25,000 in July. Fidelity deals with those who are creating the circumstances of genocide in Darfur. Darfur is a matter of great interest to hon. Members on both sides of the House and the Leader of the Opposition has often spoken about that issue—
Fidelity is an investment company.
So it is all right, then, to invest in the murderers in Darfur—[Interruption.] It is politics, someone suggests. Well, it may be the politics of the Conservative party, but it is not the politics of some of us. I hope that it will not be our politics in the future.
The second question that we need to ask about the big donors is why. Why are they giving money? Is it for preferment—
Did you ask Michael Brown that question?
If Michael Brown thought that he was going to get preferment from the Liberal Democrats, he was delusional. [Laughter.] The right hon. Gentleman underlines the fact that if people give large donations, they seek preferment, baubles, influence, policy changes or something even worse that comes under the heading of corrupt practice. The political process can do without that. That is why it is so important that we have effective caps on donations.
The Prime Minister has made it clear that the Labour party has apologised for what happened with the donations in question. Indeed, many of us wonder how the general secretary could have been so stupid. However, the hon. Gentleman must realise that he is on a very sticky wicket in talking about ethics and procedures, when it comes to Michael Brown. It is not every day that someone gives £2.4 million to the Liberal Democrats. Checks on the probity and sanity of that individual were clearly not made.
The Electoral Commission looked into the matter and said that the checks were all right, whereas it has said that the latest Labour party debacle was all wrong, and that is why it has been passed to the police for investigation.
I turn now to what we need in the future. It seems to me to be transparently obvious that caps on donations are only one side of the coin, and that we also need caps on expenditure. The third element that we must secure is stronger powers of scrutiny and investigation for the Electoral Commission.
That is why the talks with Sir Hayden Phillips, in which I participated, are the firm ground on which all parties can stand. There is no other, and it is no good for each of us, separately, to set out our own prescription and expect that to pass any test of objectivity. The importance of Sir Hayden Phillips’s proposals appeared to be recognised by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke)—
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
No, no. I am extraordinarily pleased that the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe stood up to ask, from the Conservative Back Benches, why on earth the parties were not working together to adopt Sir Hayden Phillips’s proposals. I accept that they are not perfect: for example, I should prefer lower caps than the ones that have been proposed. The Lord Chancellor was right that my party has a long record of wanting caps on donations, and I think that the Phillips proposals do not go far enough. Neither do I like the time scale, which I believe is far too elongated, although I think that that displays the natural caution of a senior civil servant more than anything else. I should prefer an accelerated procedure, but it is a matter of enormous regret to me that the Conservatives walked away from the deal.
Talk about the unions.
The hon. Gentleman, from a sedentary position, invites me to talk about the unions, but we did so and in fact reached a broad consensus about them. That was fine until June, but then something happened in central office—I do not know what it was; perhaps someone came in and said something—and then for some reason the attitude of the Conservative party’s negotiators changed and we were not able to have the meeting in July. When we came back, it was clear that there would be no conclusion to the talks.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, but what he suggests is simply not the case. We had reservations about the proposals all the way through the negotiations. We wanted an agreement so that that long-term, sustainable reform could be put in place, but from the outset we said that the question of union funding had to be addressed. During the course of the discussions, it transpired that the system of affiliation fees was far more backward, and far more of a racket, than we had realised. In those circumstances, the reforms needed to be more radical than was originally envisaged, although their goal—that is, genuinely individual donations—needed to remain the same.
That is where I do not understand what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. It is true that we found disgraceful abuses in the way in which some unions administered their political funds, and we dealt with them in the negotiations. We asked people to go away and work on those problems: they came back with recommendations and, as a result, the proposals from Sir Hayden Phillips contain ways to deal with egregious abuses of the system. For example, unions will not be able to affiliate more members than they actually have, or pay over money that they have not received.
Such abuses would no longer be possible, because the system would be even more transparent than the present regime, which was introduced by the previous Conservative Government to control union finances. Unless we recognise that the Labour party has had to move some distance to accept those changes towards greater transparency—and to accept the cap on donations from unions outside of affiliation fees, which is also an important part of the equation—we will not make progress.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
No. I am not going to give way again, and I hope that saying so will save a lot of time. The right hon. Member for Horsham negotiated with us and he knows that my account is correct, although I still do not understand what caused the Conservative party to change its position.
We wanted quality, not quantity.
From a sedentary position, the hon. Gentleman tells me something that we knew from day one of the inquiry.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
No, I have just said I will not give way.
This is meant to be a debate.
The hon. Gentleman tries me. I have given way to Members on both sides of the Chamber throughout my remarks, so it really is not acceptable to say “This is meant to be a debate” because I have not given way to him.
Order. It is very apparent that at the moment the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) is not prepared to give way to anyone.
I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker.
We must have proposals that we all agree will take us away from the culture of big donors. We must have proposals to deal with transparency and linkage in respect of trade union affiliation fees. We must accept that trade union donations beyond affiliation fees come within the rules on donors. We need real caps on expenditure, which need to be both local and national and both between and during elections. We need to end the abuse that has been growing over recent years, and which I tried to address in previous legislation that the Government did not support, whereby central parties spend large amounts in certain marginal seats on material that does not specifically refer to a candidate and thus falls outside the existing expenditure limits, but which is clear abuse of the spirit of the legislation. We need to give the Electoral Commission real teeth so that it actually becomes an investigating body rather than merely a reactive one.
The matter is urgent and we will not accept any party reverting to tribal type and simply trying to get the best deal in its own interest. We will not accept partisan legislation that deals with only part of the problem and not the whole. Consensus is possible and it should embrace all the parties in the House. I include the minority parties, which have an important locus in the matter. Throughout the course of the negotiations so far, I have said regularly that we must include not only the minority parties in the House, but also parties not represented in the House because they, too, have a legitimate voice.
I give way because the hon. Gentleman is from a minority party.
The hon. Gentleman has made a raft of suggestions. Does he think we need an anti-corruption Bill with teeth, which would separate donations to political parties from places in the House of Lords, or vice versa?
There is scope for all sorts of legislation. In the last Session, I introduced a Bill on corruption and there is a case for strengthening the legislation. I do not want legislation that could be construed as partisan, but something that will pass the test of time. Perhaps something good can emerge from the demeaning and disgraceful episodes of the past few weeks.
We need a solution that is fair, transparent, sustainable and effective. We need parties that subscribe to the spirit as well as the letter of the law. Nothing less will be satisfactory to an increasingly disaffected electorate or for the health of our democracy.
As chair of the parliamentary Labour party, let me begin by saying—
Yes. Of course, we are sorry. There is a degree of synthetic anger among Opposition Members, but there is not a Member on the Labour Benches who is not rightly angry and annoyed at being so badly let down during recent events. There is no doubt that puts us in a difficult position before the British electorate.
People watching in the Gallery and on television are probably dismayed by the tone of parts of the debate, which descended into mutual cat-calling—I may do the same in a moment—but it is worth reminding the House that none the less the public are entitled to expect that we clean up our political act and do so in a non-partisan way that is not seen to be in the interests of any one party or any grouping of parties. That is why, like others, I regret the fact that the Conservative party chose to pull out of the Hayden Phillips process at a late stage, having previously made a public commitment in the Chamber, which we thought at the time was a genuine attempt to be constructive. Sadly, that proved not to be the case because in the end the Conservatives’ vested interest outweighed the need to reach a proper conclusion.
As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) is not a leadership candidate, it will not be to his detriment when I say that I normally have a lot of respect for him. However, I think he dissembled a little on the question of Michael Brown. He said there were two questions to be asked—how and why. How did a rich donor become so rich? In the case of Mr. Brown, that question was not asked. Why was the donation made—what did the donor seek to gain? That question, too, was not properly addressed by the hon. Gentleman today.
More important, the Liberal Democrats should be considering not simply whether they complied with the spirit of the legislation in accepting the donation—I recognise that it was accepted in good faith—but whether it was legitimate to hold on to it when the money obviously came from crooked sources. They must consider whether their position on the matter is consistent with the cleanness and openness they now propose.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Liberal Democrat spokesman might have sounded a little less sanctimonious if his party were committed to pay back other creditors of Mr. Michael Brown from the donation it received rather than waiting for the outcome of a court case?
The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. In fact, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome said it would be unreasonable for the money to go back to Mr. Brown. He also said that he had not been approached by any of Mr. Brown’s creditors. Should they come forward, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will say that it is right and proper that those who were defrauded will be recompensed from Liberal Democrat sources.
Does my hon. Friend think that the spirit of the law allows political parties to accept money from someone described by a judge as showing “deliberate and pointed” dishonesty?
We have to look at the spirit of the law is. The Labour party is entirely in the wrong place at present and we have no excuses, but I hope that all parties will look at the spirit of the law.
I want to make two points. Today, the Conservatives were questioned about the role of Lord Ashcroft and whether he is a tax exile. They refused to answer those questions and Lord Ashcroft has made it clear that he will not answer them either. That completely contradicts the spirit of clean politics that the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) spoke about earlier. He told my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound) that questions about the origins of money from the Midlands Industrial Council had already been answered. That is not true and the right hon. Gentleman either knows it or should know it, because the MIC secretary, David Wall, announced that the names of new MIC donors would not be revealed. He said:
“If you’re asking me would we make public announcements when we have a new member then no we wouldn’t.”
That is a clear statement, so I invite the right hon. Member for Horsham to confirm that from now on, in the spirit of openness, the Conservative party will make it absolutely clear who funds the MIC and bodies such as Scottish business groups, Focus on Scotland, the Carlton club political committee, Fresh Start and many others. We know that over the last few years, the Midlands Industrial Council has given some £2.8 million either to the Conservative party directly or to Conservative support organisations.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
I will not, if my hon. Friend will forgive me.
If we are talking about openness and transparency, I invite the right hon. Member for Horsham to make sure that he operates on the same transparent basis as he asks of the rest us.
I want to put a slightly different hat on and talk about the role of the trade unions. The Conservative party would love to turn the debate on to that subject. Let me say this, without any fear of contradiction: the money coming from the trade unions into the Labour party is the most scrutinised money in British politics. The money given to my party and the one or two other parties that benefit from trade union moneys is so regulated that every pound is properly traceable. I say to Opposition Members that not only has that money not at any stage been challenged by the Electoral Commission or the certification officer, but the Neill inquiry said that it was satisfied with the way in which matters were handled. It is important that we establish that.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I will not, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me.
In this country, we have a democratic trade union movement—one that even Opposition Members should be proud of. Our trade unions are not like the fixed trade unions in other countries. The trade unions have never run away from the idea of modernising their relationship with the Labour party. They are making it quite clear even now—when the leader of my party spoke at the weekend—that the relationship will be modernised.
There will be discussions within the ambit of the labour movement on a basis that will make it absolutely clear to trade union members where their money goes. In the end, it is accountability to members, and transparency, that matter. If my party had had that level of transparency with respect to private donors, none of us would be facing the allegations and charges that we face today. In that context, I am very proud of the trade union movement. I am proud of its link with the Labour party—a link that we do not intend to break. It is important that the Labour party continues to maintain links with the trade unions. That is an important part of Labour’s democracy and the democracy of this country.
I make the following challenge to Conservative Members. The trade union movement has always offered to work with the spirit of the times and in the national interest. Will they ask Lord Ashcroft to do the same? Will they ask him to make it clear where his money comes from and whether he is prepared not to treat the Conservative party as a wholly owned subsidiary of Ashcroft enterprises—one that he has completely bought? Frankly, that is the only explanation for the Conservative party—under orders from its paymaster—turning away from the Hayden Phillips process.
Will the hon. Gentleman accept that the amount of money that Lord Ashcroft gives through his companies to the Conservative party is considerably less than that given by either Lord Sainsbury, who after all became a Minister in the Labour Government after being a major donor, or Mr. Mittal? The hon. Gentleman may recollect that there was outstanding a very substantial loan from one of Lord Ashcroft’s companies to the Conservative party, which got repaid in full with interest.
I would accept an awful lot more from the right hon. Gentleman if he would get Lord Ashcroft to make it quite clear where his money comes from and whether he pays tax on it in this country. That is the real challenge. Is the Tory party prepared to wean itself off the Ashcroft moneys and clean up its own house? In the end, that is the measure that the British public will judge the Conservative party on—not whether we can have an agreement across the different parties on a cleaner political system, but whether that agreement will operate only between the Liberal Democrat party and the Labour party, leaving the Conservative party once again on the sidelines, facing the allegation that it does not want to clean up British politics.
rose—
Order. I am sure that the House is aware of the fact that the 10-minute rule on Back-Bench speeches applies from now on.
The answer to the question from the hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Tony Lloyd) is that we certainly will be prepared to wean ourselves off the Ashcroft money if the Labour party is prepared to engage in meaningful trade union reform. Unfortunately, we have not seen that from Labour so far.
The occasion for this debate is another massive scandal about the way in which Labour has been funding itself over the past 10 years, but the real reason we are here goes much deeper and concerns both parties. We are here because a large proportion of the electorate believes that donations to political parties buy influence, access and honours—and, frankly, the public may be right. That is the canker at the heart of our otherwise largely uncorrupt system. I have never believed that the honours awarded in the 1980s were wholly unrelated to party donations, but since 1997 things have got much worse. It has not just been cash for honours. We have had Ecclestone, Mittal, PowderJect, Enron—the list goes on and on.
The Labour party received £36,000 from Enron. The Secretary of State seems to have forgotten about that. I notice that he did not challenge the reference to PowderJect and all the others, either.
There is only one solution to the problem of large donations: to impose a cap on them. That cap has to be comprehensive and binding on trade unions—which wield enormous influence—companies and individuals, including Michael Ashcroft. The leader of my party, to his great credit, has recognised that and has been prepared to propose bold reforms. The reason we are here today, and the reason we have not got a settlement, is that so far the Labour party has not been prepared to come with us.
Under the current Prime Minister, we have not seen any evidence of real commitment to reform. Perhaps I should contrast that with what happened when I was initially involved in the negotiations two years ago. Then, it was quite clear that Tony Blair was prepared to undertake fundamental reform. He knew how dangerous it was for Labour to become too dependent on the unions for cash. That is probably why he got Lord Levy in at the beginning, more than a decade ago, to find some big donors to counterbalance union influence. It may have ended in tears, but it worked for Tony Blair for a time. He always knew that if he had to do without the unions, he could, and the union bosses knew that too.
It is so sad that we have had no substantive response to the scandal from the current Prime Minister. His statement on Saturday was completely substance-free. It was little more than an effort to deflect attention from what was going on in his party. In some ways, it was worse than that, because he distorted the truth. He alleged that Hayden Phillips had recommended local spending limits when he had done nothing of the sort.
Order. I am not happy with “distorted the truth”. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to use a different phrase.
Are you happy with “misled the people of this country”?
Certainly not. I would be very grateful if the hon. Gentleman chose a phrase that is suitable.
I used that phrase only because it happens to be the one that the Prime Minister used, and that was not ruled out of order, at the Dispatch Box a few weeks ago—
Order. My concern is the words that are used in this debate.
I think that we can say that those listening to the Prime Minister might have found it difficult to work out exactly what he was proposing.
May I say to the hon. Gentleman, in rather more temperate language, that what he is claiming is simply incorrect? Paragraph B3 of the draft agreement from Hayden Phillips states:
“A single overall limit will apply to the expenditure of each party, including all its constituent organisations whether national, regional, local or other.”
Of course there is an issue about the discretion that will be exercised, but it is quite clear that Hayden Phillips has it in mind that local spending would be covered.
The right hon. Gentleman knows very well that it is up to each party to decide how to allocate spending locally, within the overall envelope. He also knows that he mentioned only one of a number of proposals made by Hayden Phillips. We want to put those other proposals in the public domain, but the right hon. Gentleman has flatly refused to allow us to publish them. All he has to do is tell Hayden Phillips that he would like to see them in the public domain; then the public could have a wider debate about all the other suggestions that have been put to us by him.
The right hon. Gentleman continues to contribute to the debate with views that any reasonable person might conclude appear to mislead. He repeated, mantra-like, the view that we started off with in the talks, together: that we were engaged in an arms race. He completely ignored the fact that during those discussions, comprehensive research was commissioned that shows the opposite to be the case. Hayden Phillips’s team produced a detailed, thorough research paper, which I am not allowed to show the House because the right hon. Gentleman will not allow me, showing that the arms race had been greatly exaggerated, yet he persists with that mantra.
Does the hon. Gentleman deny that the limit that should have applied to both main parties was £40 million, and that as Hayden Phillips recites in his report, £90 million was spent in the year before the last general election?
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the paper produced showed decisively that in real terms there had been scarcely any increase at all in overall spending by the major political parties? Indeed, the lion’s share of the increase that had been noted came from the Liberal party.
The main issue on which there has been obfuscation and denial is affiliation fees. They are not individual donations. How could they be? Some 55 per cent. of affiliated trade union members do not even vote Labour, never mind want to make a donation to the Labour party. The Labour party really has to make up its mind: either it wants affiliation fees to continue to be treated as a collective donation, in which case they will have to be subject to the £50,000 cap proposed in the negotiations, or they should be treated as individual donations, in which case individuals should be allowed to choose whether they give the money, and to which party. I note that the right hon. Gentleman is not prepared to get to his feet and respond to that point.
Another of the myths that we often hear is that breaking the financial link with the trade unions destroys the Labour party. That of course is complete nonsense. The head of Tony Blair’s policy unit, Matt Taylor, was refreshing in his honesty. He wrote:
“trade unions cannot be treated differently from any other donor…Individual trade unionists could be encouraged to join Labour directly…this could strengthen their relationship”—
that is, the relationship between the unions and the Labour party—
“rather than weaken it.”
The New Democratic party, Labour’s sister party in Canada, went down the road of reform and realised that it was extremely beneficial for it, both electorally and as regards its ability to formulate policy. Indeed, when the Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs went to Canada, Labour Members on the Committee were surprised and impressed by the enthusiasm for imposing a cap on unions’ donations, and for breaking the financial link.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will not; I have already given way a number of times, and I want to make only one more short set of remarks on what is needed now. First, in the immediate future, it will be difficult to restart talks until Labour’s position is more stable. I am still reflecting on the fact that for a year I have been sitting opposite Labour negotiators, one of whom has admitted systematically breaking the very rules that we were trying to improve in the negotiations. In our talks, that same man supported stronger investigative powers for the Electoral Commission. There are to be inquiries by Lord Whitty and the police, and we need to wait until we know where those inquiries are taking us, and with whom we will be negotiating.
Secondly, we must keep focused on the real source of the problem. When Tony Blair wrote Hayden Phillips’s terms of references, he made that absolutely clear; the issue was about donations and transparency, not expenditure. The then Prime Minister was right. The crisis has been caused by the big donations culture over many years.
The ball is now in Labour’s court. It must know by now that it cannot secure a meaningful or lasting agreement from the House while it is in a state of denial about the need to reform the union link.
The plain fact is that right now Labour is financing itself with the donations of millions of people who do not even vote Labour, never mind decide to donate to it. That is morally unacceptable, and it has to stop. The current treatment of affiliation fees is a legacy from a bygone era. In the 21st century we should have gone beyond the age of corporatism and collectivism. We Conservative Members want to work with Labour to clean up that tawdry area of politics, but to do so, we need a counter-party. If Labour comes forward with serious proposals to give genuine individual choice to millions of affiliated members, the talks can resume immediately. I very much hope that after reflection, the Prime Minister will deliver what is required to get the talks going again.
We have been asked to shorten our contributions. It will not come as a surprise to anyone in the House to hear that the debate has not helped us to advance towards a solution on party funding. No one expected that it would; Opposition day motions do not normally lead to a calm atmosphere. We are in the same position that we were in previously.
I intend to make what might be described as critical comments about contributions to my party, but first, as far as Lord Ashcroft is concerned, it would have been much better if we had clarified his tax status. It is simply impossible to believe that a person who bankrolls Tory candidates in marginal constituencies does not even pay tax in the United Kingdom. They will not say so in this debate, but privately a number of Conservative Members must have at least some reservations about the role that Lord Ashcroft plays, even more so if he does not pay income tax in the United Kingdom. As for the Liberal Democrats, it would have been far better for their party’s integrity if the £2.5 million had been returned, somehow or other. I was not altogether impressed by the excuse that was given.
When we hear about accusations such as those made today, at least we can say that no Member of Parliament is being accused of being paid for asking questions, and no money in brown envelopes is being passed around, so I suppose that, to some extent, we have made some progress. It should not be forgotten that the Committee on Standards in Public Life only came about as a result of the media’s exposure of what was going on in those days. Of course I accept that only a small minority of Conservative MPs was responsible, but their actions undoubtedly brought Parliament into disrepute. When the Committee was set up—it was known of course as the Nolan Committee, after its first chairman—John Major was clear that it would not be able to look into party funding; that was excluded. The present Government are to be congratulated on removing the bar on the Committee looking into party funding. Legislation was introduced and other reforms were carried out. Those reforms were absolutely essential, and many of us campaigned for them when we were in opposition.
Having said all that, I am concerned that my party has been lax—I might say far too lax—in receiving donations from very rich individuals. I have had concerns and apprehensions about that for some time. No, I have not raised it on the Floor of the House, but I did mention it on one occasion at a private meeting of Labour MPs. I felt that those donors, with some exceptions, wanted to be on the winning side in 1997, but they had no genuine commitment to what my party has always stood for. I understand that in all those circumstances, if they were willing to donate, the leadership of the party took the view, “Why shouldn’t we receive the money?”
The hon. Gentleman is a veteran parliamentarian and he is suggesting that 1997—year zero—was the first time that such benefactors came forward to assist the Labour party, but he will well remember the lavender list, Sir Eric Miller, Peachey Properties, Lord Kagan, Poulson and T. Dan Smith in the north-east, where Mr. Abrahams hails from. Is he going to whitewash everything that went before 1997, or is the Labour party, too, culpable in these matters?
The hon. Gentleman will get his brownie points for making such party points. He has got it off his chest. I am aware of all those names. If he is asking me whether I am proud that such people were involved—they go back to the 1970s and were few in number—of course I am not proud of it. I am ashamed. That goes for everyone in the Labour party, whether we are Labour Members of Parliament or not. All those who are active in our political movement and in the trade unions are ashamed of all those matters. We have never said otherwise.
Why do these very rich individuals want to contribute? In my view, with some exceptions, as I said, they want rewards. They want to end up in another place or get a knighthood. The hon. Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire) smiles. I have a list of the top 10 companies that donated to the Conservative party between 1979 and 1992—United Biscuits, Hanson, Taylor Woodrow, George Weston Holdings and the rest. It is interesting that in eight of those 10 companies, every company executive or chair received some kind of reward: in the case of United Biscuits, that was one peerage and one knighthood; in the case of Hanson, two peerages; Taylor Woodrow, one peerage and one knighthood; P&O—we know about P&O, do we not?—one peerage and three knighthoods, and Glaxo, two knighthoods. Of the two companies that did not receive anything, one, George Weston Holdings, was headed by a Canadian, and the other company had two directors, of whom one was a hereditary peer.
Can my hon. Friend tell the House whether Mr. Abrahams has been given any peerages for his donations?
I think we can all work on the safe assumption that Mr. Abrahams will not be getting a peerage of any kind from anybody at any time.
I have been listening to the hon. Gentleman’s long list. Is he telling the House that the Labour party and the Conservative party are as bad as each other?
I am not suggesting anything of the kind. The Scottish national party is not in a state to give us lectures on integrity, bearing in mind some of the remarks that have been made.
I have criticised my own party, but all the political parties should be far more reluctant to receive money from very rich individuals. I am suspicious of their motives for contributing and I have given an example. No doubt examples could be given of those who have contributed to my party and received awards in the past 10 years.
No, I will not give way.
What are required—we will not get them today, but hopefully over time—are the common-sense solutions that the public want. The public are cynical about party funding. In our constituencies they probably say that we are all as bad as each other. What happened in the 1990s brought Parliament into disrepute. Anything that brings this institution into disrepute is a blow to parliamentary democracy. I hope that as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice suggested, in future talks in a calmer atmosphere, we can look at possible solutions, one of which is a cap on donations from private individuals; another is less money being spent in local and national campaigns.
Some of the money that is spent in general elections, referred to as the arms race, serves no purpose—for example, the Tory posters in 1997 about Tony Blair’s eyes. Was a single extra Tory vote gained as a result? Having criticised Tory posters, I should say that some of our own posters have not been all that brilliant. Finally, a limit on the money spent in constituencies between elections would do no harm at all.
I look forward to a period, hopefully during this Parliament, although I am not optimistic, when agreement can be reached between the parties on party funding. That is what the public want. We often say that we want to serve the public. I say without hesitation that the overwhelming majority of the public who take an interest in this matter would like us to find a solution, instead of the constant accusation and counter-accusation that is made on so many occasions. We need to clean up our act and we should do so as quickly as possible.
The Prime Minister promised competence, but what he has given us is the first run on a British bank for over 100 years, half the adult population’s personal details lost, and an election that never was.
We have not heard much in the debate about the conduct of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. I ask the Justice Secretary one straight question: does the Prime Minister have full confidence in the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions? Let me explain why I ask that question. Jon Mendelsohn, Labour’s chief fundraiser, gave the Secretary of State a £5,000 donation for his deputy leadership campaign, but the Secretary of State’s office and his aides were so incompetent that they did not bother to do one of the most basic things—that is, register it with the Electoral Commission. Yesterday, the Secretary of State admitted that further donations to his campaign were
“not registered as they should have been”.
Although the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions might not be very good at making declarations of contributions, he managed a declaration of “extreme regret”, adding that he was preparing a full declaration to the Commission.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Time is short. I shall make some progress.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has belatedly said that he is reviewing all donations during the campaign this year. Why cannot he or his aides fill us in today on the source of the donations, how many there were, or the total value? Keeping such records should not be difficult. Is it because the donations went through a convoluted route? Can the Minister tell us today?
If the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions cannot understand the electoral law on a matter relating to his own campaign, what confidence can the British public have in his grasp of something infinitely more complicated in his Department, such as the social security system, the Pension Service or the Child Support Agency, for which he is personally responsible? I imagine that benefit fraudsters throughout Britain are having a laugh at his palpable failure to adhere to strict legal rules. When their pension credit is miscalculated yet again, pensioners will not be so amused by the Secretary of State’s behaviour, and single parents struggling with the Child Support Agency are unlikely to have their confidence in that organisation boosted by what is happening at the top.
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Can you guide the House on the appropriateness or otherwise of an attack of such intemperate nature being made upon a right hon. Member who is not present?
The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley) is addressing the House. He is relating his remarks to the subject of the debate. If he were not in order, I would have stopped him.
I am most grateful, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
The heat has been taken off the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain) by the game refusal of Ms Wendy Alexander, the Labour leader in the Scottish Parliament, to resign. She is, of course, a friend and ally of the Prime Minister. Although we quite accept that she would not deliberately have tried to commit a criminal offence for the lowly sum of £950, we have to ask what she could have been thinking of, given that the Jersey-based donor, Mr. Paul Green, said today on Scottish radio:
“This has to be gross mismanagement…I cannot understand why they”—
meaning the Labour party—
“continue to maintain that the donation had come through a UK company when I had a letter from Wendy Alexander thanking me personally.”
May I ask the Minister whether the Prime Minister has full confidence in Ms Wendy Alexander and her competence? The fact is that she is the Prime Minister’s lightning rod—if she were to resign, it could lead to a domino effect of further resignations, starting with that of the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), deputy leader of the Labour party, in relation to whom the Prime Minister said:
“The money was not lawfully declared.”
Although the British public are not much impressed by the rank incompetence that I have described, there is something that they dislike more: Labour’s self-serving attitude. My right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) has famously proposed for all parties a cap on donations—whether given by businessmen, individuals or trade unions—to reduce dependency on large donors. We heard about it in detail from my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie). Shamefully, the Labour party has blocked the proposal, asserting that union affiliation fees should be exempt from any cap on donations. Yet those fees are decided by union bosses; they are not the result of the active decisions of individual union members to donate to the Labour party. We are asked to believe that a donation from a trade unionist is independent while a block donation from a trade union is not. The Labour party national executive committee has pledged on the record vigorously to oppose plans for capping. It has said:
“the Labour Party cannot accept a statutory uniform donation cap…it would undermine the Labour Party federal structure”.
Yet Sir Hayden Phillips stated that
“a limit on donations need not in my view challenge the Party’s constitutional relationship with the trade unions”.
Why did he say that, and why did the union paymasters say something different?
Is it a coincidence that the Labour Government are moving ahead with more than 60 concessions to the trade union movement under the banner of the 2004 Warwick agreement? That deal included a £10 million taxpayer-funded modernisation fund for the unions, the weakening of anti-strike legislation and the shelving of plans to align the retirement age for public sector workers with that for private sector workers—a disgrace.
Labour’s logic—I hope the House will forgive the exaggeration—is flawed and self-serving. Last summer, the Prime Minister promised to take crime off the streets; we did not know that he was going to shove it into Labour HQ.
It was the Secretary of State for Health who said that this had been a lousy week for the Labour party, but it has been a depressing and dismal week for all who have an interest in democratic politics. To be fair to it, the Labour party has admitted that it is culpable in respect of the stories of the past few weeks. However, the consequences are shared across the whole of politics; it all feeds into the cynicism with which many people regard politics today. At a time of falling participation, it is in all our interests to clean up politics, as the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) said. I hope that we can all get behind that.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I am sorry, but there is no time—[Interruption.]
Order. Not for the first time, the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) has pursued an attempted intervention when it has been clear that the Member addressing the House is not going to give way.
This is not a Westminster village story alone. A Jersey businessman has given a donation to the Scottish Labour leader that turned out to be illegal, and a businessman from the north-east of England has given illegal proxy donations. As we heard, another donation, in respect of a dinner in Wales connected to the Secretary of State for Wales, should have been registered but was not put into the public domain.
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for one hon. Member to attack the conduct of another when the hon. Member making the attack has been found by a Committee of the House to have broken the rules of the House, but has not apologised to the House? Will the hon. Member concerned, who is here now, take this opportunity to apologise for his misconduct?
I shall deal with the hon. Gentleman’s point of order as I dealt with the earlier one. I am in charge of the debate this afternoon, and had the hon. Gentleman been out of order, I would have reminded him of that fact.
I say to the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) that simply saying, “They are as bad as us,” is not a positive message to send to the public. [Hon. Members: “Say sorry!”] I expressed my regret to the Committee in question—[Interruption.] I did, in actual fact. The hon. Gentleman will be able to see the speck in my party’s eye if he admits the mote in his own. We all have an interest in cleaning up politics, and that is what we should be debating.
Part of the problem is not only the original crime but the lack of candour that follows it. We have seen that in Scotland recently. We were told that Wendy Alexander did not know anything about the donation, but subsequently a letter that thanked the donor in question came to light. The letter said:
“Scottish Labour will reform, renew and reconnect with the Scottish people. We will earn their trust again”.
That is no way to earn the trust of the people of Scotland or any other part of the United Kingdom. Subsequently, we heard about the Cardiff dinner in April, in respect of which a donation that should have been declared by the Secretary of State for Wales was not. I do not know what it is about the Labour party and dinners in April; we have heard about the other dinner between Jon Mendelson and David Abrahams. We must have clarity on the issue. The Secretary of State for Wales has admitted that there were other unregistered donations. Will the Minister tell us how many unregistered donations there have been and whether any other Labour politicians gave money to the campaign of the Secretary of State for Wales? Were any ministerial meetings discussed or held as a result of that fundraising dinner?
The Secretary of State for Wales broke not only Electoral Commission rules, but Labour party ones. He should have given 15 per cent. of all moneys raised to the Labour party. He broke his own party’s rules as well as those on donations that the Government made law. There is simply no excuse for that. We all lose as a result of such behaviour; that, unfortunately, is the reality.
As many hon. Members have said, we need a cap on donations, but we also need a level playing field. The people will not understand if the Labour party produces a Bill that is seen as one-sided—with a cap on one side of the equation, but no reform of trade union funding on the other. Senior members of Plaid Cymru received election ballots on the Labour party deputy leadership campaign. They never ticked the box relating to the affiliated political fund, yet they were counted as funders of the Labour party. That is because, unfortunately, it appears that a small number of individuals within trade unions abuse the system. Unless we get clarity on that, we will not have a level playing field on party funding. Let us all get behind a proper party funding Bill that will finally take out of British politics that kind of sleaze, which ultimately undermines all politics for all political parties.
The Labour party funding scandals appear to be rolling out on an almost daily basis, with varying degrees of subterfuge and criminality involved. They have corroded public trust in democracy in Britain. The party that swore in opposition to be purer than pure is mired so deeply in the muck that it is in danger of drowning in it.
I agree with the hon. Member for Carmarthen, East and Dinefwr (Adam Price) that the debate should give no one pleasure. Certainly, we do not take a holier-than-thou approach, as the Lord Chancellor suggested. Today we have heard a story of abuse of the law and lack of ethical practice, which breaks the heart of our political governance. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) recognised, this is a tragedy of a Government drunk with complacency, power and disdain— a tragedy not only for the people of our country but, as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) said, for the very laws that they passed in their failed attempt to provide transparency for the funding of our democratic system.
The Lord Chancellor attempted to take the high ground when in fact he had no ground to stand on. At least the hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Tony Lloyd) provided something that approached an apology. Will the Minister do the same in her closing remarks?
Police corruption investigations have started on individual cases and will follow their course. Many more, mainly unanswered questions have emerged from the debate today, not least those of my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude), my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley) and the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, who said that the jury was out on whether we were considering incompetence or conspiracy. I tend to agree with that.
We must also concentrate on the system itself. The motion deals with the crafty rise in state funding for political ends organised by Labour, whether through Government special advisers and communications officers in Whitehall or the communications allowance in Parliament. The attempts by some hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), the hon. Members for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Simon), for Manchester, Central and for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick), to argue that all parties are as bad as each other was pathetic in the context of the debate.
The Labour party’s fascination with Lord Ashcroft’s input as deputy chairman of the Conservative party is bizarre. As Lord Ashcroft recently noted, the candidates fund, which he chairs but does not control, mainly comes from donors other than him. At £2 million a year, it amounts to only around 15 per cent. of the party’s total annual spending.
Let me tackle the core of the debate.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I gave up a third of my time so that other hon. Members could speak, so I shall not give way.
The core of the debate is the relationship between Labour and the trade unions. I say “the core” because, last year, Labour received donations of £11.8 million, of which £8.6 million—or 73 per cent.—came from the trade unions.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
What might the funding have delivered for the unions? Since Labour came to power—
Order. Perhaps we could conclude the debate in a slightly more civilised manner. The hon. Gentleman is not giving way at the moment.
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I have given my reasons for not giving way.
Since Labour came to power, some 18 Acts and 200 statutory instruments dealing with employment legislation have been passed. That includes the introduction of the £10 million so-called union modernisation fund, which has so far handed out £5.8 million of taxpayers’ cash to fund projects such as building links between the T and G and the Polish workers association, expanding ASLEF’s website and—wait for it—supporting online discussion forums at the TUC. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds made a similar point. The Government constantly talk about their modernisation agenda, but when we talk about modernisation—[Interruption.]
Order. May I say to hon. Gentlemen and hon. Ladies that constant interventions from a sedentary position are not allowed. They simply disrupt the debate and have no sensible effect. If hon. Members wish to intervene, they must stand in the normal way and if the Member on their feet does not want to give way, that is the end of it.
When we talk about modernising unions, the reaction in previous debates has been that the Conservatives did that 30 years ago and that the matter does not need further consideration. That was the extent of the Government’s bias.
Under huge pressure, last weekend the Prime Minister at last conceded the connection between the political contribution that a union member makes as an individual and that money ending up in the Labour party’s coffers. For those who think that that is stating the obvious, it is not. Indeed, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham pointed out, some unions have made larger contributions than can be attributed to their political fund contributing members. If we also consider that some unions affiliate at regional and local level, and that other help, such as manpower, which the Lord Chancellor described as completely transparent, is unrecorded, existing transparency and reporting are nothing more than a joke. If the Prime Minister thinks that his paltry weekend rehash of existing proposals will be perceived as anything other than a smokescreen for his party’s huge complacency and failings, he should think again.
The Prime Minister is unwilling to follow through the logic of accepting the individual position over the collective position of union members. The so-called openness of Labour and unions to changing their relationship, which the hon. Member for Manchester, Central described, is not the historic position. However, I hope that it is the position now. Yes, the Prime Minister said that the 30-year-old opt-out rights for union political contributions should now be clearly stated to members, but they have certainly not been to date.
Why, in this day and age, should an individual be assumed to want to contribute to a political party for which he probably did not vote? As my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham explained, we need to keep in mind the fact that most trade unionists are not Labour voters. The 2005 British election survey revealed that 54.3 per cent. of trade unionists voted for parties other than Labour. That is why there should be a specific opt-in to making political fund contributions. I opt in to paying my membership of the Conservative party, and so should someone who pays money to the Labour party. Union members who opt in to paying into the political fund should also, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds noted, have the right to decide to which political cause their money goes.
The regulatory framework for unions, through the certification officer, is clearly in dire need of modernisation. We are especially concerned that there should be a review of the relationship between the certification officer and the Electoral Commission, not least as regards registering political donations. In July, a written question revealed that the Electoral Commission had no record of any meeting with the certification officer or his representatives. That is no way to run a system to monitor union contributions.
The Lord Chancellor appeared to be desperate to move on with funding talks, but flip-flopped about including unions, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester spotted. We need to change the law and set funding limits but we also need to update the modernisation of unions. That clear message comes out of the debate.
We still have a problem that will not go away. No matter how many laws are passed, legislation is no substitute for integrity. We currently have laws that require timely disclosure of donations, which Labour has broken. We also have laws that require people to declare their indirect donations, which Labour has again broken. We could introduce more laws, and then Labour could flout them, too. If the Liberal Democrats or anyone else think that using state funding will improve the ethics of party funding, they should think again. Nothing shows that to be the case.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester said, the Conservative party has a problem. We could discuss new funding proposals with Labour and the Liberal Democrats for ever and a day, but are the Government capable of abiding by whatever rules we finally agree? Can Labour be trusted to deal with us fairly on funding? The great questions here, as matters stand, are: can Labour be trusted to deal with us fairly on funding and, more important, can it be trusted by the British people?
I should have liked to thank all hon. Members for a positive, thought-provoking and inspiring debate, but I doubt, given your recent remarks, Mr. Deputy Speaker, about interventions, that that would have been a strictly accurate description of the past couple of hours. However, I want to put on record my thanks, especially to the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) for his measured response to the debate and for the fact that he, like us, still wants to make progress in the next weeks and months on party funding.
I also particularly want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Tony Lloyd), the chair of the parliamentary Labour party, who apologised for the incidents that have taken place in the past couple of weeks—as indeed do I, and as did the Prime Minister, very clearly, as soon as he knew. The hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) should listen more carefully to some of these things.
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick), who said that anything that brings Parliament into disrepute is a blow to parliamentary democracy. Maintaining and rebuilding faith in political parties is vital for us all, and I continue to hope that hon. Members from all parties will engage constructively in taking this forward. How political parties are funded matters because of the central role that they play in democracy. We should be able, in this democracy of ours, to have debates and conversations about the importance of political parties instead of the kind of debate that we have had today.
The most recent review of party funding concluded that
“the debate about the financing of our political parties is”
therefore
“a debate about the health of our democracy and how we can improve it.”
Why did the Hayden Phillips talks include only the three UK parties in the discussions on a formal and ongoing basis? Will the hon. Lady give a commitment that future talks will, on the basis of equality, include the political parties of Northern Ireland and the parties of government of the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru?
I realise that the hon. Gentleman has come into the debate only in the past couple of minutes, but he will know that my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor and I will be more than happy to have discussions with him about how we take these matters forward.
It is vital that political party finances are, and are seen to be, completely transparent and above board. If we are to command high levels of public support, funding arrangements must be fair and transparent. We have gone a considerable way to introducing transparency. With all-party support, we sought to tackle the problem of excessive spending through the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, which reflected the key recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, chaired by Patrick Neill. It is worth reminding the House of what that Act did. It introduced a national limit on campaign expenditure, created the Electoral Commission, made the funding system more transparent, required all donations above £5,000 nationally and £1,000 locally to be made public, and outlawed foreign donations.
It is clear that we now need to move beyond the recent specific issues and consider the basis of the funding of our parties for the future. In the Queen’s Speech, we said that we would bring forward proposals to reform party finance and expenditure, and we intend to develop a comprehensive package of reforms building on the principles established by Sir Hayden Phillips’s inter-party review, which reported in October. That review, which was supported at the time of his March report by the official Opposition as well as by the Liberal Democrats, identifies important principles that should underpin the way forward.
In particular, Sir Hayden identified the key flaw in the system as the political spending arms race, whereby expenditure has spiralled upwards even as party membership has declined. I understand that the official Opposition want to deny that that arms race exists but, given that the money spent between the two main parties in the 12 months before the last general election rose to £90 million, which was nearly 40 per cent. up on the £65 million spent during a similar period in 2000-01, that is clearly what we have before us. Sir Hayden said that the 2000 Act
“sought to control the level of spending, but it has proved inadequate to the challenge.”
Will the hon. Lady acknowledge that Hayden Phillips produced a comprehensive paper showing conclusively that, since 1992, expenditure on general elections by the political parties has increased by less than incomes and only fractionally more than zero in real terms? Will she now agree to do what her colleague studiously refused to do, which is to allow these documents to be put into the public domain so that we can end the position whereby we debate on the basis of speculation rather than fact?
I am afraid that I have to say to the hon. Gentleman, whose constituency association receives funding of some £3,000 from the Churchill Luncheon Club, that his analysis of Sir Hayden’s report as regards the increase in expenditure is plain wrong. In fact, Sir Hayden shows that support for the principle of continuous spending limits at a national level is crucial. The importance of effective spending limits cannot be overstated. The Constitutional Affairs Committee observed that the United States is a constructive example of the way in which we would not want this country to go if spending were left unchecked.
We heard many comments about trade unions and donation caps. Sir Hayden acknowledged the distinction between affiliation fees paid to political parties by trade unions, which are in effect an aggregation of individual donations, and the other donations that are paid to parties from trade unions. He recommended that the process for treating political levy donations individually should be more transparent and traceable. We accept that, and we are committed to bringing greater transparency to political donations, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said only yesterday. Other donations from trade unions would be subject to any cap on donations, treating the trade unions in the same way as other major donors to political parties. Both the Constitutional Affairs Committee and Sir Hayden’s review said that limiting donations to political parties from private sources would require an increase in financial support from public funds. As my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor said, we are yet to be convinced that there is public acceptance of an extension of state funding, but we will continue to consider and consult on that issue.
The hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) was so pious about party funding by the state, but will his party offer to give back the £35 million of taxpayers’ money that it has been spending on political spending in the past decade?
Of course, it is not for me to answer for the official Opposition, but if my hon. Friend is referring to the fact that this Government have increased the money that is given to the Opposition parties, particularly the £4.4 million that the Conservatives now get from Short money, that is worth reflecting on.
I hope that we will get all-party consensus on the way forward, but we will not accept one-party deadlock—a breakdown that serves only to block progress. [Interruption.]
Order. We must not have these private conversations while the Minister is addressing the House.
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
I hope that the official Opposition will reflect on the views that were expressed by the shadow Leader of the House in March this year:
“We welcome the publication of Sir Hayden Phillips’ report. We accept his main recommendations...we are happy to discuss spending caps on all year round non-election campaigning and proposals for tighter controls on third-party expenditure”.—[Official Report, 15 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 469.]
I hope that the Leader of the Opposition is not going down the road advocated by the recent treasurer of the Conservative party, Lord McAlpine, who said in his autobiography, “Once a Jolly Bagman”:
“Personally, I do not think that we ever should have shown how we spent our money. The Conservative Central Office is not a charity dedicated to helping the sick and the suffering…There was a black hole in the Party’s finances…The solution was easy: we gave up publishing accounts.”
If that is the level of debate from the Conservatives, I suspect that we will not get very far in all-party consensus, but nor will we allow them to stop us and other parties moving forward and making party political funding transparent, clear and easy to follow.
Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—
Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments):—
Mr. Deputy Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House notes that political funding reform is essential to the future health of democracy in the UK and that Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech said that the Government would bring forward proposals on the regulation of party finance and expenditure; regrets that a comprehensive reform package was not achieved by the inter-party talks owing to the unilateral decision of the Conservative Party to walk away from a draft agreement put to the parties by Sir Hayden Phillips, despite the fact that the draft agreement faithfully reflected recommendations in Sir Hayden’s 15th March 2007 Report, which they had earlier welcomed; and urges all parties to engage constructively in order to achieve lasting reform in the public interest.
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
I inform the House that Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment standing in the name of the Prime Minister. I remind the Members that there will be a 10-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches.
I beg to move,
That this House deplores the performance of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; regrets that it has been responsible for huge and avoidable costs to farmers and taxpayers; notes with concern the significant cost overruns in the Department’s programme and administration budgets; and believes that planned budget cuts of £270 million will further undermine efforts to deliver policies which tackle climate change, promote the farming industry and enhance the natural environment.
Recent weeks have witnessed a series of events that have raised fundamental questions about the competence of the present Government—the handling of the Northern Rock crisis, the loss by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs of the personal details of millions of families, and now allegations of illegal fundraising. All those seem to be stark evidence that Labour has lost the plot. As anyone who has had half an eye open to issues affecting rural areas, farming and the environment will tell you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, one Government Department has for several years jostled with the Home Office for the honour of setting the pace in the incompetence stakes. The fact that others are catching up is no reason to let the present Secretary of State off the hook.
Throughout its relatively short and undistinguished life, the performance of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been, frankly, abysmal. In fact, the list of DEFRA failures is so extensive that this could end up being a very long speech. However, I am aware that a large number of hon. Members wish to contribute, so I will restrain myself.
DEFRA was cobbled together following the terrible mismanagement of the foot and mouth crisis in 2001. It was rumoured at the time that, as well as the political necessity of culling the old Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, one of the reasons for setting up the new Department was to give the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Margaret Beckett) a job that met her aspirations. Almost immediately, it acquired two alternative nicknames—“Deafear” and “Deathrow”, both of which turned out to be strangely appropriate!
Since its early days, beset by a catalogue of failures, the Department has lurched from one crisis to the next. At the heart of our agricultural industry and as custodians of our landscape, farmers should feel that DEFRA is fighting their corner, not letting them down. The Department’s initial response to a growing awareness that something was wrong with the Rural Payments Agency was characteristic: it denied that there was a problem at all. I say it was characteristic because this is a Department that lives in a permanent state of denial about its own inadequacies.
Let us take today’s amendment by the Prime Minister to our motion. It
“commends the Government on its swift and effective action to deal with…disease outbreaks…in 2007”,
without, of course, mentioning that the foot and mouth outbreak was started because of faulty drains at a laboratory site licensed by DEFRA. It also omits to mention that the foot and mouth outbreak was declared over before it was. As we shall no doubt hear later in the debate, there were plenty of individual occasions when the Government’s response to animal diseases this year was neither swift nor effective.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I will, but not very often, as time is short.
I am grateful. The hon. Gentleman refers to animal diseases, so may I take him back to mad cow disease and BSE and ask him how many humans died because of the incompetence of the Conservative Government?
You may well decide, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that that has very little to do with DEFRA—[Interruption.]
The Government’s amendment even “congratulates the Government” on setting up the Department in the first place. I rather doubt that many who have had to contend with DEFRA over the years will share in the general air of back-slapping—certainly not the one third of farmers who live in poverty; certainly not those affected by movement restrictions and export bans during the recent foot and mouth outbreak; certainly not those who were driven to the brink of financial ruin as a result of DEFRA’s bungled implementation of the single farm payment; and certainly not the insurance industry, which this week called for “improved national leadership” on flood defences.
It would be good to be able to say that the hardship caused by the incompetent handling of farm payments was now behind us, but it is not. Apart from the fact that the whole fiasco could end up with the taxpayer having to foot a bill for hundreds of millions of pounds in European Union fines, nearly £75,000 is still owed to farmers from 2005, and £1.7 million remains outstanding from last year.
It was the mess at the Rural Payments Agency that substantially kick-started the financial problems that have dogged the Department ever since. Last year DEFRA Ministers were forced to cut budgets by over £200 million, and this year we learn that further cuts of around £270 million are needed to balance the books. Of course Conservative Members are always keen to find sustainable ways of reducing unnecessary expenditure, but forced cuts brought about by financial mismanagement are a different matter altogether.
Let us take the impact on Natural England, which is being asked to cut its budget for next year by £12.5 million. Today it published a board paper that sets out the likely consequences and presents options that will impinge on measures to promote biodiversity, wildlife enhancement and nature reserves. The paper states:
“We are therefore once again”—
that “once again” is quite telling, for this is not an isolated instance—
“fire fighting to secure a budget in the short term that allows Natural England to operate.”
An organisation that is, I believe, less than two years old is already fighting a battle for its survival, and not for the first time.
Then there is the issue of bovine tuberculosis. We are still without an adequate policy to tackle bovine TB, which has so far cost the taxpayer more than £500 million. There is also the seemingly relentless rise in regulation. There is much talk of light-touch regulation, but the cost to business of DEFRA regulations is now put at about £530 million a year.
It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman should raise that point. A significant number of regulatory reform orders with which my Select Committee has dealt in recent years have come from DEFRA. Can the hon. Gentleman explain why the Conservative party does not turn up at the Select Committee’s meetings?
I think that that is a rather pathetic question. The hon. Gentleman might like to tell us whether DEFRA is on target to fulfil its promise, set out in “Maximising outcomes, minimising burdens”, which commits it to delivering a £158.8 million annual reduction in administrative burdens by 2010. Are the Government on target for that? I wonder. I think not.
This is not how it should be. Farmers should feel that the Government are there to serve them, not the other way round. Basic competence on the part of Government is an essential prerequisite for the important task of rebuilding trust. There should be a positive relationship between the farming industry and DEFRA’s policy process.
More broadly, the rural community as a whole has been neglected. Those living in rural areas know only too well the problems that they face with declining services, problems over accommodation and a huge programme of post office closures. Without its own house being in order, it is small wonder that people have lost faith in DEFRA’s ability to handle the big issues. It seems caught in a downward spiral, with high staff turnover, hundreds seeking early retirement, and rock-bottom morale. The fact that the Department has a part-time permanent secretary may or may not impinge on its performance; all I can say is that if I were the permanent secretary at DEFRA, I would probably want to be part-time as well.
To add insult to injury, we discovered recently that over the last five years DEFRA had spent more than £1 billion on consultancy fees. That is a staggering sum, and what is there to show for it? Does dependence on outside consultants reflect, in some way, a sense of insecurity within the Department itself?
It is not just rural areas that have been let down. This is the Department charged with leading the way on efforts to combat climate change. Tellingly, last year it quietly dropped its long-standing manifesto commitment to cut carbon emissions by 20 per cent. by 2010. In fact carbon emissions have risen since 1997, and fell last year by only 0.1 per cent. Plans to encourage microgeneration in homes and offices have been half-hearted, with reduced grants—[Interruption.] Is the hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew) blaming another Department?
The hon. Gentleman should ask the leader of his party about the generation of wind.
Order. We must hear the correct parliamentary language in interventions.
I take the hon. Gentleman’s intervention at face value, and assure him that the Leader of the Opposition will have a great deal to say on that very subject in a few days’ time.
Since DEFRA came into being with a remit to reduce household waste, the amount of household waste has risen by 9 per cent., and the commitment to require 2.5 per cent. of United Kingdom transport fuels to come from biofuels by 2008 has been made without the ensuring of safeguards for sustainable sourcing of fuel crops. In the aftermath of the summer floods, serious questions remain. The Government have pressed ahead with building on flood plains contrary to the advice of the Environment Agency, and among a variety—a plethora—of different agencies there are no clear lines of responsibility for surface water flooding.
On the question of climate change, it is vital that DEFRA is respected across Whitehall; but if it cannot manage its own affairs, why should anyone take it seriously? Only the other day we learned that the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform was seeking to water down the United Kingdom’s commitment to increasing the amount of our energy coming from renewable sources. Two weeks ago, the Prime Minister himself delivered what was billed as a major speech on climate change; three days later the Department for Transport announced a third runway at Heathrow. There is no joined-up thinking at all.
Given the scale, complexity and urgency of the challenges being faced across rural communities and in the wider environment, now more than ever DEFRA needs to be up to the job. Instead, we have a Department that has presided over rising carbon dioxide emissions, increasing levels of household waste and plummeting farm incomes; a Department committed to raising green taxation as a percentage of total taxation, which has seen green taxes fall as a percentage of total taxation to the lowest level for 13 years; a Department which cuts the budgets of local animal health teams when they have rarely been in such demand, because it has lost track of how much money it originally allocated; a Department that runs up a projected overspend on administration of £50 million in only six months; a Department whose disastrous handling of farm payments could land the taxpayer with an EU fine of £400 million; and a Department whose negligent approach to biosecurity was responsible for an outbreak of foot and mouth disease that cost the farming industry and taxpayers further millions.
Ensuring the future of British farming, supporting the stewardship of our beautiful landscapes and providing a sustainable future for our children are vital tasks. We are in danger of paying a very heavy price for entrusting them to a Department that has become a byword for incompetence.
I beg to move, To leave out from “House” to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
“commends the Government on its swift and effective action to deal with four different disease outbreaks in England in 2007; welcomes the announcement on 8th October 2007 of an aid package to farmers worth £12.5 million through extra support to hill farmers, fallen stock collection, meat promotion and help for farming support charities; congratulates the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) on its effective emergency planning arrangements in conjunction with the emergency services and local authorities to warn those at risk from the recent tidal surge and initiate precautionary evacuation; applauds the increase in spending on flood defences since 1997, a 30 per cent. increase in real terms to around £600 million, and the announcement that spending will rise to a maximum of £800 million by 2010-11; and further congratulates the Government for bringing together environment, rural affairs and food and farming under Defra to create a unified structure essential for the effective delivery of integrated Government policies across these issues.”.
Let me tell the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) and his hon. Friends that I genuinely welcome the opportunity he has given the Government to tell the House about DEFRA’s work, although it is pretty obvious to me from the speech we just heard that he is unaware of much of what DEFRA is doing. I can tell him, for instance, that the permanent secretary is not part-time—but first I invite the House to join me in congratulating DEFRA’s chief scientist Bob Watson and the other scientists at DEFRA on the contribution that they made to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has been recognised in the award of this year’s Nobel peace prize. It is not often that a Secretary of State is able to stand at the Dispatch Box and congratulate civil servants with whom he has the privilege of working on such recognition for, as the Norwegian Nobel committee stated,
“their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”
If we are going to talk about the Department and its staff—and I shall have more to say on this subject—we should recognise achievements, and that is quite an achievement.
I want to begin on a matter on which I can agree with the hon. Gentleman: when things go wrong we must be honest about that and put them right. I fully accept that in 2006 there were severe problems with single farm payments to farmers. That caused deep and genuine hardship across the country and I am very sorry for what happened. However, Departments should also be judged on what they do to try to deal with problems and, as the House knows, this year the Rural Payments Agency has managed to pay 98 per cent. of payments for the second scheme year before the end of the payment window of 30 June, exceeding the target we set as part of the recovery programme, and I expect performance to continue to improve—indeed, I am determined that it will do so.
Can the Secretary of State confirm that Scotland and Wales have already started making payments for this year, and that there will not be any payments to English farmers until at least the spring?
I can indeed confirm that that is my understanding of what Scotland and Wales are doing, but I would just ask the hon. Gentleman to reflect on what I said: I am determined that there should be continued improvements, and I intend to report to the House as and when those improvements are made. Before the hon. Gentleman waxes too lyrical, I would just like to point out that the Conservatives in their James review of 2004 proposed cutting £210 million from the RPA operating budget, and introducing a levy on subsidies paid—I am not entirely sure whether that would have been allowed. Heaven forbid that the Government might have accepted the advice at the time. For some reason, that was not mentioned in the opening speech from the Opposition.
I also agree that this summer has been one of real and severe hardship for the livestock industry, and the House has rightly debated foot and mouth and bluetongue, and there has also been the recent avian flu problem. On foot and mouth, there were problems with the Pirbright system and we have put them right: in the recent Merial incident, the system contained the failure. We will now see what further action is needed in the light of what happened, including more specific licence conditions.
What discussions has the Secretary of State had with his counterpart in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport? I met the Tourism Alliance this morning, and it said that DEFRA is not doing enough to support tourism, particularly in rural areas. It needs more financial support following incidents such as foot and mouth and the flooding. I would be very interested to know what the Government are doing and what discussions the Secretary of State has had with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.
I have talked to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, and he and other Ministers have been supporting the tourism industry during the outbreak. One of the most important messages that we were able to send out—as a House, indeed—during the outbreak was that the countryside was open for business, unlike what had happened previously.
Handling a disease outbreak is not easy, but the approach we have taken—which has been based on acting on a detailed contingency plan, using the best scientific advice and drawing upon the professionalism of the Animal Health agency—has been recognised to work. That is why The Guardian was able to say in a leader:
“Not only did DEFRA this year—in startling contrast to 2001—show signs of having a plan at the ready for dealing with foot and mouth; more importantly, it also showed that it understood how to implement it”.
Peter Kendall, president of the National Farmers Union, with whom we have worked so closely along with others in the industry to deal with the outbreak, said that
“the industry has cause to be grateful to DEFRA’s animal health officials who have striven to carry out the contingency plan operations to bring the recent outbreaks of FMD, then bluetongue disease and now Avian influenza under control.”
Let us contrast that with what the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for East Surrey, wrote in The Daily Telegraph in September about DEFRA and Animal Health staff. He is a decent man, but he accused them of the
“ignorance of petty clipboard people, and of a disregard for the welfare of animals arising from either callousness or stupidity.”
I have met many of those people, and I think we should acknowledge that it was their skill, their professionalism, their care and their commitment that was responsible for the praise they have received, and I hope the hon. Gentleman is now embarrassed by what he wrote.
I am not remotely embarrassed, because although I did not attribute those remarks in that article, they were a direct quote from a farmer I met in the affected area in Surrey.
Well, it is a bit late in the day for the hon. Gentleman now to say he was quoting somebody else, but he did not attribute it to somebody else and he must stand by those words. I genuinely regret that he passed on—if this is what he is now saying he did—a quote from a third party about staff. I have nothing but admiration for the colleagues—I call them colleagues—with whom I worked, along with my fellow Ministers, in dealing with this outbreak. Even though the hon. Gentleman has his views about how the outbreak occurred, which we have debated at length, I do not think it is acceptable to attack the reputation of hard-working professional civil servants for the job that they have done.
On bluetongue, has the Secretary of State given consideration to the French method of using pre-movement testing as a means of controlling the disease, because drawing a line on the map has an unfair—a differential—effect on those inside the zone, and midges will not take a great deal of cognisance of a line on the map?
I am well aware of that point, and let me explain what I have said to the industry. I think the whole House will recognise that we have worked closely with representatives of the industry in dealing with all three of the outbreaks, and at present there is a view in the group we have been talking to that we should keep the lines where they are. The winter is now almost upon us, and that will reduce the midge activity. We are all waiting for the vaccine to arrive, and if there comes a point in the new year where the balance of advantage might tip the other way, I will listen very carefully to the arguments put, because I accept the point the hon. Gentleman makes: it is a balance of argument. I must also say that my experience of dealing with these disease outbreaks reinforces in me the view that we should in future share the responsibility for taking those decisions much more closely with the farming community, and that includes sharing the costs—which Iain Anderson recommended after the 2001 outbreak.
My right hon. Friend will have been as surprised as I was at the brevity of the Opposition opening speech, which contained no policy whatever—and, as we are now hearing, it contained very little in the way of fact, even. At the last general election, the Opposition stood on a policy of cuts in public spending of between £20 billion and £30 billion. He has mentioned the RPA, but what effect would that policy have had on environmental spending?
It would have had a very detrimental effect. I share my hon. Friend’s puzzlement at the brevity of the Opposition opening speech, and I apologise in advance to the House if I detain Members for a little longer than that as I have quite a bit to say about what DEFRA has done and achieved.
Does the Secretary of State think it was a good idea to announce, as he did a couple of weeks ago, that the farming industry—the livestock sector—which is reeling under the costs of these various epidemics, should start to pay a levy towards animal health? I can tell him that that went down like a lead balloon in my constituency.
I recognise that point, and I thought long and hard about this issue. There is always an argument for why we should not pick up a conversation about how the system needs to change. We could take the view, “Well, let’s put it off until later.” Iain Anderson recommended in 2001 that we should go down this road, and it is my experience based on having dealt with these outbreaks that has turned cost and responsibility from a policy issue that was on a long list of things that I had to deal with when I arrived in this job in June to something I can now see needs to change. I think the farming industry ought to play a much bigger role in deciding what controls are put in place and how they are dealt with, as ultimately it is the farming industry that has the greatest incentive to get those decisions right. Governments of whatever party do not always know what is best, and I want to restart the conversations we have already been having about how we can design a better system for the future in which responsibility for decision making is shared, which is what the farming community wants. In the process, discussion must also take place about how the cost will be shared.
Does the Secretary of State regard that principle as also applying to bovine TB? Will he undertake to give the farming community a real say on the decision about whether the culling of badgers should be a policy instrument?
As the hon. and learned Gentleman knows, this is an extremely difficult and complex issue, where there is no easy solution. If there were one, we would not be 10 years on from the establishment of the scientific study. A number of considerations must be taken into account, such as the effectiveness of culling as an approach. There are wider policy implications to the culling of badgers. [Interruption.] I hope that the hon. Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) will let me answer the question. Society must weigh up the balance between the farming community’s interest in protecting animals from bovine TB and the welfare of the badger populations—the badger is, of course, a protected species. I shall shortly start a series of meetings to discuss with all involved how we can find a way forward.
My right hon. Friend has drawn attention to the partnership models between farmers and his Department. May I point to the example of the National Fallen Stock Company, which is led by my constituent, Michael Seals, as a model for how working together with farmers, establishing practices and buying services efficiently could be used more effectively by his Department? That model could also be applied in other ways to save some of his resources.
I readily acknowledge what my hon. Friend has to say about the operation of the National Fallen Stock Company. Its experience is an example that we should reflect upon as we try to take these matters forward.
The second major challenge that we have had to face this summer was the exceptional rainfall and the flooding in June and July, which the hon. Member for East Surrey mentioned. It was the wettest June on record, and I want to pay tribute to the efforts of all the people who worked so hard and with such calm purpose in dealing with the floods.
As a result of the increased expenditure on flood defence, new defences in Burton on Trent prevented about 7,300 properties from being flooded. In Malton in North Yorkshire, defences completed in 2003 prevented 300 properties from being flooded. On 9 November, we faced the biggest tidal surge to come down the east coast since the great storm of 1953, which claimed more than 300 lives in the UK and, I believe, about 2,000 lives in Holland. The flood defences, in combination with the way in which the surge and the high tides did not precisely coincide, helped to save thousands of homes, particularly in Great Yarmouth. As a result of the contingency plans that had been put in place, we ensured that people were warned in advance, that rest centres were set up and that Members of the House were kept informed. I think that the House will recognise that those who could have been affected gave genuine praise for the efficiency and effectiveness of our operation, which once again showed the benefits of the planning that we have put in place. May I also say that because of this summer’s exceptional rainfall many homes did flood, and Sir Michael Pitt is looking at the lessons that we could learn?
The right hon. Gentleman and I represent parts of a region that has the second highest risk of flooding in the country. The Minister for the Environment answered a written question informing me that our region has had its flood defence budget cut—I am talking about the contractual outreach defences, presumably in respect of the engineering works—by a third during a four year period in which the overall funding for England in this regard has trebled. Why are we not funding the area in which the Secretary of State and I have a vested interest and which is at the second highest risk of flooding? Why have his Government cut the funding by a third?
With respect, the Government have not cut—[Interruption.] If the hon. Lady would let me answer the question, I would tell her that the total funding of flood defence has risen from £300 million a decade ago to £600 million—[Interruption.] That is the point. In any one year in any one region, big schemes will be in the process of being completed and there will large spending. Such schemes will come to an end, and there will inevitably be an ebb and flow in the expenditure pattern region by region. What really matters is whether the Environment Agency has more resources. It will receive an increase—some of it will go to local authorities—in flood defence spending from £600 million to £800 million in 2010-11, precisely because we have recognised the need for that greater investment. It will mean that the Environment Agency has more money to spend on flood defence and it is also why we have tightened the planning policy guidance and given the Environment Agency the right to be consulted about planning applications.
I represent Sedgemore and the Levels. I do not know whether the Secretary of State is aware that the flood defence schemes there are being cut to a large extent and the money is being moved north. That perturbs us. The Environment Agency has a building in Bridgwater, but will be moving to Bristol, and we find that unacceptable. Will he explain what will be put in its place?
On the first point, we have just heard two contributions that offer a different view on which way the money is going. The fact is that there needs to be a system for prioritising flood defence investment. Rightly and properly we have given that responsibility to the Environment Agency. It has a system for scoring and assessing potential schemes. The best thing that we can do to assist it in that process is to ensure that it has more money to spend on flood defence, which is exactly what we have done over the past 10 years and what we will do over the next two years. Decisions about where the Environment Agency puts its head offices are a matter for the agency itself.
I am sure that the Secretary of State will join me in celebrating the fact that Environment Agency funding for its fisheries work has risen from £30 million to £32 million, but of course most of that is due to the increase in rod licence sales. He will be aware that grant in aid from DEFRA has fallen from £6.3 million in 2005-06 to £5.9 million this year. Will he give Britain’s 3 million anglers a guarantee that the meagre amount of grant in aid will be protected when DEFRA grapples with the real budgetary problems that it has?
It is tempting to give my hon. Friend the assurance that he seeks, but as no final decisions about the budget for the first of the comprehensive spending review years have been taken, I hope that he will forgive me for resisting the temptation that he has put my way. I know that he is a strong friend of the angling community and is recognised as such.
May I urge my right hon. Friend to use a mechanism for making the increased flood defence resources go further? Many counties, including mine, are preparing aggregates plans. Aggregates are drawn from floodplains, by and large. Could it not be made clear that aggregates businesses seeking new extraction should be compelled to contribute to flood defences in the neighbouring areas? Such an approach would be welcomed by many communities in my constituency.
I shall reflect on the point that my hon. Friend has made.
On DEFRA’s budget and expenditure on what the hon. Member for East Surrey referred to as consultancy, may I, for the better information of the House, tell him a little about what the money is spent on? It is spent on buying services and employing outside experts, for example, the “Act on CO2” campaign—the hon. Gentleman may have seen the adverts—and the development of the carbon calculator, which has been used by 600,000 people. Those things are not quite what people would expect to be described by the word “consultancy”.
In this regard, I should also mention work on developing carbon markets and the EU emissions trading scheme; and research looking into the causes and consequences of climate change, including funding the world-renowned Hadley Centre—does he object to the funding of the Hadley Centre out of DEFRA’s budget? The money is also spent on research into animal health, including work on bovine spongiform encephalopathy, foot and mouth, bluetongue and avian flu. Does he object to the expenditure of money on such things? The money is also spent on the running of the Department’s IT system, in partnership with IBM. Those are perfectly proper and legitimate expenditures of money to ensure that DEFRA is able to do its job. As the House will be aware, DEFRA’s budget will rise from £3.5 billion to just under £4 billion by the end of the spending review period, and I shall say a little about how that will be spent.
Would the Secretary of State accept that there is something a little odd about spending a large additional amount on flood defences and then building many houses on floodplains, thus requiring further expenditure on flood defences?
The question is whether we have the right guidance for the planning authorities, and that is why we tightened the planning guidance and then tightened it again—the most recent form is PPS25. Secondly, we have ensured that the Environment Agency, which is the expert, has to be consulted on applications. Thirdly, Ministers have the right to call applications in. We are sitting on a floodplain as we have this debate, and 2 million homes are built on a floodplain. The question is whether appropriate steps can be taken to defend those properties. Ultimately, the answer lies with the planning authorities that choose to give or deny permission and the framework that we have put in place is clear about their responsibilities.
DEFRA does have extra resources and we are investing them in flood defences. Together with the Department for International Development, we will invest in the international environmental transformation fund, aimed at protecting the environment and the rain forest in the developing world.
The extra resources will also help to pay for the launch of the green homes service, which will help people improve the energy efficiency of their homes, and build on the 1.4 million households that have received money and other support since June 2000 to improve energy efficiency.
While the Secretary of State is on the subject of spending money, can he tell us how much he is spending on early retirement for DEFRA staff?
I will happily write to the hon. Gentleman with the precise figure, because I would not want to get it wrong. We have a headcount target to meet, and we are determined to do so. I am determined that the budget will be managed properly and effectively, and a package is available across the civil service to enable us to reach those targets.
The Secretary of State mentioned the budget for spending on animal health and, in particular, foot and mouth disease viruses. Can he assure the House that there were no instructions from DEFRA for the development of a foot and mouth vaccine for the 1967 virus prior to the outbreak of the disease in August?
I am afraid that I do not understand the question—
Did he order a vaccine for the 1967 virus before the outbreak emerged in August?
The answer has to be no, because the 1967 virus was not present in the country. We only put contingency plans in place to vaccinate should it prove necessary once the outbreak was confirmed. In the end, we decided not to vaccinate, because the triggers that we had set in the contingency plan were not met.
The support that we give to the Carbon Trust enables it to secure £2 of private sector capital for every £1 of public investment. The hon. Member for East Surrey also did not mention our work through the energy efficiency commitment—soon to be the carbon emissions reduction target—which will mean that £800 million will have been invested in improving the energy efficiency of our existing housing stock by 2008. Our deal with retailers and energy suppliers will see Victorian-technology light bulbs gone from our shelves by 2011. We are the only country to be supporting post-combustion capture on a coal-fired power station. That is a really important pilot project, because the rate at which China is building coal-fired power stations means that we need to demonstrate the technology and show that it can be fitted after the event. We now have cleaner rivers and beaches, purer water to drink, healthier air to breathe, and a countryside that all of us are free to enjoy—as a result of the decisions that this Government have taken.
We have established in the New Forest the first national park for nearly 50 years. There has been a 50 per cent. increase in the number of sites of special scientific interest in a favourable or recovering condition. We have passed the Animal Welfare Act 2006. We have reduced BSE incidence from 37,000 cases a year in 1992 to about 60 in 2007. We have saved 28 million tonnes of carbon through the climate change levy, which was opposed by the Conservatives. We have quadrupled household recycling and placed 4 million hectares of farmland under environmental stewardship schemes, with the support of farmers. We much appreciate the contribution that they are making.
The marine Bill will provide protection for the wonders of our seas. We will legislate so that each of us has, for the first time in our history, the right to walk around our coastline. In eight years’ time, Britain will generate at least 15 per cent. of our electricity from renewables; nine years from now, every single new house built will be zero carbon; and the London array will generate enough electricity from wind power to supply one in four homes in Greater London. What is the Conservatives’ position on wind farms these days? Are they in favour or against? My Department is helping to change Britain and the world for the better. with a clear sense of direction and a clear sense of purpose.
Does the hon. Member for East Surrey agree that the most important issue facing humanity today is climate change, or does he agree with one of his colleagues who says that climate change is the “great global warming swindle”? The Conservatives’ confusion may explain why their manifesto at the last election had just three sentences on the subject and said nothing about a target or reducing CO2 emissions, whereas our manifesto mentioned a cut of at least 60 per cent. The House will also have noted the speech that the Prime Minister made recently.
The Government have helped to lead the world on climate change. We have broken the link between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions. We were the first country to try out carbon emissions trading; the first to put climate change at the heart of our G8 presidency; and the first to call a debate on climate change in the UN Security Council, because it is a security as well as an environmental problem. Now we are the first country in the world to put forward a legally binding commitment to reduce carbon emissions.
Those proposals have received support from across the spectrum. Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth called it
“a truly groundbreaking piece of legislation”.
David Nussbaum of WWF said that it could be
“a shining example for the rest of the world to follow”.
The CBI called it “a big step forward”.
Next week, I will be in Bali, with others, to try to get agreement to start negotiations on a new global deal on climate change. That will be European leadership, with Britain in the vanguard. DEFRA staff will work as lead negotiators for the whole of the European Union—recognised for their skill and expertise—and make their contribution.
I believe powerfully in the capacity of DEFRA and in the power of politics to make a difference to our world. I make a genuine offer to the hon. Gentleman. I would welcome an Opposition who set out ideas for how we could do things differently and better. When he has a good argument, I will listen and take it on board if it is better than mine. In the mean time, I hope that he will acknowledge on reflection that he did not paint a fair picture of DEFRA and its achievements. I commend the amendment to the House, and confirm that we intend to get on with the job in hand—preventing dangerous climate change, adapting to the change that is coming and protecting our natural environment, so that we can pass on to the next generation a better world.
Unlike the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth), I do not live in a world of cartoon goodies and baddies. DEFRA’s performance is good in parts, but it leaves much to be desired in others. DEFRA’s response to the summer floods was a case in point.
In Gloucestershire at least, emergency response systems worked well and Gold Command, under the direction of our chief constable, Tim Brain, proved an effective leadership team. I have to declare a personal interest as my wife, Dr. Shona Arora, was also a member of Gold Command. That meant that my contribution that week was often babysitting, and she felt that that accurately reflected the relative usefulness of doctors and politicians in a crisis.
As many hon. Members have said many times, emergency services, local authorities, the NHS, charities, volunteers, local communities and friends and neighbours all responded brilliantly. Liaison with Ministers seemed to be good, and I appreciated the personal interest in my constituency taken by the Secretary of State. Significant extra funds were made available quickly through the flood recovery grant, although that highlighted the weakness of the existing Bellwin scheme, which clearly was not up to the job. It is to the credit of Ministers that they realised that quickly. I also note that support may be forthcoming from the much-maligned European Union. If moneys are made available from the European solidarity fund, I hope that all hon. Members will join me in welcoming that. Perhaps Ministers will update the House on the progress of that application.
However, the bigger picture on flood defence still poses some very difficult questions. Many of my constituents, and many businesses in my constituency, are still counting the cost of the floods. I am worried that emergency response might be much more difficult, and people’s tolerance much lower, if flooding hits again on cold, dark winter nights. Climate change makes that much more likely, and planning permissions are still outstanding for areas such as the open land at Leckhampton in my constituency, which flooded in July.
The overall budget for flood defence is therefore critical, as it is what will prevent insurance premiums from spiralling and house prices from dropping. Indeed, it will prevent some new homes from being potentially uninsurable or even unsaleable. In Cheltenham, we already have a brand new flood defence scheme worth £23 million. June and July might have been much worse without it, but the Environment Agency staff who visited several sites in Cheltenham with me freely admit that more work needs to be done. What of the existing backlog of flood defence schemes? Will the Minister say how long it will take the Environment Agency to clear it, at the current rate of progress? The rumour is that it will take 10 years, which is a very worrying prospect. How many schemes have been put back by the Government’s decision last year to cut flood defence spending by £14 million?
The hon. Gentleman has pointed out that a lot of work remains to be done. Does he believe that all the money for flood defences must come from taxation, or should we find another source?
I believe that it would add insult to injury if all the money came from water bills, and I should be very concerned about that. I hope that the funds will come from the reprioritisation of broader Government spending. Perhaps we could save money in other sectors of government if we invaded fewer countries.
The Association of British Insurers has been pretty clear about what needs to be done. As well as backing the Liberal Democrat policy that we should clear up the tangle of responsibilities surrounding flood prevention, it has backed our call to increase spending faster. In October, it said:
“Government spending for the next three years is less than we were asking for even before the floods. It does not begin to address the major issues, including drainage, which were highlighted this summer. The Government will have to increase spending substantially, as needs are identified by the Pitt review team…the Government has completely failed to grasp the importance of improving Britain’s flood defences in the wake of the devastating floods across the UK.”
Yet the Government are not really being so generous, even with their existing spending on floods. The overspend on flooding this year, along with unexpected spending on foot and mouth disease, bluetongue and avian flu, is going to mean budget cuts elsewhere in DEFRA. The Brown doctrine on departmental funds appears to be that a Department that gets hit by an unexpected overspend cannot expect money to be transferred from elsewhere in government.
That is a more important point than one put forward by the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth), who characterised the approach as one of pure financial mismanagement. The Prime Minister’s callous approach brought the NHS into crisis last year, and now it seems to be DEFRA’s turn. Estimates of the amount likely to be cut from other programmes range up to £300 million, as we have already heard. Will the Minister share with us where those cuts are likely to be made? Where is the support going to be cut for action on climate change, the protection of our natural environment, or support for our hard pressed farmers? Will Natural England’s vital conservation work be reduced? It is already being asked by the Government to repay the £16 million spent on setting up the new agency structure, which was decided by the Government. Will the Minister at least confirm that the Environment Agency’s £51 million budget for new conservation work will be protected, or will the axe fall on recycling and action against waste?
I want to seize this opportunity to praise the Government’s initiative on the business resource efficiency and waste—BREW—programme, and applaud the real practical action against climate change being taken by Envirowise, the waste resources action programme, the Carbon Trust and the lesser known but equally impressive national industrial symbiosis programme. That alone has eliminated 300,000 tonnes of hazardous waste, prevented the use of 5 million tonnes of virgin material and saved 2.5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions. Perhaps the Minister will make it clear that their budgets are all safe.
Is it even clear that the promised increases in flood defence spending will be protected? Or perhaps, and most astonishingly of all, is it animal disease control that will suffer? I find it quite breathtaking that DEFRA has requested local authorities to return funds for animal disease control—even in Surrey, where councils have been hit by both avian flu and bluetongue. I was surprised that the hon. Member for East Surrey did not find time to mention that. Devon county council has said that the cuts mean five of its eight posts may have to go as a result, and that
“it will be catastrophic if an outbreak of disease happens.”
At a time when climate change is opening the door to new diseases such as bluetongue, surely that is the last thing that we should be doing.
The Secretary of State made the intriguing announcement on 19 November that he believes current arrangements to be unsustainable. Was that driven by strategic thinking, or by the short-term financial crisis in which DEFRA seems to have found itself? Surely our farming industry has suffered enough, not just from the disease outbreaks themselves but from DEFRA’s performance in the regulation and monitoring of the Pirbright laboratory and, most of all, the fiasco of single farm payments. I understand from my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) that 25 per cent. of Welsh farmers still have not received their payments. I hope that the Minister will tell us the equivalent figure for England—although I fear that the figure will be much higher.
I turn now to DEFRA’s role as climate change champion for the whole Government. Again, some praise is due, and I am happy to associate myself with the Secretary of State’s congratulation of the chief scientist on his participation in the intergovernmental panel on climate change and its receipt of the Nobel prize. After all, DEFRA is bringing forward the Climate Change Bill, which will put carbon emission reductions on the statute book, following the Stern report and Friends of the Earth’s very effective “Big Ask” campaign. That is an important achievement, although Ministers know that we on the Liberal Democrat Benches think that the targets contained in the Bill are inadequate, and I have teased them about the amount of time that it has taken us to get to this point.
The latest voices to be added to those calling for higher targets include last week’s UN human development report, which called for cuts of at least 80 per cent. from the richer countries, and that of Sir Nicholas Stern himself. Speaking to the Royal Economic Society last Friday, Sir Nicholas said:
“For a 50 per cent. reduction in global emissions by 2050, the world average per capita must drop from 7 tonnes to 2-3 tonnes. An 80 per cent. target for rich countries would bring equality of only the flow of emissions around the 2-3 tonnes per capita level. In fact, they will have consumed the big majority of the ‘available space in the atmosphere’.”
In other words, if we are to achieve an equitable world agreement on carbon reductions, we have to commit to cuts of 80 per cent. or more, and that should be on the face of the Bill.
If the hon. Gentleman wants his call for higher emission reductions to have credibility, why are Liberal Democrat councillors around the country campaigning against the very policies that would secure those reductions? Specifically, why are they in the forefront of campaigns against congestion charging in Greater Manchester, and why are they campaigning against wind farms on the edge of my constituency?
I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s characterisation. All over the country Liberal Democrat councils have pioneered work on climate change. In Liberal Democrat constituencies I have stood under wind turbines that were fully supported by the local council and the local Liberal Democrat MP. My party is in favour of wind farms, but we would never concede that every application for every wind farm is always right.
I am sorry, I shall not give way again. I do not know the circumstances in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, but I am confident that Liberal Democrat campaigners in the area are doing the right thing.
There is more evidence that the Government are parting company with even the contents of the Stern report. In the Environmental Audit Committee this morning, we heard from Friends of the Earth and WWF that the economic cost of carbon emissions—the future cost of climate change—being used by the Government is dramatically lower than Sir Nicholas Stern recommended. He cites a figure for the social cost of carbon in 2000 of $85 per tonne of CO2 equivalent. Using DEFRA’s exchange rate, Friends of the Earth calculated that that equates to £53 per tonne of CO2 equivalent, but DEFRA has introduced a new concept—the shadow cost of carbon—and puts the 2000 value of that at only £19, which is nearly three times lower.
What is the importance of that apparently technical detail? It affects all our lives—some more than others. It gives us a social cost of carbon emissions in the Heathrow consultation of just £4.8 billion. If DEFRA and the Department for Transport had stuck to Sir Nicholas Stern’s figure, they would have put the cost at more than £13 billion. That would have stopped in its tracks the proposal for a third runway at Heathrow, but by miscalculating the future economic cost of climate change DEFRA has changed the outcome of the Heathrow runway consultation. Although carbon emissions are rising year on year—and have risen since the Government came to power—the Government have given the green light to one of the very projects that will stop them meeting their own targets. The cost to the environment and, as Sir Nicholas Stern pointed out, to the economy will be truly dreadful.
There is more. DEFRA’s influence on other parts of Government is clearly weak. Why else would the Chancellor, too, take a significant step away from Stern? Again I give due credit to Friends of the Earth’s brilliant economist Simon Bullock for spotting that. The Chancellor’s October document, entitled—without a hint of irony—“Implementing Stern” says that the basis of the carbon price is
“to reflect the damage caused by emissions and to require Governments, businesses and individuals to meet the costs they impose on the environment”.
The Stern report actually argues rather differently—that it is not the price of carbon that determines the cap, but exactly the opposite: the cap should determine the price. Stern says:
“A long-term stabilisation target should be used to establish a quantity ceiling to limit the total stock of carbon over time. Short-term policies (based on tax, trading or in some circumstances regulation) will then need to be consistent with this long-term stabilisation goal.”
This time, it is the Treasury that seems to be weakening the foundations of our attack on climate change.
On 22 November, replying to me during a debate on climate change, the Minister for the Environment failed to say whether the British Government were taking active steps to persuade one of their friends not to veto a Bill that would put limits on the most significant carbon emissions of all—those of the United States of America. Will Ministers tell us whether DEFRA has asked the Foreign Office to ask George Bush not to veto the Lieberman-Warner Bill?
DEFRA’s performance has been good in parts. In its emergency response, in introducing the Climate Change Bill and in its responsibility for the BREW programme, the Department deserves credit; but by failing farmers, failing to plan for future flooding and above all by failing to spread the message on climate change across the whole Government, it has delivered a very poor performance indeed. If Members do not believe me, they should believe members of Green Alliance, who are so stingy with their accolades that they gave the Liberal Democrats only three green points in their assessment of a range of all our environmental policies—“The Green Standard Report”. It gave the Government just one point. The best that can be said about that is that at least the Government did better than the Conservative party, which was given no points at all.
rose—
Order. I remind the House that the 10-minute rule on Back Benchers’ speeches operates from now on. It may not allow everybody who wishes to participate to do so as much as the Chair originally understood, so perhaps Members could try to keep comfortably within their 10 minutes.
I was disappointed by the speech of the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth). It seemed rather a bogus attack on DEFRA. Of course, the Rural Payments Agency situation needs to be highlighted, although there are good reasons for it. The Select Committee report made a fair assessment of the background.
I am one of the few Members to have served in both the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food and DEFRA—in fact, I may be the only one—so I can tell the hon. Gentleman that DEFRA is a huge improvement on the MAFF structure. MAFF was a 1960s Department; it suffered from low status and low morale, and made the most appalling mistakes, especially over Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew) rightly said, had consequences for human lives, let alone the costs of the debacle. That situation arose partly because the then Conservative Government were far too dominated by producer interests rather than by the wider needs of society. They did not recognise that a balance was needed.
The hon. Member for East Surrey criticised the handling of the 2001 outbreak, but I remember the Opposition congratulating the then Minister for Agriculture on his handling of the early stages of the outbreak. At that time nobody knew the scale of the outbreak; during the days before the disease was reported, it was being spread all over the country by the illegal and legal transport of animals. No country had ever found itself in that situation. The fact that that outbreak was contained and eradicated is a tremendous achievement for all concerned. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that, when playing political games, the hon. Gentleman should be careful not to trash the reputation of hard-working civil servants who showed the most incredible dedication when bringing that outbreak under control.
I also echo what was said about the 2005 Conservative party manifesto. I remember debating the matter on platforms with Conservative and Liberal Democrat spokespeople. The 2005 manifesto commitments to cuts in public expenditure would have devastated the then English Nature budget.
I was surprised by the hon. Gentleman’s comments on waste. He seems to have forgotten that in 1997 the recycling rate was about 6 or 7 per cent. That has now risen to about 25 per cent. The amount of waste going to landfill has dropped, which is a considerable achievement compared with where we were 10 years ago. My local authority of North Lincolnshire has a recycling rate of 40 per cent. and is confident that it can hit rates of 50 per cent. It deserves a great many congratulations on what it has done. That has been brought about only because of support and grants from DEFRA, which is dedicated to reducing waste in this country. That is important.
I want to pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood). I welcomed the Green Alliance report. Like most people, I think that there were one or two areas where the Green Alliance could have been a bit more generous, particularly in relation to the Government’s record on biodiversity. Nevertheless, it was a fair assessment. The hon. Member for East Surrey should note that it gave the Government a great deal of praise for the international lead that they have given on climate change.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State spelled out the areas in which this country has pioneered climate change policies. Not only that, but the expertise of DEFRA officials and scientists has been used in developing schemes all over the world and particularly in Europe. The software for the emissions trading registration scheme was developed in DEFRA and has been applied by, I think, the majority of European countries. I think DEFRA gets some income from that software development, and it deserves credit for that.
Of course there are always areas that can be improved. However, I have experienced the limitations of MAFF, and seen how DEFRA has been given a much higher status and has attracted a wide range of new people, who have come to work there because they support the concept of DEFRA. Moving to a Department that has land use policy strategies for water, air and land was the right decision. If my memory is correct, at the time the Conservatives supported, rather than criticised, the approach of having a more powerful environment Ministry to deal with all the issues.
I want to make five quick points to my right and hon. Friends on the Front Bench, for whom I have great deal of respect and who have done extremely well, particularly in handling the recent outbreaks. DEFRA has received a great deal of praise for the way in which it handled the bird flu and bluetongue outbreaks, and the recent foot and mouth outbreaks. It is using updated modern contingency plans. It faced a situation in which foot and mouth was not spread all over the country by a rogue farmer and the kind of movements that took place previously. The hon. Member for East Surrey should recognise that the situations are different.
I said I would make five quick points. The first is EU funding. If we are to recognise that climate change is the biggest environmental threat that we face this century—perhaps the biggest threat that we have ever faced—there are important matters to consider. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been arguing for shifting agricultural spending towards the rural development regulation. That is the right thing to do, but we need to go further. We need to harness the EU to combat climate change. An awful lot of spending in the EU could be used much more productively. However, that is a matter for a wider debate; I just wanted to draw the point to my right hon. Friend’s attention.
Secondly, the Planning Bill will shortly go through Parliament. I know that my right hon. Friend does not have lead responsibility for the Bill, but streamlining planning is important. No one wants a better way of dealing with renewable energy and waste infrastructure more than I do, but there are issues to do with protecting biodiversity. It is important that biodiversity is not pushed to one side in the debate as a nuisance. My right hon. Friend’s voice is important in that regard.
Thirdly, on bovine tuberculosis, I ask my colleagues please to follow the science. We want decisions to be science-based. The arguments are incredibly complicated, and it is wrong for anybody to think that there are simple solutions to the problem. There has been a tendency to try to rubbish the Bourne report, which was carried out with great thoroughness. It is a very respectable scientific study. I ask Ministers please to make sure that we take a science-based approach, not one based on anecdotes.
My fourth point, which has already been mentioned, concerns shared responsibility. It is hard to justify any industry that expects free insurance, paid for by the taxpayer. There has to be shared responsibility. Indeed, I would go further and say that it should be linked to biosecurity and how it is applied. For example, in the recent Bernard Matthews outbreak there were clear breaches of biosecurity. There is a strong suspicion that the outbreak was spread from operations in Hungary by movements within the factory. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money was paid in compensation. There has to be a better scheme.
My last point is small but important. Through the Animal Welfare Bill, the Government made a huge contribution to improving conditions for animals. I know that my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench are looking at the welfare codes at the moment; that is a real opportunity for giving clear guidance on improving the welfare of animals in our country. There are some difficult issues, such as that of performing animals in circuses, but I ask my colleagues not to go back on the assurances that former DEFRA Ministers gave the House; that is very important. I ask my colleagues to work closely with such groups as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which have been strong supporters of what the Government have done, and which want to work with them to make the codes effective.
In his speech, the Secretary of State admitted, in his inimitable and endearing style, that when the Government have failures, they should admit to them. Frankly, there have been many failures in his Department, although I am happy to admit that many of them occurred before he began his watch. There have been so many examples of incompetence and there has been such a waste of public money, that the only honest statement to make at the Dispatch Box is the one that a colleague of his had the courage to make at the Home Office some time ago—that is, to admit that the Department is not fit for purpose.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs works in the unpredictable spheres of plant and animal diseases, and the effects of global warming. It will always have to handle those difficult problems. We all agree that they present severe challenges, but the real issue is that too many of DEFRA’s problems have arisen from the failings of the Department. My hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) gave an example at the Dispatch Box: when DEFRA chose the most complex method of common agricultural policy reform—the so-called dynamic hybrid—it set itself up for a fall. Administrative errors in handing out the single farm payments have cost the taxpayer £348 million, and many farmers in my constituency still do not have all the money to which they are entitled.
Perhaps more shocking than the destabilisation of the farming industry through the incompetent handling of the single farm payments was the revelation that DEFRA had rocked the industry further with the return of foot and mouth. The source of the outbreak was identified as the site of a Government-sponsored animal disease laboratory at Pirbright. Those errors on the part of DEFRA have swallowed its budget, cost the taxpayer enormous amounts of money, and caused undue and unnecessary harm to farmers and people living in rural communities. Additional Treasury pressures to cut expenditure will simply exacerbate DEFRA’s inability to deliver its remit.
The primary reason for the creation of DEFRA, we were told, was to bring interrelated areas of farming, food, environment and flood protection closer together under the one umbrella—in other words, to facilitate joined-up government. Unfortunately, that is far from the reality. So dislocated appear to be the internal parts of DEFRA that disjointed and incompetent management and administration are the norm.
Let me give the House three examples from my constituency that have happened in the past few weeks. The first case is that of Mr. Frank Harris, a beef farmer from Leverington common. On 30 October, Mr. Harris rang my office to say that he had 21 suckler cows in calf on the Whittlesey washes on the Nene river. We had telephone contact the same day from other farmers who confirmed that there were a further 200 suckler cows on the same washlands. The Whittlesey washes, like the Ouse washes further south, are a vital reservoir for excess water in the wetter winter months and, as such, play an integral and crucial part in the fens flood protection apparatus.
The washes were then placed in a bluetongue control area, with every likelihood that they would soon be flooded. Knowing that the land would be flooded, Mr. Harris asked whether we could intervene on his behalf and asked for his cattle to be blood tested so that they could be moved into a protection zone on his farm about 3 miles away, but outside the zone.
The same day we wrote on Mr. Harris’s behalf to Lord Rooker’s office asking for an exception or relaxation to be made on the grounds of animal welfare. We left messages at Lord Rooker’s office again on 6 November. A week later on 12 November, we spoke to an official who said that he would chase the matter up, but we have never, to this day, received a response or even an acknowledgement from DEFRA.
Mr. Harris has repeatedly tried to obtain permission from the State Veterinary Service in Bury St. Edmunds to move his cattle, but to no avail. Since our inquiries, the land has flooded and some of the cattle, we are informed, have given birth. As far as DEFRA is concerned, there are 21 drowning cattle and their newborn calves.
My second example is Mr. Wiggington, who runs S&T Poultry near Wisbech. He breeds chicks for stock improvement for poultry farmers. He was trying to export more than 600 chicks to Jersey, which was happy to accept imports as long as the chicks had been reared outside avian flu designated areas. Mr. Wiggington applied for his licence at the Bury St. Edmunds DEFRA office. However, it took seven days for the information from the Jersey authorities to go from the DEFRA office in Page street to the Bury St. Edmunds office via, it seems, the Lincoln office. Despite repeated calls from both Mr. Wiggington and his potential customers, nothing seemed to be moving.
My office phoned and e-mailed DEFRA in Lincoln and within an hour that office had instructed the Bury St. Edmunds office that the licence would be signed. By this time, it was only a day before the chicks were scheduled to be shipped, so Mr. Wiggington had to take the morning off to drive to Bury St. Edmunds to collect the original licence in person, because DEFRA said that a photo or faxed copy was not acceptable for an export licence.
Had the paperwork not been cleared at the last minute, despite it being in the system for a week, Mr. Wiggington would have had to destroy a second batch of chicks in a month. He has also reported to me losses of more than £1,000 in value as a result of DEFRA mismanagement and poor administration in the past year. This includes an incident where DEFRA put a stamp on a letter that enclosed licences, instead of franking it. That meant that the letter did not arrive, and as the birds could not be shipped, they had to be destroyed. The next week Mr. Wiggington had to go and collect the documents himself from the post office and pay for the postage.
Because of poor instructions from DEFRA, Mr. Wiggington is still waiting for £2,500 worth of grant aid for going organic. He followed the instructions to the letter, only to be told subsequently that his application was unacceptable. Now he has been told that he will have to wait a minimum of six months for the payment as a result of an error that originated with DEFRA.
My final example involves Mr. Charles Horrell who farms at Pode Hole farm at Thorney near Peterborough. He runs a pedigree cattle and sheep farm. When he was placed in the bluetongue control zone around Peterborough, those pedigree cattle and sheep, which he would normally have sold for breeding for £50,000 in total, would have had to go to slaughter in a poor market situation and would have been worth only about £10,000. We phoned DEFRA on his behalf and asked what Mr. Horrell’s options were, now that he was in the control zone. However, nobody at the DEFRA office knew, so we wrote to Lord Rooker. Finally, we got a response from him simply saying:
“DEFRA are encouraging farming businesses to review their contingency plans through farming organisations.”
So we followed that up and phoned farming organisations, including the National Farmers Union, the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group and the Meat and Livestock Commission. Not one had any advice for farmers on creating contingency plans or new business strategies to counter the onset of disease. It appears that not only has DEFRA offloaded on to unions, charities and advisory groups the problems of responding at farm business level to bluetongue and foot and mouth, but it has not had the decency to tell them that it has done so.
Another natural hazard that has tested DEFRA in the past year is flooding. As the effects of global warming take hold on the environment and flood risk from tidal surges, higher sea levels and greater storms grows, DEFRA has abrogated its responsibility for flood protection by offloading those problems on to the Environment Agency. The increase in the money going towards flood protection seems to be a positive step, but it coincides with the addition of the expensive burden of coastal flooding to the Environment Agency’s responsibilities. Those involved in flood protection in the fens have told me that they are concerned that the agency will be tempted to divert some of the extra funds to its own priorities—which, of course, include coastal flood prevention. If that is the case, the increase will not translate into extra security for people in Sheffield, Gloucester or Tewkesbury.
The culture of DEFRA has changed since the old MAFF days—certainly as far as agriculture is concerned. The Department’s job was to support the farming industry and the rural community, but it has become one that seems to care little about rural issues and the rural economy and just wants to control and regulate that economy out of existence. Food prices are already increasing at a frightening rate. Do not look to the supermarkets to come to our aid; they are already paring farm-gate prices to the bone. It is time that the Government returned to their age-old primary responsibility of ensuring the security of our food supplies.
The hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss) defined DEFRA as a Department dealing with plant and animal diseases and climate change; I like to think that it is called the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs because deep within it is the recognition, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) referred, that without the balance of biodiversity within the natural environment there is no food for the world to eat, and there will be devastation for rural communities.
I believe in the TANSTAAFL principle, which stands for, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” It was created in the 1970s to recognise the impact of failing to protect and value our natural habitats and their biodiversity, and to place them in the only framework that we seem to understand—that of money.
The world is losing biodiversity at an increasing rate as a result of human activity. In the United Kingdom, 44 per cent. of moths and 71 per cent. of butterflies are declining, mirroring parallel declines in common bird species such as the ptarmigan, the skylark, the grey partridge and, in some areas, the common sparrow.
Across the world, changes in biodiversity due to human activity have happened more rapidly in the past 50 years than at any other time in human history. The many species of plants, insects and animals that live in a diverse range of habitats give us the sense of the place where we live, and act as an incentive to visit other areas, communities and habitats. Environmental tourism is the fastest-growing sector of tourism. Environmental protection bodies form a rapidly growing sector to which people are giving their time, energy and commitment. There is a recognition that biodiversity brings benefits to local communities; it benefits health, improves local economies, maintains environmental quality and ecosystem services and provides recreation and education resources for people of all ages.
Securing a healthy, resilient, productive and natural environment is a key DEFRA priority. It is enshrined in the Government’s natural environment public service agreement to secure a healthy natural environment for today and the future. Biodiversity is an essential component of that.
There is a recognition among biodiversity and wildlife groups of the Labour Government’s commitment to biodiversity, through the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006, the Commons Act 2006, the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005—matters that the parties opposite neglected. Those measures demonstrate the Government’s commitment to the natural environment.
There is concern that, in the bright heat of climate change recognition, the need to track and protect biodiversity is perhaps being put on the back burner and facing policy neglect and financial cuts, as the focus moves to energy conservation and generation rather than to monitoring adaptation and habitat loss. I urge DEFRA to give the latter greater protection and priority.
United Kingdom biodiversity action planning helps to co-ordinate work nationally and locally by identifying priorities for action and setting targets for the recovery of habitats and species. That critical planning measure is vital to ensure that species and habitat information is collected and collated. The Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 was introduced to protect, conserve and enhance the country’s landscapes and support rural communities. The Act established Natural England, which is responsible for championing and integrating management of the environment, nature conservation, biodiversity, landscape, access and recreation.
There are concerns that funding cuts to Natural England will affect many big and small non-governmental organisations, from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds to wildlife trusts and bat, badger, moth and butterfly conservation bodies, which rely on seedcorn funding for their survival. Those organisations feed in the raw data from their army of volunteers throughout the UK, who track habitat and biodiversity loss. Without that information, the UK biodiversity action plan—BAP, which targets the recovery of some of our most threatened species and habitats in the terrestrial, freshwater and marine environments, with 10 to 15 year goals—will fail. I would welcome a commitment to ensuring that those organisations are supported and to recognising their importance.
Each of the four countries of the UK has produced country strategies for biodiversity. The 24 biodiversity partnerships in Wales have done an enormous amount of work to prepare and implement local plans that support the UK BAP. Local biodiversity action plans in Wales comprise a range of successful projects that inspire new partners to enter that vital aspect of planning. Partners include the tourism and business sectors. The projects contribute to progress and acknowledge everyone’s responsibility for biodiversity and habitat protection, so that it is not perceived as a matter for only the farming community.
More than 72 per cent. of our sites of special scientific interest are now in a favourable condition, which represents a tremendous improvement in the past few years. That improvement was targeted and brought about by the Labour Government. The Government are on track to meet the 95 per cent. target by 2010.
I have arranged a moth recording night in the Palace in each of the past two years—this year, it is supported by the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock)—to show that there is wildlife even in this most sterile of places. Butterflies are recognised as indicators of a healthy environment and should be recognised as indicators of the effectiveness of the Government’s land-use policy. In October, DEFRA launched a new framework called “Conserving Biodiversity—The UK Approach”, which provides a more holistic approach recognising the interconnectedness between living things, their environment and the services they provide.
It is easy to think that biodiversity is unimportant—that it has a low level of responsibility in improving the quality of life in this country—yet insect pollination of crops alone brings £172 million a year into this country. We neglect biodiversity and our habitat at our peril. If we want to eat and if we want to protect our rural communities, we have to tackle these issues. I am proud to be part of a Labour Government who are introducing a marine Bill; I am proud of the role that DEFRA has played in the International Whaling Commission.
I think that the hon. Lady may mean the draft marine Bill, as we did not have a Bill in the Queen’s Speech this year despite the fact that it has had all-party support for two years.
I thank the hon. Gentleman. Let me just say that this Government have been committed to introducing a marine Bill, which no other Government have done, and I am particularly proud of that.
I recognise that there have been problems at DEFRA—no one would deny that. What disturbs me, however, is the total lack of recognition of how important a role it has played in protecting the natural habitats of this country and how important it has been in ensuring that the huge army of people involved in and committed to habitat and species protection receive the support that they need. Only this Labour Government have taken that on board and given their commitment to the founding of DEFRA, a Department with the word “Environment” first in its name.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon). She talked about free lunches. I seem to remember that on a recent Inter-Parliamentary Union trip to Albania she and I had a lot of very long free lunches, but I am not sure as yet what the payback has been. I share her concern about biodiversity, as surely we all do. The previous Conservative Government had an extremely good record in introducing legislation to help to protect this country’s environment. My right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) played a leading part in that.
It is impossible to measure the effort that a Government make by the amount of legislation that they pass. This Government have passed a vast volume of legislation on the countryside that has placed considerable burdens on many in the farming community, as well as wasting a lot of time. Natural England, or English Nature as it was then, spent a great deal of time chasing the old socialist policy of right to roam and spent untold millions that could have been better invested in a proper footpath network than in covering the countryside with areas with the right to roam. That is certainly the case in my constituency, which has previously been roamed on quite happily by local people. All that we have had is a lot of gates put up with labels on them, and nobody much uses the facility anyway. That was a wasted opportunity.
I assure the hon. Gentleman that the right to roam has been supported by many more people than socialists.
I take that point.
One cannot measure a Government’s performance, or the performance of a Ministry such as DEFRA, simply on the volume of legislation—what is important is how effective it is. We must remember that 80 per cent. of our countryside is managed by British farmers.
I would like to lay to rest the impression given by the Secretary of State and by the right hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) that Conservative Members are somehow attacking the ordinary individual DEFRA official. [Hon. Members: “You are!”] We are not doing that. When my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) mentioned the matter, he was quoting a farmer. It must be understood that the interface between the Government—DEFRA—and the farming industry is the official on the ground, who unfortunately, as DEFRA’s representative pitching up at the farm gate, takes on the chin the farmer’s anger about over-regulation and disasters such as the Rural Payments Agency and the foot and mouth epidemic. They are only doing their master’s bidding. The actual fiasco of the Rural Payments Agency was nothing to do with DEFRA officials; it went straight to the Secretary of State’s predecessor, who decided, contrary to the advice of the European Union, most farming unions and others in this country, to opt for a system that mixed historic and land-based elements. In Wales and Scotland they opted for the historic one, which is why farmers in Wales and Scotland are receiving payments today.
I respect the hon. Gentleman’s knowledge of agriculture, but he knows that a strong body of opinion in the farming community supported the system DEFRA put in place. How would he justify, for example, putting people who had always grown vegetables and crops that were unsupported, who never had subsidies, into a system that would lock them out of that for ever, while ensuring that people who always had such subsidies—in some cases, people who did not compete in the marketplace as other farmers did—had that advantage built in for ever? Would he have justified that?
I take the point, and I respect the right hon. Gentleman because he was in the Department for a very long time. Of course, for many farmers there was an advantage in going to the land-based system, but the advice made it quite clear that it would be an administrative nightmare, and it was.
indicated dissent.
Well, for a start, as well as the system bringing in sections such as horticulture that had not been covered previously, which could have been anticipated, no one realised that all of a sudden, nearly 50,000 other so-called farmers would come on the scene who had never even registered for the integrated administration and control scheme.
People who had bought farmhouses when farms were broken up had five, six or 10 acres of land, and they thought, “Hey, this’ll be rather good. We’ll claim some single farm payment for our pony paddock.” They then boasted in the local pub, “I received £54 in subsidy payment.” The system was overwhelmed, which is why serious, professional farmers suffered so much. In future negotiations, I hope that there will be a minimum size or standard to ensure that such people are not liable to receive the single farm payment.
The serious result of the chaos over the Rural Payments Agency and the single farm payment was that for over two years it distracted farmers from sitting down and doing what they should have been doing. Because of the delays, farmers reached a point of desperation. They were borrowing money left, right and centre from banks and owed money to their suppliers. For the past two years, they have essentially concentrated on simply keeping their heads above water. They should have been doing what they had been advised to do: using the single farm payment to make their farming enterprises profitable, instead of relying on subsidy.
The idea was that a farming enterprise should run profitably on its activities, and that the single farm payment would be money for investment and possibly profit. Farmers have not been able to do that, and as a consequence many farms and farmers in the livestock sector are running at a loss. If they properly quantified their labour, which a lot of them do not do, they would find that their losses were quite substantial.
I got some figures recently—I do not know whether the Secretary of State has seen them—from the English Beef and Lamb Executive, which has been doing research into the cost of production of livestock. For example, the loss on the average England lowland suckler herd in 2005-06 was £351 per beast. In 2006-07, that figure went down to just under £300. Right through the beef industry, the losses are about the same. The losses in the sheep sector were equivalent—a loss of nearly £50 per ewe in 2005, and a £34 loss per ewe in 2006-07. The Secretary of State can see that there is a tremendous amount to do if we are to ensure that such farming enterprises are properly profitable. That is why we should encourage schemes such as the EBLEX better return scheme so that livestock farmers get a better result.
The disasters of foot and mouth and bluetongue came at the worst possible time, which is sad because 2007 was shaping up to be not a bad year for the livestock industry. That went down the pan immediately, particularly when the export of sheep stopped and there was a huge overhang on the market. However, the underlying trend is good because the quantities of beef and lamb being eaten in this country are up. It is a pity that farmers could not cash in on that by getting the better prices that they were anticipating at the start of the season. There is some reason to be optimistic, certainly in parts of the livestock sector. Cereal farmers are also not unhappy, but pig farmers, poultry farmers and game rearers are desperately unhappy about what has happened.
What the industry needs from DEFRA are some positive decisions on a number of hugely important outstanding issues. The first, which has been mentioned, is the issue of TB, which needs to be resolved. That is a matter of considerable urgency that has been around for at least 10 years—
Indeed, longer than 10 years. Unfortunately, the chief scientific adviser supported a cull. A decision must now be taken. I appreciate that the decision is difficult, but it needs to be taken quite soon.
Perhaps more controversially, a proper decision must be taken on genetically modified crops. Possibly alone on this side of the Chamber, I favour the planting of GM crops in this country, because I see them as an important new development in agriculture that will go a long way towards feeding people throughout the world with better and healthier food. We have to make that decision. The threat if we do not make that decision is that the livestock industry will gradually migrate abroad, because GM feed prices will be much lower than feed prices in the UK. That will pose a threat to the viability of our livestock industry. We will increasingly import meat more cheaply across the tariff boundaries from South America and countries in other areas.
Those are the big issues that DEFRA needs to address. The British farming industry wants not a Ministry dogged with endless disasters, but a Ministry that can support farmers and stick up for them in an ever-changing world.
If I may paraphrase the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson), who spoke well, it appears he thinks that we should scrap the right to roam, cull the badgers and plant GM crops everywhere.
A good manifesto speech.
Indeed. On the right to roam, I was pleased to hear the hon. Gentleman use the word “socialist”, which we do not hear often enough in the Chamber. In fact, many people roam through his constituency along Hadrian’s wall, past my house, through the city and right on to Bowness. There is a value in people walking the countryside, and some of the rural pubs will be pleased with the Hadrian’s wall path and the right to roam.
I want to come on to what is basically a constituency speech. The motion and the amendment talk about foot and mouth disease, and in 2001 my constituency was the epicentre of the disease in the north of the country. I had the first Adjournment debate about foot and mouth disease in this Chamber when it did not seem to be a major problem. However, it turned out to be one; indeed, it was horrendous. When I found out that there had been another outbreak in the south of England, I felt so sorry for the individuals involved.
However, it turned out that we had learned the lessons from 2001. The outbreak then was difficult, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) said. In 2001, we did not know that foot and mouth was around. The farmer concerned from Heddon-on-the-Wall had some terrible practices, but never reported the disease and in the end was prosecuted. That was the source of the outbreak in 2001. We argue about meat coming in from foreign countries, but if everybody had done what they should have done and if the biodiversity had been there, we would not have suffered the 2001 outbreak.
The hon. Gentleman says that if everybody had done what they should have done, we would not have experienced that outbreak. Does that include the DEFRA official who licensed the premises in Heddon-on-the-Wall, which should never have been licensed?
I do not know, but if that is the case, they should perhaps take the blame. The real answer, however, is that the pigswill should have been boiled, but that did not happen and that was the source, although we did not hear much criticism of the farming community or that individual from the Opposition then. However, we have learned the lessons of 2001. That is good and I am glad that the outbreak has been contained, because we do not want to go through that again. The big danger with foot and mouth is that in 10, 15 or 20 years’ time when we have forgotten the lessons, it might happen again. I hope that at any such time we bring in vaccinations at a very early stage.
Another issue is the Rural Payments Agency and the single farm payment. My constituents work in a very large RPA area office in the centre of Carlisle and when my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary came up, he was candid in saying that things had gone wrong, but that there was no blame to be laid on the work force. I am sorry that the Opposition seem to be blaming DEFRA civil servants. In the Rural Payments Agency in my constituency, they work two or three shifts. These are civil servants on shift work—something that I never thought I would see. They work very hard and very conscientiously, doing their best in very difficult circumstances. I hope that the Opposition spokesman who replies will acknowledge that. If we are to blame civil servants, let us blame those up near the top rather than individuals further down.
Flooding is another issue in our amendment. In 2005, my constituency suffered from the worst floods in an urban area of Britain for 50 years. It may have been worse since, but those were very serious floods. Unlike those we saw this year, they happened in the dead of winter in early January. We not only had floods; we had no electricity for many days. This was the first occasion for many years on which individuals drowned in floods in inland UK. Two old ladies drowned in their own homes in Warwick road in my constituency. It just so happens—it is a coincidence—that the Environment Agency announced today that the £12 million flood defences built in that area are now watertight. People living there will be able to sleep comfortably this winter. Unfortunately, in the part of the city where I live, the flood defences have not yet started, so I will not be able to sleep comfortably for another two years.
I would like to pay tribute at this stage to my right hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe. That serious flooding happened on 5 January and my right hon. Friend arrived on the morning of 6 January, when it was still raining. He gave me a commitment on that occasion—in front of the cameras, which I felt was a rather brave thing to do—that money would be made available for flood defences in Carlisle. The £30-odd million that was needed for flood defences in the city has been made available. When they are completed, Carlisle will be the best defended city in England. I really want to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for that.
I would also like to pay a special tribute to the Environment Agency, which has done a magnificent job on the flood defences. I pay particular tribute to the lady who led the defences work, Kim Nicholson, who was there when the going was rough and made sure that the plans were delivered on time, but who tragically died this summer. It is the greatest tribute to her that her team has continued and that the flood defences are completed on budget and before time. That will be a fitting memorial for her.
Let me return to the point I raised earlier with the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) about the funding of this country’s flood defences. I appreciate that the Government have gone along with increases from £600 million to £650 million and then £800 million, but I can tell the Secretary of State that that will not be enough. If we reflect on what happened this summer, it is clear that we will not be able to raise enough money through general taxation to pay for all the flood defences that we will need in the future. I do not believe that it is possible. Those who live in a flood plain who pay high insurance premiums and do not sleep easy at night should perhaps be asked to pay an extra contribution in future. I am not sure what the best mechanism is for achieving that. It may be through insurance premiums, but I am sure that people would like to pay more towards flood defences and less to the insurance companies. I think it was the hon. Member for Cheltenham who spoke of the inability to obtain insurance at all for some properties, the reduction in value of properties on flood plains and sky-high premiums. I suspect that if we could provide flood defences for those communities, they would be prepared to make a small contribution. The Secretary of State should consider that point.
Another aspect of floods is the aftermath. My right hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe, who has seen many more skips than I have, will know that once the floods have happened the skips arrive, and are themselves flooded with rubbish that goes to landfill. In Carlisle we probably contributed to eight years of landfill in a fortnight. Where was the recycling process? I can accept what happened in Carlisle because that was the first of a series of events, but I cannot accept as the years go by that all the goods that are taken out of houses and put in skips should go to landfill. It is partly to do with the way in which the insurance companies work: it is old for new. If you have an old suite, you put it in the skip. It was amazing to see how much more was recycled by those who were not insured than by those of us who were well insured.
During the 2005 floods my car was flooded, but it was running. I ran it for a fortnight. Then the insurance people came along, and said that it was a write-off and would be crushed. My neighbour had a brand-new Porsche—
You must live in a posh area!
It is not posh, actually, but that is another story, for which I do not have time. Anyway, the Porsche was taken away and crushed as well. The Government must take the lead on recycling in the event of flooding, especially if it is to happen year after year.
I do not believe that the lessons of Carlisle were learned. I think we should have protected the water treatment establishments and the electricity sub-stations. Fortunately not many of those went out, but the whole country should be sent the message that water treatment and sewage plants and electricity sub-stations must be protected. Nevertheless, I think that the Government are doing a good job overall, and I will support them tonight.
There are undoubtedly many challenges for DEFRA’s animal health officials, who have been rightly praised today. They include the demand for successful contingency plans to bring the recent outbreaks of foot and mouth disease—once the virus had escaped from Pirbright—then bluetongue disease and now avian influenza under control. Those challenges, coupled with the increasing incidence of TB—about which we have also heard today—have stretched the successful work of DEFRA’s animal health officials, so this would be a good time to ensure that they have all the resources that they require.
In August, September and October, outbreaks of foot and mouth and bluetongue disease meant that the agreed local delivery plan for Devon had to be adjusted, and contingency plans were invoked. DEFRA indicated that it expected any additional costs incurred to be kept within the overall Devon framework budget. Then it admitted that it had not done its sums. The cost agreed by local authorities and the regional divisional veterinary managers for animal disease control work amounted to £9.7 million for 2007-08, but DEFRA had allocated £8.5 million, and is seeking to claw back £1.2 million in the current financial year.
I was amazed to discover that Devon county council was notified of the situation, not by DEFRA but by the Local Authorities Co-ordinators of Regulatory Services, on 17 September. It was not until 2 November than DEFRA formally instructed Devon to make cuts in this year’s budget. Can the Secretary of State tell us why it took his Department so long to learn that it had oversubscribed its funds, and why it left it until so late to inform local authorities of the required cost savings? What discussions has he had on this, particularly in respect of the south-west, with his colleague, the Minister for the South West?
Devon has now to make £68,000 of savings by March. That represents 12 per cent. of its framework budget, but because it has to make the savings in this financial year it actually means that there will be a 48 per cent. cut in animal disease-control work. As there is merely four months to find £68,000, the only option for Devon county council is to fire five out of eight animal health officials or to pay for them itself. Those officials are in the front line against infectious diseases. If they are fired, I am sure that the Secretary of State would agree that Devon will, in the words of a local official, have
“very little to no preventative disease control”
and, as that official continued,
“Devon would be unable to maintain a presence at disease outbreak ‘critical control points’”.
The 2006 agricultural and horticultural survey shows that Devon has more cattle than any other local authority in England, the second largest number of sheep and the fifth and sixth largest numbers of pigs and poultry respectively. Farms in Devon employ 23,000 people, which is more than any other local authority, and Devon covers the largest geographical area of any local authority—approximately 1.6 million acres. The Secretary of State has given commitments in respect of “rural-proofing” so that policies take account of rural circumstances and needs. Is he therefore satisfied with his cuts, which would lead to one official per 550,000 acres, one official per 190,000 cattle, one official per 490,000 sheep and one official per 1,700,000 chickens? I think I am right in saying that the south-west produces twice as much food as Scotland and three times as much as Wales—that is a staggering set of statistics, and it leads to staggering thoughts. Given the importance of agriculture in Devon, will he enter into discussions on its funding requirements as a matter of urgency? How can the Secretary of State satisfy himself that these cuts would not impinge upon future disease prevention, containment and control? The House will remember—we have heard from the hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew)—the heart-breaking scenes, such as across my county of Devon, of the last outbreak of foot and mouth in 2001, and Members will be aware of the vital importance of managing future outbreaks effectively.
By 2010, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs must achieve a
“25 per cent. reduction in administrative burdens”.
We have seen what happens—such as in the top-down cuts on courier services in Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, which have had devastating consequences—and I urge the Secretary of State to speak to all local authorities to ensure they have the right number of animal health officials so that we can react quickly to any potential outbreak of foot and mouth, bluetongue, avian influenza or TB.
I was concerned in reading the Secretary of State’s speech at the Farming for the Future conference on 19 November that he said there should be a major shift of the cost and responsibility for animal health from Government to the industry, and he repeated that point this afternoon. I would be grateful if the Secretary of State or one of his Ministers took this opportunity to enlighten us on the framework for
“market-based ways of managing animal disease risks, including associated costs.”
I note the Government have received a submission from representatives of the UK livestock sector which urged them to
“reconsider the proposed measures on cost sharing for animal diseases.”
That is not surprising given that foot and mouth in 2001 has been estimated to have cost the economy £5 billion. The irony seems to have been lost on the Secretary of State given that he believes that the
“additional cost of disease outbreaks”
is “unsustainable” yet the latest outbreak of foot and mouth was not caused by the industry but originated in a Government laboratory—which, I hope Ministers will agree, is unsustainable—and there was a second incident at Pirbright, which is shameful.
I know the industry would be happy to become more involved in policy and operational decisions. However, such decisions must not be driven by any political desire to offload from DEFRA a basic responsibility of Government just because it is difficult to manage and because DEFRA is under budgetary pressure. Given that beef, sheep and pig producers have been saddled with enormous additional costs—at least £100 million—as a result of the outbreak of foot and mouth this year, as well as steep increases in feed, energy and regulatory costs, does the Secretary of State agree that this is perhaps the worst time to increase further the burden on farmers? I am pleased that the Secretary of State will have time to consider those and other points when he goes to Bali with many of his officials shortly, but I hope that the officials he leaves behind will deal with an issue closer to home, and which relates closely to Devon: animal health and welfare.
I want briefly to discuss poultry welfare and labelling, and the continuing failure of DEFRA and its officials to deal with those issues. Is the Secretary of State aware of growing consumer concern about broiler chicken welfare? The supermarkets’ heavy discounting has squeezed farmers’ margins to the point where they are unable to make welfare improvements. Sadly, it is increasingly common for some producers to rear flocks of 40,000 birds, each living in an area smaller than an A4 sheet of paper.
Does the Secretary of State agree that consumer demand can stop that treatment, and that a requirement for improved labelling on poultry meat would enable consumers to make an informed choice about the chicken that they buy? If he does agree, or if he is tempted to do so, I hope that he will support the chef, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who has recently moved his River Cottage business into my constituency, and conducted his “Chicken Out!” campaign in Axminster. That campaign is trying to change consumer habits by informing consumers of animal welfare. I hope that the Ministers and DEFRA officials will study the findings of that project, which will potentially have a huge impact on producers and consumers alike.
I must tell the Secretary of State that it would be a gross underestimate of reality to describe DEFRA’s reputation in my constituency as poor. I ask him to accept that that is not because of any deep-rooted prejudice or unfairness. It is because of the daily experience of thousands of my constituents who pursue rural activities such as farming, not only at the hands of DEFRA officials, but as part of a culture that seems to have been born with DEFRA but has not yet successfully been altered.
That is not to say that many civil servants in DEFRA are not dedicated, able and committed. I am a member of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and I have the privilege of listening to some of them give evidence. The sincere eagerness and urgency with which they regard the need to resolve many of the problems that affect my constituents and with which they are faced is quite apparent.
The hon. and learned Gentleman is making excellent points about the good staff at DEFRA. Does he agree that there are issues to address about the extremely increased use of temporary staff in some of the agencies involved with DEFRA? Such an approach is undermining the performance of staff who have been there for much longer.
I agree with that, but I shall not be distracted from my main point. There is a problem—the Secretary of State may say that it is a problem with perception—about how DEFRA is felt to act and operate in rural areas such as mine. I suspect that other hon. Members’ constituents have told them of similar experiences. I have asked myself why that should be.
The Secretary of State made a brave defence of those who work under him, and its warmth was a credit to him—one would have expected that. The fact remains that whether it is because of how DEFRA was conceived or because of some institutional failure of leadership, DEFRA is regarded as a standing joke in the communities that I represent—often the joke is a grim and sardonic one, but it is a joke none the less. There is a complete want of trust and a constant feeling that DEFRA is not standing by the side of those rural communities. They feel that it is standing on their shoulders and driving them down. I ask the Secretary of State to accept that it is not impossible to understand why that should be. Brave though his defence of his Department was, the fact is that it has made a pathetic litany of error and incompetence, almost since the moment that it was brought into being.
The Secretary of State must recognise that it is unusual for a Select Committee in which his own side has a preponderance—I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) is not in his place—actually to call for the resignation of the then Secretary of State when dealing with a report. By then she had become Foreign Secretary, but that recommendation was not lightly made. It was made after careful and due deliberation. The Committee said—I hope that the Secretary of State has read the report—that there had been a clear failure of political leadership, not only in the initial decision to introduce a complex hybrid scheme, but in the subsequent follow-through. Indeed, the Minister of State said in evidence to the Committee that the Department did not follow it through. The decision was criticised on all sides as the wrong decision—it was not only the fault of the civil servants, and Ministers should not hide behind the human shield of civil servants who cannot answer for themselves—and it was a failure of political leadership. It was a criminal act of neglect. What should the people of the countryside think when they hear the Secretary of State say to the House today that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with his Department, even though the Select Committee—with a preponderance of Labour Members—told the then Secretary of State that she should consider her position and that there had been a failure of political leadership?
Let us consider other decisions, such as the Department’s decision on bovine tuberculosis. In 2005, the strategic review of bovine TB called for a partnership between the farming community and DEFRA and everybody welcomed that. In 2005, I was told in the House by one of the Secretary of State’s predecessors that the time for a decision on bovine TB was very near, but nothing has been done. In 2006, the Minister of State told me that the time was nigh and that, after a three-month consultation, the decision would soon be taken. He said that it was necessary to see whether the statistics, which seemed to suggest a fall in numbers in 2006, were borne out. Since 2006-07, of course, the incidence of bovine TB has risen by 22 per cent. There have been some 2,617 herd incidents. Nothing has been done.
It is not right or credible to say to the farming community that the Government want a partnership with it while they continue to load the cost of the disease through the introduction of tabular valuations, and fail to take the brave decision that is plainly needed to use culling as an instrument of policy. It should not be the sole instrument of policy, or even the main instrument of policy, but it must be an instrument available in the hotspot areas of dense infection, where the balance of risk favours it. But no decision has been taken.
The Secretary of State asks for time. He said as much to the Committee recently. But every Secretary of State before him has asked for the same thing. They have all said that the time for a decision was near, come to the very brink of that decision, and then pulled back. How can the country people whom I represent have confidence that this Secretary of State will listen and take a decision when the two previous Secretaries of State have failed to take that decision although they, too, said that the time was nigh?
I shall give an example. Mr. David Grigg in my constituency has a pedigree herd of the most beautiful and valuable Holstein cows. It has recently been placed under bovine TB restrictions and several of his prize breeding animals have been condemned. They have already been slaughtered.
I ask the Secretary of State to look into this case. One animal, a prize-winning cow worth £20,000, is still alive. Her half sister sold for 16,000 guineas just the other day, and she is a most superb example of this country’s breeding stock. If DEFRA slaughters that animal, even though she is not even a conclusive reactor, Mr. Grigg will receive just £1,400 in compensation. Farmers have been told that they must be in partnership with the Government, but how would the Secretary of State feel if he owned an animal like that and then discovered that she was to be taken from him and slaughtered? That is neither fair nor equitable, and it is no wonder that people in the countryside consider DEFRA to be a sardonic joke.
The Pirbright saga is another example, and the Secretary of State and I have already had an exchange about it. To do him credit, he did not seriously deny that it was a clear failure in the system, although I believe that it was, in part at least, a failure of his Department. The drains at the Pirbright facility were known to be dilapidated and due for replacement, but even so the foot and mouth virus escaped. No one inquired whether the drains were able to cope with having live virus flushed down them, or whether the virus would leech into the outside environment.
That was an act of negligence, but the Secretary of State has come to the Dispatch Box to tell the country, and country people, that DEFRA has been acting well, even though at least part of the cost, stress and distress of the latest foot and mouth outbreak can be traced unerringly back to it. He should not feel surprised, therefore, by the suggestion by my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) that farmers have a grim and sardonic view of the Department.
However, what happened was not a failure by civil servants, for whom he so warmly and creditably stood up. The failure was caused by the political leadership of two successive Secretaries of State and, unless the right hon. Gentleman listens to what is being said in this debate, there is a danger that he will be the third one to be held responsible. The financial management of the Department has led to £50 million already being overdue—
Order. I almost feel sorry to be anticlimactic, but I call Mr. Richard Benyon.
I feel entirely anticlimactic, Mr. Deputy Speaker, after the fantastic oratory of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr. Cox). However, before I say any more, I must refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests.
The Secretary of State recently wrote to every farmer in the country. I was very grateful to receive that letter and to hear of his commitment to British farming, but he will understand from what has been said in the debate by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon, and by my hon. Friends the Members for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss) and for East Devon (Mr. Swire), that many farmers will be looking to him for action rather than warm words.
The reality of British agriculture is represented not by barley barons driving Range Rovers, but by the ashen-faced people we saw every night on our televisions during the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak. They work an 80-hour week and take home less than the minimum wage, but at the time they were watching their life’s work go up in flames. They have been beaten down by those who should have been helping them but who have too often placed the hand of regulation on their shoulders. That regulatory imposition has been backed up by incompetence and a lack of understanding.
During the latest outbreak, one of my constituents telephoned the DEFRA office to ask what he should do with the 1,400 lambs that he had to move that week. He was asked, “Well, haven’t you got any hay for them?” That shows how little understanding there is in the Department of the dynamics of stock farming. If I have time, I shall return to that later in my contribution.
I want to move the debate slightly away from farming and talk about another of DEFRA’s responsibilities—rural communities—to show the impact on them of the shambles in the Department’s finances. I draw the attention of the Secretary of State to the work of rural community councils, which are organised by counties and funded in part by DEFRA. They lobby local authorities on behalf of rural communities and support community organisations in rural areas. In my area, for example, RCCs assist with parish planning—a wonderful concept that has done much for local governance and widening its base.
The councils target help for disadvantaged people in rural areas. They support and promote social enterprises. In a small way, they help village halls become sustainable organisations by encouraging more involvement from local people. They ensure that there is sensible working between Government agencies, primary care trusts, fire authorities and other bodies; they act as the rural conscience of those organisations and make them work for rural as well as urban people. RCCs help with education, learning and skills training for people in rural areas. They run projects for disaffected young people, and assist in drug prevention schemes and other worthy initiatives.
DEFRA’s funding for those organisations is being cut and, in many cases, axed. Today, I heard that a number of RCCs will not be able to continue in their entirety—[Interruption.] I shall be interested to hear what the Minister for the Environment says in the wind-ups. In Berkshire, the comparatively paltry sum of £117,000 will be axed next year. That money levers nearly £1 million into rural communities in constituencies such as mine.
Tomorrow, the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw), will attend a 21st century village conference in Westminster. He will have to tell the RCCs that will be represented there why DEFRA is cutting funding for rural communities when they desperately need the help that I have just described. It is yet another example of how the problems of DEFRA’s current financial status affect people in real life.
The Institute for Animal Health—the sister organisation to Pirbright—is in Compton in my constituency. We live in a world where we face avian influenza and foot and mouth disease. Bovine tuberculosis is a constant blight on the rural farming community and now we face the bluetongue virus. Those institutes are in the front line in the battle against those organisms.
I have talked to past and present scientists at Compton, and they express real anger because in some circles they are held up as the whipping boys for some of the problems—possibly the big problem—at Pirbright. For a long time, they have been telling the Government that their methodology for attacking those diseases is world renowned, yet the Government will not let them operate that methodology, which is to examine the entire biology of the pathogens. It is a complicated, expensive and lengthy process and too often the Government ask the scientists to narrow their field of investigation and look only at particular elements. The scientists say that the Government are asking them for a quick-fix solution, which it is impossible for them to provide.
At a time when diseases are affecting rural communities as never before, funding for those crucial organisations has been reduced from £7.5 million in 2001 to £3.9 million—by more than half in real terms. I hope that the Secretary of State can understand the real anger of some scientists.
I conclude by making an impassioned plea. I cannot speak with the vigour and eloquence of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon, but I shall speak up to the best of my ability for mixed farming and stock farming in Britain. I have the honour and privilege to represent one of the most beautiful parts of the south of England: the Berkshire downs. I have known the Berkshire downs for all of my 47 years and I still find them hauntingly beautiful.
We have heard excellent contributions from Members talking about biodiversity. My worry is that, although the Berkshire downs may still be beautiful, they are no longer a centre of mixed farming, as they were just a few years ago. I can count the number of pig farmers in the Berkshire downs on the fingers of one hand. When it comes to the number of stock and dairy farmers, I am one of the few that remain in that part of Berkshire. The effect of that is being felt when it comes to biodiversity and the whole rural community. That is not something that can be reversed. In the central south of England, and many other parts of the country, we are losing the infrastructure that supports stock farming. We are losing marts. I am running out of time, but I hope that the Minister will address those points when he winds up.
One thing that this debate has achieved is to remind us of the great breadth of DEFRA’s responsibilities: the environment, food and rural affairs. Unfortunately, farming is not mentioned in the title, and yet it is essential to so many of the Department’s activities. In that context, I remind the House of the interest I have declared in the register.
I want to start by referring to some of the Secretary of State’s remarks. There is no contradiction between recognising—rightly—the expertise, knowledge, enthusiasm and commitment of individual members of his staff, and our overall concerns about the lack of co-ordination, direction and management that have given rise to the perception, which so many of my hon. Friends have referred to, that the Department is, as my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss) said, not fit for purpose.
I thought at one stage in the Secretary of State’s litany of what he claimed as successes that he was going to claim credit for the non-flooding of eastern England, following the surge that did not quite happen a few weeks ago. I can just remember the 1953 floods—I was a very small child living on the Suffolk coast—and they were horrendous. However, we should not do anything other than thank goodness that they were not repeated. The Department cannot take the credit—or criticism—because thankfully the defences and the plans were not properly tested.
I also want to refer briefly to foot and mouth. We have already had an Opposition day debate on that subject so I do not intend to spend a great deal of time on it. In response to the hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew), in that debate I said that of course the Government had learned the lessons of 2001. God forbid that they had not, because, as he and others have said, it is almost impossible to imagine the situation being any worse than it was at that time.
The Secretary of State made no reference to the £50 million overspend on administration, which the permanent secretary described to the Select Committee a week or so ago. When it comes to cutting the number of staff, the Secretary of State referred to meeting the head-count targets, but said nothing to explain why those staff were taken on in the first place if they are supernumerary to requirements. If they are required, why are we getting rid of them? Most importantly, having to make in-year cuts demonstrates the incompetence of management. Invariably, those cuts can be met only by cutting expenditure at the front line, not letting contracts that have not yet been let, and not carrying out front-line functions, because we all know that cutting staff does not save money in the year that one does it, because of all the associated costs.
My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cambridgeshire and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr. Cox) made it absolutely clear that the perception of DEFRA on the ground in farming is very different from that which the Secretary of State described to the House. They both described cases in their constituencies where incompetence and bureaucracy got in the way of the farmers going about their business.
The hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon), for whom I have a lot of respect when it comes to environmental issues, rightly talked about the importance of biodiversity; I agree with a great deal of what she said. I thought that she had to scrape the barrel to find a criticism to make of the previous Conservative Government. It was that Government who introduced the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981—a major trail-blazing piece of legislation on which much legislation has recently been based. That Government also introduced environmentally sensitive areas, and the pilot environmental stewardship schemes on which the right hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) built when he took up ministerial responsibilities.
indicated assent.
I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman acknowledges that. I noticed that the hon. Member for Bridgend made some pretty subtle criticisms of funding cuts and their impact on biodiversity.
Hon. Members raised the issue of tuberculosis. We could spend a whole debate on that subject. As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon said, we have had 10 years of virtually no progress. More than £500 million has been spent and some 160,000 cattle have been slaughtered, yet there was no strategy. There have been lots of reviews and discussions, and a series of piecemeal measures.
The right hon. Member for Scunthorpe and others said that we must be guided by science. Of course we must, but it is hard to be guided by science when the scientists cannot agree. He knows full well when he supports Professor Bourne that Professor King said something completely different. Sometimes Ministers have to grasp the nettle and make a tough decision. They have to decide what scientific evidence they accept and go with it. They need to have the courage of their convictions.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
No, I am sorry. I cannot give way because I do not have any overspill time, unless the Minister for the Environment plans to give it to me.
The issue of the single farm payment has been widely discussed. The Secretary of State apologised, but ignored the damning report by the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The problems largely arose because the then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Margaret Beckett), completely ignored the warning, given by people across the industry and in the House, that the scheme was destined for disaster. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) reminded us, the problem was partly caused by extending subsidy to many people who had not previously received it, which seems a funny way of setting about weaning people off subsidy.
Members including the Secretary of State talked about cost-sharing. The Government propose saving £120 million in three years through cost-sharing. That starts next April, but the consultation on how that will work has not even taken place yet. Let us get a few things clear: Ministers have agreed with the National Farmers Union and others that the current foot and mouth outbreak and bluetongue have cost the industry more than £100 million—and the figure is rising. So far the industry has been given £12.5 million in a Government package. According to the permanent secretary, the problems have cost the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs £32 million. They have cost the industry more than twice what they have cost DEFRA, so there already is cost-sharing when it comes to disease control. Is that not true cost-sharing? How can the industry find another £40 million, as the Government require?
More importantly, the Government need to put their house in order. We have heard about Pirbright and the causes of the outbreak of foot and mouth. What about illegal meat imports to this country, which are estimated at 12,000 tonnes a year? According to the latest figures, only one in every 7,400 seizures results in prosecution. That is an open door to smugglers, and it is another reason why the industry cannot be expected to share the costs until the Government get to grips with their responsibilities.
There is also the issue of the burden of regulation. Last year, DEFRA put forward more regulations than in any year since its inception. Tonight we are being asked to congratulate it. Should we congratulate it on the ever increasing number of regulations that it produces? In the past six months, it has consulted on 37 new regulations. On 25 October, the Secretary of State said in the House, on climate change, that he was entering a “genuine consultation”, which prompts the question: how many of the other 37 were not genuine?
In the countryside, as others have said, DEFRA has become a byword for incompetence. In 2005, the Government said that food security was not a policy objective. The Department has presided over an industry in collapse. It has done nothing but trot out warm words. Even the Minister of State, Lord Rooker, whose candour initially won the hearts of the farmers, has failed to achieve change. The whole Department seems to have lost sight of the need to help or encourage the industry, but instead wants to control and regulate it, as others have said.
The Government need to understand that regulation is the enemy of enterprise. When will they understand that if the industry continues to contract, it will not be there when it is needed? If shortages continue as a result of climate change, population growth and prosperity, we will need that food. This debate, and especially the Government amendment, have highlighted the utter indifference and complacency that DEFRA shows to rural areas. However many Secretaries of State, however many future Foreign Secretaries, the chaos under them is the same. None has ever run a business; nobody seems prepared to take responsibility; nobody cares. If DEFRA were a company, it would have long since folded. It is time for a change. I commend the motion to the House.
I repeat the opening remark of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State—I am as delighted as he was that the Opposition have given us the opportunity to put the record straight and to put to bed some of the producer-led nonsense that we have heard tonight, as if the past of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries was a proud record, and as if we had not made progress on the big questions of the environment.
I respect the views of hon. Members on both sides of the House representing farming interests. They make a great mistake when they assume that no farming interests are represented on the Government Benches. The picture painted by the Opposition bears no resemblance to reality. I recognise the importance of farming, but it is noticeable that no solutions to the alleged problems have been put forward.
I reject the central accusation in the Opposition motion this evening—that the Department is cutting its expenditure. [Interruption.] With respect, that is what the Opposition motion says. I suggest that hon. Gentlemen read their motion. I doubt that many of them have done so. I repeat what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said. The expenditure of DEFRA is to increase from £3.5 billion this year to just under £4 billion by the end of the comprehensive spending review period. It is because of the macro-economic policies of the Government, opposed by the Conservatives, that we can increase expenditure in these areas, including, for example, the £121 million investment in the Pirbright laboratories that have been criticised today.
What cheered me up tonight was that the Conservatives have shown that they have not shed their oppositionalism and their mindset—their attitude of mind that condemns them to permanent opposition, because they will not put forward policy ideas that accept the responsibility that all Governments have—that is, to balance budgets. They describe the efforts of my right hon. Friend and his team to balance our budget as cuts. That is not an economic policy. It is the folly of opposition.
The speech from the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) was rather disappointing. I was looking forward to it, but it was short on substance and full of knee-jerk press release language. My right hon. Friend will lead the United Kingdom delegation to the United Nations framework convention on climate change this weekend as one of the most respected internationalists and environmentalists in the world, a man of incredible integrity and intelligence, with a grasp of the detail of the brief, as we have seen tonight, that leaves Opposition Members wallowing in his wake. Above all else, despite all the criticism and the pressures that he has faced since he took office, he has remained his father’s son, and shows a politeness that is a commendable quality in a leading politician. Contrast that with the points made by the Opposition.
Tonight’s wisest comment came from my right hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley). He reminded us that the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries was a throwback to the 1960s—although I would say the 1930s. Despite 18 years of government, the Conservatives never got rid of it. I have done my research, and should like to refer to the memoirs of the last Cabinet member for MAFF under the Conservative Government. The book, of course, relates to the rosy days of MAFF under the Tories. This is what Gillian Shephard wrote, “It was regarded by smart political commentators as dull and by other Departments as incomprehensible. The Minister was left alone for the most part. MAFF’s budget is so small that it is hardly worth fighting over.” She went on, “Much as I love the work of MAFF, its best friend could not claim that its policy issues were anything other than impenetrable, especially when they were being discussed in a crowded, steamed-up car on the way to Heathrow early in the morning.” She gives us other insights.
Will the Minister give way?
No—the hon. Gentleman will especially like this bit. “Of course,” Mrs. Shephard wrote, “relations between lobby groups and professional organisations did not always run smoothly. Many Ministers bear the scars of encounters with their enraged customers. Michael Jack”—the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack)—“was my talented Minister of State. He had his fair share of upsets with the fishing community. He decided to meet the fishermen beforehand at Brixham and he arrived to find a huge and noisy demonstration. Flowers and eggs were thrown at him and he was covered with a pancake mixture. Nicholas Soames, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary at MAFF, ran into difficulties with the badger conservation lobby.”
Order. It is one thing to quote from a book, but we are not a reading club.
Mr. Speaker, thank you for pulling me up. I commend the book to the House as a damning record of MAFF under the Conservative Government.
I contrast that book with the 2007 DEFRA national statistics book “The Environment in your Pocket”, which is produced by independent statisticians—the very civil servants whom Conservative Members have condemned tonight. On every page, there is a record of success. Recycling in 1996-97 is compared with that in 2007, and it has increased from 51 to 88 per cent. Glass recycling has increased from 47 to 80 per cent. The recycling of tins and cans has increased from 34 to 68 per cent. Let us turn over the page to consider the impact of our climate change policy. Despite the Opposition’s warnings, we are one of the few countries in the world that is on target to fulfil its Kyoto objectives. That is hardly the action of a Department that is unfit for purpose, as the Opposition claim. Other pages cover the wider environment, such as coastal and marine waters, which sustain our fish. In 1996, only 5 per cent. of fishing stocks were sustainably harvested. The figure has increased sevenfold under the Department’s successful policies. On every page—
rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.
Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.
Question put accordingly, That the original words stand part of the Question:—
Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments):—
The House divided: Ayes 272, Noes 187.Division No. 022][10.13 pmAYESAinger, NickAinsworth, rh Mr. BobAlexander, rh Mr. DouglasAllen, Mr. GrahamAnderson, JanetAtkins, CharlotteAustin, Mr. IanBaird, VeraBalls, rh EdBanks, GordonBarlow, Ms CeliaBattle, rh JohnBayley, HughBeckett, rh MargaretBegg, Miss AnneBenn, rh HilaryBenton, Mr. JoeBlackman, LizBlackman-Woods, Dr. RobertaBlears, rh HazelBlizzard, Mr. BobBorrow, Mr. David S.Bradshaw, Mr. BenBrennan, KevinBrown, LynBrown, rh Mr. NicholasBrown, Mr. RussellBrowne, rh DesBryant, ChrisBuck, Ms KarenBurden, RichardBurgon, ColinBurnham, rh AndyByers, rh Mr. StephenByrne, Mr. LiamCaborn, rh Mr. RichardCairns, DavidCampbell, Mr. AlanCaton, Mr. MartinCawsey, Mr. IanChaytor, Mr. DavidClapham, Mr. MichaelClark, Ms KatyClark, PaulClarke, rh Mr. CharlesClarke, rh Mr. TomClelland, Mr. DavidClwyd, rh AnnCoaker, Mr. VernonCoffey, AnnCohen, HarryConnarty, MichaelCooper, RosieCorbyn, JeremyCousins, JimCrausby, Mr. DavidCruddas, JonCummings, JohnCunningham, Mr. JimCunningham, TonyCurtis-Thomas, Mrs. ClaireDavid, Mr. WayneDavidson, Mr. IanDavies, Mr. QuentinDean, Mrs. JanetDevine, Mr. JimDhanda, Mr. ParmjitDismore, Mr. AndrewDobbin, JimDobson, rh FrankDonohoe, Mr. Brian H.Doran, Mr. FrankDowd, JimEagle, AngelaEagle, MariaEfford, CliveEllman, Mrs. LouiseEnnis, JeffFarrelly, PaulField, rh Mr. FrankFitzpatrick, JimFlint, CarolineFollett, BarbaraFoster, Mr. Michael (Worcester)Foster, Michael Jabez (Hastings and Rye)Francis, Dr. HywelGapes, MikeGeorge, rh Mr. BruceGerrard, Mr. NeilGibson, Dr. IanGilroy, LindaGodsiff, Mr. RogerGoggins, PaulGoodman, HelenGriffith, NiaGriffiths, Nigel Gwynne, AndrewHall, Mr. MikeHall, PatrickHamilton, Mr. DavidHanson, rh Mr. DavidHarman, rh Ms HarrietHarris, Mr. TomHavard, Mr. DaiHendrick, Mr. MarkHesford, StephenHeyes, DavidHillier, MegHodge, rh MargaretHood, Mr. JimHoon, rh Mr. GeoffreyHope, PhilHopkins, KelvinHowarth, rh Mr. GeorgeHowells, Dr. KimHoyle, Mr. LindsayHughes, rh BeverleyHumble, Mrs. JoanIddon, Dr. BrianIllsley, Mr. EricIngram, rh Mr. AdamIrranca-Davies, HuwJames, Mrs. Siân C.Jenkins, Mr. BrianJohnson, rh AlanJohnson, Ms Diana R.Jones, HelenJones, Mr. KevanJones, Mr. MartynJowell, rh TessaJoyce, Mr. EricKaufman, rh Sir GeraldKeen, AlanKeen, AnnKelly, rh RuthKennedy, rh JaneKhan, Mr. SadiqKidney, Mr. DavidKilfoyle, Mr. PeterKnight, JimKumar, Dr. AshokLadyman, Dr. StephenLammy, Mr. DavidLazarowicz, MarkLepper, DavidLevitt, TomLewis, Mr. IvanLinton, MartinLloyd, TonyLove, Mr. AndrewLucas, IanMacDougall, Mr. JohnMackinlay, AndrewMactaggart, FionaMalik, Mr. ShahidMallaber, JudyMarris, RobMarsden, Mr. GordonMarshall-Andrews, Mr. RobertMartlew, Mr. EricMcAvoy, rh Mr. ThomasMcCarthy, KerryMcCarthy-Fry, SarahMcDonagh, SiobhainMcDonnell, Dr. AlasdairMcDonnell, JohnMcFall, rh JohnMcGovern, Mr. JimMcGuire, Mrs. AnneMcIsaac, ShonaMcKechin, AnnMcKenna, RosemaryMcNulty, rh Mr. TonyMeacher, rh Mr. MichaelMerron, GillianMichael, rh AlunMilburn, rh Mr. AlanMiliband, rh EdwardMiller, AndrewMitchell, Mr. AustinMoffat, AnneMoffatt, LauraMole, ChrisMoon, Mrs. MadeleineMoran, MargaretMorden, JessicaMorgan, JulieMorley, rh Mr. ElliotMudie, Mr. GeorgeMullin, Mr. ChrisMunn, MegMurphy, Mr. DenisMurphy, Mr. JimMurphy, rh Mr. PaulNaysmith, Dr. DougNorris, DanO'Brien, Mr. MikeOlner, Mr. BillOsborne, SandraPalmer, Dr. NickPearson, IanPlaskitt, Mr. JamesPope, Mr. GregPound, StephenPrentice, Mr. GordonPrimarolo, rh DawnProsser, GwynPurchase, Mr. KenRammell, BillRaynsford, rh Mr. NickReed, Mr. AndyRiordan, Mrs. LindaRobertson, JohnRobinson, Mr. GeoffreyRoy, Mr. FrankRuane, ChrisRuddock, JoanRussell, ChristineRyan, rh JoanSalter, MartinSharma, Mr. VirendraShaw, JonathanSheerman, Mr. BarrySheridan, JimSimon, Mr. SiônSimpson, AlanSingh, Mr. MarshaSkinner, Mr. DennisSmith, rh Mr. AndrewSmith, Angela E. (Basildon)Smith, GeraldineSmith, rh JacquiSmith, JohnSnelgrove, AnneSoulsby, Sir PeterSouthworth, HelenStarkey, Dr. PhyllisStoate, Dr. HowardStrang, rh Dr. GavinStraw, rh Mr. Jack Stringer, GrahamStuart, Ms GiselaSutcliffe, Mr. GerryTami, MarkTaylor, Ms DariThomas, Mr. GarethTimms, rh Mr. StephenTipping, PaddyTodd, Mr. MarkTouhig, rh Mr. DonTrickett, JonTruswell, Mr. PaulTurner, Dr. DesmondTurner, Mr. NeilTwigg, DerekWalley, JoanWaltho, LyndaWatson, Mr. TomWatts, Mr. DaveWhitehead, Dr. AlanWilliams, rh Mr. AlanWills, Mr. MichaelWilson, PhilWinnick, Mr. DavidWinterton, rh Ms RosieWood, MikeWoodward, rh Mr. ShaunWoolas, Mr. PhilWright, Mr. AnthonyWright, DavidWright, Mr. IainWyatt, DerekTellers for the Ayes:Alison Seabeck andSteve McCabeNOESAfriyie, AdamAinsworth, Mr. PeterAlexander, DannyAmess, Mr. DavidAncram, rh Mr. MichaelAtkinson, Mr. PeterBacon, Mr. RichardBarker, GregoryBaron, Mr. JohnBarrett, JohnBeith, rh Mr. AlanBellingham, Mr. HenryBenyon, Mr. RichardBercow, JohnBeresford, Sir PaulBinley, Mr. BrianBlunt, Mr. CrispinBone, Mr. PeterBrake, TomBrazier, Mr. JulianBrooke, AnnetteBrowning, AngelaBruce, rh MalcolmBurns, Mr. SimonBurrowes, Mr. DavidBurt, AlistairCable, Dr. VincentCampbell, Mr. GregoryCarmichael, Mr. AlistairCarswell, Mr. DouglasCash, Mr. WilliamClarke, rh Mr. KennethClifton-Brown, Mr. GeoffreyConway, DerekCox, Mr. GeoffreyDavies, Mr. DaiDavies, PhilipDavis, rh David (Haltemprice and Howden)Dorrell, rh Mr. StephenDuddridge, JamesDuncan, AlanDunne, Mr. PhilipEvennett, Mr. DavidFabricant, MichaelFallon, Mr. MichaelFarron, TimFeatherstone, LynneFoster, Mr. DonFrancois, Mr. MarkFraser, Mr. ChristopherGale, Mr. RogerGauke, Mr. DavidGeorge, AndrewGibb, Mr. NickGidley, SandraGillan, Mrs. CherylGoldsworthy, JuliaGoodman, Mr. PaulGoodwill, Mr. RobertGove, MichaelGreen, DamianGreening, JustineGrieve, Mr. DominicHague, rh Mr. WilliamHammond, Mr. PhilipHammond, StephenHarper, Mr. MarkHarvey, NickHayes, Mr. JohnHeath, Mr. DavidHeathcoat-Amory, rh Mr. DavidHemming, JohnHendry, CharlesHerbert, NickHoban, Mr. MarkHogg, rh Mr. DouglasHollobone, Mr. PhilipHolloway, Mr. AdamHolmes, PaulHoram, Mr. JohnHorwood, MartinHosie, StewartHowarth, DavidHughes, SimonHunter, MarkHurd, Mr. NickJenkin, Mr. BernardJohnson, Mr. BorisKey, RobertKirkbride, Miss JulieKnight, rh Mr. GregLaing, Mrs. EleanorLait, Mrs. JacquiLamb, NormanLansley, Mr. AndrewLeigh, Mr. EdwardLetwin, rh Mr. OliverLewis, Dr. JulianLiddell-Grainger, Mr. IanLilley, rh Mr. Peter Luff, PeterMackay, rh Mr. AndrewMacNeil, Mr. AngusMain, AnneMaples, Mr. JohnMates, rh Mr. MichaelMay, rh Mrs. TheresaMcCrea, Dr. WilliamMcIntosh, Miss AnneMcLoughlin, rh Mr. PatrickMercer, PatrickMiller, Mrs. MariaMilton, AnneMoore, Mr. MichaelMoss, Mr. MalcolmMundell, DavidMurrison, Dr. AndrewNewmark, Mr. BrooksO'Brien, Mr. StephenÖpik, LembitPaice, Mr. JamesPaterson, Mr. OwenPenning, MikePenrose, JohnPickles, Mr. EricPrice, AdamPrisk, Mr. MarkPritchard, MarkPugh, Dr. JohnRandall, Mr. JohnRedwood, rh Mr. JohnRennie, WillieRifkind, rh Sir MalcolmRobathan, Mr. AndrewRobinson, Mrs. IrisRobinson, rh Mr. PeterRogerson, DanRosindell, AndrewRuffley, Mr. DavidRussell, BobSanders, Mr. AdrianScott, Mr. LeeSelous, AndrewShapps, GrantShepherd, Mr. RichardSimpson, Mr. KeithSmith, Sir RobertSoames, Mr. NicholasSpelman, Mrs. CarolineSpicer, Sir MichaelSpink, BobSpring, Mr. RichardStanley, rh Sir JohnSteen, Mr. AnthonyStreeter, Mr. GaryStuart, Mr. GrahamStunell, AndrewSwayne, Mr. DesmondSwinson, JoSwire, Mr. HugoSyms, Mr. RobertTapsell, Sir PeterTaylor, Mr. IanTaylor, MatthewThurso, JohnTredinnick, DavidTurner, Mr. AndrewTyrie, Mr. AndrewVara, Mr. ShaileshVilliers, Mrs. TheresaWallace, Mr. BenWaterson, Mr. NigelWatkinson, AngelaWebb, SteveWeir, Mr. MikeWiddecombe, rh Miss AnnWiggin, BillWilletts, Mr. DavidWilliams, HywelWilliams, StephenWillis, Mr. PhilWillott, JennyWilson, Mr. RobWilson, SammyWinterton, AnnWishart, PeteYoung, rh Sir GeorgeYounger-Ross, RichardTellers for the Noes:Mr. Stewart Jackson andJeremy WrightQuestion accordingly agreed to.
Mr. Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House commends the Government on its swift and effective action to deal with four different disease outbreaks in England in 2007; welcomes the announcement on 8th October 2007 of an aid package to farmers worth £12.5 million through extra support to hill farmers, fallen stock collection, meat promotion and help for farming support charities; congratulates the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) on its effective emergency planning arrangements in conjunction with the emergency services and local authorities to warn those at risk from the recent tidal surge and initiate precautionary evacuation; applauds the increase in spending on flood defences since 1997, a 30 per cent. increase in real terms to around £600 million, and the announcement that spending will rise to a maximum of £800 million by 2010-11; and further congratulates the Government for bringing together environment, rural affairs and food and farming under Defra to create a unified structure essential for the effective delivery of integrated Government policies across these issues.
DELEGATED LEGISLATION
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Delegated Legislation Committees),
Legal Services Commission
That the draft Criminal Defence Service (Very High Cost Cases) Regulations 2007, which were laid before this House on 19th July, in the last Session of Parliament, be approved.—[Mr. Michael Foster.]
Question agreed to.
EUROPEAN DOCUMENTS
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 119(9)(European Standing Committees),
Economic Partnership Agreements
That this House takes note of European Union Documents No. 14498/07, Commission Communication, Economic Partnership Agreements, and No. 14968/07 and ADD 1, Council Regulation applying the arrangements for goods originating in certain states which are part of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) provided for in agreements establishing, or leading to the establishment of, Economic Partnership Agreements; and welcomes the progress being made.—[Mr. Michael Foster.]
Question agreed to.
Petitions
Community Hospital (Braintree)
I beg leave to present a petition on behalf of 2,641 of my constituents, in addition to a further 9,500 local people who have signed a parallel petition initiated by the Braintree and Witham Times—in other words, more than 12,000 petitioners who demand that the Government honour their commitment to local health care by building a community hospital in Braintree.
The petition states:
The Petition of the people of Braintree,
Declares that a new community hospital on the site of the former St. Michael's hospital in Braintree is a vital part of a renewed community hospital network which is needed to deliver improved local care. Further declares that the continuing delays in approving a new community hospital for the people of Braintree, together with an ongoing programme of cuts and closures to viable and valued community hospitals, is at odds with the commitment made in the Health White Paper “Our Health, Our Care, Our Say”.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons shall urge the Department of Health to remove any remaining barriers to the construction of a community hospital for the people of Braintree.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P000049]
2012 Olympic Tax Levy
I wish to present a petition with 8,096 signatures of members of the Bexley pensioners’ forum and others on a matter on which they feel very strongly.
The petition states:
The Petition of Members of Bexley Pensioners' Forum and others,
Declares that they object to the “Olympic Tax Levy” on London Council tax payers, without their consent. The London 2012 Olympic Games plans submitted to the International Olympic Committee emphasised that the 2012 Olympic Games would, and must be, of benefit to all areas of the United Kingdom. That being the case, Londoners should not be the only section of the UK population to have a special Olympic Tax imposed on them.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to reconsider the imposition of the Olympic Tax on Londoners and further caps any losses being passed on to London Council tax payers.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P000071]
Post Office Closures (Brighton)
I present a petition against the proposed closure of a post office at 221 Preston road in my constituency. The petition is in the name of Linda Baguley and is signed by 895 residents and people working in the area, including 37 members of staff of Brighton and Hove city council’s children’s services department.
The petition declares:
The Petition of those affected by the closure of the Preston Road Post Office in Brighton,
Declares that they protest against the closure of 221 Preston Road Post Office. That it is an excellent facility and is well-used by the local community. That they will have no Post Office if the closure goes ahead as the alternative facilities are not accessible by public transport and involve walking up very steep hills—impossible for the elderly or those with limited mobility. And that driving is a bad option environmentally. Parking is already at a premium near the Post Offices in Preston Drove and Matlock Road.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform to make representations to the Post Office Ltd so that the 221 Preston Road, Brighton, Post Office remains open.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P000073]
ADJOURNMENT
Resolved,
That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Michael Foster.]
Adjourned accordingly at half-past Ten o’clock.