I am today publishing the report of the independent review that the then Secretary of State for Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Des Browne), announced on 4 December 2007 following the loss of Nimrod aircraft XV230 over Afghanistan on 2 September 2006. Fourteen members of the armed forces tragically lost their lives on that day.

The Ministry of Defence must take responsibility for many of the failings identified in the board of inquiry. My predecessor said as much at the Dispatch Box in December 2007, when he announced that we were setting up an independent review under a senior Queen’s counsel, Mr. Charles Haddon-Cave, to look into the events that led to the loss. I am grateful to Mr. Haddon-Cave, who has provided a rigorous and powerful report. It will be very distressing reading for many, and particularly for those families who lost their loved ones three years ago.

On behalf of the Ministry of Defence and the Royal Air Force, I would like again to say sorry to all the families who lost loved ones. I am sorry for the mistakes that have been made and that lives have been lost as a result of our failure. Nothing I can say or do will bring these men back, but for their sake, and for the sake of those families, friends and former colleagues who grieve, we can provide clarity about what actually happened, where failings occurred and what must be done to ensure that, as far as possible, this never happens again.

Flying, especially in a military context, is never without risk. We have an obligation to our people to understand and manage those risks and to ensure they are as low as reasonably practicable. The safety of our personnel is of paramount importance and that is why the report is so significant. Mr. Haddon-Cave was asked to review 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 into account best practice in the civilian and military world, and to make recommendations. In his report, Mr. Haddon-Cave has been critical of both the MOD and our industrial partners, at both organisational and individual levels. He has stated clearly that the loss of XV230 was preventable.

As he was asked to do, Mr. Haddon-Cave has also made a number of recommendations in his report about what we must do to learn lessons for the future. He has proposed new key principles around which we should base our airworthiness processes—leadership, independence, people and simplicity.

I met Mr. Haddon-Cave this morning and we discussed his report. It identifies numerous weaknesses in the airworthiness system that we will address thoroughly and urgently, but he has confirmed to me that his report does not raise concerns over the actual airworthiness of individual fleets, and I have been assured by the Chief of the Air Staff and the defence chief airworthiness engineer that our fleets remain safe to fly. I have full confidence in our people carrying out airworthiness duties, but we need to ensure that they are supported by an improved process.

Mr. Haddon-Cave also states that, in our pursuit of financial savings, the MOD and the RAF allowed their focus on safety to suffer. We accept this with regard to the Nimrod XV230. As a Department, we have a duty to continue to seek efficiencies in how we deliver defence, but I am absolutely clear that that must not be done with any detriment to safety.

The two officers still serving in the RAF who are strongly criticised in the report have been moved to staff posts that have no responsibility for safety and airworthiness. The RAF will now consider what further action should be taken in relation to these officers, in light of the evidence uncovered by the report. Mr. Haddon-Cave has, quite rightly, made it abundantly clear that he wants the Department to produce a considered response to his report.

We will now examine all aspects of the report, produce a full response and update the House before the Christmas recess. I have set this challenging timetable because I want to ensure that we can act with confidence that the right decisions will be made and that the necessary work will be seen through.

We have not been idle waiting for the outcome of Mr. Haddon-Cave’s review. Let me set out briefly what the Ministry has already done in the three years since the loss of Nimrod XV230. We have implemented a comprehensive programme of work to ensure that we can have confidence in the safety and airworthiness of the Nimrod aircraft as it is today. This involves implementing the recommendations of the board of inquiry, and includes ceasing the use of the air-to-air refuelling system, as well as of the aircraft’s relevant hot air systems while the aircraft is in flight, and adopting an enhanced aircraft maintenance and systems inspection regime. We do not allow Nimrod aircraft to fly without having had their engine bay hot air ducts replaced, and we have introduced an ageing aircraft systems audit focused on guaranteeing the safety of the Nimrod’s systems for the remainder of its service life. This included a forensic-level inspection of a Nimrod aircraft.

We have applied these lessons to other aircraft as necessary, taking steps to examine, review, strengthen and improve the systems for assuring safety and airworthiness. We are aware that the implications stretch more broadly across defence to other items of equipment, and so we have also scrutinised our safety management processes and organisation with great care.

Safety is now given absolute priority at the highest levels in the MOD. It is the first point on the agenda at every senior management team meeting, and this flows down throughout the organisation as a whole. As a demonstration of our commitment to improved safety and airworthiness, we have also established a new senior post, that of the defence chief airworthiness engineer, to provide improved assurance to me that the whole technical airworthiness process, from end to end—that is, from industry through project teams to the front line—is in accordance with the Department’s regulations. Mr. Haddon-Cave welcomes this in his report as a step in the right direction. We are working hard to ensure that we capture the lessons from incidents and inquiries to improve our safety. As an organisation, the MOD is changing its culture and approach to put safety first.

All these measures ensure that we can continue to fly the Nimrod safely and that it can continue to conduct its essential work in the remaining months of its service life. Mr. Haddon-Cave undertook at the outset of his review to issue an urgent interim report outlining his concerns, if he found evidence that the Nimrod fleet was not safe to fly. As he says in his report, he has not found it necessary to do so. He states in his report

“that appropriate and timely steps have been, and continue to be, taken by the MOD and the RAF to address the immediate airworthiness issues raised by the loss of XV230 and the BOI report and subsequent discoveries about the Nimrod fleet. Indeed, the level of scrutiny now applied to the Nimrod fleet is such that it is probably one of the most closely monitored operational military aircraft fleets in the world.”

The report is a tough read. Its subtitle—“A Failure of Leadership, Culture and Priorities”—is a stark judgment. We are determined to address this and the clear message in the report that we have to do more. I pay tribute, as does Mr. Haddon-Cave in his report, to the Nimrod communities, whom I commend for their skill and professionalism. The Nimrod continues to have an important role in the defence of this country, and the current fleets are, on current plans, very shortly to be replaced by new aircraft.

Our armed forces are truly the best in the world, and we are committed to providing them with all the support that they need, including learning the lessons and making the changes for the better if tragedies occur. Let me say again that the safety of our personnel is of paramount importance. In the case of Nimrod XV230, we failed. We cannot undo this. Nothing will bring back those 14 men, and for their grieving families, the loss will be with them for ever. I will do everything in my power to guard against anything like this happening again. I am today placing a copy of Mr. Haddon-Cave’s report in the Library of the House.

For the families of those whose lives were lost, today will bring back painful memories and reawaken emotions of grief and anger. Our thoughts are with all those families today.

The House owes a great debt to Charles Haddon-Cave for the report. It is a formidable indictment and describes multiple and repeated systemic failures. It is genuinely shocking. Its most damning central conclusion is that there were previous incidents and warning signs that were ignored, and that the loss of the aircraft was avoidable.

The criticism of the Nimrod safety case is excoriating. The report says that it

“was a lamentable job from start to finish. It was riddled with errors. It missed the key dangers. Its production is a story of incompetence, complacency, and cynicism.”

How will oversight of such projects occur in future?

The report is critical of the Nimrod integrated project team, and of QinetiQ and BAE, including specific individuals. How will these be dealt with, and how can we ensure that technical guarantees given to Ministers in the future by these and other companies can be relied upon and independently verified?

The Government as a whole must bear responsibility for the way in which the MOD has been treated under the pressure of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. As the report says:

“Financial pressures and cuts drove a cascade of multifarious organisational changes, which led to a dilution of the airworthiness regime and culture within the MOD, and distraction from safety and airworthiness issues as the top priority.”

Ministers themselves must address their failure of stewardship at the MOD. The report says:

“The shortcomings in the current airworthiness system in the MOD are manifold and include…a failure to adhere to basic Principles…a Military Airworthiness System that is not fit for purpose…a Safety Case regime which is ineffective and wasteful…an inadequate appreciation of the needs of Aged Aircraft…a series of weaknesses in the area of Personnel…an unsatisfactory relationship between the MOD and industry…an unacceptable Procurement process leading to serial delays and cost-overruns; and …a Safety Culture that has allowed ‘business’ to eclipse Airworthiness.”

This report must act as a wake-up call for us all—for politicians, for industry and for the military. Cutting corners costs lives. Wars cannot be fought on a peacetime budget, and there is a moral imperative that those who are willing to risk their lives in the armed service of their country should know at all times that everything is being done to maximise the chance of success of their mission and to minimise their risk in carrying it out. The failure to do this resulted in the death of 14 servicemen—the avoidable and preventable death of 14 servicemen. The report concludes:

“In my view”—

the aircraft—

“was lost because of a systemic breach of the Military Covenant brought about by significant failures on the part of all those involved.”

There could not be a more damning charge list.

I do not retreat from many of the comments made by the hon. Gentleman. Mr. Haddon-Cave asks us to implement an entire new airworthiness system and to address further the culture that he sees as the basic problem within the MOD and in parts of the armed forces. The only thing that I can say in mitigation is that that has been recognised, and recognised some time ago, and that a lot of work has been done throughout the time that I have been a Minister at the MOD to try to put those systems in the right place. Having looked at Mr. Haddon-Cave’s report, we have to make absolutely certain that we are going to the lengths that we need to to make certain that we recalibrate that culture within the Department. I am not sure whether we have got there yet, so there is more that we have to do.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that this is a wake-up call, probably for far wider than just defence. The pursuit of efficiency is something that every organisation must do—public sector, private sector, Government and the rest. But sometimes organisations lose sight of some of the basic fundamentals as they try to drive in those efficiencies. We need to consider matters in detail, and we need to use the report as a tool to get the change that is absolutely necessary within the MOD. There were glaring dangers apparent in the aircraft for decades, and there were opportunities to spot those dangers, which were simply missed. My predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, apologised to the House for that. We knew that that was so at the time of the board of inquiry, and we need to repeat it and to have some due modesty about the situation that we find.

I thank the Secretary of State for his necessarily very sombre statement to the House this morning. This is a tragic case of an accident that could have been avoided. The 40-year history of Nimrod has, as the Secretary of State just acknowledged, been very difficult. Many critics of procurement in the MOD have their own candidates as to which has been the most bungled procurement. The distinction of Nimrod is that it has culminated in the tragedy of unnecessary deaths, and today’s report will certainly reawaken the sense of grief in the families and communities involved.

I welcome the candour of the Secretary of State’s admission of fault by the Government, and I welcome his saying that the MOD is changing its culture and approach to put safety first, but I regret that he had to acknowledge that that is necessary and was not always the case in the past.

This has not been a good few weeks for the Government, with Bernard Gray’s report last week indicating a culture of poor process, indecision and mismanagement, and we must all hope that lessons are learned. The case under discussion has been one of wake-up calls from previous incidents not being heeded. The report in 1998 gave warnings that were not taken on board by those managing the project, and, as today’s report says, that was the

“best opportunity to prevent the accident”,

and it “was, tragically, lost”.

The report is also damning of industry, which it accuses of “incompetence, complacency and cynicism.” There is always a danger with flying military aircraft, but some of those issues were unnecessary and avoidable, and the lives of personnel have been lost. BAE Systems, as our biggest defence contractor, finds itself on the wrong end of some scathing words. Its involvement in the Nimrod safety case was

“poorly planned, poorly managed and poorly executed, work was rushed and corners were cut.”

In addition to the errors in industry and in the MOD, Mr. Haddon-Cave refers in the report to “organisational trauma” in the MOD between 1998 and 2006 as a result of the 1998 strategic defence review. I hope very much that Ministers will dwell upon that and ensure that the forthcoming strategic defence review avoids any similar aftermath. Where will Nimrod feature in the new review? Can we please be assured that all the lessons of this appalling story will be learned for the future?

I do not disagree, again, with many of the hon. Gentleman’s comments. We are not unaware of the weaknesses in the procurement system. We commissioned Bernard Gray’s report in the first place and we published it last week—I think that it was only last week—to help us to address those issues. Mr. Haddon-Cave, in his report, refers to procurement as part of the cause of the problem, and we need to make absolutely certain that we learn the right lessons, not the wrong lessons.

In the Nimrod saga, there has often been a focus on the safety of the aircraft itself and whether it should be grounded. Charles Haddon-Cave focuses on the systems themselves, and that is where the focus needs to be. There were systems that simply did not fit the purpose for which they were designed, and, instead of being distracted by other issues, that is where we must focus our attention and that is what we must put right. As the hon. Gentleman has said, safety cases have become completely distorted to the point where they simply are not—or were not, in this case—value for money or of any benefit at all. Putting those systems right has to be our overriding priority.

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s attitude with regard to the statement. There was humility, and he said, “Sorry, we admit we got it wrong and we are going to put it right.” I await with interest the Government’s response to the report. He said that Nimrod issues were missed over the years, but will he change that to “ignored” over a number of years?

The report makes grim reading. Glaring dangers with the Nimrod aircraft existed for decades and were not recognised for decades. The safety casework was, as Mr. Haddon-Cave says, far and away the best opportunity to identify those dangers that were so clear to see, but it was missed. Despite great expertise and expense, the dangers were simply not identified, proving that the system was totally and utterly inadequate for the job.

As I listened to the Secretary of State’s words and read about the tick-box culture, I thought that he was genuinely sorry. However, I thought that he and, perhaps, all of us have no understanding of the massive job that we face in changing the culture not just of the Ministry of Defence, but of the country. In that respect, I was very pleased to see the Leader of the Opposition in his place, listening to the Secretary of State’s statement. However, if we are to change the culture, let us start here. The strength of this crushing report is that it was rigorously independent. But the Secretary of State has yet to accept the key recommendation of Bernard Gray’s review of acquisition—that the assessment of the equipment programme should be similarly rigorously independent. Why not; and, will the Secretary of State please do so?

I recognise that the lessons that we could learn from this episode are absolutely profound in terms of defence, and we have to try to learn them. However, they go far wider than defence. How do we get right in our modern world the balance between the pursuit of efficiency, which everybody wants us to pursue because nobody wants to pay more than they absolutely have to for equipment or capability, and making certain that we do not compromise safety in any way? We really have got to put in place systems that properly calibrate those priorities.

On Bernard Gray’s report, the one significant recommendation that I do not accept is that we will improve procurement by placing defence equipment and supply with a contractor-run organisation. We can and must do that by other means, and we have to have military knowledge properly plugged into our procurement processes. That recommendation would not be an aid to procurement; it would be a detriment.

I commend my right hon. Friend on the manner in which he registered the Government’s contrition for the events that have taken place, but I refer him to the assurance that he received from the Chief of the Air Staff and the defence chief airworthiness engineer that our fleets remain safe to fly. Had my right hon. Friend asked for such an assurance on 2 September 2006, would he not have received the same assurance? He says that he has full confidence in the people who carry out airworthiness duties, but how confident can the House be? Will he give an assurance now that no incident in the future will occur due to any fiscal shortfall?

If my hon. Friend manages to read the report, which is very lengthy and detailed, he will see that it contains words that could be read as indicating that Mr. Haddon-Cave himself feels that not only the Nimrod fleet, but some of our other aircraft fleets are not safe to fly today. The reason why I met Mr. Haddon-Cave this morning was to make absolutely certain that I understood what he was saying in his report—I thought that I did on my overnight reading of it, and he confirmed that this morning. It is not only the Chief of the Air Staff and the individual in the new position of defence chief airworthiness safety engineer who are telling me that the fleet is safe, but Mr. Haddon-Cave. Mr. Haddon-Cave says that, on Nimrod, he had been invited to make an interim report, if he felt that one was necessary, because of airworthiness considerations. He has not made that report. He assured me this morning that his report should not be read as saying that our current fleet or fleets are not safe as they fly today.

May I say to the Secretary of State that I accept that he is deeply distressed by the report and will do his best to implement the recommendations? May I also say that many of us fear that the long-standing disregard for safety, arising out of a concern for savings, may extend right across the MOD budget—for example, into the military budget, including armoured vehicles and the historical lack of body protection; the Navy, perhaps, with its submarines; and the RAF, with the Nimrod and, I fear, the Puma? Given all that, will he accept that the situation requires a change of culture at the highest level of the services, probably involving direct intervention from Ministers?

Yes, I do. I accept that savings were a part of the problem—I do not demur from that at all—but I do not think that the pursuit of savings alone is the cause of the problem. It is therefore necessary to drive through culture change. We have been trying to do that, as I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will accept. We have learned the lessons not only from Nimrod but from the deaths on the Tireless submarine a couple of years ago. We have tried to learn the lessons of our own boards of inquiry in trying to drive in the management and cultural change that is needed in the armed forces as well as in the MOD.

I welcome this hard-hitting and detailed report, as will my constituents, who wish all the best for everybody at RAF Kinloss and the families of the 14 brave service personnel who died aboard the Nimrod XV230. We have had an independent inquiry and inquests, we have had reviews, we have had numerous reports, and we have had analysis about Nimrod. At every stage, Ministers have given assurances that the right lessons would be learned and acted on. Clearly, they were not—so why should we have confidence in the assurances that we have heard today?

We commissioned the report because we knew that assurances were necessary given the findings of the board of inquiry—not through any fault of its own, but because the terms of reference of boards of inquiry mean that they do not consider the wider background and apportioning blame but the direct causes of the accident. There was an absolute necessity to commission this piece of work because it was obvious that some of the reasons for the crash went beyond the remit of the board of inquiry. I hope that we are able to reassure the hon. Gentleman and his constituents—many of the lost lived in his constituency—that we take this matter very seriously and are determined to drive in the change that is necessary. When I meet the families of service personnel who have lost their lives in very many circumstances, I find that their overriding desire is to know that their loved one did not lose their life in vain and that we genuinely learn the lessons of the loss that they have suffered; and that is what we must try to do.

When will the Nimrods be phased out of service?

The Mk 2 Nimrod is nearing the end of its service life. Indeed, part of the report exposes the fact that we have extended its out-of-service date repeatedly because of delays in the supply of a replacement. On current plans, the MR2 has only a few more months of service life left. However, I remind my hon. Friend that we also have the Nimrod R1, which is conducting vital operations in Afghanistan.

The MOD is very often—continually, it seems—criticised for its inability to provide the right equipment at the right place. Surely we can expect that when equipment is provided it is at least safe and airworthy. There are two stark facts in this report. First, Mr. Haddon-Cave refers again to the pursuit of financial savings and taking eyes off the safety ball; and secondly, he is very critical of our industrial partners. We heard what the Secretary of State said about the internal review that he is going to conduct within the MOD. What ultimate sanctions can be taken as regards our industrial partners, and how can they be called to account?

This is a very detailed report with some pretty far-reaching criticisms, not only of us but of others—individuals and companies, including important British companies. I therefore do not want to leap to conclusions about how we take these matters forward. I have promised to look in detail at every aspect of the report and to come back to the House before Christmas, and I will do that.

I welcome the Secretary of State’s saying that he is going to learn from Army boards of inquiry, because, as he knows, a second Army board of inquiry is due on my late constituent, Captain James Philippson.

I was pleased to hear that the Secretary of State is aware of the financial implications stretching more broadly across other items of defence equipment. Will he take that down to the lowest common denominator—namely, not just equipment that is out there and may not be functioning correctly, but the absence of equipment that should be there?

In the case of the hon. Lady’s constituent, she knows that we are awaiting a second Army board of inquiry. Her constituent was not at all happy with the outcome of the first Army board of inquiry, and I would not like to prejudge any findings that the second board of inquiry comes to.

The parents of one of the dead crew members live in my constituency. They find it almost impossible to get closure on the situation because of the time that it has taken to come up with these reports. Will the Secretary of State build into the MOD ethos the fact that the speed with which people need to know what happened is paramount? These parents and families need to know, as quickly as possible, the reason that their child, or whatever, died. Could we please have some form of timetable after a disaster for when the information comes back to this House?

I accept that the hon. Gentleman is genuine about the point that he makes. This was a big issue with me when I first became Minister for the Armed Forces over two years ago. These things go on for such a length of time that people cannot possibly get closure. However, I have come to accept that one cannot impose arbitrary timetables in such cases. The board of inquiry in this case took more than a year, which was very frustrating. We then had the inquests, and we then commissioned the Haddon-Cave review. We must be mindful, all the time, that there are grieving people suffering as a result of the process. However, when I talk to them they say that their first demand is thoroughness. Yes, they want speed, and yes, they want closure, but they do not want short cuts. We therefore cannot impose an artificial time line on these things.

The Nimrod aircraft was built at BAE Systems at Woodford; part of the site lies in my constituency. I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and his assurance that all the recommendations will be implemented, as the crash was an absolute tragedy. However, will he not stand up for this wonderful aircraft that has done a magnificent job over the years? The R1 is still performing a brilliant role. Will he tell me, and all the work force still at BAE Systems at Woodford, that following this tragic accident, which I deeply regret—my condolences go out to the families of all those who were killed—the Nimrod will not be prejudiced in future purchases by the Ministry of Defence?

Mr. Haddon-Cave pays glowing tributes to all those who were associated with the Nimrod, and rightly so. The overwhelming thrust of his report—I have not managed to read every single page and every detail overnight—is not an attack on the aircraft itself in any way: it is an attack on the systems that have effectively let our people down.

I thank the Secretary of State for the content and tone of his statement. He says that lessons have been learned and that there is still more to be done. As part of that process, will he look at the procurement programmes that he has already announced, such as the Puma extended life programme? That programme was much criticised by the Defence Committee, and there are modern alternatives that may prove to be better value and cheaper in the long run.

We must look at our procurement processes. The purpose of commissioning and delivering the Gray report was, in effect, to force us to do that. We will bring forward proposals for acquisition reform as part of the Green Paper process that the hon. Gentleman’s party and the Conservative party are co-operating with, and I hope that we will bring forward some work early in the new year. However, I do not want to get distracted into individual programmes and decisions that people may or may not agree with. This is a far bigger problem than that, and it needs to be considered at a comprehensive and strategic level.

I join the Secretary of State in expressing the sympathy of my right hon. and hon. Friends to the grieving families of the 14 servicemen who tragically lost their lives. I commend the Secretary of State on the manner in which he made his statement and the humility with which he has accepted the report. Can he guarantee that the failings that have been outlined will be corrected, and that a time scale will be given for when those corrections will be made?

There are many people in the MOD who, over the period I have been there, have been absolutely bent towards trying to ensure that we learn all the lessons that we need to learn to put safety in place. Nimrod has been a big part of that lessons learned process. There is a desire to do that, but are we at the right place? No, we are not. We have not yet achieved the culture change that needs to take place, but there is a huge desire to do so and I want to ensure that I encourage that and drive it through so that we get to where we need to be.

Three companies of my local Royal Anglian Regiment went to Afghanistan last week. They will welcome the Secretary of State’s gracious words, but there are of course implications for them in the report. Will he seek to ensure that the replacement aircraft that comes in soon will be able to operate from a base much nearer its operational zone? That may help to reduce risk.

I am not aware of the basing considerations that the hon. Gentleman raises, but I am more than happy to talk to him and listen to any representations that he has. Ensuring that we have sufficient surveillance for operations in Afghanistan is a vital part of keeping our people safe there. That surveillance is provided not only by Nimrod but by many other platforms, and we must ensure that we do all that we can to maintain the overall capability in the best possible shape that we can.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make clear my displeasure at the fact that a written ministerial statement pertaining to today’s debate has in fact not been released. The Government have announced publication of the responses to the consultation on local spending reports, but I find it curious, to put it generously, that the statement is being published on the day of the debate. I find it incredible that Members were not given the courtesy of seeing the statement, and that it is still not available in the Library of the House as late as 12 minutes past 1. Not only is that a grave discourtesy to Members of all parties, who have worked together in a non-partisan way on the issue of local spending reports, but it makes a mockery of the Chamber being used in any meaningful form.

I believe that there was a similar incident the Thursday before last, Mr. Speaker, when you described it as a grave discourtesy to Members that a statement was made available only one hour before a debate. I should like to know what your view is of the fact that the statement pertaining to today’s debate has not yet been made available.

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her point of order and for giving me advance notice of it. My view is straightforward: I regard the situation as extremely unsatisfactory. A statement of that kind ought to be delivered in a timely way. If it has not been, we need to know why and the matter needs to be put right. Above all, I hope that there will not be a repetition. It is a discourtesy to Members of the House.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I address this point to you in your capacity as custodian of the interests of those who work in the Westminster village. You will be aware of the speculation surrounding the leaking of Sir Christopher Kelly’s report and the impact that that is having upon a lot of individuals who work for MPs or are members of MPs’ families. I do not believe that it is tolerable that that speculation should be allowed to continue until next Wednesday.

It is well known that the report has been completed and is at the printers at the moment. I wonder whether it is within your power, Mr. Speaker, to order that the report should be published as soon as possible so that the speculation can be ended and we can answer questions from our staff based upon the facts in the report rather than speculation.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. It is not a parliamentary report that is being produced, and although I note that he either thinks that it is within my power to do as he asks or wishes to extend my power to ensure that it is, the present situation is that it is not. The report is due to be delivered to the Government by 4 November and published on that date.

I have heard the very serious point about the leakage that has taken place, and I say to the hon. Gentleman, who is an immensely experienced and perspicacious parliamentarian, that if he wants to address his concern to representatives of the Government, business questions might be a suitable opportunity for him to do so. I have a hunch that he will probably be there.

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require rentcharge companies to notify annually residents subject to chief rent of their statutory right to redeem their charge under the Rentcharges Act 1977; and for connected purposes.

I am pleased to have been given this opportunity to bring to the attention of the House a specific problem affecting properties in my constituency and a small number of others, and to provide a practical and, for the Government, cost-free method of resolving a long-standing problem. In short, I wish the existing law to be amended to allow for a tightening up of the regulations regarding chief rent charges and to prevent some of the bad practices that rentcharge companies have used on my constituents in recent years.

I first raised the issue of rentcharges in my maiden speech, and since then I have been contacted by a large number of local residents who have been caught up in various chief rent scams and have quite frankly been conned out of money, often hundreds of pounds, by estate management companies. Greater Manchester is one of only a handful of areas in the country where chief rents were legally established. Chief rent is a perpetual charge, a form of ground rent that is charged on freehold properties by a previous landowner. It affects properties only in small parts of the country including parts of Greater Manchester such as Tameside and Stockport in my constituency.

As with any charge, the resident is billed by the property company each year to pay the chief rent. It is often a very small sum of a few pounds a year, and because the charge remains at the level at which it was originally set in the deeds, it is of diminishing value in real terms to the rentcharge companies as time goes by.

Under the provisions of the Rentcharges Act 1977, the freeholder can unburden themselves of any annual rentcharge created before 22 August 1977 by applying to make a lump sum payment through the relevant Government office. In the case of my constituents, that is the Government office for the north-west. The Act provides a formula that enables the Government office to calculate the redemption figure that the rent payer has to pay the rent owner in order to redeem their rentcharge. That figure comes out at roughly 14 times the annual chief rent.

When the transaction has been completed, the Government office, on behalf of the Secretary of State, issues a redemption certificate to the rent payer. That provision was secured by intensive campaigning in the 1970s by a number of MPs, including my predecessor but one Ken Marks, who was the Member for Manchester, Gorton, in the days when much of my constituency was in that one. He also successfully campaigned to ensure that no new chief rents could be created after 1977 and that any rentcharges still in existence by 2037 would be automatically extinguished. However, those laudable changes unfortunately created some new challenges, as I will briefly explain to the House.

For all the time that I have been an elected representative, first as a councillor on Tameside metropolitan borough council and since 2005 as an MP, I have been contacted by many local constituents who have been subject to various underhand tactics by unscrupulous management companies. In the past, I have launched campaigns to warn residents throughout Tameside and Stockport about various chief rent scams. In the most recent scam, letters were sent out by property companies to local residents, offering a “cut-price reduction” for home owners to buy out their chief rent. One area where they targeted householders was the Dane Bank area of Denton, where the chief rents were set in the 1930s, generally at around £2 to £5 a year, depending on the size of the landholding. Had residents been made aware of the 1977 Government scheme, the average cost of buying out the rent would have been between £30 and £60 in total. The property company’s offer was for people to pay around £350 but, in a twist, there was a “special offer” whereby that was reduced to £250 for a limited period. In essence, people were being fleeced for hundreds of pounds by those property companies.

There are other examples of such practices. Companies sent out property surveys to see what improvements residents had made to their homes. When people filled out the details, they were hit with excessive charges for making alterations without having the rentcharge company’s permission to do so, despite being freeholders. Such administration and penalty charges can also run into hundreds of pounds.

It appears that that tactic is being used only on properties on which it is not now economically viable to collect the charge annually, so the companies are looking for other methods for raising income from the rentcharge. For years, rentcharge companies have been trying it on with residents, attempting to fleece them for as much money as they can, especially as the value of the rentcharge is worth less and less as time goes by. Frankly, it is outrageous that the companies can charge people for occupying land that, as freeholders, they own outright anyway. It is nothing short of a throwback to feudal times.

Until the rentcharges are extinguished in 2037, I want to ensure that my constituents are made fully aware of their rights to buy the rent out using the existing Government scheme. I would hate for even more local people, particularly vulnerable groups, to pay over the odds. That is why I am presenting this Bill.

My concern is that some residents who are unaware of the provisions in the 1977 Act will think that the £250 offers and the like are a good deal. I want to make local residents in Denton and Reddish, and elsewhere, aware that they can purchase their chief rent for a lot less money by filling in an application form and sending it to their Government office. That can be achieved very simply and at no cost by legally obliging all property companies to automatically notify residents of their rights under the 1977 Act to buy out their chief rent, in plain English and in a prominent way, when they send out demands for the charge each year.

Back in 1977 when the Rentcharges Act was being debated, probably nobody anticipated how rentcharges would be abused. The small changes proposed in my Bill will ensure that people are correctly notified about their existing statutory right to purchase and buy out chief rents, and most importantly, give them the absolute confidence that they are doing so at the correct price.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That David Heyes, Ann Coffey, James Purnell, Sir Gerald Kaufman, Tony Lloyd, Graham Stringer, Mr. Graham Brady, Mark Hunter, Andrew Stunell, Mr. John Leech, Jim Dobbin and Andrew Gwynne present the Bill.

Andrew Gwynne accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 30 October and to be printed (Bill 154).

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I came in very slightly too late to hear the gist of an earlier point of order made by the hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman), but I gather that the document the Government have published today, which is referred to in our amendment, is not in the House of Commons Library and that it may not have been provided to the hon. Lady and other Opposition spokespersons. I deeply apologise for that. I personally attach great importance to the matter. I will endeavour to find out what went wrong, but for now, I give my apologies to you, Mr. Speaker, and to the House.

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order and I know that what he has said will be appreciated by the House.

I inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

I beg to move,

That this House welcomes the provisions of the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 requiring the publication of local spending reports; believes that people have a right to know how their money is spent by public bodies; especially welcomes the assurances given by the then Minister for Local Government, the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth, that the local spending reports would include all public agencies; further welcomes the Minister’s assurance that the purpose was to achieve a report that identified how much would be spent in each area by the authorities; is therefore very concerned by the limited information available in the local spending reports produced by the Department for Communities and Local Government; believes them to be a contravention of the expressed assurances of the Minister; and calls for proper local spending reports to be published, which will give effect to those assurances.

Obviously, I appreciate the Secretary of State’s apology for the non-availability of the written ministerial statement to hon. Members. However, I am sure that hon. Members share with me just a touch of incredulity that the consultation report is being produced on the very day of the Opposition day debate. That we do not have access to the information will obviously have an impact on the quality of the debate. It is right to record that. We accept the apology, but the impact remains.

I shall proceed by setting out why we feel it is so important to revisit the issue of local spending reports and then spend some time looking at the implications of the Government’s failure to implement local spending reports as they were originally conceived in the Sustainable Communities Act 2007. In conclusion, I will look at how the policy should be implemented and at how, as elected representatives, we should go further and faster in responding to the public appetite for transparency and efficiency.

All hon. Members will be familiar with the history of the 2007 Act as many of us took part in its passage. As a Bill, it enjoyed genuine cross-party support and it would be remiss of me not to pay tribute to colleagues on both sides of the House, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd), whose private Member’s Bill was responsible for the 2007 Act and who will wind-up the debate, and the hon. Members for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) and for Stroud (Mr. Drew), for all their hard work in getting this important piece of legislation on to the statute book.

Of themselves, those tributes emphasise the cross-party nature of the support for local spending reports. It is also fitting to record our thanks to the tireless efforts of Local Works, which has done so much to drive support for the 2007 Act. I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House will have received letters and e-mails from their constituents expressing strong support for the legislation.

Hon. Members will have noticed that the wording of today’s motion is based on that of early-day motion 1064, tabled by the hon. Member for Stroud. That early-day motion, like the original Bill, drew widespread cross-party support—254 signatures in total. In that spirit of cross-party working, let me say to Liberal Democrat colleagues how helpful it is for the debate that they have become co-signatories of today’s motion. I, for one, hope that that bodes for a constructive and conciliatory debate—an example of the new politics that people want to see.

To my mind, the reason why the Sustainable Communities Bill enjoyed so much support—not just in this House, but among the public—was that it was seen as a way of delivering a clear, tangible change in the balance of power between communities and their elected representatives. It was seen as a way of giving the people the tools with which they can better shape the communities where they live. Measures that could help to reverse the pattern of the development of ghost towns or to reduce local carbon emissions were seen to be strong moves in the right direction, and as a way to empower communities and give people more say over what happened in their locality.

However, arguably, the centrepiece of the 2007 Act is section 6, which is on local spending reports, and I shall focus for a moment on why the spending reports are so significant. On the one hand, it is a matter of transparency and accountability, but on the other, getting a clear understanding about where money is being spent is the key to getting better use of financial resources. If local strategic partnerships, which we all support, are really to deliver, they need the information that would have been provided in the local spending reports and must be able to get their arms around the totality of local spending.

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is remarkable that in the case of Cumbria, the Local Government Association—presumably in collaboration with the Department—has managed to publish all of the relevant information, non-departmental public body by non-departmental public body and Department by Department? Does she agree that it is therefore likely that this information might already exist on the COINS—combined online information system—database and other Government databases?

I thank my right hon. Friend for that helpful information. Residents in Cumbria have access to the sort of information that we would all like to have. His intervention shows that providing such information is perfectly possible.

The information is the bedrock for finding out where there is duplication, where spending can be pooled or better aligned to optimise efficiency, and where funds can be reinvested or redirected for a better outcome. These reports are integral to ensuring that we get more for the money spent. In this time of recession, the imperative for that has never been stronger. On that basis, it is no surprise that early-day motion 1064 attracted such support.

Local spending reports are fairly innocuous in name, but hugely significant in nature. As colleagues will know, they were the key to unlocking the level of departmental spending in local areas. The clause provided for all public authorities to insist on local spending being publicised so that people could see where their hard-earned money was going, and if they wished, challenge it. Indeed, this was a clause lauded by Ministers at the time.

The former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Salford (Hazel Blears), said:

“Less of Whitehall calling the shots and more of men and women everywhere working with their council to set the agenda”.

The former Minister, now Minister for Borders and Immigration, said:

“The fundamental point of the reports would obviously be to aid transparency and accountability, but I believe that they would also have the beneficial effect of prompting serious debate in local areas”.––[Official Report, Sustainable Communities Public Bill Committee, 2 May 2007; c. 47.]

Against that backdrop, people rightly had high expectations of the Bill.

Age Concern and Help the Aged have publicly observed:

“A breakdown of all public spending would ultimately be of great benefit to older people, particularly with regards to transparency about spending on things like benefits and public services in local areas.”

The National Federation of Women’s Institutes has said:

“We urge the Government to deliver on their promise to publish the full local spending reports which are so vital to the Sustainable Communities Act. Local communities can only effectively use their right to have a say in their local services if they know how the money which was raised from their taxes is being spent.”

The National Council for Voluntary Organisations said:

“The voluntary sector fully supports the need for local spending reports as a breakdown of all public spending by local authority areas. This information would not only be valuable to voluntary organisations everywhere, it would also encourage more people to get involved in the Sustainable Community Act’s exciting new processes.”

There are other endorsements from third-party organisations of the need for local spending reports.

As a result, it may cause some consternation that colleagues find themselves having to use valuable parliamentary time today debating why the Government have watered down the scope of these vital local spending reports. In the consultation paper on spending reports, Ministers released details of a critical change so that the reports would now apply only to local authority spending and primary care trusts. To a large extent, that information is already available, but more significant than what the 2007 Act covers is what it does not cover. It is worth taking a moment to list those organisations missing from the current proposals for local spending reports. They include the Environment Agency; Natural England; Jobcentre Plus; the Health and Safety Executive; local probation boards; probation trusts; NHS foundation trusts; regional development agencies; the Learning and Skills Council; national health service trusts; Sport England; English Heritage; the Arts Council; the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council; the Highways Agency; and the Homes and Communities Agency.

Would it interest my hon. Friend to know that details for all the bodies that she has just listed are published in the case of Cumbria, making it slightly odd that they will not be published for the rest of the country?

Once again, my right hon. Friend’s observation about Cumbria shows that it is perfectly possible to provide such information for every area. The question is why that is not happening.

This huge chunk of public spending, which is channelled through non-departmental public bodies, including RDAs, has been granted an exemption. So what started out as a means of shining a light on the way that public money is spent seems to have ended up as more of a dull fog concealing the truth. I am sure all hon. Members will share my concern that many supporters of the Bill will see that as a fundamental breach of trust. They will know from their constituencies that when Local Works campaigners held public meetings and signed up supporters, this halfway house is not what they had in mind, and the practical working of this compromised position has set back what pioneers of the Bill sought to achieve. It makes a nonsense of the time spent debating the Bill, with so much work put in by hon. Members, only to end up with such a large proportion of public spending being exempted. In essence, that fatally undermines the power that people have to scrutinise and challenge where their money is being spent.

In my constituency, I am astonished that we are not able to find out where and when public money is being spent by our RDA. What I can ascertain is that significantly less public money is awarded to Advantage West Midlands than to One NorthEast—approximately half, to be precise. The figure is £55 per head in the west midlands, as opposed to £96 per head in the north-east for 2008-11. That will seem very strange to people in my area, which is so badly affected by the recession.

The hon. Lady is obviously not speaking as a constituency MP but as her party’s representative on these matters. May we take what you have just said as a clear indication that you would change the allocation of resources to RDAs on the lines that you have suggested? That would be very important news to many people—

Order. The Secretary of State is very experienced and he knows that he must use the correct parliamentary language.

I am sure that you would not want to have to answer such a disingenuous question, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Given that the Government are already in bad odour in the Chamber for failing to produce a document pertinent to today’s debate, attempting an intervention that is just point-scoring party politics is not a good start by a comparatively new Secretary of State.

The important point is that we want to know where the money is going. I cannot cross-reference how spending in the north-east compares with spending in the west midlands, but our constituents might reasonably expect us to be able to do so. Constituents in Cumbria are fortunate to have the opportunity to do so, but it is not generally available. Does the Secretary of State understand how infuriating it is to be kept in the dark over exactly where the money is going, and in what sort of quantity? It is not only infuriating, but disempowering for elected representatives and the communities that they serve.

The hon. Lady makes several points about the spending of RDAs. Why is her party failing to participate in the Regional Select Committees, which could look in detail at those very issues?

Most hon. Members find it an extraordinary afterthought that, so late in this Parliament, the Government have realised that there might be a problem with lack of accountability in the regional structures that they have tried to create. All of us understand that there is something fundamentally wrong with the regional structures that the Government have set up. My party would seek to solve that by returning powers to local government, where there is democratic accountability.

At a time of recession, when households are having to account for every penny carefully, and our national debt is forecast to grow by £240 billion a year, it is all the more poignant that people cannot see where their money is going. Insulating quangos from public scrutiny will serve only to strengthen people’s suspicion and distrust of quangos. They are seen as mandated by Whitehall to take the decisions that Ministers do not want their fingerprints on, and the bodies which spend taxpayers’ money are free from interrogation.

In recent years, the quango machinery has accelerated. In 2007, spending on non-departmental public bodies rose from £37 billion to £43 billion. That information comes from the Cabinet Office. There are now 1,152 quangos in the UK employing more than 500,000 people. The TaxPayers Alliance estimates that every year £90 billion of taxpayers’ money is spent by unelected quangos—equivalent to more than £3,500 for every household. The fact that the best that we can obtain is an estimate is telling in itself. Surely, we should all be entitled to know exactly how much money is being spent. My sense is that, if anything, £90 billion is probably on the low side.

Under the current regime, the figure will certainly be escalating. Let us take two examples with which the Secretary of State will be dealing. The Infrastructure Planning Commission is forecast to cost £10 million a year and will take the most controversial planning decisions out of the hands of elected representatives, but despite the scale of its finances and the impact of its decision-making power, it is not covered by the 2007 Act.

Just when we thought that public patience with elaborate and unaccountable quangos, which have failed to deliver in important areas such as housing, had run out, the Government have put them on a life support machine in the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill. RDAs will now be spending vast sums of taxpayers’ money on functions that they were never designed to deliver and taking decisions over some of the most controversial aspects of housing and planning. Yet RDAs, along with the rest of the quangos, have been exempted from the 2007 Act.

At a time when every publicly funded organisation is having to demonstrate its value for money, I cannot believe that the RDAs welcome being veiled in secrecy. Ironically, the RDAs might be better placed to advocate their case if they were covered by the 2007 Act. The quango culture is of a piece with public suspicion that politicians seek to abrogate responsibility and spend taxpayers’ money without recourse. That corrosive cynicism is undermining our democracy and we need an antidote to it. People need to know how much is being spent, by whom and on what. Could it be the case that at the back of the Government’s decision to dilute the requirements for publishing spending, there is a genuine concern that people would be horrified at the level of waste? What is incontrovertible, however, is that opening up the books would enable people to see just how their area compares to others in the share of funding that it gets.

Having set out how and why I believe that the Government have got it wrong in compromising the scope of local spending reports, I want to advocate how we might better match the reality of the 2007 Act with the rhetoric of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill. For a start, we should honour the commitment given by Parliament to enact the legislation in full. As legislators, we should aim to meet not just the letter but the spirit of the legislation and really open up spending to local scrutiny and counter-bid.

Hon. Members on both sides of the House have sought opportunities to do this, and I know that my hon. Friends the Members for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson) and for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman) recently tabled amendments to the Bill to that effect. Sadly, however, those were to no avail. It is clear, therefore, that if the public’s desire for transparency in local spending is to be realised, it will take bold action. On my part, I believe that we should go further than the terms of the Bill, and that we should be bolder and even more radical in the quest to get transparency and accountability into public spending.

The Conservative party has made it clear that under a Conservative Government councils would have to publish online details of all expenditure over £500—already some Conservative councils, such as Windsor and Maidenhead, do that. That will let people see, at the click of a mouse, how their local authority is using their money. The emphasis will be on making the data easy to access, easy to understand and easy to compare with other councils.

That cannot be said of the current format in which the sustainable communities spending reports are being published. I consider myself to be fairly adept with Excel, and those reports are a cautionary lesson in making information at best opaque, and at worst simply indecipherable. However, the key to making those council spending reports valuable as a means of scrutiny is our pledge to abolish the entire regional tier of government and repatriate power to democratically elected councils. That would solve at a stroke the problem of regional bodies not being covered by the 2007 Act.

Our approach of discharging as much power as possible to elected councils, rather than unelected quangos, will give real force to the power of publishing spending online. We would also go back to the source—the grant formula—and make it more transparent. That, along with the power of local referendums and our commitment to phasing out ring-fencing, would deliver a sea change in the way we do politics. We are intent on devolving real power to councils so that they can deliver on the priorities and needs of their communities.

That approach is best summed up in our policy of giving councils a general power of competence—a power to enshrine the presumption that councils could, and should, be free to act in accordance with the wishes of the communities that they serve. However, in return, the communities deserve to be given the tools to hold those councils to account. They have to have at their disposal the information and the levers of power to challenge spending decisions and get things changed.

Is that not at the heart of the original motivation behind the spending reports that we are debating? It is a silver thread that has been running for some time in various incarnations but with very limited success—from local area agreements, to local strategic partnerships, the 2007 Act and, most recently, the Total Place initiative. Sadly, however, none of those manifestations has delivered what we need, which is why we find ourselves here today. We are in the early days of the Total Place pilots, and Conservative Members are watching with interest to see whether the Government can crack it.

It all goes back to the money, however. Bringing budget holders around the table can yield great results, but it is predicated on knowing what money is spent, by whom and on what.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again, and I am glad to tell her that this intervention relates to Dorset, rather than Cumbria. Does she think it as important as I do that the Secretary of State explains how, in the Total Place pilot in Dorset, all Government agencies have been able to reveal their figures—this time, not published—to the other partnership authorities in Dorset?

When the Secretary of State replies, he will have a golden opportunity to explain those discrepancies.

I shall draw my opening comments to a close, because I am keen that others have an opportunity to speak. It is an important debate because it goes beyond the subject of local spending reports and to the heart of what the public expect of us and how Parliament responds to them. The past year has been a deeply damaging one for this institution. We have been left with a clear, unambiguous instruction from voters that they are sick of public money being spent behind closed doors. They want to see where their money is going and whether it is being used efficiently. Politicians ignore that at their peril. The Government’s desire to keep public spending under wraps is completely at odds with where the public are.

The organisation Unlock Democracy put the matter well when it said:

“With the current acute public disillusionment of politics it could not be more timely for the government to commit to publishing full Local Spending Reports, as already promised by”

a previous Minister. As politicians, we are on notice that we have to live up to the high standards expected of us, which is why backtracking is so dangerous. The tide of public opinion has turned. It is unflinching and there is no going back. People are no longer content to defer to distant individuals or faceless organisations over how their money is spent. They are determined to know.

I firmly believe that Parliament, as with any organisation in receipt of public funds, has a moral and unquestionable duty to make public how it spends our money. To resist that will only foster more of the kind of distrust, cynicism and resentment that we have already seen when taxpayer-funded organisations refuse to come clean on where the money is going. We have to show that we are better than that. Delivering in full on local spending reports would do that. With sadness, however, I say to colleagues that those reports have not been forthcoming in the way that hon. Members on both sides of the House had hoped. In recognition of that, I urge colleagues to support this motion so that we can go some way to restoring the House’s integrity in the eyes of supporters of the 2007 Act.

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add:

“recognises the role of strong, accountable local government in delivering high quality local services and entitlements to services whilst ensuring value for money; welcomes Government investment, through local councils, in providing real help now to families; reiterates the importance of providing information about local spending and service quality to ensuring effective scrutiny and value for money; further welcomes the passage of the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 and the Government’s commitment to work with the Selector on its implementation, and believes that the first local spending reports published in April 2009 marked an important initial step in making local public spending more transparent; further welcomes responses to the consultation confirming the desire to see more data published; welcomes the Government’s intention to extend local spending reports to cover all local public spending which can be readily provided in this format at reasonable cost; further welcomes the Government’s proposals to extend local authorities’ scrutiny of all local public service spending in their area; further welcomes the Total Place pilots mapping in detail all public spending in key services in 13 areas; further welcomes Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s work advising Government on how best to make non-personal public data as widely available as possible; believes that these developments will enhance the Government’s ability to provide local spending information in the most effective manner; and asks Ministers to report back to the House before the end of December 2009 on the next stages in developing local spending reports.”

This is an important debate. I want to go through what has been achieved so far and what the next steps are. I did not think that the speech by the hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) showed an enormous grasp of the nature of public data and how they are made available or of what has been done so far and what will be done in future. I regret that, because I believe that those public data are important. It is also important that we build on what has been done so far.

There are clearly some conceptual difficulties. Whatever the merits of, for example, the Infrastructure Planning Commission—I think that they are considerable, but that is a debatable point and has been debated in the House—it is a national body, as is the Supreme Court. It had not occurred to me to previously that the Supreme Court should be covered by local spending reports. Presumably the spending should be divided by the number of local authorities and put into a report, but would it really help to subdivide what are essentially national institutions into local reports? The hon. Lady told us that the IPC and similar bodies—presumably including the armed forces and so on—should be included in local spending reports. However, we need a bit of clarity about the purposes behind the legislation, because that will enable us to look at what can reasonably be done in future.

Does the Secretary of State not understand that councils, particularly during this recession, are trying to develop policies to help local people get back into jobs? The absence of figures for regional development agencies and Jobcentre Plus is not only a disincentive in itself, but fundamentally works against the notion of partnership that is needed for such activities.

I agree about the importance of such information. I was merely making the point that suggesting, as the hon. Member for Meriden did, that expenditure in institutions that operate at a national level should be covered in local spending reports is a misunderstanding of what the original 2007 Act was about. It would be better to concentrate on how we make relevant and timely information available on genuinely local public spending.

The ground that we are covering today has been fairly well trodden in recent weeks and months, but is no less important for that. There are two things that we should try to do in this debate. The first is to establish the importance of information on local spending in driving the delivery of effective, personal, high-quality and value-for-money public services. However, we also need to establish the deep divide that now separates the two major parties on the future of local government. Perhaps I could start by setting that scene first.

I recognise that there is a superficial rhetorical similarity between the commitments of the parties to decentralisation, but in practice they are a long way apart. Time and again in yesterday’s Communities and Local Government questions, we saw Opposition Members lining up to remind us that their local government policy is against growth, against jobs, against homes, against sensible transport planning and against the regional development agencies, which have helped to support numerous businesses through the downturn.

Surely the help that local businesses have received via the RDAs is a classic example of regional spending having an impact at a local level, where it would be beneficial for the public to know the quantities of money being spent in their areas.

I will come to that point, although I am glad that the hon. Lady does not seem to share the desire of the Conservative Opposition simply to do away with those structures and pretend that nothing should exist between central Government and local expenditure. That is a huge gulf between us, and it puts the Opposition in a terribly weak position when they try to argue that they have policies that will help us come out of recession and deliver decent public services.

The Secretary of State is right that there is a gulf between the two sides on the future of regional development agencies, but what on earth does that have to do with local spending reports? While he is on his feet, could he address the issue in the Opposition motion? For example, how can we take the experience being developed in Leicestershire through the Total Place initiative, which focuses on drugs and alcohol and which the Government say they support, and use it outside Leicestershire if, say, the youth offending service or the probation service does not publish the information that would allow other local authorities to use that experience?

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point. He says that the Government say that they support Total Place, but the Government invented it. We are driving Total Place forward, and I am grateful for his support for it.

I will come to Total Place, the lessons that we can learn from it and how it fits into the wider picture in due course. However, it is important in a debate on local government to set the policy scene behind the demand for local information. The hon. Member for Meriden wrote in August urging Conservative-controlled councils to go slow on making land available for housing and jobs. That was an act of gross and irresponsible economic vandalism, but it speaks volumes about the Conservative party’s approach. Any discussion that we have about local spending information needs to set in that context.

Actually, the Secretary of State is going the right way about committing his own economic vandalism, by misrepresenting the policies of the Conservative Opposition and stoking unjustified fears about our clear plans to provide more housing and more jobs, which his Government have failed to provide.

Given the support that the hon. Lady gave to Conservative councils to resist attempts to provide land for housing, she has some difficultly in trying to explain how that would provide the land needed for housing.

The second point about local spending plans is that the Opposition would like there to be a lot less local spending. They are on record as saying that my Department should have its spending cut by £1 billion this year—not next year or when we look at deficit reduction, but this year. That is hugely damaging. I agree that making local spending information available is important, but it is also worth noting that the Conservative party fundamentally believes that there should be far less spending, although it has never been open and straightforward about its plan. The Opposition proposals are wrong, because they would damage recovery and lead to further huge cuts in housing, on top of their desire to block housing.

The background to this debate is that Government Members believe in strong, accountable and effective local government, able to influence the whole of public service spending in its area. We believe in devolution on principle, but we also believe in it for a purpose: to deliver high-quality public services while making each taxpayers’ pound work as hard as it can. We see devolution as a way of entrenching people’s entitlements to public services and ensuring that they are delivered. The proposals that I set out last July to extend the scrutiny power of local government will ensure that councils and councillors have the power to challenge how every pound of local public service money is spent.

The Conservatives couple the localisation of power with the abandonment of any concept of, or commitment to, the standards of service that citizens have a right to enjoy. That is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It is a charter to make the postcode lottery the founding principle of conservatism in local government. The Conservatives have given the green light for “Ryanair councils”, where people have to pay twice—once in tax and then in an extra tax—to get a decent service.

I make that point because although the hon. Member for Meriden spoke a great deal about local spending, she said almost nothing about information on the quality of local services. That is not a surprise, because as part of their package, the Conservatives have promised to abolish targets, end standards and stop entitlements. They have also promised to stop inspections: they do not want to check on standards because there will not be any. Government Members support local spending reports, but I am sure that they agree that it is the outcome of the spending—the quality of service that our constituents receive—that matters most.

We can have a debate about local quality reports another day, but could we come to local spending reports—something to which the Secretary of State has so far made only glancing references? That is the subject of the motion on the Order Paper.

The Conservatives are uncomfortable when it is set out in front of them what their policies mean for the quality of local public services, so I am not surprised that I am being urged to move on. I will do so, but it is important to put this on record. There is a great deal of interest in the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill outside this Chamber, and it is important to put on record the fact that there is no cosy consensus between us and the Conservatives on the future of local government and of local government services; there is in fact a big divide.

Before we knew the subject for today’s debate, I had already arranged to speak at the Royal Society of Arts, and I gave a lecture there last Wednesday on the future of local government. If I may, I should like to read from the part of that lecture that is directly relevant to today’s discussion. I said:

“Public data is an essential tool in creating pressure to drive improvements in public services—on the old principle that knowledge is power. It puts all the information, and therefore the power, in the hands of users, service providers and would-be providers—including social enterprises. People should be able to compare the outcomes and the costs for their own local services with the services delivered elsewhere, and suggest means of improving and driving change. An open data policy as part of our broader efforts towards democratic renewal is important for creating a culture in which Government information is accessible and useful to as many people as possible”.

That is a statement of principle that I am happy to restate in this House. It is, of course, exactly what local spending reports are about.

I want to set out what we have done so far, what the next steps will be and, crucially, how the Government’s wider policies for the reform of local government, local public spending and public data openness will continue to transform the availability of public data. As the House knows, we have completed the first stage of local public spending reports. There has been some suggestion in this debate that the Government have in some way significantly deviated from promises made at the time the Sustainable Communities Bill was being discussed, and that we have backtracked on them. In the debate on 2 May 2007, the Minister then responsible, my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, East and Saddleworth (Mr. Woolas), rightly said:

“The local spending report would cover all public expenditure in each local authority area in so far as it is possible to define it.”––[Official Report, Sustainable Communities Public Bill Committee, 2 May 2007; c. 46.]

In that same debate, which many hon. Members attended, he also entered a number of caveats—[Interruption.] This is relevant, because the suggestion has been made in this debate that the Government’s response to that legislation was dishonest or disingenuous. It is therefore important to remind the House of the reasonable and practical qualifications that the then Minister made when talking about the public expenditure reports.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

I should like to make a little progress, then I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

My hon. Friend went on to say that he was talking about

“expenditure that can be easily identified as relating to a particular area”.

I have previously made the point about the desire of the hon. Member for Meriden to include the Infrastructure Planning Commission in this, but it would be difficult in an annual report to identify how much of that expenditure related to a particular area. My hon. Friend went on to say:

“We do not propose to create a new power to require additional information to be provided”.––[Official Report, Sustainable Communities Public Bill Committee, 2 May 2007; c. 51.]

He also said that the clause that was being discussed specified that the cost of producing the report must be limited.

I do not believe that what we have today represents the end of the process. I am simply making the point that it was clear from everything that my hon. Friend the Minister said at that time that there would be some limits on the data that were initially provided as part of this process. The important thing about today’s discussion is to determine how we move forward from where we are.

It was in response to me that the then Minister made several of those remarks in that debate. The impression that he gave was very clear to all present, and it was confirmed in discussions outside the Committee Room. It was that there would be detailed reports. There are detailed reports produced by others, which are based on Government information. That Government information has not been published. The Secretary of State cannot stand there and say that the Government have done what they committed themselves to do. I regret that, but that is the fact.

The Government made it clear at that stage that there were limits to what would be immediately provided, and that there were some absolute limits on what could be provided. This is an important point, and I will come in a moment to the case of Cumbria and to other examples. It is a completely wrong charge to suggest that what the Government have done so far represents a stepping back from the commitments that we made at that time. What we have now does not represent the complete process, but it does not represent a stepping back.

Does the Secretary of State accept, given the large numbers of individuals and organisations that supported these measures, that this will have undermined their confidence in the process and made them less confident that it will be successful? Is not that the fundamental problem? If we are trying to encourage people to participate, will not this failure to meet their expectations undermine that?

When I was listening to the hon. Member for Meriden earlier, I certainly shared the concern that if that is what has been communicated outside the House about the reasonable expectations and the Government’s attitude, it might well have had that effect. I share that concern, and it is something that I wish to address. It is important for Members of the House to provide information to those outside in a reasonable and balanced way.

I want the Secretary of State to address his mind to a specific question. The list of institutions relating to practical objections to the publication of this information locally includes the probation service. Will he explain what the practical objections are to publishing local information about the cost in each locality of the probation service?

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very fair point, and it is one that I wish to pursue in suggesting that the House support my amendment proposing a further report in December. I do not believe that the job is yet done in a number of areas.

Let me refresh the House’s memory on where we had got to. The first stage of local spending reports was published on 29 April. The data that they contained were wider than those originally proposed in the first consultation. Although the House has been told the opposite this afternoon, they include data on spending by the Department for Work and Pensions. That was not on the list, and the House has been told that it is not on the list, but it is on the list. In addition to principal local government spending, the data include police, fire, waste disposal, passenger transport, park authorities, strategic health authorities, ambulance trusts, NHS trusts, primary care trusts and spending by the DWP.

That first stage covered the data that were held in Government at—or primarily at—principal local authority level, and which could be made available without incurring significant additional costs. There is an important point to be made here. It is at that local authority level that the focus of interest lies. The first port of call in the exercise involved the data that were already held in Government systems, aggregated at principal local authority area level, that could be made available.

It is clear to everyone that a great deal of local public spending is not covered by the first stage of the reports. That is why we are having the debate this afternoon. Given my commitment to openness of data—and the statement that I made last week, when I was unaware that this debate was going to take place—I want to share frankly with the House some of the challenges involved in moving to the next stage.

Do Ministers know what these data would reveal? Are they therefore embarrassed for others to know about them? Or do they want to be in ignorance?