My Lords, it is with deep regret that I have to inform the House of the death on 12 May of Viscount Bledisloe. On behalf of the whole House I extend our condolences to the noble Viscount’s family and friends.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they expect to ratify the United Nations convention on the rights of disabled people.

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question in my name on the Order Paper and declare an interest as chairman of the World Planning Group that first called for this convention.

My Lords, we aim to deposit our instrument of ratification of the convention with the United Nations on Monday 8 June.

My Lords, as ever, I am most grateful to my noble friend. Is he aware that while the constancy of his commitment to ratification is well understood—like that of Jonathan Shaw, as exemplified by the signing of the optional protocol following my last starred Question and his announcement yesterday of a ratification date—it is widely felt that some other departments could have done much more to expedite progress? Can my noble friend now say what plans are in place for implementing the convention and for proclaiming, loud and with Wagnerian clarity, that henceforth Britain’s 10 million-plus disabled people have and must be able to enjoy the same enforceable human rights as everyone else in this country?

My Lords, let me start by paying tribute to my noble friend for the supreme engagement that he has had with bringing this convention into being, as have other noble Lords. He mentioned my colleague Jonathan Shaw. We should not forget in this Anne McGuire, who for a long time was Disabled Persons Minister.

We envisage that implementation of the convention will have a number of strands, such as awareness raising, developing reporting and monitoring processes and commissioning new statistics and research. We will be developing these over a period of time, working closely with disabled people and stakeholders.

My Lords, although we are very glad that the ratification has been brought forward, can the Minister tell us exactly what this Government think they have learnt about the process of getting this convention ratified and exactly what lessons they would take to any further ratification of treaties in making sure that they are expedited?

My Lords, I guess that the first lesson, which we probably already knew, is the importance of a meticulous and robust approach, so that when we actually sign and ratify we are clear that we are consistent with the terms of the convention. There is also the importance of consultation with stakeholders; we have a good record of engaging with stakeholders involved with disabled people. There has been some criticism that perhaps we were not as robust in this case as we might have been; I think that that is part of the learning, as well. But we take with us the importance of continued engagement as we monitor and implement the treaty going forward.

My Lords, the Minister will remember that we had a long debate on this subject on 28 April, in which he performed with his usual astute clarity. Can he tell us what number down the list we will be in this country in ratifying the convention? How many countries need to ratify it to make it operational for all the signatories? Lastly, does he know when the EU is going to ratify this convention?

My Lords, on the latter point, no, a process of discussion is taking place between the Commission and member states. Our ratification does not depend on the EU’s ratification. As of 30 April 2009, 139 states have signed the convention and 82 have signed the linked but separate optional protocol; 53 states have ratified the convention and 32 states have ratified both the convention and the optional protocol. Enough states have ratified to bring the convention into being.

My Lords, does the Minister accept that of more than 600 conventions from the United Nations, a quarter have yet to be ratified by the United Kingdom? What are the Government doing to speed that up or to explain why so many still await ratification?

My Lords, that is straying a little from the Question before us, which is about our role in relation to a particular convention, but I am happy to take away that point and see whether I can provide a written answer to the noble Lord.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to reform the governance of universities by revising Schedule 7A to the Education Reform Act 1988.

My Lords, we have for some time been looking at how we can create a level playing field between the universities incorporated by the Education Reform Act 1988 and other universities which have more control over their governance arrangements. Specifically, we are proposing to amend Schedule 7A to the 1988 Act to allow these universities to determine the size and membership of their governing bodies, as other universities are able to do. We see this as a step forward.

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his reply. Will he tell us how far his department is influenced by what is known as the Carver model of governance, which looks to a slimline board of non-executives with probably no representation from staff or students? Will he further tell us how far the Labour Government, which in their past espoused the stakeholder model of governance, are supporting the new concept of governance? If they are, why do they need to revise the schedule, which gives universities considerable flexibility over their size and membership, in terms of a membership of between 12 and 24 members, and states that they may, not must, have staff and student representation?

My Lords, I can reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, that we are not influenced by the Carver style: it would be more of a carve up if we were to utilise that. We are about giving flexibility, not reducing stakeholder involvement. We remain committed to that. As the noble Baroness rightly said, in the current regulation it is not mandatory; it is “may” rather than “must”. The new proposals are to have a new category of internal members. The corporations will consist of two or more persons who are members of staff or students at the institutions. I reiterate our commitment to stakeholder involvement.

My Lords, can the Minister confirm that the 1998 Act, which allowed the whole university community—students, lecturers, staff as well as the management and, crucially, brought in the expertise of outside business people and so on—was a powerful model and one that has enabled universities in the past 20 years to develop a strong management and governance structure?

My Lords, we agree with the noble Baroness. We want to continue the involvement of independent lay members; that will be a key feature of the revised schedule. We have had quite a bit of consultation; we have been working with HEC governing bodies and the AHUA. We take the point about the importance of independent members.

My Lords, is the Minister aware that it has often been members of staff or students who have brought to light serious difficulties with governance so that their role on the boards is extremely valuable? Do the Government really want to encourage universities to have small boards composed entirely of lay people? Surely the current banking crisis should warn them off such a model.

No, my Lords, we do not want boards entirely composed of lay people. I reiterate the assurance that there will be members of staff and students on them. We will look closely at the question of numbers. We have not absolutely made up our mind. We were trying not to be unnecessarily prescriptive, but we understand the importance of the point made by the noble Baroness.

My Lords, has the Minister noticed recent expressions of concern that major funders—persons or organisations endowing universities with very large sums of money—may be having an unacceptable influence on what is taught in those institutions?

My Lords, I cannot say that I have. Provided that there is a balanced board, provided that there are independent members and provided that stakeholders are represented, there should not be undue influence; but I understand the importance of the point made by the noble Lord.

My Lords, taking my noble friend’s point one stage further, what reports have the Government received on the financial problems that universities are facing and expect to face in future?

My Lords, I think that that strays outside the bounds of the Question. I am quite happy to respond to that point in writing.

My Lords, to come back to the centre of the Question, given the reassurances that the noble Lord has just given, why have the Government brought forward what seems to be an unnecessary new proposal?

My Lords, we believe that it is an improvement in flexibility. We are making it mandatory that there should be what we define as the independent members on the board, rather than that there may be. We are trying to extend the flexibility enjoyed by some institutions—chartered universities, for example—to all higher education institutions. We think that there is value in that. We are not being prescriptive on size; we have deleted the minimum and maximum. We think that there is a real benefit in that approach.

My Lords, I point out to the Minister that there is already a mandatory requirement in Schedule 7A to have lay members on the board. I cannot see that that is a good reason to revise the schedule which, as I pointed out at the beginning, is already extremely flexible in the numbers that it allows. The only effect of this is to reduce the representation.

My Lords, I think that I have already dealt with the points that the noble Baroness raised. I take her back to my point about the importance of independent members being mandatory rather than the current schedule’s provision of “may”.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what they are doing to support the efforts of developing countries to shape an effective and equitable global agreement on climate change.

My Lords, the UK is helping to build capacity in developing countries to enable them to participate fully in the negotiations and has appointed a senior Foreign and Commonwealth Office official as climate envoy for vulnerable countries. That role is designed to help mobilise the voice of the smaller developing countries to enable them to make greater impact on the negotiations.

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his reply. I trust he will agree that the poor countries, and the poorest people in the poor countries, will be hit the earliest and the hardest by climate change. Indeed, they are already being hit. They are the least responsible for the big rise in concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the past half-century. Thus, while we all face greater risks from climate change, there is a double inequity.

Further, since the currently developing world has 85 per cent of the world’s population, with many countries showing welcome growth that is essential to overcoming poverty, it will not be possible to reduce global emissions on the scale required unless those countries are centrally involved. Therefore I trust that the Minister agrees that the following are required. In addition to cuts of at least 80 per cent in greenhouse gases, there should be strong support for processes where developing countries take a lead, financial and technical support for action plans, and support for China, Brazil and India.

My Lords, I agree, and I pay tribute to the noble Lord’s outstanding work on climate change, particularly its economics. He is absolutely right; the impact of climate change on some of the poorest countries in the world may be devastating unless we take action to mitigate climate change. That is crucial for a shared understanding and mutual agreement between all the nations of the world.

My Lords, the Minister was clearly unsighted when I asked him this question during yesterday’s debate. Will he tell the House today whether the Government accept or reject DfID’s latest report, which concludes that if any successor to Kyoto is to be effective, it must set up a new international institution with extensive, coercive and enforcement powers, and that any country that does not comply fully should be treated as a pariah and barred from all forms of international co-operation whatever?

My Lords, I would not describe myself as having been unsighted. I recall that I told the noble Lord yesterday that we work very closely with our colleagues in DfID on these matters. I do not recognise the approach which the noble Lord has suggested is the Government’s approach to the agreement and discussions that must take place between developing and developed countries. He is really suggesting what is sometimes called conditionality. I see it as a mutual coming together. There are huge benefits for developing countries in there being agreement in Copenhagen. We must ensure that they have financial and technical assistance, but we must do so through mutual agreement and not in the way which the noble Lord has suggested.

My Lords, given that climate change really will affect developing countries first, fastest and worst, what is being done about adaptation? I note that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has just been appointed to the new adaptation sub-committee of the Committee on Climate Change. Will it have an international brief or only a national one?

My Lords, the adaptation sub-committee is a sub-committee of the Committee on Climate Change, so in essence it has a UK brief. I am delighted that we have been able to appoint someone of the calibre of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and I know that it will have a very positive impact on advising the Government on adaptation policies, but that does not mean that we are not very well aware of the need for adaptation strategies in developing countries. Some climate change is inevitable. We will try to mitigate the rise in temperatures generally, but this country, as well as developing countries, will also have to adapt to the inevitability of climate change. Part of our strategy, our aid and our work with developing countries is to assist and support them in their own adaptation work.

My Lords, does my noble friend recall that the noble Lord, Lord Stern, pointed out in his excellent report that 20 per cent of greenhouse emissions were caused by deforestation, most of which is in developing countries? Bearing in mind the long lead time to get institutions working, will the Government assure us that they will urge our negotiators on climate change matters to start setting in process a system of paying some of these developing countries not to deforest? I declare an interest as chair of the Forestry Commission.

My Lords, my noble friend speaks with great authority on the question of forests, and he is right. We think that perhaps upwards of 18 per cent of global emissions come from the forestry sector. I want to reassure him that we want the deal in Copenhagen to include avoided deforestation and the future carbon market to encourage the trading of carbon credits generated from the sector.

My Lords, the question from the noble Lord, Lord Stern, refers to an “effective and equitable global agreement”. Would it not better to start off by conceding that there is not the slightest chance of achieving that?

No, my Lords. I am sorry that my noble friend—who usually looks at life in an optimistic way—takes that view. We are cautiously optimistic about success in the Copenhagen negotiations. It is clear that the US Administration have come to the table in a positive mode, and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, who was recently in China, was very encouraged by his discussions with the Chinese Government. Of course we cannot be complacent—there is a long time to go before we get to the table at Copenhagen—but at this stage I remain optimistic.

My Lords, I strongly support the line that the Minister is taking; as the noble Lord, Lord Stern, pointed out, the moment is very late and the cause is crucial to the survival of the planet. The noble Lord, Lord Clark, asked about deforestation. Has the Minister seen reports of the dumping of substantial amounts of toxic waste on countries such as the Ivory Coast which are quite incapable of dealing with it? In the light of these reports, will the Government be speaking to major British companies about the need to deal with these toxic items themselves or by agreement with other developed countries, and not to land the problem on developing countries?

My Lords, the noble Baroness speaks with great authority and she raises a matter of concern. I can reassure her that these issues are very much in the mind of the UK Government in our discussions both with British companies and with other nations. Essentially, we want financial mechanisms that encourage—not force, but encourage—the poorer developing countries to wish to move to a low-emitting economy, which, in itself, will help them develop in a sustainable way.

My Lords, it is important to deal with facts rather than emotions in addressing this very difficult and important subject. Has the Minister seen the latest very detailed survey by Consumer Focus which shows that because of all the additional levies and taxes being put on fuel costs, and despite the lower oil price and relatively low gas price, 44 per cent of people in the United Kingdom are finding the average fuel bill—now £1,288 a year—so high that they have to cut back on their food and other essentials? Is it really fair, right and equitable that we should visit those same burdens on nations and developing countries where income is far, far lower and the danger of fuel poverty is far, far greater?

My Lords, it is always dangerous to interpret the noble Lord, Lord Stern, in front of the noble Lord, Lord Stern. However, surely the conclusion of his work is that while there is and will be an immediate cost to the measures that need to be taken to lead us toward a low-carbon world, the cost of not doing so will be very much greater in the future. That is why we must take action now.

My Lords, rises in sea level caused by climate change will disproportionately affect developing countries with low-lying coastal areas, such as Bangladesh, where millions of people would be displaced by a one-metre rise in the sea level. What help are the Government giving to improving the capacity of those countries to deal with climate change and take an active part in the negotiations on it?

My Lords, my understanding is that 94 million homes in Asia could be flooded by the end of the century. In addition, storm surges in coastal areas could have a devastating impact. This Government and this country have a record to be proud of in the support we are giving to developing countries. We are, for instance, making available £800 million from the ETF for climate investment funds. We are also the major contributor to the International Development Association. We will continue to work with the countries that the noble Lord mentioned, and we are keen to encourage them to be articulate, to come to the table and to play a very important role in levering the kind of agreement that all countries need to sign up to.

My Lords, the huge volcano known as Yellowstone Park erupts approximately every 600,000 years. It is now 640,000 years since it last erupted. We do not know when it will next erupt, but does my noble friend agree that when it does, any agreements will be blown hither and thither?

My Lords, that is rather a speculative question and I may need to take advice on it. In the summer, we will publish the Hadley Centre’s climate impact change forecast for this country. I believe that it will give a measure of the likely climate change that will occur over the next 30 to 40 years and be critical to ensuring that we in this country take the adaptation measures that need to be taken. Of course the methodology—the brilliant work of the Hadley Centre—is applicable to other countries as well. I am sure that it will be helpful in terms of the issues that noble Lords have raised today.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many intending purchasers have been helped to buy properties under the MyChoiceHomeBuy scheme; and what funding remains available to prospective purchasers.

Since 1 April 2008, the Government have helped 3,123 purchasers to buy a MyChoiceHomeBuy property. This week, the HCA has released £126 million specifically for MyChoiceHomeBuy to help a further 3,000 households.

My Lords, I thank the Minister and I am delighted to hear that further funds have been released. As she probably knows, this is an enormously popular scheme, with 200 applications a week, yet in the whole of the past year only 400 to 800 sales went through. Some people were promised money before the cash ran out and before the immediate release of new money. People who have been promised money have entered into contracts with surveyors and solicitors and have made mortgage arrangements; they are now out of pocket because they were refused money, having been told that they would get it. What will be done to help those people? I understand that they can now proceed with their purchase if the new money is available. However, if their house has already been sold, what will be done to help them?

My Lords, the noble Baroness is right. This is a popular, generous scheme, for which there is a lot of demand. I have to make it clear that everyone who was interested in the MyChoiceHomeBuy scheme would have been told that they should not spend any money on surveys or solicitors, for example, until the funding was approved. Where the funding has been approved, we have released funding and people will get their equity loans. Now we are considering what we should do in terms of next steps and funding for the affordable housing programme as a whole.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that, although these HomeBuy initiatives are very useful as far as they go, in the great scheme of things they will help only a small number of people? The underlying problem is the acute shortage of homes compared with the number of new households formed each year. Does she accept the conclusion this month of the independent National Housing and Planning Advice Unit that, unless we substantially increase the supply of new homes to rent as well as to buy, after the recession we will face much higher house prices and much more acute shortages than we have had so far?

Yes, my Lords, I certainly accept that, which is why we do not renege on our ambitious target of 240,000 homes a year. We know that, no matter how difficult the current housing situation is, the demography and the demand will not change. We need to make available as much help and incentive as possible for the housebuilding industry in particular. As the noble Lord will know, we provided £200 million towards bringing forward unsold stock for social rented homes and, in the Budget, £400 million of kick-start for the stalled construction industry. We have to use a variety of initiatives to maintain jobs and the supply of housing.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the current crisis in the housing market presents a real opportunity to get away from the emphasis on property ownership and back towards providing homes for people? In that context, would this money not have been better spent on providing socially rented accommodation?

My Lords, the challenge that the Government have is to meet the diverse demands of the housing market. The noble Baroness is absolutely right: it is not just about home ownership but also about social rented homes. That is why we made £200 million available for unsold stock to be brought forward from developers for the housing associations. We have given £100 million to local authorities to stimulate their own housebuilding programmes. We have to meet diverse needs, including those of aspiring home owners. We need to reduce waiting lists for those who need help in accessing social rented housing. We also need to help people who are in difficulties with their mortgages, which is why we have mortgage rescue and mortgage support schemes. We are trying to do all that while stimulating the housebuilding industry.

My Lords, will the Minister tell us who runs this organisation and how many people are involved in it?

My Lords, the MyChoice organisation involves 15 housing associations. Eight of those are members of the CHASE consortium and are equity loan providers. The housing associations are spread across the country—one in every region—and people who are interested in these sorts of products go to those housing associations, which help them through the process to see whether they are eligible and to find them a suitable property.

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend Lady Gardner that this is an absurd situation and distressing for potential home buyers, especially when there is cash that is unutilised in other housing schemes. For example, the HomeBuy Direct scheme has £300 million available but, amazingly, according to Hansard, as at the end of March no transactions had taken place. It is therefore heartening to hear from the Minister that, at last, the extra funds will be made available to MyChoice. Will she tell the House when this cash will be available for use? Would it not be better to have one pot for all the HomeBuy funds, so that money is made available as and when it is necessary and none of the schemes will run out of money again?

My Lords, the money that I spoke of—the £126 million to fund people—is now immediately available. I sympathise with the noble Lord’s suggestion that there should be one pot but, as I have explained, the diversity of need makes that difficult to provide. I know that this is no substitute but, because the terminology of some of these projects overlaps—HomeBuy Direct, Social HomeBuy, HomeBuy and so on—I propose to put a document in the Library that sets out the different schemes and the different forms of funding, which should help noble Lords. I am afraid that I do not recognise the figure of £300 million for HomeBuy Direct. What we have provided is £400 million to kick-start new land and new homes. HomeBuy Direct, which is the scheme where equity is shared with developers, may be funded from that, which might be what the noble Lord was thinking about.

My Lords, I announced to the House yesterday that the report of the Committee for Privileges into allegations made earlier this year about certain Members of this House would be published today. Two separate reports by the Committee for Privileges have now been published and are available to Members in the Printed Paper Office. The first report covers the disciplinary powers of the House in respect of serious misconduct by Members. The second report concerns the allegations made against four Members of the House by the Sunday Times on 25 January. Both reports will be put to the whole House for consideration.

It is proposed to debate both reports together on Wednesday next, 20 May. The House will take decisions on the reports and on the recommendations of the Privileges Committee. In order to give proper time for the debate, the Second Reading of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill will be postponed until Tuesday 2 June. The Third Reading of the Postal Services Bill will still be taken on Wednesday, but as last business after the debate on the two reports.

I intend to make no further statements outside this House in relation to these matters beyond what I have told the House today. If it is necessary or appropriate to make any other further Statement to the House before next Wednesday, I shall of course continue to undertake to keep the House informed.

These were serious allegations against Members of this House. The committees of this House charged with investigating these allegations have carried out their inquiries and considerations in a serious manner, and this House now faces serious decisions on the reports which have been published today. The reports place an obligation on this House, an obligation of fairness and justice towards the Members of this House who are the subject of the investigation and recommendations which are set out in the report, an obligation of fairness and justice towards all Members of this House and the House as a whole, as well as an obligation beyond this House to the people we are here to serve. It is a set of obligations which I trust and I know that this House will discharge properly.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for making that short Statement and for the way in which she has kept the House informed of developments in what I regard as an exemplary way. The report is published on a bleak day in the history of your Lordships’ House. As the noble Baroness said, the allegations were extremely serious. They needed and they got exhaustive examination in which those under investigation had the full opportunity to put their point of view.

But the findings were clear. It is a long report and I urge noble Lords to read it. Sadly, it demonstrates that two Peers fell short of what both the House and the country are entitled to expect. The penalties that have been recommended by the Privileges Committee are severe, but in my view they are fully deserved. What they demonstrate is that the law must never be for sale to those with the money to buy it, and that is why I support the findings and will urge the House to back these sanctions when we debate them next Wednesday.

My Lords, I agree with most of the sentiments expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, although the point made by the Lord President that I most fully endorse is that it is better if we all wait until next Wednesday to express a view on these matters.

That the debate on the motion in the name of Baroness Massey of Darwen set down for today shall be limited to three hours and that in the name of Lord Pendry to two hours.

To call attention to Her Majesty’s Government’s policies on the well-being of children and families; and to move for papers.

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to be introducing this debate in anticipation of contributions by so many distinguished colleagues. In your Lordships’ House there are, and have been, many champions of children and families, and I pay tribute to them all. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Laming, who sadly cannot be here today, the much lamented Lord Dearing, and of course the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock.

I declare an interest as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children, several of whose members are here today, together with others who have great expertise and commitment. I have said before, and I will say it again, that when we debate children’s issues in this House, the concern is about children and only secondarily about party politics. This is not only refreshing, it has also enabled us to change legislation significantly on a number of occasions.

I hope that this debate will give the Minister arguments which may be incorporated into future legislation. I know that she will carry them back to the DCSF and other relevant ministries, as she is very conscientious and has the well-being of children and families at heart. I thank the Library in the House of Lords for its assiduous research on this topic and for its excellent briefing, which all noble Lords have received. I also pay tribute to the vigorous and tenacious voluntary sector for children, and the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, not only for their briefings, but for discussing issues with me and for being so supportive to all of us. I know that they are well respected and listened to by Government.

One colleague from the voluntary sector asked me if the debate today would be a sort of report card on government progress. I suppose that is what, cumulatively, it will be. I am sure that we have all, at some time in our school careers, had report comments such as “enthusiastic”, “attentive”, “diligent”, “average”, “inconsistent”, “poor”, “more effort needed”, and so on. There is a large spectrum of achievement, from brilliant to awful. One of the most damning comments I ever had was from a domestic science teacher. In this subject we handled things such as knitting needles and hot ovens, and I was deemed to be “dangerously incompetent”. There was not much emphasis on self-esteem in children in those days.

On the spectrum of achievement, I would put the Government’s record on children and families very high. I wonder how other noble Lords will judge it. No one can deny the immense focus that this Government have placed on children and families. No other country—

My Lords, this is extraordinary, but if I might interrupt my noble friend, it seems that the microphone to which she is speaking is defective. Therefore I urge her to move to another microphone, with the leave of the House.

“Dangerously incompetent”, my Lords! This is a first. This has never happened to me before.

I was talking about the Government’s immense focus on children’s issues. The Children’s Commissioner has said publicly that more has happened for children in the past 10 years than in the previous 50. These achievements are, regretfully, too often unsung. The vision for children, reflecting Every Child Matters, the Children’s Plan, and many other reports and legislation, genuinely seeks to make Britain a good place for children.

Listening to the voice of a child has become much more prevalent. Investment in outdoor play facilities, children’s centres and Sure Start, increased funding for schools, investment in mental health and child health, and reviews of social care all point to a Government who care deeply about children. There are some contradictions and disappointments, for example in the child poverty targets. Nevertheless, real progress has been made—we have a Minister for Children and commissioners for children. We have had reform of children’s services, which is ongoing. Commitment to improvement has been visionary and consistent.

I have no intention of going through all the reports and legislation on children and families over the past 10 years or of quoting lots of statistics. Noble Lords are very good at statistics. I will single out some areas that concern me, and to which there have been some government responses. I will do this very briefly on each area—other noble Lords will no doubt comment more extensively. I will then go into more detail on two initiatives which demonstrate, in different ways, a commitment to improving life for children and families.

Four things stand out for me as essential to the well-being of children and families: good parenting, a good workforce dealing with children and families, good co-ordinated systems for children and families, and listening to the voice of the child.

There are some areas of concern. There are too many children in the criminal justice system, especially in custody. Damaged children are being damaged further. This is expensive and counterproductive, and only re-emphasises the cycle of deprivation. In particular, children with special needs suffer. It is a difficult area. I am glad that youth justice has become part of DCSF, working with the Youth Justice Board, and I hope that this will change the emphasis to be more rehabilitative than punishing.

I welcome the introduction of education initiatives for young people in the criminal justice system in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill. Children in care are also at risk, and, given the small number of such children, we should be able to improve the system.

Indeed, there are steps in place to do that. I recently visited a centre for very difficult children, Tanglewood in Wiltshire, based on the therapeutic community model. As one member of staff said to me, “Such children need consistency, clear boundaries and security in order to combat their low self-esteem and feelings of victimisation and powerlessness”. Yet, on average, most of those young people have moved from one setting to another every six months. Therefore, a child of 13 who has been in care for seven years will have been moved 14 times as a looked-after child. Of course they have problems with attachment. Such children need intensive programmes but, alas, there are too few. Some children will be from families where substance misuse is common, while sexual abuse and domestic violence may also be common.

Recent reports and statements emphasise protecting children, and I am glad that the Government have accepted the recommendations made by the noble Lord, Lord Laming. I am glad that the Children and Young People Act 2008 emphasised the need for better educational attainment for those in care. Social care needs high-calibre staff. The Government have recently announced extra money to recruit both departed and new social workers, a move welcomed by the LGA. The system needs an overhaul.

My third concern is with young people’s health. Young people’s sexual health initiatives illustrate the dilemma. Young people’s sexual health in some areas of the country has shown dramatic improvement, particularly the teenage pregnancy rates. It is clear that where this has happened, services for teenagers, such as in school, surgeries and clinics, have collaborated. The same needs to happen across all young people’s health services. They need a sympathetic, confidential approach, and they need collaboration between agencies. The news that personal, social and health education is to be statutory in schools is welcome, but I wish it had happened earlier.

My fourth concern is about the importance of play and too early an emphasis on formal learning. We have a play strategy, we have increased the time for physical activity in schools and we have had the sensible proposals of the Rose review recommending the removal of SATs at key stage 3. Young children need the chance to be creative, be it in sport, music, art, drama or whatever. Creativity is the bedrock of all real learning. Education is not training to pass exams or passive experience on a computer. The Government have invested considerably in education and in improving standards and attainment—for example, the Narrowing the Gap initiative, 21st Century Schools and the gifted and talented programme. There has also been investment in improving outcomes for children with special education needs.

I said earlier that a vital foundation for well-being in children and families is good parenting. Most children are wonderful and not the depraved monsters depicted in the media and perceived as such by many adults. I believe that some 70 per cent of stories about children in the media are negative; a shocking indictment. The experience of children in families is all-important, and the Government are to be congratulated on their support to families by way of tax credits and other initiatives, as well as by parenting support through Sure Start and family intervention programmes, which I shall say more about in a minute. The Government have recognised that disability in families requires special support. Welfare reform policies will help more people into work, the best route out of poverty.

Sadly, some families fail children. I am chair of the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse. I am proud of the progress made on drug treatment over the past eight years, due largely to dramatically increased government funding support. I see the impact of parental substance misuse, usually of drugs and alcohol, on children who may end up as victims, either as young carers or removed into care, or simply suffering. Thankfully, some are picked up by family and friends, particularly by grandparents. I am glad to say that the Government have responded in part to the needs of such grandparents by regularising their national insurance contributions, although there is still some way to go in ensuring that such family carers have adequate financial and other support. When families are failing, that needs to be spotted early and measures taken. Support must be built in and superb care systems are required, otherwise negative and vicious cycles will continue. The Government have recognised that.

Time is needed for policies to become embedded and for good practice to spread. More joint working across government and across services at a local level is needed to deliver the desired outcomes. I know the Government are working hard on this, but the breakdown of silos may take longer than was anticipated. Perhaps the Minister can give some examples of good practice in collaboration at national and local levels.

I end by referring to two recent initiatives that demonstrate aspects of working with children and families in positive ways. The first example encourages young people to become activists on environmental issues, something that young people are interested in. The Health Protection Agency defines sustainable development as a way of linking together recommendations in UK strategy for children’s environment and health. Small steps to a sustainable future, a project funded by the DCSF sustainable development team, works in collaboration with the National Children’s Bureau. It will involve local authorities and vulnerable young people to develop a young person’s vision for sustainable development. The NCB is also a founding member of children in a changing climate, a global advocacy and learning programme aiming to motivate children, young people and their families, to influence climate change. The Government have set up the development of a sustainable schools programme, Defra has led a third sector task force on climate change and environment, and youth climate change champions were appointed in 2008. This timely action involves young people and families directly, and works across government and agencies.

The second initiative is the family interventions project, which works with challenging families to tackle anti-social behaviour, prevent homelessness and tackle social disadvantage. There are 67 of these projects across England, and they will be expanded to every local authority targeted in the youth crime action plan. More than half the projects are being run by local authorities, through for example, community safety, youth offending, children’s services or housing departments. The remainder are run by the voluntary sector, such as the National Children’s Home and other organisations.

The projects have a key worker, who will help the family identify problems, co-ordinate services to support the family and agree steps to motivate change. They have proved very successful, and evidence suggests that they save money. It is estimated that a family with severe problems could cost between £250,000 and £300,000 a year, without such interventions. Again these projects involve families in solutions to problems, and have multi-agency collaboration. It is not just doing things to people, which can be demotivating and create dependency.

I have tried to demonstrate that vision and determination can make a difference. Parents, a good workforce, co-ordinated systems of delivery and listening to and involving children and families are all key. This Government have shown vision and determination. We all know that governments cannot do it all—visionary and determined people in the systems are what ultimately count. However governments can set an agenda. There are of course still issues to be addressed, but children and families deserve governments who help them thrive. I hope that whatever the next election brings, and whichever political party is in power, it will not lose sight of the need to act on behalf of every child and every family.

My Lords, this debate today covers a huge range of issues, all of them important to the well-being of our society, and so I should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, and express my admiration of her for yet again securing a debate on these essential issues. I too came close to being dangerously incompetent in domestic science, although my husband probably thinks I still am. In the short time I have, I will focus on just a couple of issues; first, the increasing perception that our children are less fulfilled and happy than they once were, and, secondly, the threat to family life in all its forms. I do not believe it is too controversial to suggest that the two are closely linked.

It was more than two years ago, in February 2007, that UNICEF—I declare an interest as a trustee of UNICEF UK—produced its damning report on the state of childhood in Britain. The findings were profoundly worrying, and although most noble Lords will be familiar with them, the main headline deserves to be highlighted. The UK was rated at the bottom of the table overall for children’s well-being, scoring the lowest of the 21 industrialised countries studied—not near the bottom, but at the very bottom. Even after two years I think that conclusion has lost none of its power to shock.

The significance of the UNICEF report was that it found that neither national wealth nor household wealth in the countries concerned was the determining factor in whether children were happy. By definition, the countries studied were developed and affluent but there was still evidence of poverty in the quality of the childhood experience. A detailed look at the report shows that family breakdown is more prevalent in the UK, with fewer children living with both parents than in any other country except the United States. But the most shocking findings were those on children’s behaviour, with the UK leading the tables on the percentage of young people indulging in “risk” behaviour such as drunkenness and under-age sex.

Just a few months after the UNICEF report, the Children’s Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley-Green, warned of a,

“crisis at the heart of our society”.

Sadly, this grim picture has been reinforced again in the recent report compiled last month by the University of York for the Child Poverty Action Group. Although it shows the UK placed slightly higher than in the previous UNICEF study, it is only slightly better, at 24th out of 29 countries. Germany comes out in eighth place, with Scandinavian countries at the top of the table. Overall, it looks depressingly like the scoreboard of the Eurovision Song Contest over recent years. Let us hope we have a better result in that this weekend, but I fear that solving the complex problems of childhood will be beyond even the ability of my noble friend Lord Lloyd-Webber.

I acknowledge that, following the UNICEF report, the Government published the Children's Plan and the Department for Children, Schools and Families was born. Of course, change does not happen overnight, but it seems as if we keep debating the same issues, passing more pieces of legislation and getting the same outcomes. One area where this is most obvious is children in care, the system now known in local government by the awful title of “corporate parenting”. We learnt last month that the attainment gap for looked-after children has widened. As Natasha Finlayson, the chief executive of the Who Cares? Trust said:

“Achieving a level of good GCSE grades is the absolute minimum to ensure children get access to employment and a good start in life. It is a major concern that progress is so slow and the gap between those in care and not in care is widening”.

But it does not have to be that way. During our deliberations on the Children and Young Persons Bill and in previous debates I drew attention to Barnet Council, where each child in the care of the council has been twinned with an employee of the council. They do not meet them or mentor them but they are that “pushy” parent that all children need, asking the awkward questions. The result is a dramatic improvement in educational achievements. That does not require money or an all-singing and dancing piece of legislation; it is simply something that works.

Similarly, we are now in the middle of a debate on whether more children should be taken into care or whether we should spend more time and resources on early intervention. Again in Kent—I make no apologies for referring to this once more—the authorities spend a good deal of their precious resources on working with families and the extended family to try to reach a solution which keeps the family together. Only when that has failed do they take a child into care, and then move swiftly to adoption so that a child receives the stability and consistency that is so vital to the well-being of which the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, spoke—and it saves money. So my question to the Minister is, what happens to best practice? Rather than always trying to reinvent the wheel, why do we not look at what is working across our councils and with some of our wonderful charities such as Save the Family, which every week battle to rescue broken families before they disintegrate? Why do we always have to have shiny plans and countless new pieces of legislation?

In conclusion, alongside providing our children with the best possible education with rigorous standards, we must support families and help them to stay together wherever possible. Unless we address the root cause of family breakdown, or in many cases the absence of a family structure at all, I fear that the Government's well intentioned policies will fail to deliver the quality of life and opportunities that so many of our children and young people deserve.

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for giving us this opportunity to review the Government’s policies on children and families and to look more broadly at community support. As a nation, we are still failing to provide all our children with the best possible existence. We have evidence of this, to our shame, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, set out, in the child well-being index and other international reviews, where the UK is well down the list.

Legislation can go only so far to improve people’s lives. Government cannot intervene at every stage in personal relationships—nor, indeed, would we wish them to—but they can set frameworks to promote equality and opportunity for all, as well as encouraging a caring culture and promoting a healthy work-life balance.

The House’s recent debates have included the report A Good Childhood, which came up with sound and positive proposals for children’s well-being. All our deliberations are framed by Every Child Matters, the Children’s Plan, UNICEF’s work, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. We are not short of good guidance, but it should be matched by implementation.

On the horizon at the end of May is National Family Week, a new national occasion to encourage families to spend quality time together, with an imaginative range of events and an impressive array of supporting organisations.

Families these days come in all shapes and sizes. They may consist of two people or myriad people, one child or more, one parent or more—maybe male and female or same sex—birth parents and foster or adoptive parents. They may be made up of two, three, even four generations. There is diversity in ethnicity, faith, health and wealth. In short, there is no such thing as a standard family and no pat solutions for ensuring universal well-being. Today’s tolerance of diverse families should have reaped positive benefits. Too often it has led to lack of opportunity, rather than increased confidence.

The media, as ever, have their part to play in raising awareness. There is a current series on Channel 4 highlighting the care system. On Sunday it will show “The Unloved”, a film directed by Samantha Morton who herself grew up in local authority care. I saw the preview last week. Often a single case can make a more powerful point than all the general statistics put together. The film follows an 11 year-old child, as seen through her eyes, as she is moved away from her drunken father to a children’s home. She is surrounded by well meaning but often inadequate adults, trying to cope in the most difficult circumstances with young people in need.

The film is a dramatisation, but with the detail of a documentary. It conveys the lack of security, warmth or engagement between adults and children. It portrays the powerlessness of a child taken into care, her isolation and the basic wish to be with a parent, to be part of a family unit. We witness young people reaching out for communication, recognition from another child or an adult, with brief moments of friendship, happiness and love, which give hope of a better life.

Reports from UNICEF, Barnardo’s and other children’s organisations indicate that such a depiction of vulnerable, disadvantaged children is sadly only too real. Children in care have so much disproportionately poorer prospects of success, educationally or socially. The levels of child poverty in this country are still much too high, given our wealth as a nation. In raising awareness, there should be a concerted effort to use the expertise and advice from children’s organisations to target funding where it can be most effective and to encourage people to train and to work in social care. Adverse publicity about tragic cases has accelerated moves to ensure better safety for vulnerable children, but too many laws and regulations may have unintended consequences. There is a real danger that good people will be deterred from becoming social workers and fewer people will come forward. They work in some of the most difficult and dangerous areas of the community, often under stress, often undervalued and underpaid, but with some of the greatest rewards in turning around disadvantaged lives.

This debate comes shortly before your Lordships' House considers the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill, which will have an impact on children’s well-being. Education has a key part to play in ensuring that young people grow into responsible and confident adults, better equipped to be caring parents. To that end, we, too, welcome the Government’s commitment to making PSHE a compulsory part of the curriculum as one step toward giving them the confidence and skills to build good relationships.

The well-being and safeguarding of children should be the responsibility of us all—of parents, certainly, but with the support of friends and neighbours, and of professionals in schools and health services. We look forward to hearing from the Minister how the Government will take forward the issues raised in the debate to provide opportunities and quality of life for those who need them most.

My Lords, I, too, must thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for initiating this debate, which is obviously of enormous importance, especially if we wish to improve on the rather dismal place that we occupy in the league tables to which both she and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, referred.

I want to address a relatively narrow issue, but one to which I know the Government, to their great credit, are committed: the improvement of children’s linguistic abilities. I think of it as linguistic deprivation; it has also been spoken of as language poverty. The Government have taken good note of the 2008 Bercow report, and doubtlessly of Sir Jim Rose’s recent remarks in his curriculum review on speech and language needs. Nothing is more important to a child’s future well-being than confident communication.

Some time ago, I visited a primary school on the outskirts of Birmingham, an area of acute poverty and squalor where most of the children were of single mothers, living in blocks of flats quite apparently in need of demolition. A nursery school had only recently been opened at the school as a result of intense lobbying by the local GP.

The average vocabulary of the children, aged about three when they started, was five words, at least two of which were expletives. The difficulty that the teachers faced was largely that of engaging the attention of the children, who had never had a conversation in their lives. Their mothers, many of whom had relatively short-stay boyfriends, had no time or inclination to talk. When they went out, it was usually in a pushchair facing firmly away from their mother; at home, they sat in front of the television.

I heard from the teachers, and could see for myself, that one of the most important things that those children began to learn was to do things together in a regular, indeed a rhythmic, sequence, such as playing ring a ring o’ roses, saying rhymes together or singing songs. They were drawn in to such activities and began to enjoy all the repetitions, jokes and actions. All this was confirmed in last year’s departmental national strategy publication, Every Child a Talker, which is full of ideas for nursery and primary school teachers and for parents. But there is one thing that I would like to factor in to this programme: radio.

I must declare an interest as acting chairman of a broadcasting group called Sound Start, which for three years ran a highly successful children’s radio station in London as a privately funded pilot—the group is actively campaigning for children’s radio and hopes to collaborate with the BBC. As noble Lords will know, the BBC will next week bring to an end its only readily accessible radio programme for young children.

This seems to be a genuine abrogation of the duty of public service broadcasting. The BBC is, sadly, moving increasingly further away from what it used to do so brilliantly in schools’ radio programmes, which were useful, not only at school but at home. The need for this good programming is even greater, now that there are more children in our primary and nursery schools for whom English is not the first language.

The BBC has turned its back on an enormous service that it used to perform. It shares the totally unfounded belief that small children are not interested in radio and that the only radio they need is the sort of wall-to-wall pop that they can listen to while they are doing something else. This belief is completely and profoundly mistaken, as the BBC could have a profound input into making children take part in what I think of as genuine conversation. Radio also used to be amazingly useful for schools which lacked a teacher with the confidence or ability to teach music, movement, singing, rhymes, poetry and literature. There are schools where teachers could easily learn from the input of radio.

I come back to the concept of linguistic deprivation, which is one of the most serious kinds of deprivation that a child can possibly suffer. I firmly believe that radio can teach children not only to talk and to sing, but to listen. Television is no substitute, because it tends on the whole to distract a child from listening and to limit a child’s imagination. After all, the imagination of children is the foundation of their future education, well-being and ability to live lives that they will think are worth living.

I therefore ask the Minister to assure the House that subsidising children’s radio will form part of the speech, language and communication action plan under which the Government are committed, I am glad to say, to spending several million pounds over the next few years. I greatly welcome the action plan, but beg the Minister to consider the place that radio may have in school and, perhaps above all, at home, where children and parents together can benefit and learn—learn the power of listening and talking—as a way of properly engaging with the world.

My Lords, with others I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, for bringing this debate to the House and to her consistent and distinguished commitment to the issues which it raises. As chair of the Children’s Society, I must declare my interest.

This debate builds on many of the issues raised by the Good Childhood report which we debated a few months ago. The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote in his afterword that this report forces,

“the reader to ask what we have in the ‘bank’ of mind and spirit in our culture that reinforces love and fidelity and offers some robust account of what long-term human welfare looks like and what it demands”.

I want briefly to say something about what well-being looks like and something about what it demands.

There are at present no universally agreed ways of defining and measuring well-being. In terms of children, ideas about well-being have often been transferred directly from concepts which apply to adults, with inadequate reference to children themselves. In addition, there has been a tendency to focus more on children’s future well-being or “well-becoming” as adults than on their experience of childhood, and to measure child well-being in terms of the absence of negative indicators, such as substance abuse, rather than the presence of positive ones. How do we attend wisely to the views of children themselves on these matters?

This year, for example, the Get Ready for Change! project saw a group of children and young people carrying out a major children’s rights investigation and submitting their own report to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva to inform its examination of the United Kingdom. Such projects fall far short of a systematic attempt to monitor and assess the experiences of children over time. For that reason, the Children’s Society is developing a well-being framework based on a consultation exercise with Ipsos MORI. The first phase of the survey, a representative sample of over 7,000 children, in years six, eight and 10, was completed in July 2008. The findings are due to be published this summer. This will be a major part of identifying well-being among different subgroups of children, leading to the development and testing of a new index of child well-being. Some of the themes are already clear, even predictable. The family is clearly of paramount importance. When children and young people were asked to choose between love, respect, support and freedom, in terms of their importance in family relationships, 70 per cent chose love.

We can begin to see where this message is getting through in the recent Children, Schools and Families Select Committee report on looked-after children, which concluded,

“the greatest gains in reforming our care system are to be made in identifying and removing whatever barriers are obstructing the development of good personal relationships, and putting in place all possible means of supporting such relationships where they occur”.

I want briefly to focus on child poverty, for it is clear that the well-being of children demands a fundamental change in our approach to inequalities and a renewed political determination to deliver on the targets for child poverty eradication. I hope that we shall hear from the Minister on the subject, because if there is a golden thread linking all the policies around child well-being, this is it.

The financial crisis offers us a chance to rethink our public values; to evaluate the collective social, political and economic costs of our present inequalities, as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s recent research has clearly revealed. Living in poverty has an immediate and enduring impact on children’s lives. In my own diocese, in some of the inner city schools, 85 per cent of children are on free school meals; one school has children speaking 40 different languages. Here we see powerfully the impact of poverty and multiple disadvantage and we realise that those forms of inequality demand focus and sustained attention on the alleviation of poverty. It was therefore a serious disappointment that in the Budget the Government were not able to prioritise spending in that area, putting only £20 extra per child per year on tax credit, or merely 38p per child per week. Will the Minister commit today to doing everything possible to ensure that the pre-Budget report in the autumn gets the Government back on track to reach the 700,000 children who need to be taken out of poverty if the 2010 target is to be achieved?

The well-being of children focuses our attention on the central task of a civilised society: the task of inducting children into responsible and fulfilling lives. That is a challenge at every point of government policy but especially in facing with real, enduring courage the challenge of the toxic combination of inequality, high child poverty and low social mobility in this country, relative to many European comparators and illustrated by the UNICEF report to which reference has already been made. If we are to move beyond what has been called the mixed climate of fear and dislike that seems to affect so many perceptions of children and young people, the agenda for addressing the needs of the 3.9 million children in poverty in this country must be faced. That remains the single greatest threat to the well-being of children and families today.

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, on obtaining this important and timely debate and pay tribute to her for her chairmanship of the Children Group, which is recognised by the large number of people from outside organisations who make it their business to attend, knowing that there will be a lively, challenging, interesting and relevant meeting under her chairmanship. I also join in the words of my noble friend Lady Warnock and repeat the plea that I have made many times in this House that every child should receive a speech and language therapy assessment before beginning primary school, to enable them to engage with that process.

I say that this debate is timely because we are about to embark on a legislative marathon, including the Coroners and Justice Bill, the Welfare Reform Bill, the Policing and Crime Bill, the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill and the Equality Bill, all of which contain clauses relevant to children. Therefore, it is very timely to be reminded of their needs and problems as we approach that process.

I want to focus on one aspect only—children in custody—and take as my text the excellent joint report of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons and the Youth Justice Board entitled Children and Young People in Custody 2006-2008, which was published recently. I shall cite two passages from it, one from the text and one from the conclusions, because I could not put what is said better and they are relevant for the House. Talking about the whole survey, the report states:

“The results … show, in general, a steady improvement in terms of young people's experience of the custodial environment”—

which is to be welcomed—

“But there is less encouraging news in relation to what the effect on them will be. Ease of contact with family and friends had deteriorated both for young men and young women … only a third of them said that it was easy for their families to visit, and in some establishments this figure was as low as a quarter (for young men) or 13% (for young women). Over a quarter of young women and nearly one in five young men said they had no visits at all. This must reflect the distance from home of some young people. In some establishments, a significant proportion also said they had problems contacting their families by telephone or mail.

There had also been deterioration, for young men, in some other important resettlement areas. Fewer young men said they could see their training plan, or had been contacted by a youth offending team or social worker or probation officer while in custody. There was still only a minority of young men—around four out of 10—who believed that they had done anything in custody that would help them not to offend again; though this rose to nearly eight out of 10 among sentenced young people in the one open unit (which has now been closed)”.

In conclusion, the report states:

“There are some key messages … from these surveys. First, there is considerable variation in young people’s experiences and opportunities between different establishments … there are also variations which are not inexplicable … where culture, management or history seem to play a part. It also remains troubling that overall so many young people have felt unsafe … the experience of black and minority ethnic young men remains significantly more negative … Third, and most importantly, the experience of custody is only a part of these young lives, and it must be of concern that links with families and, for young men, with support services outside prison, seem to have loosened”.

Those are serious and worrying words. They reflect something that I have been saying now for more than 10 years: until and unless someone, some person, is responsible and accountable for consistent direction of what happens to children in custody, we will continue to have uneven performance. We will continue to have the ridiculous situation that incoming governors and directors of establishments are not required to carry on from where their predecessor left off but can do what they like in relation to the targets and performance indicators that they have been given.

As has been mentioned, there is a disconnect between what happens in young offender establishments, run by the Prison Service, secure training centres, which are run by private companies on contract to the Youth Justice Board, and local authority secure homes, some of which are run by local authorities and some by the private sector. In this context, I deplore, as I have many times in this House, the abolition of the Commission for Social Care Inspection, which focused entirely on issues such as safeguarding, which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester just mentioned. Until and unless something is done to improve the overall direction of what happens, we will still go on having to read this depressing catalogue of avoidable failure, which is damaging the young people whose interests all of us in this nation must have at heart. I beg the Government to do something serious to overcome this deficiency.

My Lords, before my noble friend stands up to speak, I respectfully remind noble Lords that the six minutes are up when the clock turns to six. Several noble Lords have overrun by a minute—not the previous speaker, who was a model of brevity. However, I remind noble Lords that we will overrun if we do not stick to the time.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for bringing this debate to the House today and I apologise to her and to the House for my mobile interrupting the beginning of this debate.

I am acutely aware of the many areas that need to be covered if we are to take a broad view on the Government’s record on well-being. Therefore, I will focus on just one aspect, sport, which I firmly believe ranks with equal importance to apparently more serious areas being covered today. For who can deny the part that sport plays in our society, whether one is a fan, an aspiring player or an occasional participant in a huge variety of sport? All that against the increasing awareness of an epidemic of obesity among both young and old and the anger and frustration we feel at not having access or opportunity to take part in our favoured sports.

Years ago, as a young councillor in Banbury, I well remember the scathing attitude of those around me when youngsters lobbied us to provide a skate park in the town—heresy. Many years later it came into being, but only after a very long campaign.

When I reflect on the Government’s policies today, I have to remember the starting point in the 1990s. School sport was reduced to a token. Curriculum expansion had almost pushed PE off the timetable. Heads were more concerned with academic league tables and made flimsy defence of sport. Not only that, but extra-curricular activities in state schools had bitten the dust, thanks, in no small part, to the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking—as a fallout of his confrontation with teachers.

What has been done to repair the damage? Frankly, an enormous amount. The Government have set up a delivery framework—Sport England, UK Sport and the Youth Sport Trust—which has built up a positive rapport with all the governing bodies of sport in the United Kingdom. Huge amounts of money have been channelled into sport, £2.4 billion, divided equally between sport in schools and the community, the development of young players and encouraging families to return to active sport.

What has been the result? Well, a transformation. Sport in schools, from having virtually no time in the timetable, is now five hours for primary schools and three hours for secondary schools. Extra-curricular sport is flourishing. Clubs, teams and groups are in competition. Competitive sport has regained its proper place in society. There is a genuine broad offer of sport for all with schools and colleges. Volunteering, officiating, running clubs and being coaches are being promoted. All these are essential if we are to build for the future and staff the London Olympics in 2012. Those Olympics have pricked the nation’s conscience to get off our sofas.

Links between schools and clubs are essential. Three years ago, the Government created community amateur sports clubs. That is part of the answer, but that bridge is not yet completed. Clubs must change and become less exclusive. Community sports clubs have an inducement of rate reduction. Governing bodies are putting in place a matrix of link officials who work with schools to publicise sport in their area and help identify sports that students can take part in—all this against the alarming rising figures of obesity. Sport not only helps counter that but adds to the social inclusion of many youngsters in society; and it is fun and lifelong. If only noble Lords had come along to watch the match at the Lords and Commons tennis club this Thursday, they would have witnessed extraordinary scenes of ageing players thoroughly enjoying themselves, albeit a trifle creaky the following day.

The Government are playing their part and must be determined to continue with a high level of support. The credit crunch puts pressure on all budgets, but this budget line is surely one that must be protected at whatever cost. We cannot slip back to the dark days of the 1990s. I very much hope that the Minister will assure us of that. If I speak with unusual passion, that might be because I spent part of my childhood in care. Sport played a crucial part in helping me to find new friends within the community of sport.

However, I have a most wonderful offer to make to the Minister and to the Government today, with no extra cost and with guaranteed success. If they take on board the campaign to stop putting the clocks back in October, at a stroke, they will give us all thousands of extra daylight hours, after school and work, to make ourselves more active. If they resort to that old chestnut of dark evenings being dangerous, I hope they will quote this month’s report from the National Audit Office saying that child pedestrians are most at risk from 3 pm to 7 pm, especially in the weeks after the end of British Summer Time.

So, let us stop this daylight robbery and give everyone the chance that they need and deserve to create a healthier, more active and happier society—a crucial policy to promote the well-being of children and families, which is the heart of our debate today.

My Lords, I strongly support the suggestion just made by the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham. I would like to take advantage of this valuable debate introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, to raise a specific issue about well-being: access to justice for those children whose future is decided in the courts.

As has been said, one of the most vulnerable groups are those children who are in care and those who are the subject of care proceedings with the possibility of permanent removal from their families. All such children committed to care have to have an order, either of a judge or of magistrates, and they have to go through court proceedings. Many such children have been physically or sexually abused or seriously neglected and all have been emotionally abused. Allegations have to be proved and medical and social worker evidence has to be tested to assist the court to decide whether the case for a care order is proved.

Every Child Matters: Next Steps refers to the importance of the family justice system for children. Family lawyers, the Family Law Bar Association, family solicitors such as Resolution and the Association of Lawyers for Children spend long hours preparing these cases with voluminous evidence and difficult and often insoluble problems where their expertise and experience are of great help to family judges, which, as your Lordships will appreciate, was what I was at one time. The work of these lawyers, of barristers in particular, often makes a real difference to the outcome. However, contrary to public belief, family lawyers are not particularly well paid under this legal aid system.

I recently co-chaired a meeting for the Family Law Bar Association with the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, to learn about the Legal Services Commission’s proposals to restructure the package of payments to family barristers in the longer cases. Because of a marked reduction in those cases, there will be a most damaging effect on the availability of experienced family practitioners in those cases. There will be fewer family lawyers prepared to do this work. They will vote with their feet and there will be a great disincentive for young barristers coming into family work. As a former family judge, I already advise Bar students not to do family work. Following the Legal Services Commission’s proposals, there is about to be a serious and irreparable loss of the pool of expertise.

My concern is not at all for the lawyers; it is for children and the parents who must be represented. The legal aid changes raise issues about the rights and welfare of children. They involve Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and Articles 6 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. There will be a lack of access to justice and a lack of adequate representation of children and of the parents who may be unfairly accused of misbehaviour and may lose their children for ever. Much more important is the grave danger of the loss for children of their parents if these cases are not properly tested.

I cannot overemphasise the potential damage to these extremely vulnerable groups of children. It is worrying that the Legal Services Commission does not recognise children among its stakeholders. I should make it clear that the family Bar is asking not for more money but for a more sensible redistribution of the money that the Legal Services Commission and the Ministry of Justice say will be available. I appreciate that I am taking the Minister by surprise, but I ask the Government to recognise the damage that will be done if the Family Law Bar Association’s proposals are not taken seriously. Those proposals should be looked at again. A failure to do so would undermine all the Government’s other good policies, which I so very much support.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Massey for opening today’s debate on an issue that is not only of current importance to our society but crucial to the future well-being of our nation. I shall focus on the interconnectedness between educational achievement, family and community support, and the importance of aspiration and self-belief in our young people. When the Prime Minister announced the creation of the new Department for Children, Schools and Families in 2007, he said:

“Children and families are the bedrock of our society. The Government’s aim is to ensure that every child gets the best possible start in life, receiving the ongoing support and protection that they—and their families—need to allow them to fulfil their potential”.—[Official Report, 3/7/07; col. WS 82.]

Today, I shall focus on one initiative, Trailblazers, which I have supported for the past four years and which aims to deliver some of these goals in a practical way and to link strongly to the Every Child Matters agenda. Trailblazers was started in 2004 by the Learning Trust, which runs educational services in Hackney. I declare an interest in that my sister works for the Learning Trust in Hackney. Hackney is an inner-city borough, with all the attendant challenges. It is the third most ethnically diverse local authority in the United Kingdom, with a dynamic and constantly changing population and high levels of poverty. It has formidable educational challenges, with young people facing significant pressures to engage in behaviour that makes them vulnerable to harm. As a consequence, the borough suffers from negative stereotyping about its schools, its young people and the wider community.

In focus groups and consultations, students said that their achievements should be celebrated and recognised by the local community. This was in line with the trust’s own objective to raise awareness of the positive achievements of young people in the borough, and so the Trailblazers initiative was born. Its objectives were publicly to celebrate the achievements of the young people in the borough, to combat negative stereotypes of Hackney schools, to give examples of excellence, to attract the recognition of the community, to inspire students to reach their full potential through education and to improve GCSE results.

The trust began by identifying young people who had achieved across a range of different areas. Importantly, it looked not only at young people who were academic but at those who were making significant progress in other areas, including behaviour. The early stage of the campaign included an advertising campaign on buses and billboards that asked Hackney citizens to support Hackney children. The campaign was entitled “Hackney is with you all the way”, and was run just before the children’s exams. Hackney residents could not miss it.

What a success it has been. To date, more than 600 super-achieving students have been nominated by secondary schools as trailblazers across the categories of academic achievement, sports, creative arts, musical excellence and personal development. They have become the voice and role models for Hackney youth. All Hackney secondary schools have participated in the campaign. Trailblazers became the model for the London Challenge—the London-wide schools recognition programme. A student was sponsored to attend Gordonstoun School, five university students have been sponsored and revision publications have been used by students and parents across the borough.

A head teacher said: “People need to look behind the headlines declaring that Hackney schools are failing their children, and you will see a totally different story”. A young woman said: “Hackney students are tired of being considered second-class citizens. We want everyone to know that we are achieving excellence”. The then chair of the Learning Trust said: “In Hackney, we are no longer happy with mediocrity but genuinely aspire to excellence”.

Students have achieved the highest marks in GSCEs in the county. Their talents are endless. The campaign was a simple idea that was driven by the passion of students in Hackney. All its materials featured students or their work and led to spin-off activities in schools. It has captured the imagination of local people and acted as a call to action that was accepted by students and the teaching community. The success of this programme rests on its co-ordinated approach. It engages students, parents, teachers, administrators and the whole community in recognising that we all have potential and that there is a need to nurture and support talent and to celebrate achievement. I have been privileged to host an annual event for Trailblazers in this House, which has been supported by other noble Lords.

I ask the Minister to tell the House what initiatives the Government have supported to promote community support for educational achievement and to live up to the department’s ambition to promote the wider contribution of young people to their communities.

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, on securing this debate and on an opening speech of such clarity and width. She is a tireless advocate for children and their families and I can testify to the fact that she also encourages other Members of this House.

Families come in all shapes and sizes and, although we all hope that every child can be brought up in a stable environment, we know that family breakdown happens. Most parents manage to make good arrangements for the care of their children when divorce or separation occurs, but for the 10 per cent who fail to come to an agreement the family courts must help and intervene.

I shall spend my few minutes this afternoon talking about the children and family courts system and about the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service and the social workers who try to help the families who come before it. CAFCASS is a non-departmental public body that comes within the framework of the Department for Children, Schools and Families; it is therefore part of the government framework. I declare an interest as its present chair and previous deputy chair for five years.

It is no secret that CAFCASS has had a difficult journey and that we still have much to do. However, we have consolidated 113 organisations into one national CAFCASS and we have built a corporate identity as a service provider and an employer. We have much to do in the areas of standards, but we are working on it. We must remind ourselves that we have a statutory responsibility to ensure that children and young people are put first in family proceedings, that their voices are heard properly, that the decisions made about them by the courts are in their interests and that they and their families are supported throughout the process.

As such, the organisation plays a key role in family life within the legislative framework set by Parliament. We are involved with some 80,000 children a year and have a staff of around 2,000, most of them social workers. Care and separation proceedings are fraught with conflict. For many, it is about winning a battle where the children have been either the victims or weary bystanders. Much of our work is about helping families to see the conflict through the eyes of the child and to seek a resolution.

In private law, divorce and separation start with the presumption that it is in the child’s best interests to maintain contact with both parents, unless there are good reasons to the contrary, such as domestic violence or neglect. We must remind ourselves, particularly this week, of the importance of protecting women and children from domestic violence. There is a view, however, that the law treats non-resident parents unreasonably in the family courts. This view has led in part to the opening up of the courts to the press. The Government’s own research, however, and our most recent gender outcomes statistics show that there is,

“no evidence that non resident parents as a group are systematically unreasonably treated by the family courts”.

On the contrary, it looks as though fathers are taking more part in the lives of children. We in CAFCASS work closely with support groups such as Families Need Fathers, which has done excellent work in supporting the role of fathers and, indeed, now separated mothers. Of course, there is a small minority of cases where a parent is determined to continue the relationship battle whatever the detriment to the child. Ending contact in these cases can save that child from emotional harm.

In public law, where children are likely to be removed from both parents for care reasons, CAFCASS carries out some of its most high-profile work, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, mentioned. Key to this, as in all our work, is the role of safeguarding—ensuring that children are properly protected. In the aftermath of the case of the murder of Baby P, the number of care applications has escalated sharply. The trend continues. It represents a shift in intervention threshold by local authorities. We have found that there is an increase in the number of cases coming to court of children who are already known to local authorities and where chronic neglect is the main feature.

Each child and family needs intensive help, clear assessment and decisive plans. My concern is that none of the agencies is meeting this requirement at the present time, as reflected in the second report of the noble Lord, Lord Laming. Work with chaotic, disordered families, where there is poverty linked with alcohol or drug abuse, or both, and where parents have limited emotional ability, requires the highest-skilled workers, either to keep the family at home or to make the difficult decision to remove the child. One thing is certain: the social worker who will undertake this task on behalf of us all will be damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

The Secretary of State has made a commitment to supporting social workers and I hope to hear the Minister today reiterate her support. We have to come through this crisis of backlogs and difficulties. We have to come to the point where we can find other ways of helping families and their children. The debate introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, is a useful way of focusing on many ways forward. Government policy and the Every Child Matters agenda must mean every child because, as my chief executive Anthony Douglas put it:

“Each child is not a statistic but a person with complex and long-term needs which the State has a duty of care to meet”.

In these difficult times, I know that the Minister and the Government will do everything possible to meet those needs; we in CAFCASS will do everything in our power to play our part.

My Lords, I want us to think again about the structure of the welfare state and social security as it affects women and their families.

We need to go back 100 years, to Lloyd George’s introduction of national insurance. He refused to accept that sickness, unemployment, old age and so on were a lack of moral fibre to be dealt with by charity. He would have preferred universal provision and a decent poor law but the stigma of that was unacceptable. So he went for contributory national insurance for the head of the household—for the working man. That kept out the rough and the idle, and women. His principles were continued by Beveridge, who worked for Lloyd George. As long as the man held on to his 40-year job and his wife held on to him, they were okay. National insurance, revamped poor law, filled in the gaps for the uninsurable, the lone parent, the widow. The bones of that system—contributory national insurance for men underpinned by means-tested benefits for women—still scaffold our welfare state, wrongly in my view. Why is it wrong? Because it has continuously discriminated against women.

Let us think about it. Benefits assume that you are either in full-time work or out of it. That is fine for men but impossible for most women, who can manage only part-time work. What about pensions—save for 40 years, save early, save enough, do not touch it? That is fine for men, because pensions depend on full-time work, but impossible for most women. Economics and demographics have rendered this model of Lloyd George and Beveridge pretty much obsolete. Yet we still expect women to get their benefit and pension cover either from husbands, even though half of women in their 50s or 60s are not married, or, if they are without a husband, to behave like men even though most will have children, grandchildren or elderly parents to care for.

All Governments have recognised the problem and sought to tweak the system. Since 1997, the Government’s record has been admirable. They have made it possible for mothers, particularly lone parents, to work. The minimum wage, the 10th anniversary of which was yesterday, has benefited a million people, mostly women. Tax credits, childcare provision and the right to request flexible working have made work possible and work pay. As we all know, the only way to address child poverty is to bring up the child in a working family.

As for pensions, five years ago 90 per cent of men, but generally only 20 per cent of women, could retire with a full basic state pension. As a result of the great work of James Purnell, the number of years required for a basic state pension is down to 30. Those caring for older people and, to my delight, those caring for grandchildren for more than 20 hours a week will receive a national insurance credit. This is a real recognition of family values and the dependence of one family generation on another. Above all—thanks to your Lordships—the Government have allowed people, mainly women, to fill in their pension gap through the buy-back of missing national insurance years. One hopes that within the next decade or so both women and men will have similar coverage, perhaps of 85 or 90 per cent, in their pensions.

We have travelled a long way. And yet, why keep the state pension contributory if fairly soon almost all will be covered but in unnecessarily complicated ways? Why not go for a universal state pension based, say, on 20 years’ residence? This would be simple, popular, inexpensive and save 3,000 jobs administering a redundant system. Why continue to police a contributory system to keep people out when, on the other hand, we then use credits to bring them back in again?

As for working-age benefits, income support—a woman’s benefit which recognises unwaged work—is being replaced by jobseeker’s allowance, which is a man-seeking-full-time-work benefit. Given that three-quarters of unemployed men voluntarily return to work within six months, JSA’s tough conditionality has been designed for the 22-year-old who is reluctant to get up in the morning. That is fine: a 22 year-old can be expected to work under JSA rules and to travel an hour and a half to seek work. But a job that starts at 9 am and is an hour and a half away is not fine for a lone parent with two children whose school opens at 8.45 am. The JSA has financial sanctions for the 22 year-old; but apply those to the lone parent and you also sanction the child. You can pressure the 22 year-old into full-time work, but often all that the lone parent can manage is a patchwork of mini-jobs of, say, 12 hours a week. As her benefit is deducted pound for pound it may not be worth working, so either she will not work or she will not declare it. And yet those mini-jobs may be the best preparation for her to go into full-time work when her children are older. We make her fit the benefit regime of the 22 year-old instead of devising a benefit regime that fits the realities of her life, which requires a tapered approach to benefit rather than the male model of being in work or out of it.

The time has come to restructure social security by holding up the gender filter and building it around the lives and needs of women as well as those of men. I believe that we would all win from it.

My Lords, I, too, warmly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, for securing this debate and for her chairmanship of the children’s group. I am most grateful to her, and to other noble Lords, including the right reverend Prelate, for speaking at length today about the needs of children in care. As vice-chair of All-Party Group on Children and Young People in Care, perhaps I may advise the House that, on Wednesday 20 May, there will be a meeting of the group at which the Children’s Legal Centre will discuss its advocacy for children and young people in care. I would be grateful for your Lordships’ support for that meeting. I declare my interest as a trustee of TACT, a not-for-profit foster agency, and the Michael Sieff Foundation, a child welfare organisation.

I thank the Minister for the attention that she has increasingly been giving to the children's workforce, especially child and family social workers. I am grateful for the establishment of the social work taskforce and look forward very much to its recommendations this autumn. Moira Gibb, chief executive of Camden local authority, has been appointed to lead the taskforce and is highly regarded by all the professionals I have spoken to. As the vacancy rate for child and family social workers in London is 20 per cent we know that her work is vital. I also thank the Minister and her colleagues for the recent additional investment of £58 million in child and family social work. However, given the concerns that we all continue to have about children's social care, I hope the Minister will continue to give thought to the need to ring-fence and increase the funding for these services.

I shall speak about access to mental health services for the carers of young people in care, for young people in care and for care leavers. On Tuesday I had the privilege of attending a discussion at which the Minister spoke. In the audience were a number of care leavers, foster carers, social workers and adoptive parents. Channel Four showed excerpts from its documentary “Lost in Care”—which was referred to earlier in the debate—in which care leavers spoke about having 15, 20 or 30 different placements while in care. That was not a representative sample. However, the trauma that children experience prior to entering care, which is sometimes compounded by trauma experienced while in the care system, gives rise to high rates of mental disorders within this group.

In its 2002 survey, the Office for National Statistics put disorder rates as high as 45 per cent for children in foster care and 72 per cent for children in residential care. As they are children, they may recover quickly. However, if their needs are not met, these disorders may harden into adult personality disorders which can be very hard to treat. Often the best treatment for such childhood disorders is a warm and stable relationship with a caring adult, as the right reverend Prelate so elegantly said. It is therefore absolutely right that the Minister places such high value on stability and that the Government have set a target for placement stability. At the same meeting on Tuesday, Stuart Hannah, a child psychotherapist at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, drew attention to the important work of therapeutic children's homes such as the Mulberry Bush School. Key to the success of such facilities is ongoing consultation by a child psychotherapist or appropriately skilled clinical psychologist or psychiatrist with the staff group.

Children who have been traumatised may often sabotage future relationships with adults and avoid intimacy and love at all costs because of the pain that it has given them in the past. Given these children’s resistance to forming stable relationships with carers it is essential that residential child care workers should be supported in their task by the best mental health professionals in the field. It is deeply regrettable, given the level of need and the inexperience of those working in the front line, that all children's home staff do not enjoy ongoing support from these kinds of consultants.

There needs to be appropriate high quality mental health provision throughout residential care. Consideration also needs to be given to providing such support to adoptive parents, child and family social workers, foster carers and GPs. The very best services already provide this. Kids Company, which was also referred to at our meeting on Tuesday, forges relationships of trust with our most neglected children. Staff do so while receiving regular support themselves from child psychotherapists. Such support was once a regular feature of child and family social work, as I think my noble friend Lady Howarth may be able to attest.

The final report of the national CAMHS review, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, published last December, recommended increased integration of CAMHS services with other services and a push to educate the childcare workforce in child development. The Government have established an independent advisory board to implement these recommendations. Will the Minister consider meeting the board—perhaps with her colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Darzi—and me to discuss the concerns that I am expressing today? What progress has been made in the integration of CAMHS with children's homes? How many children's homes offer ongoing consultation for staff by child psychotherapists or other clinicians? How is the quality of this consultation monitored?

Given that improvements in public care are still at an early stage, what assessments and access to services are offered to care leavers who may have mental health issues arising from abuse prior to care or from instability in the care system? Is there an infrastructure of support for self-help groups for care leavers, perhaps facilitated by a mental health professional, so that care leavers can resolve earlier trauma? Is individual therapy for care leavers made available and promoted? I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

My Lords, we are in the debt of my erstwhile mentor, my noble friend Lady Massey of Darwen, for giving us this opportunity to share such a wide expression of views on this general subject. I am delighted to offer mine in the midst of expertise of a rare order, and I stand as a general practitioner in the midst of consultants. As a church minister, my daily work is to visit families in their homes, to climb the stairs of those inner-city dwellings and to sit and eat humble fare sometimes with such families. I allow my mind to see the two little children in this small one or two-bedroomed accommodation when they have grown up and their home will be bursting at the seams. I sometimes hear that a pregnancy will make it likely that there will be three children before very long.

I try to deal imaginatively with some of the problems that ensue. For example, I deal with inner-city schools which make provision for people who come from these sorts of homes. I am the minister of a flourishing church with more than 400 members. We have a large number of families from many ethnic groups. My only qualification for contributing to a debate like this is that I know and I visit those families. They matter to me and, through the way we organise our church, we try to offer safe space for children to have activities that enhance their well-being.

I hope that it will not be thought to be a little tendentious or pedantic on my part to qualify the wording of the Motion before us. Although my awareness of child-centred government policy began with the Children Act 1989 and therefore goes well beyond the lifetime of this party’s Administration, I want to congratulate the Government on much that has happened. Rather than call attention to the policies on,

“the well-being of children and families”,

I shall consider making provision for such well-being or to offer a legislative framework to enhance the well-being of children. Governments of course cannot and do not do it. It is those of us who live in communities and respond at ground level to the opportunities that legislative frameworks and systems of care offer who have to turn the good thinking, the lofty thinking, and the idealism of Governments into practice.

I am full of admiration for the children and young people whom I see day by day and week by week. I see the noble Lord, Lord Stewartby, almost in his place. His family trust helps us to achieve real funding for an effort in the borough of Haringey—it is worth dwelling on the fact that it is Haringey—where children are encouraged to play, to develop cultural ways of behaviour, to learn about each other’s cultures through drama, and to enact responses to the burning issues of the day on the street. A young man, a member of my church—I have known him since he was 10 and he is 23 now—is funded by that trust. He organises workshops that look, for example, at substance abuse, the carrying of knives, gang activities on the streets, and so on. It is a brilliant piece of work.

Another young man—a big boy—was passing by when a gang with baseball bats and knives were about to leave yet another victim on our streets. He simply went in and knocked a few heads together and knocked a few people out of the way, and they ran like scared rabbits. He will be presented, in church, at a suitable time, with one of the top awards that our Boys’ Brigade unit has to offer. He is about to undertake his A-levels.

There is another young man, completing his degree—he was 21 last Sunday—who is the only male teacher in our Sunday school. Incidentally, I notice that there are six male participants in a debating list of 23 today, and that those organising this debate have bunched them together for solidarity, which I find very encouraging. So thank you very much.

My admiration is unbounded for children and young people, and for families who courageously try to bring up their children with dignity, often in difficult and constraining circumstances, turning them out so well and wanting them to become responsible citizens. Because they arrived here from other places, these families often do not have many of the benefits they aspire to for their children. It really is imaginative and brilliant.

We were represented by one of my colleagues earlier this week at a faith forum in the borough of Islington. Members of faith communities advised social workers, doctors, nurses, those concerned with housing policy and its implementation, and people from the voluntary sector and the police, about how those who have faith—or how the values that come from faith—impact on some of the social problems that present. To have an opportunity for the voluntary sector and the sector of faith to have practical interaction with the providers of the services which legislation in this area makes possible seems to me to be very positive indeed.

My Lords, I have found this debate, as all these debates are, to be richly inspiring. I, too, warmly congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, on initiating this debate and having placed the community once more in her debt for the most distinguished efforts she has made for so long on behalf of children and young persons.

It is inevitable that this debate should, to some extent, be in the shadow and gloom of the Baby Peter case, which has already been referred to today. I am very grateful to the Government for the swiftness and dedication with which they have approached this horrible situation, and for the promptness with which they have reacted to the report of the noble Lord, Lord Laming. That report, to my mind, is the fruit of assiduous and thoughtful study. The Government have accepted all 58 recommendations and have set in train very many relevant and splendid initiatives.

I want to make three general points. First, the inquiry of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, splendid though it is, has been on a rather narrow basis: that was the basis on which he was invited to report. He was asked to consider the systems in existence for the protection of children and to ask whether those systems were now operating as they should, and what the difficulties were. To my mind, there is justification—and this will have to be attended to sooner rather than later—for looking into whether the systems now in existence are relevant to the needs of the 21st century. I hope that the Government can give some assurance that that is a matter very much in the forefront of their mind.

Secondly, tragic, ironic and shocking as was the case of Baby Peter, there was nothing unique nor, I am sorry to say, outstanding in the loss of that child’s life. The statistics do not always tally, but taking a conservative view, one would come to the conclusion that about 100 children lose their lives every year, possibly as many as 150. In other words, two or three young children a week die of neglect or abuse.

My third point is closely tied up with the question of at-risk registers. The registers, on which there are the names of thousands of children in England and Wales, form some sort of a potential statutory shield of protection for those children. But it is a sad fact that 80 per cent of children who are killed or who die of neglect do not have their names on a register. How can we improve that situation?

Care orders have been mentioned. I agree completely with everything said so eloquently by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. It is inevitable that there will now be what the chief executive of CAFCASS has described as a bulge in applications for care orders. In October of last year, the number of applications in England was 496, whereas in March of this year, that figure had risen to 733 and is bound to rise further.

The point I wish to make—and I do this, in common with all noble Lords, with the utmost regard for social workers and those who administer the care system—is that there is an institutional failure here. It is failure in the sense that it has not been possible to bridge and narrow that gap between children in care and those not in care. That gap, if anything, is getting wider. The dismal statistics are known to all Members of this House—how in every league of achievement they fail, and how, in every statistic of underachievement and dismality, they are overrepresented.

It is well known that, of all prisoners aged under 25 in our prisons at the moment, half of them have, at some time or another, been in care. Many noble Lords will say, “Isn’t that to be expected? They are damaged children and have suffered terribly in the battle of life”. That is perfectly true. A very high percentage of them—something of the order of one third of those who have been in care for more than a year—are the subject of educational statementing. They are educationally subnormal in almost all those cases. One can quote statistic after statistic suggesting that the situation is almost inevitable, but it is not. In Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Germany, the gap is being narrowed substantially, and we can do the same. I congratulate the Minister on initiatives taken in relation to the pedagogic attitude towards childcare.

We have a great challenge to face, but also a great opportunity presented to us. There is a strong tide of feeling running on behalf of children and young persons. If we take that tide, it can lead to great progress and happiness so far as children are concerned. If we miss it, we should remember the words of the Bard:

“Omitted, all the voyage of their life

“Is bound in shallows and in miseries”.

Baroness Uddin: My Lords, I, too, am grateful to my noble friend Lady Massey for allowing us to debate this important matter. I thank and salute her for all her work as chair of the Children’s Group and the NTA. My remarks concern the effects of addiction on families, in particular on children living in households where the parents take drugs and drink alcohol. I should like also to register my interest in that I am remunerated by and work with a national charity concerned with families. I have worked with vulnerable children and on child protection issues for much of my professional life, especially with children caught up in the midst of domestic violence, often directly as a result of parental substance and/or alcohol misuse. More recently, I have had the privilege of working with those who provide treatment and support to individuals and families trying to recover from their substance and alcohol addiction, and it is the lessons I have learnt from that experience that I should like to share.

As has been recognised, there has been a dramatic increase in the variety of services available since the 2005 Hidden Harm report and the Government’s subsequent report published in 2008 entitled Drug Strategy. It is recognised that the family needs to be at the heart of good practice. At least 1.3 million children in the UK are growing up in families where their mum, dad or both have chronic drug and alcohol problems. Concerns remain about the resources being directed at support for families beyond drug and alcohol misusers, even when there is the possibility of children being taken into care.

In coming to the debate, I have spoken to a number of workers on the ground. They say that it is a simple but ignored truism that drugs have a big impact on families. The person who develops a problem with drugs or alcohol is also someone’s son, daughter, brother or sister. It is also a fact that families dealing with substance misuse often live in an atmosphere of secrecy where children tend to bear much of the burden. Workers say that evidence suggests that angry, irritated, scared and bewildered children are shut out of rooms and often told to go away while unexplained activities take place. Imagine a six year-old accidentally stumbling across syringes on top of the fridge or microwave as an ordinary occurrence. They say that children are reluctant to raise the subject of substance use for fear of causing more aggravation or tragedy in their already volatile environment either with other family members or in school, resulting in their further isolation. They also say that many children become carers responsible for their parents and siblings.

That 1.3 million children are frequently denied regular education and the opportunity to take part in mundane childhood activities, that their good days and bad days are determined by how their parents behave under the effects of drug taking or drinking alcohol, means that many of these children feel different. Having been exposed to conversations about drugs, they feel guilty, worthless and often ignored by the actions of their parents. They often experience bullying both at home and at school. Research shows that children know far earlier and in more detail about drugs than their parents believe, and that some people are likely to engage in sexual activity earlier where there is inadequate parental involvement or support.

These descriptions do not come from novels, they are the harsh reality of children’s words. What is shocking is that they come from the experiences described by children once they become engaged with services. Tackling these problems is not the work of a magic wand. The parents and children I am referring to have complex, long-standing problems that need intensive intervention from a wide range of services. I agree with my noble friend Lady Massey that despite significant local and national initiatives, there remains a vast inconsistency between services for children caught up in these families. A family culture of denial and secrecy has major consequences for whether children seek services.

All too often, the drug user’s problem is seen as the cause of difficulties rather than as a symptom of a range of problems, each of which needs to be addressed before a parent can become capable of taking care of their children. Indeed, the frequent chaos of family life, coupled with the long-term nature of drug use and an atmosphere of denial, can mean that the work to stabilise one family may take a year or more. Yet despite these pressures, we know that less than 1 per cent of the drug treatment budget is currently spent on family support. Needless to say, the reality is that where family work is funded and available, many children need not be burdened with caring responsibilities and indeed may feel able to take advantage of support from a range of services, including from teachers and other welfare agencies. Work by leading organisations in the field shows that change is possible if there is a strong family focus when working with drug and alcohol misusers.

As a result of my current professional involvement in this work, I am aware of independent ongoing research that is looking at the impact of the work being done with over 300 families. Early indications are that the majority of clients, 88 per cent of those being monitored, showed a reduction in substance misuse and harmful behaviours, and an improvement in social and parenting skills. They are also more successfully prioritising the well-being of their children. We need more input into building family support and services, and the new Drug Strategy launched last year is a step in the right direction. I wonder whether my noble friend the Minister would consider undertaking a cost-benefit analysis of some of these successful interventions.

It is true that drugs and alcohol are life choices for adults, but 1.3 million children have not chosen these parents. It is critical that we commit ourselves to working jointly to ensure that the well-being of children living with parents who misuse drugs and alcohol are given our paramount consideration so that they can break free from the generational cycle of substance misuse themselves.

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, securing this debate and, as other noble Lords have said, for the many valuable things she does for children. At a time when the economic situation is grim and the Government have had to drop their target for the elimination of child poverty by 2020, it makes every kind of sense to address the best way those of us speaking think the Government can achieve their many valuable plans for the well-being of children and families. I hope to concentrate my remarks on two areas where I believe that the Government could give an even higher priority.

First is the need for more effort and resources for the early—and I do mean early—prevention of family breakdown. Secondly, if that fails and offending has meant imprisonment, far greater concentration needs to be placed on returning the offender, especially a young offender, to their community with maximum support plans in place to prevent any reoffending. In both these situations, it is for the local authority, indeed for the whole local community, to support these plans, their reward being that if the horrendous financial cost of keeping a child in care followed by a lifetime in prison is averted in even, say, 10 per cent of cases, substantial sums of money can be saved. But of greater importance is that if a family’s “cycle of deprivation” has genuinely been broken, the result is that the individual’s life and talents will benefit not just their own family, but also the whole community in which the family subsequently settles. If that happens, the five outcomes that children and young people themselves have identified as necessary for well-being in childhood and later life will have been achieved.

First, early support and prevention with a known deprived or disadvantaged family. Once a pregnancy is known, planned support should begin. If a family is not already known to the authorities, then the statutory health visitor or midwife visiting after a child’s birth may well be the first point of contact able to alert other authorities.

I need hardly say, and others have mentioned, that social workers are an even more important community resource, but they are in dire straits. We all know the appalling history of Baby P, but we should acknowledge that social workers have taken the blame for much that is the shared responsibility of others, not least primary health trusts. It will take time before government plans for upgrading their pay status and training turn social work, once again, into a natural choice for graduates leaving university. A better approach to the problem, and resources to deal with it, must begin now. Equally, there are nothing like enough foster carers available when children need to be taken into care. Their training and involvement in an individual child’s plan need upgrading.

In today’s world, there are other aspects that warrant extra attention if support and prevention of family breakdown are to be effective. One example is for more employers to offer flexible working for both sexes, which will enable parents, and I mean men as well as women, to work and share the practical side of bringing up the next generation to be well adjusted, responsible citizens. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has just published a report on this, entitled Working Better. Their research makes clear that men increasingly want these facilities as much as their partners do.

Many other examples spring to mind about how to help today’s families to combine the important roles of workers and parents, but time is limited and I want to turn to my second priority, which is where prevention has failed and imprisonment begins. The Corston report points to the immense danger done to families if a mother is imprisoned. With male overcrowding, women prisoners are housed well beyond the recommended 50 miles from their homes. Worse, with the family break-up and with all the children taken into care, the inevitable cycle of deprivation begins again.

A limited form of Corston is under way, but it is essential that, except for really violent and dangerous offenders, all women should be helped, and treated for their drink, drug and often severe mental health problems, as the recent Bradley report recommended, within their local communities, while the local authority and third sector continue to support other measures necessary for the rehabilitation of the whole family.

For those whom we have failed already, and who are now in prison, the Government’s original end-to-end offender management may still have some potential if the plans are realistic. The Government’s latest Education and Skills Act has, thankfully, placed responsibility for providing education for young offenders, up to the age of 18 firmly on the shoulders of the local education authority. No longer can the individual prison governor pay prisoners more for working in the kitchen than for attending those vital education classes.

Many of them also have totally inadequate skills and qualifications. Thankfully, the new plans for 14 to 18 year-olds include a reinvigorated apprenticeship strategy, which could well start to begin within the young offender institution. Like my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham, if I had one wish that could be granted, it would be to persuade this or any future Government to test all children, at the very start of their schooling, for signs of dyslexia or other learning problems. The earlier a plan to deal with this is worked out, the sooner it is likely to be successful.

For the future, and particularly for the priority group of young offenders, it is also vital to return them to the community with three essential elements in place, all of which take full account of the wishes of the young person concerned. These are an educational plan, a safe and stable place in which to live, and a probation officer or, at the very least, a mentor, probably from the third sector, to help with the process of settling in. I believe that we will see real and measurable success from everyone involved if these plans are put in place.

My Lords, the last four speakers over-ran their time, and it really is not fair on everybody else in the debate. I ask the next lot of speakers to stick to time. When the clock says six, please stop speaking.

My Lords, I shall have to try to make sure that I stop at a full stop. I thank my noble friend Lady Massey and I assure the House that her domestic science skills have improved since she was at school. Her report card showed that, despite difficulties, this is a topic on which the Government have a good story to tell, and it would be a terrible catastrophe for families, and in particular for children, if all the good work that has been achieved in the past decade were to be compromised in the next few years, blighting the life chances of a generation, as happened a generation ago.

I will concentrate my remarks on the role of arts and culture on the well-being of children, and I will refer to two organisations with which I am connected: the Roundhouse in north London, and Artis, which is a small but perfectly formed business that recruits and trains performing artists to deliver specially developed programmes linked to the national curriculum and to the Every Child Matters agenda in primary schools and, more recently, in secondary schools.

I am afraid that what I say will overlap significantly with the eloquent words of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. I hope the House will forgive me. The noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, referred to the review of the primary curriculum by Sir Jim Rose, in which he referred to the necessity of emphasising the importance of speaking and listening. The review talks about the possibility of needing formal lessons in spoken English. Command of language is one of the most powerful tools we have. It can be used for good or, of course, for ill, but without it we are denied access to our imaginations, and to the expression of our most complex emotions. A child impoverished in this way will remain at a disadvantage throughout life.

There are few more effective ways of developing language skills than through engagement with the arts, and I refer to a report that was published last month by the Culture and Learning Consortium, which is made up of a number of arts and cultural bodies. The report, Get It: The Power of Cultural Learning, is a compilation of feedback and recommendations from a wide public consultation among practitioners working in the cultural and learning sectors in England, directed toward a new approach to cultural learning. The report has an excellent set of recommendations focused on improving outcomes for children and young people. I was going to share with noble Lords some of the marvellous quotations that are peppered throughout it, but as I am a bit afraid of the Whips, I will not do so. However, two jumped out at me. The first is from Sir Alan Ayckbourn, a great playwright, who said:

“When you are young, the arts afford you a glimpse of the world through the senses of others, while helping you to make sense of yourself”.

The second is almost my favourite. It is from Doreen, aged nine, and is a tribute to my noble friend Lady Massey. After a school visit to the Unicorn Theatre for Children she said:

“I am telling you, theatre is better than TV”.

Amen to that, say I, though of course I am biased, but I believe nothing beats participating in a live experience. The Government, to their enormous credit, are piloting the Find Your Talent initiative, which aims to ensure that all children and young people, no matter where they live or what their background, have the chance to participate in at least five hours per week of high quality culture, in and out of school. The key phrases are “participate” and “high quality”. To be candid, this is a very ambitious plan, but it is really important that the current economic situation does not result in such ambition being stifled. I hope that my noble friend, when she comes to reply, will be able to reinforce the Government’s commitment to maintaining this initiative.

The two organisations that I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, Roundhouse and Artis, are both contributing significantly in different ways to using arts and culture to develop skills and confidence in children and young people. Again, I would give examples of this but I am not going to because I want to raise one other point. I will say only that the quiet work that Artis does, which reaches 25,000 children a week in primary schools, and the rather noisier and more ebullient work that Roundhouse does in engaging with the young people who have come through its pioneering studio programmes, which resulted in it creating, producing, managing and delivering an entire weekend’s worth of work at the Roundhouse last weekend, are important indicators of what can be achieved. There are many more, too, but we have some way to go before the benefits of learning through cultural experience are fully embraced in our educational and social policies. I hope that we shall not lose ground on this issue in the years ahead.

I want to talk about radio. I am a lifelong radio addict. I started with the pirates and Radio 1, but now I am in the arms of Radios 3 and 4. That may conform to a very comfortable middle-class stereotype that suggests that this is not really what children and young people today are interested in, but I do not think that is true. What the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, said about the potential power of radio is important, and we should take it seriously. Speech radio for children is a medium that engages imagination and reinforces the power of language, and it encourages listening skills, which are essential to the development of complex language skills. I ask the Government, when they publish their Digital Britain report, to recognise the contribution of high-quality speech radio for young people and make sure that they encourage the BBC to reinvest in it.

My Lords, I, too, am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for introducing this debate. With her agreement, I am going to speak for a few minutes not so much about the Government’s programme but about the way in which we in this House as a group try to influence their programme. I want to see whether my thoughts have any resonance with your Lordships.

Those of us who are speaking today and those who are not but wish that they were—perhaps those who often speak about children—comprise a voice for disadvantaged children in this House. In effect, we are an informal lobby group for children and together we have an enormous reservoir of expertise. My concern is that, in spite of all this, we as a group may not be as effective as we might be in achieving change. An equally informal disabled lobby often seems to be more powerful in its advocacy and more successful in achieving change. An example that is fresh in my mind is the Second Reading of the Welfare Reform Bill last week, when five or even six speakers talked about the problems that the Bill would create for the disabled, whereas only one, who happened to be me, talked about the potential disadvantages for children.

There are two principal ways in which we in this House bring our influence to bear on the Government: one is to chivvy them and the other is to amend their Bills. There is plenty of work to do on the chivvying front, of course; lots of things need to be addressed, such as shortages of staff in children’s social services, the problems of looked-after children, children in prison and so on—many things that noble Lords have mentioned today. But I shall concentrate on the revision of Bills.

Among the members of the children’s lobby there is no lack of dedication or knowledge. The problem is not a lack of dedication or enthusiasm but, in my view, a lack of organisation, co-ordination and support. The current position on support in this House is roughly as follows. We have an admirable research facility in the Library, but there are limits to what we can ask it to do. Sometimes it does the right thing but does not tell anyone; as we walked into the Chamber today, my noble friend Lady Howe told me that it had done a Library note on this debate. It would have been nice to have known a little sooner.

Then there are the children’s charities. They send some of us briefings, but most of those are focused on the particular interests that the charity has at that time, rather than on the broader implications of the Bill for children. Then, of course, there are the political parties. The parties have their own priorities, which often include the best interests of children, but I suggest that, although there is overlap, we should not have to rely on the Front Benches to lead us on children’s issues.

There was a time when the National Children’s Bureau was funded to undertake a series of child impact statements on all Bills. Its report was an elaborate legal statement; it was too expensive to produce, took too long to read and often came too late. Anyhow, that service funding has come to an end.

We need a part-time co-ordinator for the children’s lobby whose job would be to scrutinise all likely Bills well in advance for their potential impact on children; to summarise the issues and circulate a note of no more than two pages to Members; to identify Members who were interested and who were able to be involved; to co-ordinate their inputs—whether they were going to speak at Second Reading or in Committee or just vote, or do the lot; and, when necessary, to help with research. If any noble Lord agrees that such a service would be valuable and that these thoughts are worth pursuing, would they please contact the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, or me? If there is sufficient enthusiasm, we will try to pursue the idea.

I take credit from the Whips for being probably the only person who has spoken within their allotted time.

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for keeping the question of the welfare of families and children always at the forefront. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, for mentioning that the business of working, as well as the business of raising children, is affected by gender, and that the way in which policies are introduced often does not take into account the gender nature of work.

I shall refer to my own experience. When I had my first child, it coincided with the time when nurseries were closed, parental leave was curtailed and so on, and I ended up having to pay for the care of my child while I was in full-time employment. After paying for domestic help—I must admit that I had no training in domesticity, so I would have been very bad at it—and all the childcare provision, as a full-time lecturer at a university I earned £5 a week. It shows the triumph of hope over experience that I had a second child and continued working, but then we all suffer from various kinds of madness.

I was enormously grateful to this Government for recognising the importance of childcare and for introducing measures to help with it. However, I was saddened to see that, when my daughter had her first child, she decided to give up working as the head of a faculty to go part-time in a primary school because she found out that to carry on would cost her more than she would earn. Her view was: why should she work so hard in order for someone else to enjoy her children? She decided to go part-time not least because she discovered that, because she had taken maternity leave for one year, her income was reduced every month. Had she as a teacher chosen to take leave for a year because of stress, she would have been paid full-time. Motherhood does not seem to be recognised, valued or rewarded; it is certainly not remunerated.

Recent research at the University of York’s mother and babies unit says that middle-class women can afford at most the costs of childcare for one child and that childcare for two children becomes unaffordable. If professional women in full-time employment cannot afford good childcare, what happens to working-class women who have very few options?

I am worried about the proposed link between welfare and work. What kind of work, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, asked, can these mothers do when they are constrained by school hours? That is particularly a problem given that there is nothing so deskilling as motherhood; when you have been out of the workplace, you cannot get any work. Women who try to do flexible, part-time work experience difficulties. I have had quite a few e-mails from nurses whom I know telling me that it is all very well for us in the House of Lords to talk about the glass ceiling; they talk about the bedpan ceiling. If you happen to want to combine part-time, flexible work with childcare, you stay at the bottom rank. There is no movement anywhere for such mothers.

Good children are raised in good families where there is support but also a bit of money. Of course, low incomes do not necessarily mean a poor childhood, but they have a connection. I ask the Minister whether it would be possible to give women on benefit, who stay at home, the funds that would otherwise be spent on supporting their children. This would also valorise the work that women do. If this is not an alternative, we need to go much further down the route of providing good, high-quality childcare locally. I applaud the support that is offered by grandparents and by family, but there is a worry that that kind of support is not open to any kind of analysis or evaluation. Many grandparents are wonderful, but there is no way of weeding out those who are not or who do not have the expertise. We need to work on those fronts and I wonder whether any of these ideas will go any further.

My Lords, I thank and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, in particular on battling against the shortcomings of the digital age in her excellent speech.

There is no finer investment that we can make at any time, not just during a financial crisis, than investment in our children. This country’s success in the world will depend on the quality of our people and we must invest in that. Therefore, anything that prevents our children from fulfilling their potential and leading happy, successful lives must be eradicated. Unfortunately, recent sad cases have demonstrated that we have not yet got it right for children. We are still not putting enough resources into their safeguarding, their mental and physical health or their education. That must change. These are cost-effective measures, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, emphasised. I accept that this Government have done more for children than any Government, but the numbers of needy children are rising and the complexity of the pressures on their lives is growing. None the less, many of the Government’s policies are moving in the right direction. I particularly support the five principles and six objectives of the Children’s Plan.

There are many aspects of children’s well-being, so I shall concentrate on just five issues from the debate. The first of those is child poverty, as mentioned by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester. The Government made an ambitious commitment in 1999 to halve child poverty by 2010 and to eradicate it by 2020. Although progress has been made, I know that the Government are disappointed that they did not meet their interim target of a 25 per cent cut by 2005. I suppose that that is not entirely surprising, since the ways and means of achieving it are very long term.

Paying parents large amounts of benefit is neither affordable in the short term nor sustainable in the long term and, therefore, it is quite unrealistic. They say that it is far better to give a poor farmer a tractor and some seed than to give him a bag of grain to feed his family. On the other hand, if you do not give him a bag of grain as well as a tractor, his family will die of starvation before the crop can be harvested. I think that your Lordships will follow what I am saying, which is that the Government must address short-term poverty while at the same time putting into place those measures that will enable families to support their own children adequately in future.

This is where we come, as the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, mentioned, to the education of the parents, in particular the mother. In developing countries, funders know that the best way to help children is to educate their mothers so that they can bring up their children well. Even in this highly developed country, we know that a woman with a good education is more likely to have fewer children and a stable family structure and be able to get a job to help to support them. She is less likely to make poor health choices that will harm her children, such as smoking or drug and alcohol abuse, as the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, mentioned, all of which can destroy children’s lives as well as those of their parents. She is more likely to appreciate the importance of education and to do everything that she can to support her children’s learning. In the mean time, her education will help her to feed them well without great expense, understand their health and social needs and learn from those who have found effective and positive ways of parenting without resorting to violence.

So why has it taken the Government 10 years to agree to make personal, social, health and economic education a statutory part of the curriculum? Of course I welcome that, but they have wasted 10 years since Tony Blair made that commitment, without realising that such education would be one of the levers that would help the Government to achieve their child poverty target. Will the Minister tell us how the Government are getting on with the implementation of the new policy and with the training of the teachers and say whether parenting skills will be included in the curriculum?

Secondly, I should like to mention the importance of continuity for children, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, referred. Most families, rich and poor, are loving and caring, and the best continuity for the child is to leave it with its family. However, some families, as we have recently had brought home to us most sadly, are downright dangerous for the child. For those families, very difficult judgments have to be made by social workers, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said, as to whether the child’s best interests are served by staying with the family, with support, or going into care.

A couple of years ago, the cost to a local authority of taking care proceedings rocketed and the number of cases brought to the courts fell substantially. If that was because more families were being supported and it was safe to leave the children at home, that would have been a good thing. However, the fact that there has been a doubling in the number of cases since Baby Peter died suggests that that was not the reason. The implication is that many vulnerable children have been left in danger. I do not underestimate the cost and difficulty of taking these children into care. Many of them have been very damaged and need foster carers with very special skills and support. Sadly, most foster carers do not get either the training or the support that they need to do and carry on doing this very difficult job.

Thirdly, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has made the case brilliantly about the family courts. I agree with her wholeheartedly; it is a matter of the rights of children to be properly and independently represented and supported in court proceedings. However, the current proposals will discriminate against women and BME practitioners, just as the law was becoming more diverse. I think that that is very sad.

Fourthly, I will say a word about speech and language difficulties. The noble Baronesses, Lady Warnock and Lady McIntosh, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, spoke most effectively about the benefits of helping children with these problems, especially, in the case of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, about those in young offender institutions, where there are rather a lot of them. It is vital—and cost-effective—that the service in custodial settings should be properly funded. However, prevention is better than cure. If more resources were put into communication problems in the early and primary years, that would probably avoid many of these young people getting into trouble in the first place and save us all a good deal of grief and money. Will the Minister say how the Government are getting on with the job of implementing the Bercow report?

Last week, the Government told all primary schools to place more importance on speaking and listening skills, following Sir Jim Rose’s review of the primary curriculum. I have read about I CAN’s primary talk project pilot in schools in Somerset, Bradford and Walsall, which accredits schools for creating “communication-rich environments”. Heads say that it is making a real difference, but the chief executive of I CAN said that she was frustrated over delays in implementing the Government’s speech and language strategy. Can the Minister say what is being done to support such projects and implement the strategy?

Does the Minister also share with me and others a regret that the BBC has found it desirable to cut its budget for children’s radio programmes such as “Go4It”, which is to be axed next week? I must declare an interest as a BBC pensioner. One of my earliest, happiest memories was of sitting in front of the fire with my mother after lunch and listening for that most familiar tune, which your Lordships of a certain age will recognise as the signature tune for “Listen with Mother”. If we are to give children every opportunity to improve their oracy, which must always come before literacy, surely children’s radio must play its part. Last year the BBC spent £460 million on radio, but only £1.6 million went on young listeners. The numbers listening to children’s programmes may not be large but they will be hooked on radio for ever and become dedicated radio-listening adults, so they deserve their space in the schedules. It is patronising to children to suggest that all they want is TV soaps and pop music. They do not. Just because fewer children choose to eat fruit and vegetables, we do not remove them from the menu in school canteens. Children’s radio has an important place in our efforts to ensure that the next generation grows up able to communicate verbally as fluently as possible. I hope that something can be done to stop the rot.

Finally, I draw the Minister’s attention to child trafficking and the report published today by the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, which asks for more investment in police teams to track down victims and bring traffickers to justice. It says that immigration judges and border officials need to be better educated to recognise trafficking and that there needs to be more safe accommodation and psychological support for victims. The committee concludes that:

“In effect, traffickers may be using the care home system for vulnerable children as holding pens for their victims until they are ready to pick them up”.

This must end. UNICEF, in which I declare an interest as a trustee, has for a very long time urged the Government to open their eyes to this abuse. I hope that this report will ensure that the Government do so.

My Lords, I join all noble Lords in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, on initiating this timely and pertinent debate. Like all noble Lords, I believe that to achieve health and prosperity in our country we must ensure that our children and young people, and their well-being, are at the heart of any government priority. I declare an interest as a provider of social care.

I have visited many schools, children’s centres and local community groups, which has enabled me to meet remarkable parents, children and young people—parents seeking to do the best for their children and children wanting to achieve their aspirations, excel and make the most of their lives. One of my most recent visits was to Shadwell children’s centre in Tower Hamlets. Meena Hoque and her team work against a very challenging backdrop and need to be congratulated. Yet, sadly, for many families, while there is a desire to achieve aspirations, unfortunately, personal circumstances greatly reduce opportunity and choice. For some there are no children’s centres or community groups.

Many families have become institutionalised to state dependency, worklessness and poor or zero educational attainment. Children born in these circumstances face such enormous challenges that they often resign themselves to failure and the cycle continues. I join wholeheartedly with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester in arguing that the Government should look closely at inner cities, where problems are aggravated by language difficulties and lack of cultural knowledge.

We have had initiative after initiative and report after report, but very little progress has been made in narrowing the gap to enable real economic mobility to work among the most disadvantaged families. Britain rates 24th out of 29 developed countries in the University of York’s measurement of child well-being, produced in April 2009. My noble friend Lady Morris of Bolton referred to that report. Sadly, we are still failing our children. The Child Poverty Action Group found that countries with a higher GDP tend to have more children reporting high-quality life satisfaction. Britain is one of the exceptions to this rule. Despite a high national GDP, our children report a low level of life satisfaction. France, with a similar GDP, ranks nine places higher. Research into well-being shows us that as economic pressures increase well-being decreases. With Britain’s poor track record of well-being, and the OECD predicting that unemployment in Britain will rise at a faster rate than in other G7 countries, it is crucial that the Government act robustly to slow down the added disadvantage facing struggling families.

UNICEF defines well-being as being adequately clothed, housed, fed, supported, loved and protected and where families and children are not disadvantaged in that their circumstances do not prevent them participating fully in the world and opportunities around them. But well-being is not a list of qualities against which we can tick boxes; it is a matter with real long-term consequences for many people. My noble friend Lady Morris of Bolton passionately recorded the findings of the report. I agree with her that little has changed since it was published. Many children today cite themselves as unhappy, more children are showing signs of depression at an earlier age and the lack of participation in collective activities has brought isolation and created rising obesity.

Through his excellent work with the Centre for Social Justice, my right honourable friend Iain Duncan Smith has shown us that society is becoming more and more broken, and that the state alone cannot hope to fix it without individuals being supported to take responsibility and play an active part in it. Time and time again we have been shown that children do better and are happier in stable family structures. They are more confident and are more likely to achieve better educational attainment. Therefore, it is vital that in supporting families we ensure that appropriate systems are in place to provide children with the outcomes that we all desire.

Early year support is particularly important to parents and children. The Government plan to create a children’s centre for every community by 2010. In 2007, the target for 2010 was 3,500 children’s centres. Will the Minister say whether this target will be met? Will she also say how centres are being monitored to ensure that they are responding to the needs of the local community? Between 2003 and 2006, the proportion of privately-owned nurseries declined from 78 per cent to 65 per cent. The number of childminders has decreased by nearly 40 per cent since 1997. There has been a continued decline in childminders. Nursery closures arise as the Government have reduced funding to PVI nurseries. While maintained nurseries receive £3,800 per pupil per year, the PVI sector receives just £1,800 per pupil per year. Good quality early years provision is one of the most important steps in equipping families with the information and support they need to bring up their children and to give children the early opportunities to lead a happy and fulfilled childhood. It is certain that if parents are to be encouraged into employment, affordable childcare places will have to be easier to access.

I welcome the Government’s play strategy launched in December 2008, which set out that the Government would invest £235 million over 2008-09 to 2010-11 to develop play facilities for children of all ages. What progress has been made in developing the facilities? How many play facilities do the Government aim to develop by 2011? There are more children suffering on the well-being scale in Britain as British society is more unequal than ever before. This is visibly apparent in the education system. More than 3 million children have left primary school without the basics in maths, reading and writing since Labour came to power. Since 1998, the Government’s expected level 4 in reading, writing and maths at key stage 2 has not been achieved by 3,114,000 children. Last year, almost 230,000 did not achieve this standard. Can the Minister say why she thinks that there has been so much prolonged failure? Will the Government reverse their wish for themed teaching and implement a primary curriculum that is rigorous and protects proper subject teaching?

It is the most vulnerable who are worst affected by this unequal education system. Government figures released in April show that only one child in seven in care reached the Government’s expected standard of educational achievement at the age of 16. The gap in educational achievement at GCSE between children in care and other children has risen again this year and has widened by more than a quarter since 2001. Will the Minister say what the Government are doing to improve the education of children in care? Will they take up the Conservative proposals to set up residential academies to help children in care to fulfil their potential?

Many of the hard-working and bright children I have met at under-performing schools and schools in deprived areas are working incredibly hard to achieve good marks in their GCSEs and A-levels. Teaching staff and head teachers dedicated to teaching their pupils still struggle against the cultures of poor outside experiences. If we wish to create equality, this is an area that needs real will and direction. Children need to have confidence to participate in activities that develop different skills.

I turn briefly to the young people in, or on the edge of, care who are not getting the help they need. Part of this is due to high social worker vacancy rates and part due to excessive bureaucracy. According to figures from the Minister’s own department, 34,000 new children were put on the child protection plan in 2008. Sadly, we tragically saw, with the case of baby Peter, how important it is that children do not get lost in a system mired in bureaucracy and poor training. The lessons of baby P must teach us that the Government must take an axe to social work red tape so that professionals can spend the bulk of their time with children in need, not tied to their desktops. Can the Minister say what the Government are doing to reduce bureaucracy and red tape in social care so that frontline staff are able to do face-to-face work? I put to the Government our suggestion that there should be in place a chief social worker. Will the Minister say whether there are discussions to review requirements needed by social workers to leave their desks and move forward into face to face with multi-agency working?

The 2009 Institute for Fiscal Studies report informs us that the Government would have to spend an additional £4.2 billion to meet the 2010 targets for child poverty reduction. Currently, the Government are on course to miss the target by 600,000 children. Sadly, we in Great Britain have the highest rates in Western Europe of binge drinking, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse and sexually transmitted diseases among our young people. While we have increased in material wealth, we have increasingly become poorer in time and human contact. Children may have the latest hand-held gadget, plasma screen or designer wear, but the loss of family structures, extended families, neighbourhood activities and safe and secure streets constantly threaten the happiness and well-being of our children.

This debate raises many questions. I will listen very carefully to the Minister’s response.

My Lords, I join all noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lady Massey on initiating this debate. She has encouraged us to think about our experience of domestic science. Sitting here, listening to the debate, I recall that, when I started at my comprehensive school in 1972, the girls were allowed to do domestic science but the boys were not. I was so outraged that I was not allowed to do woodwork or metalwork that I organised a little campaign. Shortly afterwards, we were all allowed, boys and girls, to do domestic science or woodwork. I loved my woodwork, as well as my domestic science.

This debate has been a great occasion. I have very much enjoyed—as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, suggested—being chivvied on a range of very important issues. I have listened very carefully to all the contributions made. My noble friends Lady Amos and Lord Griffiths of Burry Port brought to my mind a very important thing that we must all remember to do and that is to celebrate the success and the contribution of our young people in our society. They explained very eloquently the possibilities for communities to nurture and celebrate their young people. We should all do this and the Government should play their part in promoting this. I feel enormously encouraged by their words. I will make sure that when the department looks at plans to develop campaigns to change the perceptions of young people and to work with the children’s commissioners and other stakeholders, it will take note of their words and the example, in particular, of Hackney. To this end, we are also piloting celebration events across the country and looking at what role National Youth Week could play in celebrating the achievement of our young people.

We were all taken with the thoughts of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, and my noble friend Lady McIntosh on the concept of linguistic deprivation. I have to declare an interest as someone who has for many years enjoyed listening to “Go4it” on the motorway back from Wales with my daughter on a Sunday night. The quality and contribution of children’s radio is something that I would be very proud to celebrate. The Government very much support the principle of high-quality children’s radio. We recognise the concern over provision. This has been raised by the independent regulator Ofcom and by the Government’s own interim Digital Britain report, as my noble friend asked. The BBC has a duty, as part of its charter, to provide educational content for children. However, noble Lords are aware that it is up to the BBC to determine how this is provided. I reassure my noble friend Lady Macintosh that we have a very strong commitment to the find your talent initiative. I am very happy to reiterate that and to take note of her comments on quality.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, drew attention to the Bercow review. The Government have committed £12 million to implement the recommendations made by the honourable Member for Buckingham. A further £40 million will support speaking and listening in the early years; we have heard about the Every Child a Talker programme today. Invitations for the commissioning of pathfinders he recommended went out in March. Subsequently, we issued a tender for an organisation to support the communication champion and the communication council.

The noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, talked about the importance of motherhood. I reassure her that the Government have a very strong commitment to the provision of quality childcare, particularly for children in areas of deprivation. As of March 2009, there were more than 1.3 million registered childcare places, more than double the figure in 1997. In 1997 there was one registered childcare place for every eight children; now there is one for four children under the age of eight. Taking into account turnover, at August 2008, more than 664,000 new Ofsted registered places have been created since 1997.

The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, asked about Sure Start children’s centres. These have been evaluated and recognised as being high achieving. We now have 3,000—we celebrated the opening of the 3,000th last week. We expect to achieve 3,500 centres by 2010. That is, I believe, one in every community.

Many noble Lords talked about the importance of getting it right for children in custody. In particular, my noble friend Lady Massey, the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, talked to us most forcefully and eloquently on this subject. We will have further debates on the Bill. Of course, custody for under-18s is a last resort for only the most serious and persistent offenders to prevent offending in the community and to protect the public. The Government have developed a range of non-custodial sentences to deal with young offenders, and we are working hard to reduce the size of the population of young people in custody. I want to put it on the record that we are committed to improving the safety and welfare of all children and young people in custody, and I hear very clearly the noble Lord’s comments about the importance of accountability and responsibility. I look forward to working with him further on taking those thoughts forward.

The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, spoke eloquently about the importance of getting family law right and about the changes to the legal aid system and its impact on children and families, and family lawyers. Child protection is the overriding priority and I am advised that our changes are about redirecting £4.4 million to ensure that some 3,500 child protection cases will receive funding, that there are more than 3,000 family legal aid barristers and that we are confident that their services will not be significantly affected. But I heard loudly her caution—I am very committed to working with family lawyers to make sure that we can make the system work in the best interests of children.

The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, talked about the work going on in CAFCASS. I note very carefully her commitment to put children at the centre of its work and to work with both parents and fathers. However, I am watching very carefully the trends in the level of care proceedings cases and we will be working with all those in the system to see how, as the noble Lord, Lord Laming, recommended, we can reduce delays in the system and deliver the best possible outcomes for children who are potentially to be taken into care.

Many noble Lords talked about looked-after children, including my noble friend Lady Massey, the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, and of course the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal. I absolutely agree that stability is one of the most fundamental issues and we need to ensure that looked-after children can experience stability in their care placements. We have, as the Select Committee recently pointed out, a very comprehensive Care Matters programme which is looking at every aspect of the care system to ensure that we can achieve the best possible outcomes for looked-after children. Yes, the outcomes for them are improving in terms of stability, educational outcomes and the number of young people who leave the care system going into jobs and suitable accommodation. However, this is far from anything like enough. Much more needs to be done, and we are committed to doing that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, talked about child trafficking. I will look at the report published today and we will take it extremely seriously. It is a very worrying issue and, like her, it concerns me deeply.

The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, talked about the importance of mental health services. We are issuing revised statutory guidance on promoting the health and well-being of looked-after children. This talks about CAMHS and we will be involved in a consultation.

My noble friend Lady Uddin spoke about the impact of drugs and alcohol on families and children. We are extremely committed to tackling this. The family intervention projects that we promote are being significantly invested in and are creating some significant results. We hope that they can be more widely implemented across our communities.

However, my noble friend Lady Massey started this debate by talking about a report card. This is something that as a department we are very interested in looking at. When we talk about looking at the results from our schools and education system, I am very interested in how a report card could be used in the education system to take account of well-being. I hope that we will be able to debate that in the future.

As many people have asked: what do children think and have to say about their experiences? The department’s TellUs3 survey involving 150,000 children in England is a very sharp instrument for understanding what children think. It found that 69 per cent of young people say that they feel happy about life—sometimes we can have a glass that is half full. Some 90 per cent agreed that England is a good place to grow up in. Sadly, I am talking just about England, although I am sure that Wales and Scotland would reflect a similar experience. Despite all the changes that have occurred in society over recent decades, a recent poll conducted by the BBC suggests that three-quarters of British families are optimistic about the future; that is 24 per cent higher than when the same question was asked in 1964. It is worth bearing that context in mind when we debate support for the family, children and child well-being.

This House is very well aware that the Children’s Plan puts children and families at the centre of everything that the Government do. It is the first of its kind. The plan is underpinned by the general principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The plan aims to give every child the best chance in life and to make this country the best in the world to grow up in. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, the plan is underpinned by the widely acclaimed Every Child Matters outcomes. These are about children being healthy, safe, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution, and achieving economic well-being, which has featured strongly in this debate. Those outcomes provide us with a means of measuring our progress towards that objective. It is important to remember that these aims reinforce each other. As my noble friend Lady Massey pointed out, it is about how all this meshes into improving the real experience of children. A child who is healthy is likely to do better at school; a child who enjoys life is likely to go on to make a positive contribution to the lives of others.

We do not achieve our aims unless we can create a new culture that puts the child or young person at the centre of the process—as the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said as regards CAFCASS—and giving them more say about issues that affect them. Listening and responding to what they tell us is important. That in turn will require everyone providing services for children and families to work more collaboratively by sharing information and operating across professional boundaries. That is an essential theme of our approach. That is what we are aiming to empower the children’s workforce to do through our 2020 children’s workforce strategy, which is all about helping to create common language and a social work profession that is empowered, knows its role and contribution, and is not tied up in red tape, as the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, suggested. That is how we will deliver on the commitments to our communities that we made in the Children’s Plan.

That is the approach we are taking on children’s health, for example. Earlier this year we published the first ever children’s health strategy; Healthy Lives, Brighter Futures, setting out the high-quality health services children and their families have a right to expect from birth through to the age of 19. We commissioned a review of child and adolescent mental health services, and have accepted the majority of the review’s recommendations. We are working on all of them, including individualised care packages for vulnerable children, which I know the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, is very concerned about. We have also made £60 million available to fund a programme of targeted mental health services in schools. That is about taking a universal service and making the most of helping children and young people access special mental health services.

We are also working across Government to tackle obesity, which my noble friend Lady Billingham talked about and is one of the most pressing health concerns affecting young people. Since the publication of the Government’s £372 million Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives strategy in January 2008, we have introduced tough food standards in primary schools, and we are extending them to secondary and special schools in the autumn. We have highlighted and tightened up regulations on broadcast advertising of foods high in fat, salt and sugar. But we cannot act on obesity simply by looking at what children eat. We also need to encourage them to be more active, so our action on obesity goes hand in hand with our action on play and sport. As we have already heard, the Children’s Plan announced the biggest ever investment in outdoor active play by the Government: £235 million over three years. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, that we have achieved 500 new or refurbished play schemes. We are on target to achieve the plan’s results. That will allow every local authority to develop or improve play areas in line with local needs.

We have also improved opportunities for high-quality sport and PE within schools, with 90 per cent of five to 16 year-olds now doing two hours a week. I cannot comment on the daylight robbery that my noble friend Lady Billingham spoke about, but I agree that sport is key. I do not wish to stray out of my knowledge or expertise, but this debate will be continued in the House of Lords. As I have seen during my time here, it raises passions.

Everyone here will be familiar with the circumstances that led to the commissioning of the recent report by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, on safeguarding procedures. We are all extremely mindful of the tragedy and the tragic death of Baby Peter. We have promised to act swiftly to implement his recommendations. As the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, said, it is essential that all 58 recommendations are acted on swiftly, and we are committed to doing that.

One of the noble Lord’s most significant conclusions was that childcare professionals and everyone else with a safeguarding role must work more closely together if children are to be protected; again, the theme of my noble friend Lady Massey comes out across a number of issues. The noble Lord, Lord Laming, recommended that we have in place robust policies on which to build. He looked carefully at the policy foundation of Every Child Matters and recommended that there is a consensus among professionals and all those involved in safeguarding that the Every Child Matters reforms set the right direction. However, while there is excellent practice in many areas of the country, in others the picture is less good. We recognise that, which is why we have taken action.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, suggested, I am particularly glad to restate the Government’s commitment to reforming the social work profession. We agree that we must move further and faster in order to make arrangements in this country for protecting children and to make sure that they are the best in the world. It is perhaps in the area of economic well-being that the benefits of working across boundaries are most obvious. Money is not the cure for all ills, but families with inadequate financial resources are likely to find the normal challenges of raising children even harder. As my noble friend Lady Hollis said, as eloquently as ever, we have made a commitment to eradicating child poverty within a generation, a target that has not been dropped. I am proud that we can show real progress, but we have much more to do. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester made clear the challenges that we face.

The Child Poverty Unit is leading this work across Whitehall, and between 1998-99 and 2007-8, 600,000 children have been lifted out of relative poverty. The measures announced in the 2007 Budget will lift a further 500,000 more children out of poverty. We will be receiving in this House a child poverty Bill, which I hope will make the ending of child poverty a goal of future UK Governments.

In the economic downturn, our priority is to support all families and to protect jobs. Significant additional support for lower income families has been announced over the past year, including lower VAT, and a further £25 tax cut for basic rate taxpayers. Those are contributions. Tax credits benefit around 6 million families and 10 million children. We have brought forward increases to child benefit, which is important to support all families across the UK.

In many ways you could argue children have never lived so well, but we must recognise that there is an enormous amount more to do. This has been an extremely important debate. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Massey for introducing it and for setting out her themes and making an important opportunity for the Government to receive some gentle chivvying, some important lessons and some contributions. I look forward to working with all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate to make sure that we can make this the best country in the world for children to grow up in.

My Lords, I hope I will not again be the victim of technological problems. I was hoping that this microphone would deliver the test score, but it has not. As I expected, this debate has been brilliant and varied. We have had everything, including a bit of singing. I thank all noble Lords who have taken part for their many wise words and for their obvious practical experience of the issues. I could not possibly acknowledge all those contributions, but I will write to noble Lords afterwards.

There has been great emphasis on vulnerable children and examples of success as well as of shortcomings. We should not forget that not all children are from chaotic backgrounds. We need to be concerned for all children. Those who have special needs clearly need special interventions. We have a duty to make sure that those interventions are fast and effective. We should also celebrate the achievements of our young people. I am glad that there has been an emphasis on language development, on creativity, including sport, on personal relationships, on equality including gender equality, and the experience of children in custody and in care. As I said earlier, the connections between services, systems and integration is vital, as is vision and commitment at a local level, which was well described by my noble friend Lady Amos.

I thank the Minister for her sympathetic response. The issues raised here today will not go away. The children’s lobby is persistent. Government commitment is well recognised but there is some way to go. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

To call attention to the opportunities for the United Kingdom tourism industry’s growth and greater contribution to all parts of the economy; and to move for papers.

My Lords, I am pleased to secure this debate at a time when there is so much doom and gloom around us. As I am the chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Tourism and was previously the shadow Minister for both sport and tourism for five years, I continue to have a major interest in the topic under discussion.

By now many people have felt the effects of the crunch, but I think that most people recognise that the situation has little to do with the management of the UK economy and that it is a global problem. However, the purpose of this debate is to lift some of the doom and gloom that lingers around us and instead highlight opportunities for growth in the tourism industry and its greater contribution to sustainable economic growth. As your Lordships know, tourism is no small industry. Last year it was worth £86 billion and constituted 8.7 per cent of the UK’s GDP—three times more than, say, the agricultural sector. It really does touch the parts that other industries do not reach. Every constituency, local authority, and region benefits from our visitor economy. The tourism industry creates jobs at all skill and wage levels. It regenerates communities, both urban and rural, and cannot be outsourced or transferred overseas.

In the 18th century we had vast agricultural, wool and linen industries. Now tourism is the only one that has grown. In the 20th century we had vast manufacturing industries, such as coal and steel. Now tourism is the only one not in decline and which has grown. In the past few decades we have seen our call centres, IT and technological industries grow here and then be outsourced overseas, but tourism remains here and grows here. With such a great legacy, it is no surprise that the tourism industry directly supports 1.4 million jobs and indirectly supports 2.7 million jobs, which is 8.5 per cent of the country's workforce.

That is not to say that tourism has been immune from the effects of the downturn. However, recent research by VisitBritain and Visit London shows that despite the gloom and doom, British residents still want to take a holiday, increasingly in the UK. After all, we have great attractions here: great heritage, history, theatre, sport and, increasingly, world-class restaurants. We have never been more affordable to our potential overseas visitors. It is pleasing to read some good news from some financial experts. Steve Johnson, deputy editor of the Financial Times, stated recently that the Budget will give a boost in the City at the expense of the rival markets of Luxembourg, Dublin and the Cayman Islands. Only last week, the Daily Telegraph offered 10 good reasons for being more cheerful. Also, at the beginning of the month, the Financial Times published a survey that suggested that consumer confidence and optimism was at its highest all year.

I urge the Government to capitalise on those sentiments, because domestic tourism accounts for 78 per cent of total UK tourism expenditure. The relative position of sterling against the world currencies means that this country represents better value than it has for years. We are 20 per cent less expensive for Americans than at this time last year and 37 per cent less expensive for Chinese and Japanese visitors.

Let us not forget tourism in other forms. The UK generates foreign earnings of about £1.5 billion from 500,000 students who study in this country. More importantly, there is strong evidence that previous students often return to the UK with friends and family, as tourists or on business. Travel business to the UK constitutes 24.5 per cent, or £9.1 billion of total overnight tourism expenditure. Many businesses have begun to promote eco-friendly practices through water conservation, energy-efficiency, water management, biodiversity and recycling campaigns. Major hotel companies have introduced low carbon initiatives, which the Carbon Trust has estimated will have reduced CO₂ emissions by between 6 per cent and 19 per cent.

Those statistics are in themselves impressive, but the tourism industry as a whole could be in much better shape. It could create more jobs. It could deliver more revenue to the Exchequer from our overseas visitors. It could equip young people with skills and careers and generate more civic pride in more of our cities, as we had in Liverpool last year. If only the Government were to give it the support, the political and financial investment, that it deserves, we would be in a better state.

The British tourism framework review, launched in February, revealed that the Government could create real jobs in all parts of the country, increase revenues to the Exchequer and obtain the highest return on investment available. They could achieve all that in weeks, not months, by increasing investment immediately in the marketing of this country overseas. It must be remembered that VisitBritain was voted the best tourism board in the world by its peers and a panel of leading travel writers. It has representatives in 36 countries around the world and has expanded in India, China, eastern Europe and south-east Asia.

Past examples have shown that there is much to gain from government investment. A very good example comes from the campaign implemented by VisitBritain after the foot and mouth disease outbreak and the 9/11 attacks, which significantly decrease tourism in 2001. The campaign consisted of £20 million from Treasury reserve funding, match-funded by the industry to create a £40 million campaign in Europe and north America. Within a year, the campaign had generated 1 million additional visitors, who spent £500 million on goods and services in the United Kingdom. Those visitors maintained the jobs of about 12,000 British workers and returned an estimated £90 million straight to the Exchequer.

The willingness of the Government to invest was reflected in January, when they held a tourism summit in Liverpool to mark the end of the city of culture festival. At that summit, the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and the Minister for Tourism acknowledged that the Government needed to support the sector more and asked for the industry to supply the Government with a list of priorities. Immediately, the industry responded to that request and submitted its priorities, which included tactical marketing campaigns, greater co-operation in public expenditure on tourism, financial sensitivity to seasonal tourism, and the resolution of regulatory issues such as visa fees and air passenger duty. I urge the Government to review each of those recommendations without more ado.

I end with a historical perspective. Forty years ago, a Labour Minister, the former Secretary of State, Anthony Crosland, recognised the importance of the tourism industry and its contribution to all parts of the economy, with the introduction of the Development of Tourism Act, which, incidentally, is the only tourism Act on the statute book to date. It brought into being the national tourism boards of the United Kingdom and established the framework under which tourism has grown. In the debate on tourism on 22 January in this House, no credit was given to Anthony Crosland for introducing the Act, and I am very pleased to put the record straight today. Forty years on, we have another opportunity to invest for success and growth, which will benefit all parts of our local, regional and national economies.

We must seize this opportunity to support one of our most dynamic, sustainable and home-grown industries. Tourism must be taken more seriously by Governments. Admittedly, it is a difficult industry to represent itself, because it is so diverse, but it will need a strong Secretary of State to bang the Cabinet table on its behalf.

My Lords, I declare some interests. I am a trustee of two castle tourist attractions and chairman of the Caithness Archaeological Trust and am involved in the gathering to be held in Edinburgh shortly.

I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, for introducing the debate because, sadly, I was unable to take part in the debate in January introduced by the noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, who will speak shortly. It was interesting that that debate concentrated on the lack of interest by government in tourism; that was highlighted quite strongly. Yesterday, we were discussing carbon emissions as part of the Climate Change Act orders. It occurred to me that when visitors come to Britain they need to come either by plane, by ferry or by train and that we are a long, thin island that requires a lot of travelling. It occurred to me that the Government were seeking to meet the targets on carbon emissions by reducing the funding for tourism, so that people would not come. Can the Minister confirm whether that is a hidden government policy?

This country has lost its traditional economic and industrial strengths. Even the one shining post-industrial light, financial services, has faded. The Government are now driving the wealth generators away from our shores, so increasingly, people will grasp at tourism as the new saviour. Sadly, the mentality generally matches that grasping: pack them in, stack them high and sell the brand quick. That may be right in some areas, but all the surveys that we have carried out in the north of Scotland show that people want exactly the opposite: quality, not quantity. Most of them go there because they cannot find what they want elsewhere.

When discussing tourism in the UK, it is too simplistic—but tempting—to focus only on the main cities and prime destinations. To produce a solution for them and think that solves the problem for the whole of the UK is a road to ruin. Tourism is a multifaceted business that is international, national and regional. It encompasses large, medium and small-sized businesses, which, although often run by volunteers, form an important and too often neglected part of the mosaic, as they do not have a strong, united voice. It also covers hotels, bed and breakfasts and restaurants as well as visitor destinations. It is, as the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, has just said, very diverse.

There need to be a number of solutions. To make them the success that they should be necessitates strong links and a common sense of direction between central government, local government, development agencies, statutory agencies and the private sector. Those links need to be flexible to accommodate the different requirements of the various sectors and allow the niche markets to play their full part. Regrettably, those links have become too fragmented. Consequently, the agencies have become much too rigid and inflexible and this is causing huge damage to the industry.

Even though the average length of stay and spend per night by visitors is less in Scotland than in England, tourism is still hugely important, especially in the Highlands, where 14 per cent of all employment is tourist-related, compared with the Scottish average of 9 per cent. Thus, the further north one goes, the greater is the dependence on tourism, but the shorter is the tourist season. It is even more necessary to maximise the opportunities that we have. Due to the distinctive built heritage, culture, history, food and drink, each area is different and thus should be encouraged to create its own niche market, to which people would travel and pay to see.

Let me take Caithness as an example. A recent survey showed that most people came for its iconic landscape and scenery. Furthermore, 33 per cent of our visitors said they had visited archaeological sites, compared with 17 per cent for the Highlands as a whole. In the past six years, the economy of the area has benefited from more than £2 million, due to the archaeological work that has been carried out by the private sector.

We have proved to the Highland Council that there is a good economic return from the preservation and proper presentation of our old stones. Indeed, there is still a huge potential to improve facilities so as to maximise the enjoyment of the visitor as well as to improve that economic return. However, it cannot be done by the private sector alone. Other agencies and the local authority must play their part. In particular, the local authority must remember that the many visitors who come to see the archaeological monuments in their natural setting will not come to see them if they are beside a wind farm or next to a modern kit-built house.

Central government holds the key to a successful industry and needs to show its full commitment to improving tourism. Planning is one of its roles. It has to be even more mindful of the importance of tourism to rural areas as most of its members come from cities and towns. It also needs to work closely with local government to ensure that the appropriate travel infrastructure is in place so that visitors can access all parts of the country easily, which is not the case now.

Turning to the other agencies involved in tourism, I noted that in his reply to the British tourism framework review report, Achieving the Full Potential of the Visitor Economy, the Secretary of State says:

“Britain’s national tourism agency will need to provide a core marketing capability for its strategic partners, including industry, the national tourism organisations in England, Scotland and Wales, VisitLondon and the RDAs, in addressing global markets”.

The national tourism organisation for Scotland is VisitScotland. Unfortunately, many tourism organisations have lost faith in that agency and are doing their own thing because they feel that they have been paying a lot of money for no reward. This is a major problem. There needs to be a much better and closer working relationship between VisitScotland and the diverse local communities and tourist organisations if the Secretary of State’s and the Tourism Minister’s words are not to become just another sound bite.

One example of where that co-operation, after a slow start, is now working well is the support VisitScotland is giving to the private sector, which is organising the largest get together of the Scottish diaspora, with the gathering to be held in Edinburgh, on the last weekend of July. Not since the visit of George IV in 1822 will Edinburgh have seen such a spectacle.

VisitScotland has been amazed at the pull that ancestral tourism has and the gathering is expected to boost the economy by £8 million, which is 20 per cent of the expected economic benefit of the whole year of the homecoming. The interest that has been shown from around the world has been generated not by digital marketing and associated e-commerce, as the Minister put it in the same reply I referred to earlier, but by the private sector getting out on the stump and proactively marketing. Encouraging people to visit the UK is not done just by sitting in an office macro-managing tourism, but by getting out there and being physically where the markets are.

Earlier I explained that archaeology and heritage can be an attractive and economically beneficial niche market. Another government agency that needs to look closely at its working methods is the Heritage Lottery Fund. It is not just that its budget has been slashed to help pay for, in some parts, the much resented and increasingly taxpayer-funded London Olympics, but it does not appear to be interested in heritage anymore. It has become too inflexible in its requirements and criteria. Without its support, the best of our heritage, in the more remote parts of our island, will not be preserved. That, in turn, will have repercussions for tourism and the economy.

What we need is a diverse tourism industry that puts a premium on taste, not tat; that leaves visitors feeling spoilt, not soiled; and that leaves a land that is fit, if not for heroes, then at least returnees. Too much of our tourism falls badly short of these basic criteria. I appreciate how difficult it is to pull all the sometimes competing strands of tourism together but unless a much more determined effort is made by all involved, with a strong lead given by the Government, Britain will continue to decline in importance as a tourist destination and our economy will be much the poorer.

My Lords, I, too, should like to say how grateful I am to the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, for giving us another opportunity to debate the state of British tourism. I will be endorsing much of what he said.

Since our debate in January, VisitBritain has published its British tourism review, entitled, Achieving the Full Potential of the Visitor Economy. This, again, was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Pendry. It was commissioned by the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, James Purnell, and is far and away the most comprehensive and objective report on the state of British tourism so far. Among many other things, the report regrets—as I think we all probably do—that successive governments have paid so little attention to tourism and, even now, are reducing VisitBritain’s marketing budget. I would urge the Minister to take special note of this report, commissioned by one of his colleagues, and try to persuade the Government to take on board some of the report’s considerations and recommendations.

Three important facts emerge from the report which the Government must surely regard as significant. The first, which the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, has already mentioned, is that tourism is Britain’s fourth largest industry—it is Scotland’s second. It employs 1.4 million people full time and another million or so part time, and contributes £86 billion to the economy. This in itself is surely a good enough reason for the Government to take tourism seriously.

Secondly, easily the largest number of small businesses that start up yearly come from the tourist industry. Some of these are very small, with turnovers of less than £100,000 a year, but in a time of high unemployment tourism offers a relatively cheap and practical way for budding entrepreneurs to start up a business on their own. Surely the Government should actively encourage this.

Thirdly, a thriving tourist industry—it looks as though the tourist industry will thrive this year and even benefit from the recession—can absorb large numbers of the unemployed, if only on a seasonal basis. So often in this business, a cheerful and friendly disposition is far more valuable than a university degree. Yet despite these important facts, successive Governments have allowed our tourist industry to fall further and further behind our competition—other countries. Relative to the size of their populations, far more people go to Ireland and New Zealand than to Britain. You would expect Britain to have as many, if not more, attractions than either of those two countries, but no: it is because the Irish and New Zealand Governments believe tourism to be important to their economies, and they are prepared to spend money promoting themselves and making certain that the visitor has a good experience when he gets there.

In this time of recession, with a weaker pound and fewer Britons going abroad for their holidays, this is the ideal time for our Government to invest in their tourist industry, not cut its budget. Apart from increasing VisitBritain’s budget so that it can more effectively market Britain throughout the world, the Government should also through their various agencies encourage and assist new small businesses to start up—new craft shops, new cafes, specialist tourist operators, coach services, local museums, farmhouse bed and breakfasts and all sorts of new visitor attractions and sporting activities.

What we most lack in comparison with other countries are tourist information centres. This is one of my hobbyhorses; I feel very strongly about it. There are so few of them now, which is particularly noticeable at gateways to the country, particularly airports. A tourist information centre is very much more than a place where you can pick up a brochure and ask for train times. It should proclaim to the world: “You are welcome here. We want you to learn more about our country. We want you to get the most out of your visit here, and when you have more time we want you to come back again”.

In a recent survey by VisitBritain, Britain came 13th out of 14 countries that were tested in its reputation for friendliness to the visitor. This is very shaming. A handy visitor centre manned by efficient, knowledgeable and above all friendly staff could do more than almost anything else to improve our image. Yet more and more of the still existing TICs are being closed down. The reason that is given is that they are costly to run and usually located on expensive prime sites, although there is no point in having a TIC if it is hidden away. They are usually partly or largely financed by local authorities, which are being forced to cut their costs. Some argue that because everything is done on the internet nowadays, they are not as necessary as they once were, but this completely misses the point. Tourism is a people business. The visitor wants human contact and friendly help. He cannot get that from his computer: at least, I do not think that he can. I ask the Minister to consider trying to find some way of helping local authorities to keep their TICs open and, where appropriate, to open new ones, starting of course with the airports.

Finally, I shall quote from the excellent report to which I referred and which declares:

“a belief that it is time for tourism to be better recognised for what it is—one of the dynamos of the British economy, reaching parts of the economy other industries cannot reach”.

I hope that the Minister will seriously consider adopting some of the report’s recommendations.

My Lords, six years ago, my noble kinsman, the noble Lord, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, spoke in a similar debate that was also opened by the noble Lord, Lord Pendry. He said that he had been speaking on tourism in this House for 50 years. I wish that he was speaking today as he has accumulated so much experience of tourism, both in Parliament and in his own successful ventures at Beaulieu. I have no pretension to follow him, except that I also seek to promote the potential of the south-west, in which he played such an outstanding role.

The 2003 debate was held at a time of great uncertainty because of the effects of 9/11 and Iraq, the foot and mouth outbreak and SARS. It was held soon after the Government had announced the creation of VisitBritain. Yet most speakers agreed, as they seem to do now, that the Government were not giving enough support to one of their most important industries at a vulnerable time. Now we are in a recession and the same is true today. The words of the noble Lord, Lord Montagu, seem highly relevant. He said:

“Tourism has always been vulnerable to major disruptions, and the cost to our industry and to jobs can be enormous. We need an early commitment from the Government to be prepared to provide a long-term investment to help Britain to improve the tourism infrastructure and win its share of demand against ever-growing competition from other nations. More than ever before, we cannot afford to neglect our tourism potential. We do so at our peril”.—[Official Report, 30/4/03; col. 746.]

The then Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Davies, who was here a moment ago, had no money to offer that day. His response was in kind. He pointed to the VisitBritain merger, the increased role of the regional development agencies and partnership with industry. It will be interesting to see whether our new Minister can provide anything more tangible. Meanwhile, the new flagship VisitBritain has itself had to endure an 18 per cent cut over three years and we have a diminishing share of the world market.

Can we at least expect the Minister to reaffirm the Government’s support for recommendations 5, 6 and 7 of the British Tourism Framework Review, which urge the raising of the profile of tourism in national policy? This seems to me essential considering how low the Government have allowed it to fall. The DCMS response is quite positive. The new advisory council and the cross-Whitehall group are obviously a step forward but results will have to come from political will power as much as from setting up new machinery.

In a recession, the tourism industry will need to show a lot of ingenuity and I am pleased to say that in the south-west this is happening. The quiet corner of the west country where I live, a few miles from the sea, has woken up to a completely new concept of tourism, namely the Jurassic Coast, now declared a world heritage site. The entire west Dorset and east Devon coastline is fast becoming another wonder of the world—a geological walk through time, spanning the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. I spent part of last Sunday in a newly discovered pub overlooking the Chesil Bank at Portland, sipping my Jurassic beer. The Olympic sailing events promised at Weymouth and Portland in 2010 will provide a huge opportunity for tourist attractions along this coastline and Dorset must make the most of it.

The coast nearest to me beyond Bridport is apparently Lower Jurassic and 180 million years old. As a result, Lyme Regis and Charmouth have become great centres for old fossils, appropriately enough perhaps for my generation, and for many young people. The 630-mile-long south-west coast path from Poole to Minehead, assuming that it emerges unscathed from the Marine and Coastal Access Bill, is already more or less open to serious walkers.

I remember driving foreign tourists as a student and feeling exasperated that they always wanted to go to the same places—Stratford, Broadway, Bath. Perhaps it was the hall porter who used to make those decisions for them. I notice the VisitBritain website still takes you automatically to Bath on its west country map, and then straight across to Cornwall. If you persevere, however, and click on Jurassic, you will now virtually explore the gateway towns along the Dorset coast.

I would like to hear how the Minister feels about the increased role of the RDAs. I confess I am suspicious that a lot of the regional idea is about strategy and partnership and not a lot about helping people in the tourist industry. For example, I find on the Partners for England website the following statement:

“A national tourism strategy for England is a priority for Partners for England. One of the key outcomes of the British Tourism Framework Review is that VisitEngland should work with Partners for England to create and deliver a ‘bottom-up’ national strategy”.

And then it says:

“This area of the site will be expanded in due course to include information about strategy development”.

Why can we not read about real support for people involved in the business of tourism and not always about strategy? I sympathise with the comment of the noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, about the TICs. Tourism promotion support must be effective at local as well as regional and national level. We need new ideas which recognise the commitment of practitioners on the ground. I have my doubts whether the RDAs can achieve this. All the southern RDAs have suffered cuts this year and the south-west RDA is short of about £50 million. It did allocate £7.12 million to a project within the Jurassic Coast framework programme but announced in January that it will be withdrawing from some of that—from proposed visitor centres in Exmouth and Seaton.

In Dorset, we have severe communications and transport problems common to many rural communities, including poor mobile telephone and broadband coverage. Local authorities are not doing enough to overcome the delays and costs created by planning and listed building regulations, and all the obstacles which have blighted excellent new tourist initiatives, such as Destination Dorset. But there is a government responsibility here too. I know that the Minister is very familiar with this subject, but does he accept that there is a digital urban-rural divide and that communications failures are a new form of social deprivation? People are even moving house to find broadband.

Historic houses in remote rural settings make an important contribution to the wider economy. I declare an interest as a member of the Historic Houses Association and the Country Land and Business Association, and I am the joint owner of a tourist attraction in west Dorset. When my wife and I took on an historic house 25 years ago we received a handful of visitors and we now receive about 10,000 each year. We were proud to be named by Country Life as the nation's finest manor house. We enjoy it and mostly it works well, but we do it at some personal cost. Managing a property like this, along with all the undertakings that we have to give, is extremely hard work. The Government could help us by imposing the minimum of restrictions. Historic houses now receive some 16 million visitors per annum, and more than four in five visitors to the UK are likely to see an historic building. Yet the Government insist on tighter regulation of this sector. Licensing fees, permissions for special events and temporary structures, form-filling, questionnaires, and changing the trading regime for bed and breakfast accommodation, which is hitting a lot of people, are all of concern to members of the HHA and the CLA like us.

In conclusion, my concern in entering this debate is that the Government should think harder about the people involved in tourism and remove some of the negative effects of their wider fiscal and economic policies. Tourism is the public face of our nation: it is the face we are proud to put on. Support for tourism should not be all about coastal gateways, showcases and visitor centres, but also should encourage the individuals who meet tourists every day in their own homes, the small businesses and the attractions that make up the fabric of our national life.

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to my noble friend Lord Pendry for initiating this debate on tourism. This framework review on British tourism has, as has already been mentioned, information and statistics greater than I can possibly express in this debate, but I recommend it as a reading for your Lordships. As we should all be aware, tourism is vital to the economy of the United Kingdom. Last year, spending by overseas visitors was estimated to be more than £16 billion, which came from the 32 million people who visited this country. With the decline of the value of the pound, Britain is likely to remain a major tourist destination even during the recession.

This year, domestic tourism is also likely to grow. More and more, the evidence is that Britons will turn away from expensive foreign holidays and will look to holidaying at home. A recent survey by VisitEngland found that 21 per cent of people who went on holiday abroad in 2008 would consider looking to the United Kingdom for a break in 2009 to save money. This is a golden opportunity for the domestic British tourist industry. As we know, the whole economy benefits from a successful tourist industry. It benefits the local and national transport operators as most tourists do not take or use their own transport when on holiday. It benefits the local food manufacturers who produce goods that are either sold in the locality or used directly by hotels and restaurants in the tourist areas. It also benefits the distribution companies, which transport the goods and services needed in the various tourist locations up and down the country.

Retailing in particular is both a major beneficiary of tourism and vital to its success, whether it is food or non-food items for self-catering holidays, or simply a whole variety of things associated with being on holiday. One thing is certain: when people are on holiday, they spend a lot of money in the local shops. It is estimated at 15 per cent of the total holiday spend. In fact, the whole shopping experience is often an integral part of the overall holiday itself. Retail and tourism are clearly closely linked, and it is true to say that, without a vibrant retail sector underpinning it, the tourist destination could fail.

Tourism is also a major source of employment. Directly, as has been said, it employs around 1.5 million people. When one adds on those jobs indirectly linked to tourism, such as shop staff, the figure is considerably more. This is almost 10 per cent of all people in employment, and it is growing in a developing sector.

Look at how it has changed in our lifetime. Not only have the standard and variety of accommodation greatly improved, but there have been many other developments. We have seen the arrival of large theme parks such as Alton Towers, which has become one of the best theme parks in the world. With an international reputation, it has become a must-visit attraction for young, domestic and overseas tourists.

We have seen museums changed beyond all recognition, with many becoming hands-on attractions, with lots to do and explore. Many innovative ideas have been developed and come into practice, such as Legoland. Whole parts of run-down cities have been transformed to reflect the display and heritage of the city itself, such as the Albert Dock development in Liverpool, with its museums, shops and other attractions.

However, there still remains great potential for the tourist sector. As technology develops, new things will be possible that we are unaware of today. In the mean time, we have a tourist opportunity just around the corner. I am, of course, referring to the Olympic Games, to be held in London in 2012. It is a chance to show the world the attractions not just of London, but of the whole of the United Kingdom as well. The Olympic Games could be a massive boost to the UK tourist industry and the economy itself; if successfully sold, they could bring benefits for years to come.

Tourism is vital for this country. It is a major employer; it boosts many sectors of the economy. Therefore, it is an industry that we should do all that we can to support and advance for the benefit of the whole of the economy. As I live in the north west, I trust that I will have the indulgence of your Lordships to be somewhat parochial in drawing attention to Manchester’s contribution to tourism.

Tourism continues to play a vital role in the success of the Manchester city region. The latest industry figures have revealed that it generated £5.6 billion for the Greater Manchester economy in 2007. The Office for National Statistics has confirmed that during the same period, Manchester remained the third most popular destination in the United Kingdom with 971,000 international visitors, a growth of 6 per cent on the previous year. The significant investment made in Manchester airport has played a key role in this success, and together with the North West Regional Development Agency, the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities, and strong private sector partnerships nurtured over the past 10 years, Manchester is now well placed to improve its position.

Manchester can make a strong cultural offering. The second Manchester Festival takes place this summer and the city is building on its strong sporting tradition. It was home to the very successful Great Britain cycling team at last year’s Beijing Olympics. Manchester United and Manchester City football teams feature strongly in what the city region has to offer, and the city has built a world-class sporting events programme which covers events from the UEFA cup final, the FINA world short course swimming championships and the UCI world track cycling championships.

Finally, I hope that the Government will take what has been expressed in this debate into serious consideration. As president of the Manchester East County Scout Council, I have a long-standing commitment early this evening in the north-west, and therefore I hope your Lordships will forgive me for not remaining until the end of this debate. But I will read Hansard thoroughly on Monday.

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and I agree that it is a good idea to promote the north-west. This has been a wide-ranging debate and our general thanks are due to the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, for introducing it so comprehensively. As he pointed out, tourism is a vast industry generating great economic activity and much needed foreign exchange. It is very labour intensive and requires large long-term investment, especially in hotels.

We are all dependent to a certain extent—I know that I am—on the good information produced by the British Hospitality Association, which represents the entire hospitality industry and produces excellent background material. I have spoken in many tourism debates, including one held this time last year, but unfortunately not in the one in January that several noble Lords mentioned. I agree entirely with other speakers that the Government have done very little for tourism recently. This is especially curious in the current economic situation, as the Prime Minister is always talking about spending our way out of recession. For example, the hotel industry has invested £25 billion over the past five years, but last year the Government abolished the hotel building allowance and many other capital allowances. That seems to be rather a contradiction.

In the shorter term, as other noble Lords have asked, why has there been no encouragement for people, both domestically and internationally, to spend their holidays in the UK in view of the pound’s weakness against both the dollar and the euro? The noble Lord, Lord Pendry, mentioned a good example from several years ago. The Government invested a small amount of money which in a year generated 1 million tourists who spent over £500 million.

However, another example of muddled thinking is the fact that the reduction of VAT to 15 per cent coincided with an increase in excise duty on beer, which meant that the counter price in public houses was completely unaffected but the administrative burden vastly increased. Whenever I can, I take the opportunity to spend time walking in the countryside. In the middle of the walk, I often stop at a pub, which is usually run by a small team, frequently a husband and wife. The result of the Government’s policy, as we have seen in the press, has been frequent closures of what are in fact social gathering centres for local communities. A great deal needs to be done.

Another strong recommendation from the BHA is to introduce daylight savings, which it suggests would increase tourism and leisure expenditure by £3.5 billion per year as well as impacting on road safety and CO₂ emissions. This has been suggested many times in this House—Bills have been introduced and I have spoken on it a huge number of times—but the Government have always ducked it.

Generally, as other noble Lords have said, we need to reduce bureaucratic expenditure and the very numerous bureaucratic rules and get people back into productive work. Restaurants and hospitality present a huge job-creating opportunity. The Government should pay more attention to this and to the excellent and regular reports and recommendations of the BHA.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Pendry for initiating this debate. As we have heard, the number of people deemed to be employed in the tourism industry depends on what activities are considered to be part of the industry, which is why figures quoted often differ considerably. The Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee in the other place said in its report last year that the tourism industry employed between 1.4 million and 2.1 million people in the UK, depending on what was recognised as falling within the scope of the sector. According to the Select Committee, there is a lack of adequate data about the tourism sector on which to base strategic and management decisions, although some progress is being made to improve the situation.

For the most part, the industry is not well paid, except for those at the top end. Seasonal labour and part-time working are key features. Its employees will be among those who have benefited most from the introduction of the minimum wage and they will also benefit from the recent change in relation to tips. Labour turnover is 30 per cent and costs the sector, it is estimated, nearly £900 million a year.

One would like to think that a key priority for the industry as a whole is to find ways of improving levels of remuneration and creating better pay and career structures, although I accept that that is a more difficult change to make for a labour-intensive industry than for one where labour costs are less significant. Around 60 per cent of the workforce in the hospitality sector nationwide is from overseas; in London, the figure is around 80 per cent. I hope that a further priority in this sector will be to take steps to encourage the locally unemployed to take up positions in the sector as they arise.

Tourism is an industry that has seen considerable change in recent years in some areas, with the consolidation of smaller organisations into major tour companies directly offering the full range of tourism services: bookings, tours, hotels, airline services, foreign exchange and coaches. Most organisations in the tourism sector in the UK, however, are small and medium-sized businesses. Obviously this has its upsides, but a downside appears to be that very few small businesses, which account for 45 per cent of the industry’s workforce, access the funding that is available to them for developing staff skills. This is significant, since the UK is still perceived to offer poor levels of service and not to be very welcoming. Language can be a barrier and as a nation we do not put great emphasis on learning other languages, which may be affecting us adversely in the field of tourism.

There has been little growth over the past 10 years in the domestic tourism sector—tourism within the UK—which accounts for 80 per cent of the value of the industry. Inbound tourism into the UK from overseas accounts for the remaining 20 per cent. In inbound tourism, the UK, despite growth between 2004 and 2006, has underperformed in comparison to the world average and it is projected that the UK’s global share of this highly competitive market will continue to fall, although the recent decline in the value of the pound against other currencies may affect the situation.

As noble Lords have said, last year there were 32 million visits to the UK by overseas residents, who spent nearly £16.5 billion, while UK residents made nearly 69 million trips abroad, spending £36.6 billion. Calculations from a survey suggest that, over the last 10 years, expenditure by UK citizens visiting other countries has risen in percentage terms three times more than expenditure by overseas residents visiting the UK. Although there were 32 million visits to the UK by residents from overseas last year, this was a 2.3 per cent decrease from the previous year, with the decrease being greatest in the last quarter of 2008. It is forecast that inbound tourism will fall by 0.7 per cent this year, although, as has been commented, there is evidence from surveys and company bookings that more UK citizens may choose to holiday in this country in 2009.

The Government have done a great deal over the past decade to encourage visitors to come to Britain, through VisitBritain and the regional development agencies, through support for arts and culture and our heritage, through investment in the Olympics and Paralympic Games, through free museums, through improving skills within the tourism and hospitality sector and through investment in our tourism infrastructure and the product on offer to visitors. Public sector funding of tourism stands at about £350 million channelled through a variety of organisations and there is further investment of £500 million a year in improving the industry’s skills base. This represents a level of public sector investment in the industry substantially higher than it was in 1997.

Although I do not have any figures, simply travelling around this country makes one aware of the increase in the number of tourist attractions and venues compared with even a few years ago. The tourism industry represents value for money for the country as a whole. Not only is it a major employer but there is evidence that money spent by VisitBritain on promoting and marketing Britain to potential visitors from abroad brings considerable extra income into the country. VisitBritain has exceeded its return-on-investment target of a ratio of 30:1, set by DCMS in the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review, which indicates that money spent on marketing our country provides a real benefit to the UK economy for a relatively low cost.

Most visitors to the UK come from Europe and the United States. However, we also need to look to the future and the fact that, as the economies of countries such as Brazil, India, Russia and China grow and expand and their citizens’ standard of living rises, an increasing number of those citizens will be in a position financially to travel abroad. We need to ensure that we are providing the resources to tap into that potentially very large market for new visitors to the UK, including ensuring that the cost of obtaining a visa to visit the UK does not act as a deterrent compared with our competitor countries.

We also need to ensure, particularly at present, that the necessary resources are being provided to extol the virtues and attractions of the UK to our own citizens to encourage more of them to take holidays and short breaks in this country rather than abroad. That would be a further way in which the tourism industry can deliver for the economy at this difficult time, bearing in mind the gap between the amount of money spent by overseas visitors to the UK and that spent by UK citizens travelling abroad.

I hope that, when my noble friend the Minister responds, he will be able to say how the Government intend to assist the tourism sector to develop still further, building on the already substantially increased investment over the last dozen years. The sector has much to offer the economy of this country in terms of both jobs and income. With tourism around the world set to increase, we need to ensure that we are geared towards attracting a significant share of this expanding market to the United Kingdom as well as encouraging growth in tourism within the UK.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, for securing this debate. I declare my interest as chief executive of London First, a non-profit-making business membership organisation that seeks to ensure that London can compete successfully with other world cities on exports, tourism and inward investment and so continue to generate substantial economic benefits for the whole of the UK.

I join previous speakers in calling the Government’s attention to the importance of tourism to our economy. It supports something like 2.5 million jobs in Britain; certainly in London the leisure, retail and hospitality sector accounts for one in five private-sector jobs, and, in our current economic circumstances, jobs matter. Tourism is one of the few economic sectors to have held up remarkably well this year in the face of the recession which is biting into so many other industries. London, for example, continues to attract more visitors annually than Paris and New York combined. With the pound’s exchange rate at historic lows against both the dollar and the euro, there has never been a better time for overseas tourists to get excellent value for money from their visit to the UK. However, to get full advantage for our economy while the pound remains so competitive, we need to get the message that the UK is now surprisingly affordable to a much wider audience of people across the world, and as quickly as possible.

As other noble Lords have suggested, experience has shown that investing in tourism marketing in this environment generates a return of at least £15 in visitor spending in the UK for every £1 we spend on promotion. So I am delighted that the Mayor of London, in co-operation with a number of boroughs, has seized the opportunity and committed £2.5 million to the Only in London tourism campaign. I am also encouraged by the tremendous response from London’s consumer-facing businesses, with innovative deals, eye-catching PR and real investment in their product, many of them linking to the Only in London theme. My personal favourite project, the revitalisation of Marble Arch, will only add to London's attractiveness for visitors and locals, thanks to the efforts of Westminster Council's leader.

However, we could do so much more to reinforce success. London First, together with other major business organisations, has written to the Secretary of State, calling for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to provide further investment of relatively small sums—for government—in this campaign. I am speaking only of a few millions in this context, not the billions that we have come to see as a normal financial measure in our discussions about the problems of the financial services sector. Surely a few millions committed with a return of 15:1 for the economy is money well spent on taxpayers’ behalf. Supporting employment in the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors is more efficient than endeavouring to create new jobs in other sectors.

I make this point in relation to London but it is no less valid for the rest of the UK. I very much hope that the noble Lord, Lord Carter, will press his colleagues in government for an urgent response on this point.

While for ice-cream licking retail tourists we already top the league in London, perhaps I may now turn to another undoubted opportunity for tourism growth, both for the capital and for the UK as a whole—the market for large-scale conferences and conventions. This sector is often known as business tourism, but as we all know, international meetings are a feature of life for professionals and managers in every walk of life—civil servants, academics, medics and, dare I say, even politicians.

Overseas visitors to conferences and conventions—perhaps I can characterise them as Burberry-buying business tourists—also contribute substantially to our economy, over £1.5 billion a year in London alone. However, in this sector we are by no means world-beaters. In the 1970s, London was the number one destination city internationally for conferences and conventions, but we now rank a lowly 17th behind Barcelona and even Vienna. Essentially the problem lies in our infrastructure—a familiar British disease, some might say. We lack a modern, large-scale, purpose-built convention centre and hotel complex that could house a typical world-wide conference of, say, 10,000 specialist orthopaedic surgeons, together with their partners and supporting staff. More than 100,000 delegate days of large-scale conferences are turned away from London each year, because our venues and accommodation are inadequate for these types of event. Meanwhile Paris with its Palais des Congrés, Barcelona with its business tourist facilities, developed to exploit the international profile from its Olympic Games, and even Vienna, with not one but three large-scale convention centres, all profit at our expense.

Repeated studies—most recently by KPMG in 2006—show that a publicly funded convention centre in London along the lines that I describe would provide substantial positive return on investment to our whole economy. Now the costs of both development land and construction are lower than they were a year or two ago, making the numbers even more persuasive. The potential is well illustrated by ExCeL in east London, the site of the recent G20 conference, which is already investing in increased conference space to house an additional 5,000 delegates, funded by its owner in Abu Dhabi. What is needed now is political and financial commitment from government and mayor to the creation of a purpose-built landmark convention centre.

Talk of nearly half a billion pounds of investment may send some running for cover. It is a substantial sum, but the prospective returns are at least as substantial. It is an investment with tangible financial payback and represents real value for money. I call upon the Government to work with the mayor and the capital’s business community to bring this project to reality, to attract conference visitors away from the more established venues in Europe and elsewhere, and to provide a lasting major contributor to the UK economy. I know that the mayor has written to the Prime Minister signalling his readiness to proceed. I call upon the Prime Minister to respond in equally positive terms.

My Lords, I declare interests as a former Tourism Minister, a former member of the English Tourist Board, a former chairman of the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester and chairman of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions. I also have shareholdings in tourism, hospitality and transport companies detailed in the Register of Members’ Interests.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, on securing the debate and support virtually everything that he said in his opening remarks. This debate follows relatively closely that initiated by my noble friend Lord Glasgow on 22 January, which gives me the opportunity to challenge some of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Carter, made in responding to that debate. Much was made in the debate of the tourism summit in Liverpool, which was positively dripping with Ministers from the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State at DCMS, the Tourism Minister. However, in that debate I expressed cynicism. I said that,

“the test will be what action the Government take. Will they take tourism seriously for the first time, because, at a time of rapidly rising unemployment, a very worrying economic situation and a weak pound, perhaps tourism’s time has come?”—[Official Report, 22/1/09; col. 1815.]

What has happened since that much hyped summit? It is true that the Tourism Advisory Council has been established, which I believe met on 30 April. When does it next intend to meet and how frequently will it meet? However, there has been no new funding for VisitBritain and no new funding for the Olympics, despite pleas, whereas billions of pounds have been spent bailing out our banks.

There was no mention of tourism in the Budget. However, buried deep in the Budget was the removal of a special tax break for holiday lets, which encouraged many to accommodate tourists. So much for the Government taking tourism seriously. I wrote to the Secretary of State on 27 April, asking whether the DCMS had been consulted before that decision was taken by the Treasury. I got a reply today which dodged that question.

I should like to challenge some of the points that the Minister made in winding-up the debate on 22 January. He said:

“I felt that a number of noble Lords rather flippantly criticised the Government for not including ‘tourism’ in the title of the department”.—[Official Report, 22/1/09; col. 1830.]

He then rather flippantly himself made a rather weak joke about the length of business cards or the time taken to answer the telephone if everything for which the department was responsible was included in its title. I assure him that there was nothing flippant in my or the industry’s anger that tourism—our fifth largest industry—is not included in the title. There is deep resentment about that.

The noble Lord referred to a joint ministerial committee that would look at issues that touched multiple departments. There is nothing original in that concept. Indeed, when I was Tourism Minister, we had just such a committee 20 years ago. But the problem is that that committee has to be chaired by a very senior Minister. It is not good enough to have it chaired by the Tourism Minister. I speak from experience. Will the noble Lord tell us the date of the next ministerial meeting on tourism and the frequency of future meetings?

I challenge the noble Lord on the whole question of double summer time, for which I and others strongly argue. Nothing would give a bigger boost to tourism than double summer time. The noble Lord said that,

“we are aware … that while the tourist industry may favour this change, many sectors in our communities are strongly opposed”.—[Official Report, 22/1/09; col. 1834.]

Certainly, many bodies are in favour, as was said earlier; for example, those representing tourism, road safety and sport. Can he please list for me today, or perhaps subsequently in writing, the many sectors, which are strongly opposed?

As a massive supporter of UK tourism, I have been fortunate, over 50 years as a holiday maker, Member of Parliament and Minister, to travel the length and breadth of the country. Since we debated tourism in January, I have stayed in England, Scotland and Wales on short holidays, in many excellent hotels of quality. I agree so much with what the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said about quality and about the rising quality of our industry to which the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, referred a little earlier. In England I stayed for a long weekend in the Yorkshire Dales at the Traddock Country House Hotel in Austwick near Settle, which gave an absolutely outstanding level of comfort, food and service. In Scotland, during a salmon-fishing week, I stayed at the Ednam House Hotel in Kelso, a magnificent location on the River Tweed and a very friendly, traditional, sporting hotel. Finally, over Easter, in Wales, I stayed at the St Brides Spa Hotel at Saundersfoot, which overlooks the harbour and has had £6 million of investment go into it. There was an outstanding welcome from the staff and an opportunity to walk the wonderful Pembrokeshire coastal paths.

It should be a very good year for domestic tourism in 2009, with the weaker pound and our economic situation. A great summer could put icing on the cake or, perhaps, sausages on the barbecue. Last week, I was reading an article that talked about the resurgence of the great British picnic. Yesterday, ALVA, the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, had its council meeting. We had a reception at the Tower of London, a Thames boat trip down to the Olympic site and a dinner at Waterman’s Hall, hosted by two of our members, the Historic Royal Palaces and British Waterways.

Many members reported welcome growth in visitors this year. English Heritage was up 12 per cent. The National Gallery was up 23 per cent. The Portsmouth Historic Dockyard was up 20 per cent and the National Maritime Museum up 16 per cent. Many reported an excellent Easter but that there was a negative on the corporate entertaining front, which is very difficult at the present time. Interestingly, the Natural History Museum found, in a recent survey, that 50 per cent of the public did not appreciate that admission was actually free. There is much to do here. The Olympic site was a hive of activity. There is considerable optimism that it will be completed something like a year before 2012. We hope that this does come to pass. It is obviously a great pity that the Government are not seizing the opportunity and putting more marketing spend behind the Olympics.

What would the industry like to see from Government? We would like to see greater funding for VisitBritain. I am pleased to say that we have a Lib Dem commitment to increase funding for VisitBritain. I should like to congratulate Sandie Dawe on becoming chief executive of VisitBritain. I wish her every success. We need greater co-ordination of public expenditure on tourism by our national tourist boards, by the RDAs and local authorities. VisitEngland—which I welcome—has a role to play here. I very much support what my friend and colleague Lord Glasgow said a little bit earlier about the tourist information centres.

We need to review the increase in air passenger duty, which presents a barrier to travel within the United Kingdom. We should review the phased withdrawal of the hotel buildings allowance that was referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, a little earlier. The Government should also tackle the expense and inconvenience of visas by introducing, on a trial basis, a Schengen plus scheme, or a bolt-on visa, in our core overseas markets so that visitors from these countries, who have already obtained a Schengen visa, can then apply for a UK visa at a reduced price.

A reduction in VAT should be considered as well. The UK is one of only five EU members that levy VAT at the standard rate on visitor accommodations. With regard to visitor attractions, the standard rate applied in the UK is significantly above the EU average. I also very much support the plea by the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, for a major convention centre in London. We sadly miss this.

Finally, with 81 per cent of people who are likely to visit the United Kingdom saying that they are likely to visit an historic house or castle, the Government should acknowledge the work of the HHA. I pay tribute to the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for his work with it. There is something like a £1 billion backlog of outstanding repairs at listed places of worship. Charitable and privately owned heritage could play a major role if it had the resource. The Government should restore English Heritage’s grant in aid to 1997 levels and introduce fiscal incentives for maintenance.

I conclude with the words of the Tourism Alliance:

“The Government can either continue to make spurious claims that it is supporting tourism and squander this current opportunity, or it can take tourism seriously by developing and implementing a strategy that reduces the regulatory burdens, removes barriers to overseas visitors and provides the funding required for the national tourist boards to successfully compete in this global market”.

Dialogue with the industry is not enough; we want action.

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, for introducing this debate. As a number of your Lordships have pointed out, tourism is one of the major industries in this country, so it is appropriate that such an important subject is debated in this House. I must declare an interest as the owner of a tourist attraction which has between 30,000 and 40,000 visitors a year.

Predictably, there have been calls during this debate for more support to be given to tourism, with attention being drawn to its decline. I have some sympathy with the argument put forward by Her Majesty’s Government on a previous occasion that one of the causes of the decline is the market becoming more competitive, as other countries increase efforts to attract visitors. Cheap airline travel induces more Britons to choose to take holidays abroad, making further inroads into our tourist industry.

While recognising that that there are certain things that for practical purposes may best be done by government—for example, advertising and marketing the attractions of this country overseas to promote inward tourism, the success of which has been commented on today—I believe that there would be enormous benefits for the industry in removing some or all of the government-created impediments to tourism. Her Majesty's Government should look at what can be done to further this.

For example, as has been mentioned today, the cost of a visa to visit the United Kingdom is £80. For £20, you can visit 12 European countries. I am told that in Russia, China and India applications for visas must be in English. Given the number of languages available when one applies for state benefits, it would surely be an easy exercise to provide visa forms in local languages. A simple action such as this does not cost anything but can make a big difference to potential visitors’ perception of the welcome that they will receive in this country.

When tourists, both from abroad and within this country, make their holiday plans, the first thing that they look at, and the deciding factor in the great majority of cases, is the cost of travel and accommodation. Her Majesty's Government should look at whether steps can be taken to influence people at this crucial stage of the decision-making process to plan their holidays in Great Britain.

Another matter that Her Majesty’s Government might consider is taking a better and longer look at promoting more consultation and co-ordination between different government departments. Little consideration seems to be given to the knock-on effect on our fifth largest industry—I heard it stated earlier today that it is our third largest industry, but I have also read that it is our sixth largest industry: whichever it may be, it is big—of the continuing stream of regulations that this Government are so fond of imposing. For small, and even large, providers of facilities for tourists the full focus should be on ensuring their visitors’ enjoyment. Several noble Lords, including the noble Earls, Lord Glasgow and Lord Sandwich, and the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein, alluded to this. Those providers should be looking after their visitors, rather than filling in forms to assist in promoting politically correct agendas.

For all the fuss made about cool Britannia and being modem, the anchor for our tourism, the main attraction, is, as my noble friend Lord Caithness pointed out, our superb and unrivalled heritage which gives Great Britain a huge advantage over other destinations. Any Government wishing to assist tourism should surely do their best to maintain to the highest standards that great lure for visitors to come to this country. It is regrettable that government support for English Heritage over the past 10 years has been reduced in real terms by £110 million at a time when the costs that English Heritage incurs, because of its extensive use of highly skilled labour, have increased way above the rate of inflation.

Sporting tourism is another important aspect of the industry but the tax treatment of overseas sportsmen performing in this country is a serious deterrent to top-class athletes coming here. It is the sporting stars who bring the crowds and generate the resulting revenues. In spite of the tax disadvantage, major sporting events such as Wimbledon continue to attract the great players; but for how long will they manage to do this when, even if the players win substantial prize money, they can still be out of pocket after Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has stuck its hands in their pockets?

The big names avoid the smaller events, which are the ones which need the star attractions to bring in the crowds. If Tiger Woods plays in a golf tournament the attendance multiplies, but the stars will not wish to come here if the penalty is ending up with a tax bill in excess of any prize money or winnings. A significant impediment to England attracting major football competitions is the reluctance of those organising the events to push players into being sucked into a tax net which can then attack their world-wide earnings.

With the present rate of exchange for sterling there is, as has already been pointed out by noble Lords, a superb opportunity for British tourism; but it may not always be thus. While we all enjoy contemplating the enormous advantage that has been given to Great Britain of not being in the single currency, I urge the Minister to use what, in spite of the reductions, still remains a substantial budget to maintain the competitive edge which the exchange rate has provided by addressing some of the impediments to the initial decision to take a holiday in Great Britain.

My Lords, since I became a Minister I have had the pleasure of taking part in two House of Lords debates on tourism, and the significance of the sector has been made very clear to me. The contributions made today and back in January have all been eloquent and absorbing. As I think we all know, the world continues to change at a sometimes rather alarming and challenging pace. I would like to join other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lord Pendry on securing this important debate. I know from my day job as a sectoral Minister how challenging it can be to ensure that a sector’s perspective is heard across government. Debates such as this one help to air the issues in a very constructive fashion.

Britain, like many countries, continues to battle the effects of the economic downturn, but the outbreak of swine flu and the associated media coverage reminds us all that the economy is not the only factor influencing the prospects for tourism in 2009 and beyond. 2009 is a very important year as the effects of the downturn become fully evident and today’s debate is a timely reminder that tourism—whether it is the third, fourth, fifth or sixth largest industry—is integral to the British economy and its recovery.

My noble friend highlighted that this year marks the 40th anniversary of the Development of Tourism Act 1969, and he rightly took the opportunity to underscore Anthony Crosland’s contribution in that legislation. This debate therefore presents an ideal opportunity to take stock of the developments in tourism over the past four decades and to see what lessons we have learnt and what more we need to do.

I confess to being slightly chastised by the noble Lord, Lord Lee, on my flippancy in responding to the previous debate. But in listening to some of the contributions today I was reminded of Bill Bryson’s description of national character. He certainly knows more about travel and tourism than I do. When asked what the difference was between the United States and the United Kingdom, he said: “When you wander round the United States and ask people how they’re doing, they say, ‘Pretty good, thanks’. When you wander round the United Kingdom and ask people how they’re doing, they say, ‘Mustn’t grumble’”. The consensus view in today’s contributions has been that the Government have done little or nothing for this industry; that it is in a woeful position; that there is a crisis of marketing investment; and that something must be done to avoid a clear and present crisis. There were some exceptions to that consensus, such as the speech of my noble friend Lord Rosser. I was also reassured by the knowledgeable contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, about the resilience of the tourism industry and the commitment and performance from London.

A number of noble Lords have outlined the contribution that tourism and hospitality make to the national economy: around 8 to 9 per cent of our GDP and 2.7 million direct and indirect jobs, some 8.2 per cent of the workforce. Those are remarkable figures. We have a world-class tourism product and that quality is now available, as many noble Lords have highlighted, for significantly less given the value—or competitiveness, depending on your perspective—of the pound abroad. As a number of noble Lords have highlighted, that product includes breathtaking scenery; our dramatic coastline; increasingly outstanding food and drink; our incomparable history and heritage; our museums; and our hosting of major sporting events, both currently and over the forthcoming decade, such as the Olympics and the Champions League.

It is right to say, as the noble Lord opposite did, that the tourism customer is growing ever more sophisticated and has ever more choices. The competition from overseas—notwithstanding the current position of sterling—and cheaper travel have developed a demand for a higher quality product and greater value for money. VisitBritain is responsible for promoting Britain as a world-class tourist destination. It has representatives in over 36 countries around the world and has recently expanded into India and China and throughout eastern Europe and south-east Asia.

Provisional figures for 2008 indicate that overseas residents made 32 million visits to the United Kingdom, down by just 2 per cent on 2007. But they spent £16.5 billion, which, before adjusting for inflation, is 3 per cent up on 2007. As a number of noble Lords have commented, when times are good, tourism is easy to ignore, and we sometimes take our successes in tourism for granted. Times are now immensely challenging for the industry, and despite the weakness of the pound, the latest figures that I have seen, from March this year, show that the number of visitors from the United States, the eurozone countries and the rest of world was decreasing comparatively, therefore increasing the importance of the domestic market.

However, as my noble friend Lord Davies has highlighted, there are encouraging signs for the summer of 2009 that people will choose to holiday at home. Anecdotal evidence suggests that, for example, the holiday park sector is going to do well this year following indications of good visitor numbers in the attractions sector over the Easter period. So, all is not doom and gloom. The standard of our hotels and bed-and-breakfasts continues to improve apace, and the wealth of attractions that the British brand offers is second to none, but there are challenges. I know that many tourism businesses across the United Kingdom are doing outstanding work trying to compete in and combat the economic downturn. The Government understand that that is not easy, particularly as we face up to what will be a difficult fiscal period.

How should we combat those challenges and what is the role of the Government? In the first instance, effective management of Britain's tourism industry resources will help us emerge from the downturn in good shape, ready to take advantage of the recovery when it comes. As discussed during our previous debate and again today—I was pleased to hear the noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, endorse this—following the Comprehensive Spending Review, the DCMS asked VisitBritain to carry out a strategic review of British tourism. Strategic reviews often come in for a bad name, but I share the noble Earl’s view that that was a quality piece of work to ensure better co-ordination of funding, strategy and implementation of our approach to tourism as a sectoral industry and to try to identify ways of improving efficiency and effectiveness where the public sector touches the private sector for tourism.

That was published by VisitBritain on 11 February and set out recommendations aimed at better co-ordination of the significant public investments made centrally, regionally and locally. The review proposals also involve the fundamental restructuring of VisitBritain and developing the role of VisitEngland, which will market England in a more focused partnership at national, local and regional levels. In welcoming the review's findings, the Government emphasise their determination to forge a closer partnership with the tourism industry to minimise the impact of the downturn and to try to ensure that we are better positioned to exploit the opportunities offered by the recovery, when it comes. I am glad that the review proposed many things that the Government are already doing, and a number of things that we have subsequently implemented.

If I am allowed two observations, there seems to be an excessive, if understandable, focus on the unwillingness to move on the financing of marketing. As I said, in my day job, I am the sectoral Minister for Broadcasting and the Media. This will not come as a surprise to any noble Lord, but I can tell the House that for much of the past year, I have spent my life in meetings with media companies who tell me that today, advertising and marketing prices are cheaper than they were in 1992, and that the advertising and media market is currently suffering between a 30 per cent and a 45 per cent reduction, depending on which form of media you are buying. The value that you can extract from the marketing pound has never been more attractive, if you are a buyer, and less attractive, if you are a seller.

On the specific question asked by the noble Earl about the digital divide—a subject about which he is right to observe that I have some knowledge and feel passionate—the Government have already committed to delivering a universal broadband service for the entire country, have already identified a universal service fund, and seek to deliver that by 2012, making us the leading country in the world in delivery of universal access to broadband at average-speed rates of 2 megabytes and above, which are attractive both to the domestic user and to the small to medium-sized enterprise looking to offer home or domestic-based connectivity and promotional opportunities.

To turn to the things that we are doing, the Tourism Advisory Council has recently been formed as part of the Government's commitment to support the UK's fifth largest industry. The noble Lord, Lord Lee, was right to say that the tourism summit in Liverpool was dripping with Ministers—although, I must confess, not me. The Prime Minister made it clear at the summit that he was extremely keen for a strengthened partnership between the Government and the tourism industry. That is why we set that group up. It will meet three to four times a year. I will be delighted to provide the noble Lord in writing with details of the forthcoming dates of those meetings.

The remit and purpose of the advisory council is to ensure that, during these times, we can receive timely and accurate information directly from leading tourism businesses so that we can identify areas that need action and highlight ways to move forward. As the noble Lord and others will know, the council is deliberately formed of a group of high-level industry executives, including members of organisations such as Virgin Atlantic, Eurostar, Travelodge and Center Parcs. The group is designed to provide direct and regular input into government and to identify how Ministers can support the sector.

The Tourism Advisory Council is only one of a number of regular groups giving the industry access to government. Other regular meetings include meeting the Tourism Alliance, the Tourism 2012 ministerial advisory group, the skills implementation group and the tourism leads at each of the RDAs.

Another recommendation from the tourism summit was the creation of an interdepartmental group of Ministers. I defer to the noble Lord’s comments on the challenges of interdepartmental ministerial groups being delivery vehicles rather than merely discussion events. This group first met at the beginning of May—so, relatively recently—and will meet four times a year. He is correct to identify that this group will be chaired by the Minister for Tourism in another place. I hope that my honourable friend will not be offended if I describe her as a forceful presence in the chair. So, notwithstanding her Whitehall ministerial status, I do not believe that her occupancy of the chair is a limit on that interdepartmental group’s ability to deliver. As a number of noble Lords have highlighted, tourism is often dependent on a range of government departments not making negative decisions as well as making positive ones.

The future success of VisitEngland will largely depend on its capability to form and maintain partnerships with regional development agencies and local authorities. The evolution of Partners for England is vital to that end. The Government welcome the group’s progress so far and its future aims. We are confident that these arrangements will make for strengthened leadership and better representation of private and public sector stakeholders and provide a more robust and more responsive vehicle to grow and sustain the industry in the long term.

The noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, made a point about marketing England domestically. Despite a tough Comprehensive Spending Review round, the Government are committed to providing £130 million between 2008 and 2012 for marketing Britain overseas and England to the British. In addition, between £3.3 million and £3.5 million is provided annually to the regional development agencies for tourism support.

Again, as my noble friend Lord Davies highlighted, this industry has a vertical contribution to make to jobs. For that reason, the Government have also made a significant investment in skills in relation to the tourism industry. Last year, we announced that we would focus an additional £210 million on the sector through the Train to Gain scheme and through learners who will be going through programmes approved by the National Skills Academy for Hospitality. In addition to this, the Government have committed £350 million to help small businesses to get the training that they need to get through the economic downturn. This is an investment across the country.

London, as the noble Baroness highlighted, is central to the visitor economy as a destination in its own right and, indeed, as a gateway route to the rest of the country. I recognise that there has been concern about the DCMS’s decision to discontinue its bilateral funding agreement with the GLA. This is, for the record, no reflection on the work of Visit London or the LDA, which we respect and value greatly. It is a matter of simple financial constraint and the requirement to make difficult choices, which our London partners have also encountered. We informed the then London mayor, Ken Livingstone, of this possibility last March, in order to give the GLA at least a glide path of more than a year to prepare for this eventuality.

We are not disinvesting from tourism. We will be reinvesting this money to support the recommendations of the British tourism framework review and to maximise potential national benefits. Indeed, as I said in the last debate—as I recall, I was asked to clarify the source of these funds—VisitBritain and VisitEngland are currently running a major £6.5 million marketing campaign focusing on England and Britain as high-quality, value-for-money destinations, which will naturally benefit London.

In response to the question asked by the noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, about cuts and whether we would revisit that issue, I have to say no. Following the Comprehensive Spending Review in 2007, the DCMS was required to engage with its sponsored bodies and to seek to achieve value-for-money savings. Our funding decisions are final. The department then commissioned a review of public sector support for tourism, which we have discussed, and we agreed with VisitBritain that, pending the outcome of the strategic review, we would have a one-year provisional funding agreement for 2008-09. As I say, £350 million a year is being invested in tourism at national, regional and local levels. That is a significant commitment.

In line with the Prime Minister’s vision, which was outlined in the summit on improved partnership that was referred to, central government has increased its profile in relation to tourism in recent months. DCMS Ministers and tourism industry representatives attended a number of events during British Tourism Week, which ran from 23 to 29 March, both in London and the regions, to highlight the importance of tourism to the United Kingdom.

The DCMS has continued to pursue its advocacy role across government and it is fair to say that this is producing tangible results for the industry, including some more tourism-friendly strategic planning advice for local authorities—although perhaps not as much as the noble Earl would wish—as a result of intensive DCMS-led discussions with the DCLG, the Tourism Alliance and other organisations over 2004. I have another day job as the Minister for Regulation and will respond in writing to the noble Earl on his question about historic houses and the appropriateness of the religious application of regulation, as I have some sympathy with his view.

The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, asked about sustainability. One issue that is increasingly significant as we look to the future is the importance of a sustainable approach to tourism. Sustainability has never been so important as we face up to the impact of climate change. We all know that we have a clear and present responsibility to make sure that we act in an environmentally friendly way; tourism, given its size, can be no exception. Many tourism businesses across the UK are already doing outstanding work under the green agenda, but more need to do so and soon if we are to protect and value the world of the future. This will not be easy, particularly as we face up to difficult economic times. However, by adopting a more environmentally friendly approach to the management of resources, Britain’s tourism industry will be able to emerge stronger and more globally as well as domestically competitive.

When the Government published the tourism 2012 strategy, we committed to developing a framework in conjunction with the tourism industry, which we published in March. It sets out six key points. First, we must minimise waste. Secondly, we must address the impact of tourism transport. Most holiday trips, as noble Lords know, are by car and plane, so we must address the attractiveness of convenience and cost by advertising special offers and making people aware of alternative forms of transportation. Thirdly, we must ensure quality and making holidays accessible to all. Fourthly, we need to improve the quality of tourism jobs, as the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said. Fifthly, we need to improve the perceptions of the tourism industry and make it more attractive to new and more diverse, talented and skilled people so that they view careers in the industry as long term rather than just temporary. Sixthly, a healthy and sustainable tourism industry can help to maintain and enhance community prosperity and quality of life, so we must try to reduce the seasonality of demand by increasing occupancy in the shoulder seasons and encouraging off-season activities and experiences. A version of this framework document, Sustainable Tourism in England: A Framework for Action, has been sent to the House Library.

Our national tourism strategy will therefore continue to focus on delivering a first-class welcome for our domestic and international visitors, providing high-quality product and accommodation for people to enjoy and improving the skills of the workforce, particularly in customer service and management. However, we cannot make headway in delivering these aims and a real and meaningful legacy from the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games without real commitment from the whole country and every region and without increasingly effective co-ordination with the RDAs and local authorities in particular.

There is a real momentum right across central government. These debates are material to improving the importance of tourism in the policy discussions in government and there is an increasing and effective working relationship between the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Communities and Local Government. We now have an unprecedented set of conditions and ideas knitting together to show what our sector can deliver to the local economy and to local communities. That is now being made clear in a commercial way as well as in a policy way. The Government intend to maintain a constructive dialogue with the regions, focused, as two of the contributions this afternoon highlighted, on delivery rather than just on discussion.

I sense from the majority of the contributions this afternoon that there is not a unanimous view of the Government’s confidence in and optimism about the future of the visitor economy or about the Government’s programme of commitment. I recognise that, as indeed does my colleague in the other place. I would like to reassure noble Lords that neither in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport nor in government as a whole do we lack either vision or commitment to the importance of powerful industry sectors. The Government recognise that they need to concentrate on positioning the industry for recovery and exploiting future opportunities over the next decade.

There are real issues, some of which have been raised in this afternoon’s debate. There are questions around better co-ordination across government. There are legitimate questions around the application of the planning and regulatory regime to tourism industries. There are undoubtedly questions over how fast we can deploy the improvements in our transportation networks that we know we need to make.

I would say to noble Lords, however, that there has been significant progress. Institutional and organisational co-ordination is better than it has been. I genuinely believe that the overfocus on, verging on obsession with, the marketing budget is out of tune with the times and with the reality of what can be achieved with the money that is on the table and in the budgets of individual organisations. Last but not least, there is the significant capital, operating and marketing investment in the Olympic Games and the associated events. These are real opportunities. As I wander around this country to different centres and significant parts of the countryside, I rarely grumble about the quality of what is on offer.

My Lords, this has been a good debate and I would like to thank all those who have made contributions. The noble Earls, Lord Caithness, Lord Glasgow and Lord Sandwich, and the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, all made thoughtful speeches. Although I did not agree with everything that they said, they made points that the Government should take up following the summit in Liverpool.

My noble friend Lord Davies of Coity was his usual forceful self, making sure that we all know the benefits of Manchester as a tourism venue. With regard to the comments of my noble friend Lord Rosser, we know that numbers of employees in the industry vary from survey to survey but we cannot ignore the fact that there are a lot of employees. That should be taken very seriously. I enjoyed the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine. In her, London has a real champion, as we always hear when she speaks in these debates.

Although I have said that the noble Lord, Lord Lee, was the best Tory Minister that I encountered in my days in the other place, it was a bit rich of him to suggest that, between January and now, the Government should have acted on all those recommendations. I hope that he will reflect on what he said. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howard, for his contribution and the Minister for his thoughtful response to the debate. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will accord formal recognition to the men and women of Bomber Command during the Second World War.

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the Question of whether the Government will accord formal recognition to the men and women of Bomber Command during the Second World War. It is a short and relatively simple point, which I will not labour too much by repetition. The short point is that it seems to me to be a matter of plain justice and fair dealing that the members of Bomber Command who served in the war should be recognised on the same basis as those who were members of other services.

I approach this issue with very few preconceptions and with no particular ties to the Air Force. I did not serve in it; neither did my father. The only connections that my family have had with the services are two uncles who served on the Somme, who by some miracle survived, and a brief period a long time ago when I was a very junior Minister in the Ministry of Defence with responsibility for the Army. I do not come to this debate as someone who is committed to a particular service.

It seemed to me when I first looked at this matter, and it seems to me now, to be a matter of basic equity and fairness. I do not think that many people would question the huge support given by Bomber Command to the war effort. Nor do I think that anyone would dispute or quarrel with the statistics, a few of which I shall give the House because they are important in this respect. During the war, a total of 120,000 air crew carried out no fewer than 366,000 sorties of which 297 were by night. During those long and dangerous occupations, 55,573 pilots and crew were killed—a ratio of 1:2. Every other member of Bomber Command who flew was killed. One Member of this House, our noble friend Lord Mackie, was a pilot in Bomber Command. I am told that he went on no fewer than 70 sorties and was much decorated as a result for his bravery. He is still waiting, as are the others, for proper recognition of that valiant career.

When we are looking at the figures, it is also worth remembering the countries from which the total figure was made up. These are the realities of that dreadful time. The 55,000 members of Bomber Command who died while on duty included 38,500 Britons, 9,980 Canadians—no less than 58 per cent of Canadians who flew with Bomber Command were killed—4,000 Australians, 1,700 New Zealanders, 977 Poles, 480 Czechs, 218 Free French, 188 members who were then known as Rhodesians, 68 Americans who were attached to Bomber Command from the United States Army Air Force, 34 Norwegians, 12 South Africans and three Indians, as well as 1,479 ground crew and 91 members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. Those figures have been slightly revised upwards, not downwards; but, no matter, the argument still stands. The casualties were huge whatever the difference may be in the statistics.

In addition to those who were killed, 8,403 members of Bomber Command were wounded in action. Nearly 11,000 were taken prisoner. They spent the rest of the war in German captivity and faced the harsh forced marches of the last months of the war. As many as 1,000 evaded capture after being shot down, most of whom made their way back to Britain to fly again. In all, Bomber Command was awarded 19 Victoria Crosses, nine of them posthumously. Two members of the Advanced Air Striking Force also received the Victoria Cross posthumously for a bombing raid on 12 May 1940 on a bridge being used by the Germany Army to advance into Belgium. They were Flying Officer Donald Edward Garland, aged 21, who was the first of four brothers killed in the war, and his observer, Sergeant Thomas Gray, aged 26.

As well as the war on land, the war at sea called for the attentions and exertions of Bomber Command, which carried out the mine-laying at sea. It sank German warships and bombed dockyards. It attacked submarine bases. It carried out the sustained bombing of Germany’s military forces, stores and supply lines on all the war fronts, striking at the German V1 and V2 sites, whose missiles were aimed specifically at Britain. That, too, was a Bomber Command task.

Weakening Germany’s formidable capacity to make war—its oil storage depots, munitions factories, aircraft factories and parks, railway marshalling yards and railway traffic, coastal fortifications and tank parks, troop concentrations and transport links—all depended on Bomber Command.

The scale of the achievement of the brave men who carried out these wide-ranging essential tasks was expressed by Sir Winston Churchill, when he wrote at the end of the war to Sir Arthur Harris, Air Officer Commander-in-Chief, Bomber Command:

“All your operations were planned with great care and skill. They were executed in the face of desperate opposition and appalling hazards. They made a decisive contribution to Germany’s final defeat. The conduct of the operation has demonstrated the fiery gallant spirit which animated your air crews and the high sense of duty of all ranks under your command. I believe that the massive achievements of Bomber Command will long be remembered as an example of duty nobly done”.

Today, there are approximately 30,000 pilots in the air crew of Bomber Command who are still alive. They and the next of kin of those who were killed in action, or who have died since the war, are still waiting for their campaign medal. It really is high time that justice was done for these brave men and women.

I have been trying, in anticipation of this debate, to anticipate the arguments that the Government might use for continuing to refuse this request. I have to say that I cannot think of any that stand up to very close examination. Let me dispose, first, of the bureaucratic argument. It has been said on a number of occasions that, because the Honours, Awards and Decorations Committee had considered this issue in 1946, and then rejected it, it is no longer open to review. I would refute that. There is absolutely no reason I can see why the matter could not now be sent back to the committee for further consideration, or, alternatively, why the Government could not take the decision, thereby acknowledging that the 1946 decision was wrong. Certainly, a decision of that committee cannot be considered irreversible. It really would be a nonsense to hold that a decision made in 1946 is permanently binding, no matter what change there is in circumstances. I will be very interested to hear what the Government have to say on that.

The Early Day Motion put down by my honourable friend Austin Mitchell in another place has now attracted more than 200 signatures. The Canadian Senate, by unanimous resolution, has asked that Britain be approached formally to give,

“belated recognition to the effort and sacrifice made by Bomber Command”.

So there is an increasing political realisation that this anomaly should be corrected.

Their contribution was immense. Their treatment has been shabby and neglectful. It is time this is put right. The time is long overdue, and I hope the Government will recognise it.

My Lords, I wholeheartedly support the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Richard, about formal recognition of the men and women of the Bomber Command during the Second World War. Born and bred, as I was, in Lincoln, the second home of many of those men and women at the time, I grew up in a city that revered and loved those who, as the noble Lord just said, played a decisive role in the outcome of the war.

More recently while serving in Australia, I became aware that 20,000 Australians served with the Bomber Command of the Royal Air Force during the war. Under what was then called the Empire Air Training Scheme, the Royal Air Force in 1941 was, as the noble Lord, Lord Richard, said, recruiting approximately 20 per cent of its pilots from Commonwealth countries. I am advised that Australian casualties in Bomber Command were 3,486 dead and 246 injured, and after the war, 750 Australian air crew were released from German prisoner of war camps.

The first Australians to see action with Bomber Command were Australian-born Regular Royal Air Force officers, some of whom like Group Captain Hughie Edwards, who was awarded the Victoria Cross in 1941, had trained with the Royal Australian Air Force. Australians continued to fly with Bomber Command until the end of the war, as did Canadians, New Zealanders and citizens of the other countries mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Richard.

Memorials may be dismissed by some as mere tablets of stone. To most they are a tangible and continuing reminder of the heroism and sacrifice of a generation which helped to secure the liberties that we now take for granted. They are a reminder and, for some, an inspiration for the present. The Minister has visited Australia and other countries whose men and women fought in Bomber Command and she knows as well as anybody in Parliament the importance with which our military and other links are still regarded both publicly and privately in those countries. I hope that she may be able to give some positive support to the Question put by the noble Lord, Lord Richard, and that recognition and gratitude will be accorded in tangible form to those who fought in Bomber Command.

We are now reconciled with our former enemies in war. That reconciliation should include a constant reminder to present and future generations of the horrors and sacrifices undergone by all our and their forebears.

My Lords, as someone much swept up in the events of 1942 to 1944, latterly at what might be described as the sharp end, perhaps I may make three points. First, however much we may now regret having had to reduce so many German cities to ruins, there is no doubt that the bomber offensive by night by Bomber Command and by day by the US Eighth Air Force made a major contribution to writing down the German war effort, making it difficult for the Germans to go on sustaining their armed forces against the Soviet Union and latterly against the forces they faced from the west. That shortened the war because Hitler would never have surrendered.

More than that, because those offensives put so much pressure on the Luftwaffe to counter them, by 1944 the Luftwaffe as a potential weapon of war had virtually ceased to exist, which as much as anything else made the Normandy invasion possible, for which I personally was very grateful, otherwise it would have been hazardous in the extreme. Finally, against that background, and bearing in mind that statistically service as air crew in Bomber Command during the war years was by far the most dangerous assignment for the armed services who served in the front line, it seems more than appropriate that they should have special recognition, perhaps in the form of a special rosette on their Air Crew Europe medal.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Richard, for bringing forward this debate. It is one of those ones where you thank whoever there is to thank that you were not around then. Fifty-five thousand died, and the figure I have is a 44.4 per cent casualty rate. I would not fancy being in a line of 10 with those odds.

The casualty rate was immense. I had better say outright that there has also been historical controversy about whether these young men’s sacrifice was used in the most productive way. Questions have been raised about that. The fact is that we were in total war and those young people who were manning those air crews did not make the decisions. Damn the generals if you like, or the air marshals in this case, and the politicians who gave them their permission, but do not try to condemn the memory of those who suffered out there.

I feel something of a fraud in that I do not have the company, and am some way in the stead, of my noble friend Lord Mackie of Benshie. He could not be here today. I asked him for anything he would like to be said and remember that my noble friend is in his 90th year, though young in spirit. He said:

“Remember, I was a grizzled, hard, veteran squadron leader”,

and he was a navigator, by the way, “of 24”. He was one who had survived beyond late teen age, beyond his 21st birthday, in a large, fragile aircraft, and had to fly through walls of red hot bits of metal flying through the aircraft and tearing people apart. Luck and judgment would have helped people get through this, but they were the most exposed part of our Air Force.

I had prepared other things to say, but we come back to a point that was touched on on Tuesday, when I suggested that we should start being slightly better at remembering those who survive conflict. That was in relation to the two surviving veterans of the First World War. We should remember this.

My noble friend Lord Mackie said to me that he was not too bothered about the medal but he was bothered about there being somewhere where people could possibly see the list of all the names, some monument on the level of 55,000 names and ages. That would help bring it home to those who are fortunately too young to have served in a conflict of this level. I do not have to tell the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, who has that unenviable task in this House of reading out the names of those who die on active service, that 55,000 died taking on a job that was not only dangerous but has become politically unacceptable in certain sectors of our society. Surely we should remember them and honour their memory at all levels and at the first opportunity. Let us not wait until we have the last handful left. Let us do something now, because time is not on our side, and these things take time to get organised. It would be nice to think that my noble friend will see some monument produced in his lifetime.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Richard, for introducing this debate. It is a subject which has caused controversy since 1945 and will continue to do so until formal recognition is granted to the immensely brave men and women who died for our freedom.

On 31 May 1992, Her Majesty the Queen Mother dedicated a statue of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris. Her Majesty reminded her audience that western Europe had been at peace for over 45 years, as it had been then, but that it was right that we should not forget those dark days of war, when we were in such grave danger and Bomber Command gave us hope and the means of salvation. Arthur Harris, as we all know, followed a strategy of area bombing, which has provoked immense controversy, as noble Lords mentioned. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, gave us some of the amazing figures involved, so I will not repeat them. The campaign inevitably caused vast destruction and loss of life among civilian war workers, German and slave labour, and the military. As we have heard, more than 55,000 British air crew died producing this destruction, yet we cannot say how many lives were saved by the area bombing strategy, which continually disrupted the German military industry, thus contributing enormously to Allied successes in France, Italy and Russia. The great Russian campaigns were greatly helped by the German need to divert a large number of their new fighters that were coming through, and of course their air crews, to defend against Allied bombers flying from Britain, thus, I believe, shortening the war considerably.

All the men who flew with Bomber Command were volunteers and their average age was just 22. As has been said before, they included thousands of men from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the other Allied and Commonwealth countries. My noble friend Lord Goodlad emphasised that point. In recent years the Battle of Britain Flight has, rightly, become extremely popular in this country. It includes various Spitfires and Hurricanes and one precious Lancaster bomber. Would it not be appropriate to rename it the “Battle of Britain and Bomber Command Flight”? Lancasters were undoubtedly the best of the heavy bombers involved, but of course there were also Halifaxes, Stirlings, Wellingtons, Hampdens, Blenheims and, not least, the extremely effective Mosquitoes. All of these, and maybe others, should be mentioned on the memorial that I am sure will eventually be built.

Bomber Command also had other activities, which have been mentioned. There were the pathfinders, whose activities, highly expensive in terms of lives, made sure that the bombers eventually arrived at the right place to drop their bombs. There was mine-laying, which again disrupted the movement of troops and supplies east from Germany into Russia. It is right that, included with the incomparable air crew, we remember the indomitable ground crew and engineers who maintained these aircraft and kept them flying.

It is good to recall that that bombing campaign in Europe also included the great efforts of the 8th and 9th United States Air Forces, with their “flying fortresses”. They also lost many lives in the combined day and night offensives. Incidentally, from 1943 to 1945 I lived one mile from the end of a runway; I remember the flying fortresses flying in and out, and they were marvellous.

It is on record that Arthur Harris always got on well with his American colleagues, and that reminds us once again of the importance of maintaining a close relationship with our greatest allies. What recent discussions have the Government had with representatives of the Bomber Command Memorial Campaign? Do the Government have any views about the construction of a memorial to the many non-UK service personnel who served and died with Bomber Command?

After the war Sir Arthur Harris said:

“There are no words with which I can do justice to the aircrew who fought under my command. There is no parallel in warfare to such courage and determination in the face of danger over so prolonged a period, of danger which, at times, was so great that scarcely one man in three could expect to survive his tour of operations”.

The Conservative defence team remains very supportive of the Bomber Command Association’s campaign for a proper memorial and continues to be in close touch with the association to see whether it can assist its fund-raising endeavours.

My Lords, I am afraid that I must start with what the noble Lord, Lord Addington, rightly called my most difficult responsibility. I invite the House to join me in offering condolences to the family and friends of Lieutenant Mark Evison from 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, who died earlier this week from injuries that he sustained a few days ago on operations in Afghanistan. This is a salutary reminder of the dangers that are faced daily by our troops who are on operations now, working to sustain our security in the same way as those who fought in the Second World War, with very heavy losses; they did so bravely, as do those on operations now.

I am pleased that we have had this debate, however brief. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Richard, on securing this Question for Short Debate, which is one of the House’s useful procedures to give an airing to a topic that might otherwise get squeezed out of other debates that come up from time to time. One theme of unity throughout the speeches of all who have been able to contribute is that nobody—but nobody at all—disputes the fantastic contribution of Bomber Command or the fact that Bomber Command was very important in securing our future and making such a difference in the Second World War. Its was an historic contribution. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, who knows far more about these things than I do, gave his assessment that it without doubt shortened the war. Hitler’s Armaments Minister, Albert Speer, who knew more than most people about the impact of Bomber Command, said:

“It made every square metre of Germany a front. For us, it was the greatest lost battle of the war”.

That sums up some of what people have been trying to say today about the very significant contribution of Bomber Command.

However, as others have pointed out, that very significant contribution came at a terrible cost. More than 8,000 aircraft were lost and, out of 125,000 pilots and crew, 55,573 were killed. Mention has been made of those who came from the Commonwealth—25 per cent of the pilots and crew. It is right that, when we think about how we should remember Bomber Command, we should take into account their feelings as well. It is important to remember that people from Commonwealth countries and from Britain worked closely together during that time and it is good that the bonds, as the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad said, with Australia, but also with Canada, New Zealand and other Commonwealth countries, are still so strong today. So there was a terrible cost.

Statistically—this is one of the most salutary facts—a Bomber Command crew member had a worse chance of survival than an infantry officer during the First World War. That shows the scale of the challenge that they took on and why people are so concerned that they should get recognition. As the noble Lord, Lord Richard, said, 19 members of Bomber Command received Victoria Crosses, nine of them posthumously. Their contribution was very significant indeed.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, mentioned the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, who participated in a debate that originated with a Question from the noble Lord, Lord Selkirk, in March of last year. The whole House was silent when they realised that he had that direct experience and therefore was entitled to talk about these issues in a way that others could not. I assured the House at the time of the deep appreciation of this Government for the courage and indeed the sacrifice of those who served in Bomber Command during the Second World War. That certainly remains the case. We owe them a great deal.

The age of those who flew on operations has also been mentioned—the average age was only 22. The dangers were clearly many: night fighters; anti-aircraft fire; the development of new aircraft; mechanical failure; navigational challenges; the prospect of imprisonment if you managed to bail out; and sorties that could take eight or nine hours and brought with them a mental as well as a physical strain and ordeal—an experience that could rarely be matched. We should not forget the contribution made by all those who died, were injured or were taken prisoner.

I, of course, include in that the absolutely crucial role of the ground crew and the in-flight engineers. Without them, Bomber Command would not have been able to carry out hundreds of thousands of sorties, drop more than a million bombs and tie up vast amounts of scarce German resources that would otherwise have been used elsewhere against Allied forces, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, said. Many of the ground crew also suffered. I was glad that we heard mention of the many women in the ground crew support teams who made a very significant contribution. Night after night these brave volunteers— noble Lords have stressed that these were volunteers and it is important to remember that—risked their lives and, as I said, many gave them. There has never been any doubt about the bravery and integrity of those who took part.

All speakers have said that there should be appropriate recognition of that contribution. Given the extraordinary service that these people gave, there is, indeed, a very strong case for that. People understandably ask for that recognition. As has been said, those who served in Bomber Command during the Second World War were eligible for one of the stars instituted for campaign service—for example, the 1939-45 Star. In addition, a series of campaign stars were created for participants in particularly hazardous campaigns and many Bomber Command personnel qualified for the much prized Air Crew Europe Star or the France and Germany Star.

Noble Lords have said that this issue should be revisited to consider awarding extra recognition. The case for a specific Bomber Command recognition medal was considered by the relevant committee at the time but it was not considered appropriate at that stage. That was not just the situation for Bomber Command; it applied also to Fighter Command and others. The committee’s long-standing policy has been that retrospective consideration of awards and medals for service performed many years earlier should not be given and that remains the case. Ministers do not interfere in the working of the HD Committee—the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Richard, will recognise, from his experience as a Minister in the department, that many problems would arise if Ministers interfered in the allocation of medals.

As regards noble Lords’ suggestions about creating a memorial and the campaign to erect a memorial to recognise those associated with Bomber Command, we are actively supporting the Bomber Command Association in its efforts to establish a national memorial for Bomber Command that will pay tribute to all those who died serving in Bomber Command. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, said that the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, was concerned that the names of those who died should be recorded. I understand where he is coming from. The actual design of a memorial has not yet been determined but I am sure that any suggestions coming from the Bomber Command Association or veterans of the campaign will be taken into account. The House will know that a Bomber Command memorial funding campaign was launched last year, to which the noble Lord, Lord Luke, referred. I understand that the fundraising is going extremely well, which is good to know. The Ministry of Defence chairs the Bomber Command memorial committee, which is looking at locations in London. I understand that good progress is being made about possible locations; discussions, however, have not been finalised. I undertake to come back and inform the House once a decision has been made.

I hope that your Lordships will acknowledge that the unity that exists in this House about the need for recognition is shared by the Government. The dedication and sacrifice of those who were part of Bomber Command is absolutely unquestioned. This debate is about how best to recognise that contribution and how to move the situation forward. The Prime Minister said in October last year:

“I have always believed that the 55,000 brave men of Bomber Command who lost their lives in the service of their country deserved the fullest recognition of their courage and sacrifice”.

I hope that your Lordships will agree that a national memorial to those who perished is a fitting tribute and one that we can all support.